Jack Russell terrors

That’s it. The training starts here!
On my return from work tonight, and finding no dinner waiting on the table, I decided to get my trainers on and head out for a quick 5k. I’m running a 10k in September in aid of Sands and have not been out on the streets for a run for months.
In fact, I’ve never run 10k in my life. The family used to run 5, 6 or 7ks when we were younger, in and around Strathclyde Park on the Motorola fun days, but I’ve never attempted 10k in one go. So, with this in mind, I thought I’d better start doing a bit of training. Okay, I know September is ages away but the longer you leave it, the harder it will be (in my measly opinion).
With grey clouds smothering the sky and the occasional droplet of water hitting off my nose, I started running, expecting the occasional droplet to turn into a raging downpour as that’s usually what happens on these 5k runs around Calderwood and St. Leonards.
Thankfully I ran the length of the lap with no rain but, thanks to my lack of jogging in recent months, struggled for the majority of the 35 minutes, passing the occasional walkers and growling or muttering dogs. Dogs who were sometimes held back by straining leases or allowed to run free, running up threateningly towards me and growling angrily at my audacity to be running with shorts on, keys jangling in my pocket. Thankfully none of the dogs were Jack Russell Terriers. If it had been I may have lost my shorts… or worse.
I have a history with Jack Russell terriers.
For some reason, this particular breed of dog seems to dislike me. For years every single one of them that has passed me in the street has took an instant dislike to me. These small, white and brown dogs may seem innocent looking upon first glance but don’t let them fool you.
Upon meeting them in the street, some of these little terriers, simply growl as they pass and others bark. Others have been known to stop dead in their tracks and glare at me threateningly or stop and then snarl and snap, some jumping about wildly on the spot, flashing their small, but not insignificant jaws, filled with sharp, straight teeth.

In Manitoba Crescent, our second family home, the permed neighbour owned one. This neighbour was a quiet, airy fairy type of woman, with a large, dark permed hairdo and one of those vaguely annoying, patronising voices. The kind of voice that, coupled with her habit of tilting her head to one side when talking to you, sounded like she was constantly being sympathetic towards your situation. As if she pitied you as she spoke.
She’s now a waitress in the local Beefeater. She served our table one night when I was out for dinner with the family. We didn’t recognise her at first as her perm is now gone but she still does the mourning voice and the head tilting, sympathetic, nodding during conversation.
Anyway, she owned a Jack Russell and was one of my paper round customers when I delivered the East Kilbride News.
Every Wednesday night I’d walk to the town centre after school and pick up a huge pile of newspapers from the office’s front desk and trudge all the way home on foot, come rain or shine. Not an easy job as the East Kilbride News wasn’t the lightest of weekly local rags. Little did I realise then that I’d end up helping putting the paper together every week.
From behind the large glass window of the neighbour’s front door the wee mutt would constantly bark, growl and snap at me as I tried to safely deliver the permed neighbour’s newspaper. As soon as I prized the letterbox open to start sliding the week’s latest East Kilbride News in through the opening, the Jack Russell’s teeth would be there, snapping and snarling at me from the other side.
I don’t mind admitting that sometimes I would aim the first end of the rolled up paper directly at the dogs snapping mouth, hoping to give it a wee smack across the jaw. Usually the paper’s end would be torn and shredded within moments on the other side of the letterbox, the crazy wee mutt attacking it with a violent, psychotic hatred.
This neighbour had a baby girl as well?! Can you imagine having such an animal with this lunatic nature around a baby? Nuts.
One afternoon, after picking up my usual pile of papers, I decided to treat myself to a paperback I’d been looking forward to reading. I dropped in at WH Smith on my way and headed on out up the road to make my deliveries. Hours later, with only the permed neighbour to go, I started making my way up her Manitoba Crescent drive when I heard the weekly snapping and barking start once more from behind the large glass front door. I seen the familiar brown and white blur of ears and teeth jumping up and down as I made my way up the drive and, just as I got around two thirds of the way up the paved path, the permed neighbour appeared out of nowhere in the small porch and, to my horror, swung the front door wide open to greet me. The crazy little mutt of a dog sprinted right for me. Barking, growling, snapping.
A blur of rabid dog hatred, galloping towards my legs, spittal spinning out from it’s black dog gums, upon which the small, sharp teeth snapped. My steps faltered but I kept walking, pulling the paper from my bag, ready to deliver, striding up the path as if undeterred by the coming white and brown onslaught of noisy, yapping teeth. Then, as if on a spring board built into the permed neighbours pathway, the dog fired straight up into the air, aiming for the face. I swerved to the side, the dog missing, barking and snapping all the way, as it landed safely on it’s four paws at my side.
Almost instantaneously, it leaped up again, snapping at my arm.
This time it hit. Biting my arm briefly but thankfully letting go just as the teeth found some grip on my arm. The jacket I was wearing at the time was some kind of canvas number so the teeth did not manage to do much damage but it was enough to make me kick out at the little runt on his way back down to ground. The permed neighbour stood in her doorway, gently chastising the little git of a Jack Russell for playing, with that pathetic, quiet voice of hers and that tilting head of pity. Undeterred, the Russell paid his master’s voice no heed and once more lept up into the air spraying me with another volley of barks and yelps and snapped onto the WH Smith carrier bag in my other hand. This time the dog bit in and wouldn’t let go. My new book was in there and the little terrier had it’s grip on it with it’s vicious jaws. I shook and swept the bag through the air between myself and the permed neighbour in an effort to separate the mutt from my newly purchased book but with a dogged determination the dog held on by the teeth. The struggle lasted for at least a couple of seconds before the permed neighbour eventually took hold of her pet’s body. The mutt released the book upon the touch of his owner and continued with his barrage of verbal abuse, but this time from the safety of his owner’s hands, snapping and growling at me as I threw the paper into the doorway and retreated back down the garden path.
On getting home I pulled my new book from the slightly shredded carrier bag to find one large set of jaw prints cut into the lower half of the book. Proper, deep, tooth marks embedded through each side of the cover and buried down, gnawed into at least 100 pages on either end of the book. Throughout the following weeks, reading that book, turning those tooth marked pages, I never shook the feeling of anger and hatred towards that little b**tard of a dog.
I remember it was only a matter of weeks until I was walking up the hill to school one day and an older gent passed me, innocently walking his dog. Of course the dog was another Jack Russell Terrier and stopped in its morning ramble to fiercely yap and bark in my general direction, jumping around madly on the spot of pavement before me.
“They’re all insane!”, I remember thinking, but inadvertently half shouting at the same time, at the rather puzzled elderly owner as he clipped the end of the dog’s lead on and pulled it under control.
There have been more than a few other similar incidents over the years, all with Jack Russells.
Even a few months ago another one of these little runts destroyed my nephew’s football the day we took him, and our niece, Morgan, over to Strathclyde Park. Joshua, Morgan, Ka and myself stood and watched helplessly as the mutt ravaged the blue football to blue, plastic smithereens, growling the guttural noises of a wild animal after running across half the park, out of nowhere and descending on the ball like a bat out of hell.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t enjoy ‘The Artist’ as much as everyone else seemed to.

Okay, Uggie did look a little friendlier than most Jack Russells but I couldn’t help but spend the majority of my time watching that movie being highly suspicious of the supposedly wonderful little co-star. I don’t care if he could rescue someone from a burning building, play dead with an imaginary bullet or walk on two hind legs, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him (or even kick him). All of those skills just make him all the more dangerous for when he starts attacking people in the street, regardless of how many awards he’s got on it!

Something to smile about

Well thank goodness that’s all over. Back to normality (well, as normal as normality gets). Just as well this Jubilee malarky only happens once in a while. As nice as it was to watch all the barges and boats on the Thames on Sunday it was far more entertaining watching the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir gaining ‘hypothermia’ whilst singing Rule Britannia at the top of their voices. Apparently the girls in the company had just had their hair done especially. Certainly looked like they’d just stepped out of a salon, even though they were only halfway through the rinse.
A wee bit of rain and everybody in England thinks they’re hard because they went out in the bad weather to see their Queen. The London Ambulance Service told of how they treated around 560 people who, because of the bad weather conditions, said they were cold. Bless.
At least it was dry for the concert on Monday.
A concert which veered from the rubbish to the surreal, to the rubbish, to the half entertaining, to the actually quite good, to the, wow, lots of fireworks.
In all, pretty entertaining, if you were drinking, and that was without Rolf even getting to finish his song. Scary Grace Jones’ skills with a hula hoop were particularly impressive. I’m lucky if I can manage ten seconds nevermind the length of ‘Slave to the Rhythm’.
We had been standing at the foot of that statue, the Victoria Memorial, in the sunshine, only a few months ago with Ann holding Adventure Ted aloft in order to get a decent picture of her before Buckingham Palace (the bear that is, not Ann).
Little did we know that by that time, the next afternoon, things would be a little bit different.
It was a cloudy Saturday March morning in London. Grey, unlike the previous days, and and as the rain had slowly started to fall, Ka and myself hurriedly took shelter from the Strand and ran through the large archway entrance into Charing Cross Railway Station. Not only were we after temporary shelter from the gathering rainclouds above but we were also after a loo and since this was a railway station this would mean digging into the pockets and coming up with 10 and 20p pieces. At least I was hoping it was only 10 and 20p pieces - this was London after all. I wouldn't have been surprised if the railway stations of the capital ventured into the 50p regions. After a brief scout around we found the required restroom archway and Ka ventured forth, leaving me sitting on a plastic bench outside, before a small card and souvenir shop. Even back in March there seemed to be more Union Jacks knocking about than usual. I sat waiting whilst eyeless members of the Royal family smiled at me from the circling stand in the shop's doorway opposite me. The Queen’s eyeless mask was particularly freaky. Without eyes behind them, these masks looked like a Royal version of Village of the Damned or, with the light of the shop behind, like Nicholas Fisk’s ‘Grinny’.
“I hate that Grinny book!” Chaz shouts at the top of his voice, his shout echoing up the corridor behind the short, striding form of Mrs. Boyd.
The teacher had laughed on previous, probably quieter, occasions in the school corridors, but this time we were walking in the vicinity of the Head Master’s office and she wasn’t amused by the echoing shout that had burst out from the corner of the corridor behind her. Mrs. Boyd spun on her heels, in mid chew of what looked like a particularly chewy piece of chewing gum, and flew at Chaz with pointed finger. Mrs. Boyd had been championing Fisk’s ‘Grinny’ for the past few weeks in her English class, much to our displeasure as we slumbered and struggled to stay awake over it’s pages, listening to the unfortunate that had been chosen to read on that particular day. Chaz had took it upon himself to voice his opinions on the chosen literature on more than one occasion in the corridors of Saint brides High School. Mrs. Boyd had always replied with a smile and a warning of how he’d be the next lucky reader, but on this particular occasion she’d obviously grown weary of the joke. As Mrs. Boyd closed in, Chaz couldn’t seem to move, frozen to the spot by that twisted, pointed finger, but the rest of us managed and darted to the safety of the nearest common room, leaving him to his fate.
The Queen grinned at me the same way the Alien Granny of that book used to grin, easily dominating the adults’ minds but unable to infiltrate the kids’ which eventually led to her downfall.
A busker strummed at a guitar in the corner of the Railway Station. A cleaner was sauntering around, lazily sweeping at the odd piece of rubbish, either mumbling, grumbling or humming to himself under his cap. A couple of guys, obviously on their way out to the Saturday of some kind of drunken weekend break, ambled up the to shop and spun the mask stand as an old couple picked a birthday card from the shelves in the small shop behind them.
We were heading to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End to see the matinee performance of Stomp that afternoon and Ka had voiced an interest in seeing Russell Grant in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, an interest I chose to not hear. We still had more than an hour or so to while away, just as well really considering the time Ka was taking in the Station’s loo.
The guys decided on a freaky Royal each, fighting over who was to be Kate. One of the guys was verbally bullied into it and took the other guys’ masks of Philip, William and Charles up to the small counter where a bored looking girl took them off him. The old couple chuckled over a card and then nodded in agreement, handing it over the counter to the lady behind the till once the guys had moved back out into the Station and immediately started unwrapping the cellophane.
Ka eventually appeared through the shadows underneath the archway leading down to the toilets. Looking a little pale, she walked over the train station waiting area towards me and produced the short white stick she had been harbouring from somewhere within her jacket.
“I’m pregnant!” Ka handed the white plastic stick to me with a shaky hand. Looking down at the small screen on the pregnancy test I seen a feint but definite indication of lines in certain positions and compared them with the details on the crumpled up instructions Ka handed to me in my other hand.
“Are you finished with that?” the Railway station cleaner suddenly interrupted us, almost moving between the two of us gesturing with his pick-up stick.
“What?” I almost blurted at him as he continued to edge forward.
“Are you finished with that?” he asked again nodding at my hands. Confounded I was about to give an answer when Ka confirmed we had indeed finished with it and told the guy to go ahead. The cleaner then moved in and just as I thought he was about to swipe the crumpled paper and test from my hands, extended his pick-up stick and lifted a rolled up McDonalds bag that had been lying behind my feet. I quickly agreed we had finished with it and then corrected myself for taking responsibility for someone’s rubbish and informed the man the McDonalds wasn’t even ours. I don’t eat in McDonalds and I never discard litter in such a fashion even if there is a distinct lack of bins in London Railway stations. When we arrived in London on the Thursday I had to trail a whole carrier bag full of rubbish from the train around Euston with me until I eventually found a bin in the Shaftesbury Paddington Hotel. Okay, bins are maybe handy for bombers but it’s not an ideal situation when you’ve got some rubbish to dispose of and there are no weird cleaners hanging about.
Anyway, Ka’s latest bombshell was enough to make my head spin, without any form of explosives, and as the Railway Station cleaner leaned in and picked up the obvious emergency situation that was his crumpled up McDonalds paperbag I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d noticed what was going on before him.
Had he realised he had disturbed a teary eyed woman revealing to her husband, after coming out of the loo, in the middle of Charing Cross Train Station, that she was pregnant? Surely the white stick, the urgent quiet discussion and the look of bewilderment, confusion and then mixed emotions on our faces was enough to illustrate the point.
He could have at least congratulated us to ease the tension. He could have grabbed us at each side and happily shouted a massive ‘Alleluia!’, turned and told the shop keeper, the blokes behind the Royal ‘Grinny’ masks and the old, chuckling couple with the funny card. They could have replied with smiles and happily waved over to us. The volume of the busker’s guitar could have suddenly became much louder. A passing brass band could have joined him with a nod, a smile and a wink. The cleaner would then start up a song and dance routine, skipping and jumping with his pick-up stick, and all the passing pedestrians, who suddenly all seemed far more brightly dressed, could have suddenly started dancing transforming Charing Cross Railway Station into a floor of colour, dancing, waving and smiles. Grace Jones could have appeared with her hula hoop, a helmeted Russell Grant could then have been shot out of a nearby steam train’s chimney in a shower of glitter and stars whilst Flavia circled underneath on the platform and the Station announcer could have made the announcement over the tannoy.
Obviously that would have been asking too much, of course. The cleaner didn’t give us any congratulations. He was far more interested in the dropped McDonalds wrappers at our feet, mumbled something under his breath and then slouched on with his slow trail around Charing Cross.
That was thirteen weeks ago and Baby Reid 2 is growing well. Obviously it is quite early and happy thoughts are always going to be tinged with sadness as we think of Baby’s big sister, Lucy but fingers crossed things work out a little better this time around.

Halle's hot and Dahl's hut

So Halle Berry’s been in Glasgow over the weekend filming her latest flick. I was reading yesterday that there is someone employed on set, standing, waiting patiently behind camera who runs out as soon as the director shouts cut and rubs Halle’s hands. Her poor, wee cold hands. This same person also provides Halle with a nice hot water bottle at each scene’s break, helping her brave the freezing cold Scottish air.
It’s not even cold yet?!
Berry’s filming an adaptation of David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’. And no, the author is not the same David Mitchell as the smarmy one with the hook nose and bulbous eyes with a penchant for making snippy comments whom I reckoned it was when I originally seen ‘Cloud Atlas’ in the book charts. This David Mitchell has been shortlisted for the booker prize and is now getting his books made into films starring big Hollywood names. The git.
I get very jealous of writers. People writing stories and getting paid for it. Especillay once they start getting made into big Hollywood movies. David Mitchell will be loaded now. Mega bucks for spending your days, sitting at home, writing, or in Edinburgh coffee shops if your J. K. ‘I was a poor, lonely, single Mum’, Rowling.
Can you sense the jealousy? (Not of being a single Mum...)
Every time I’ve tried to settle down in a coffee shop to write a book I’ve always been chucked out an hour or so after my first tea (I don’t drink coffee) or at the very least received growls from the folks behind the counter or had a wet mop flung over my shoes as a subtle hint.
How did J.K. ‘my ideas are all completely original’, Rowling get away with it? She must have spent a hell of a lot of her single parent benefits on posh coffee.
Or maybe it was a tea drinker vendetta. It was simply because she was a slurper of the coffee bean. Like I said, I’ve never drank coffee. Perhaps the coffee shops I was perched in were discriminating against me because I was a tea drinker. That would explain why tea is always p**s poor in those ridiculously overpriced coffee shops, because they simply do not cater for, and have no intention of catering for, tea drinkers. Especially ones that are trying to come up with the next multi million pound making fantasy series to envelop the whole childrens’ fiction reading market.
Roald Dahl, the genius and a favourite author of mine since I was a kid, who would have been 95 last week, made the headlines a few days ago, not only because of his birthday (even though it’s not really his birthday because he’s dead) but because his poor little garden hut is falling apart.
Yes, Dahl’s dilapidated, old hut at the bottom of his garden is apparently in imminent danger of falling apart and Dahl’s family have started a campaign to save, and move, his hut to the Roald Dahl museum in Buckinghamshire.
That’s a nice thought. Treasuring and perhaps partly restoring, what was the birthplace of so many classic and wonderful stories.
At least it was a nice thought until the family insisted they wanted half a million quid for their trouble.
Half a million quid? To save a garden hut?
Are the Dahl offspring having a laugh?
My Dad’s got two garden huts in his garden but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t need half a million quid to give them a bit of a refurbishment, even if it did mean sticking them on the back of a lorry to shift them to a different location. He could probably even install a wee swimming pool in each of them and it wouldn’t cost him half a million quid. Perhaps a mini bar and an HD TV too?
And another thing, why the hell can’t the Dahl offspring pay for the refurbishment and transportation of their famous author patriarch’s garden hut themselves? Surely they can afford it with the royalties they’re earning off the back of his hut originated creative genius?
That Sophie Dahl could cut back on the old chocolate cake and put a few quid in the bank for a start, not to mention, lose a couple of pounds. Talk about the everlasting gobstopper…
It was a simple garden hut made out of brick and polystyrene with a mouldy old chair, a rotten old sleeping bag and a crumbling old suitcase inside. Dahl must have been freezing in the winter months. I bet he could have done with one of Halle Berry’s hot water bottles in those days.
How much would that hut cost to ship? I reckon that Dahl lot have been selling on ebay. One of these sellers that inflates their price by grossly overestimating the old postage and packaging.
‘Yes, this item is well worth a look at. This item has been previously used, and probably abused. A great little garden retreat. Brilliant for hiding yourself away in to get away from the wife or the grandweans that are screaming for chocolate. A little worn on the inside, and out. Brick crumbling. Polystyrene mouldy. Plenty of bugs and parasites. Perhaps the occasional fox.
Worth around £5. Postage? Half a million quid’.
Sophie Dahl described it as a place of ‘palpable magic and limitless imagination’.
After her grandfather’s lifetime of fantastic writings and creative genius I’m sure her bank account could be described as something similar.

Cookies on call

Just back from Dunblane. Ka and myself stayed at the Doubletree Dunblane Hydro, a monster of a hotel perched on a large hill at the edge of Dunblane village. As Ka and myself drove up the winding road towards the front of the building we couldn't help but be impressed by the large Victorian structure with it's towering height standing over us like a traditional hollywood style haunted house or murder mystery setting. One of the best things was the greeting at reception.
Standing on the plush carpets before the tall wooden panelled reception desks we were greeted with, not only genuine friendly smiles and offers of help with luggage, but also, most importantly, a large, steaming hot chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven wrapped up in a thin paper envelope. The receptionist had just pulled them out from a small storage unit under her desk. No wonder she was all smiles. What a fantastic perk to the job. Chocolate cookies on call. As we waited on the elevator to take us up to the top floor, the beautiful stench of cookie filled the air. The need for tea grew within me as we waited with the cookie smell wafting around me. The champagne we'd brought for our overnight stay could wait. Tea had to be made immediately in order to accompany this smoking hot baby.
Of course, Ka opted for coffee, (that ain't right is it?) and after enjoying our 40 grams of fat in cookie form we thought we'd walk the dietary sin off by exploring Dunblane. A town we'd never visited before and were curious to have a walk around. We returned to our rooms an hour later, considering a trip to Stirling. From what we could see, Dunblane has a Cathedral, and a Tesco. Oh, and a Railway Station, presumably for escaping by, sorry commuting by. That's about it.
After our short walk we opted to stay in the hotel and take advantage of it's amenities enjoying a dip in the pool and a sweat in the steam room, all the while I mulled over the location of the Doubletree chocolate cookie factory. Could it have been in the Hydro's basement, with small serving lifts rising the cookies up into the receptionists desks, just in time to serve to the lucky arriving guests?
Could Celebrity tv chef, Nick Nairn have had a hand in creating the cookies?
Ka and myself dined in the luxurious setting of The Kailyard, Nick Nairn's Restaurant, housed within the hotel. Beautiful meals of duck and tagliatelle served with a nice, crisp Pinot Grigio (crisp, hmm, I may become a wine connoisseaur yet). We then retired to our room where we danced to the final tunes from a dying iPod and ate strawberries with champagne.
The breakfast, this morning, was immense. Tables of cereal, freshly cut fruit, bacon, sausage, egg, scrambled and fried, potato scone, porridge and whisky, racks and racks of toast and baskets of chocolate chip muffins. Muffins, but no cookies. The cookies were disappointingly absent at breakfast.
After breakfast we went for another swim in the hotel's pool which was more of a challenge than yesterday, as it seemed far more difficult to keep myself afloat after my platefuls of food in the past 24 hours, not to mention champagne and wine.
All in all, not bad for a short Valentines break.
A Valentines all kicked off on Sunday night by a visit to Tricia and Tommy's.
Tricia was on a mission. Ka, Lynsey Ann and myself walked into her house only to be bombarded by a plethora or hearts. Tricia had transformed her living room into a Valentines wonderland with candles, confetti, balloons and paper hearts hanging from the ceiling in coloured, curving, twisting, acetate papers. Tricia had went to town with it all presumably just stopping short before she had painted it red. Christopher and Martin hummed in quiet but amused disapproval, well used to their Mum's fantastic enthusiasm. After dinner Tricia had organised a game of Mr & Mrs for the gathered couples. All two of them. Tricia and Tommy themselves and Ka and myself. Chris, Martin and Lynsey Ann opted out, thankful, for a change, that they were single.
After around twenty questions, with a possible 300 points up for grabs, Tommy and Tricia managed to win the game. Winning only by a mere five points I should add but with totals, which Chris quickly pointed out, that were not even a third of the possible total. A miserable performance by both parties. As a luxury item of clothing I thought Ka would have preferred a pair of her boots to underwear but hey, what do I know? Not enough, as it would turn out. It was the iMac on a desert island and the purple pants that tripped me up. How was I to know that particular desert island would have no electricity supply?
As a result of the Valentines games we all won a prize regardless of how bad our result was. The girls all got various items of smelly stuff and chocolates whilst I got a large, heavy wrapped box. Puzzled, I started unwrapping my present, nervously laughing upon revealing the Mr. Men Library. A boxed collection of every Mr.Men title by the late, great Roger Hargreaves. The reason I was nervously laughing is because I immediately became slightly emotional as the Mr. Men Collection had been the one thing I had informed Ka would be the first purchase I would personnally make for Baby Reid's own library. Obviously I did not bring everyone down at the dinner table by mentioning this as Tricia started telling of how she always used to read the tale of Mr Tickle to me as a wee tyke.
Mr. Tickle had hands on enormous long arms, with which he could reach people from far off and give them a damn good tickle. Mr Tickle could also lie in his bed and reach downstairs, into his kitchen and get himself a cookie from the jar. He'd have loved the Dunblane Hydro!

Waterstones and the wishlist

On Sunday I pulled up in the rain, parking the car under the drooping trees in one corner of Blythswood Square. Before you think it, no, I was not kerb crawling, Blythswood Square being one of Glasgow's old hooker haunts(I don't think they hang around there anymore). Ka had been out shopping all day with her Mum, so I was heading into the city centre to meet her for the cinema. Escaping the rain in the streets, I dived into Sauchiehall Street's Waterstones and headed for the design books. The best way to escape the bad weather - Waterstones. Not only is there shelf upon shelf of wonderful, colourful, story and picture filled books aplenty to browse, but there are even comfy chairs, toilets and, if it's a big branch and you've done your homework, a coffee shop. Not sure if the one in Sauchiehall Street has a coffee shop though, I wasn't there quite as long as I'd usually hang about bookshops what with having to meet the wife with her shopping bags.
You are also sometimes lucky enough to meet famous people in these quiet, calm surroundings, usually after waiting in horrendous queues, undoubtedly behind a smelly person. Being a geek, (but an unsmelly geek I should point out), I've waited in more than one queue in the past decade or so. Michael Palin, Tom Baker and Terry Pratchett are among the luminaries I've queued to meet, hanging around bookshops.
There's also been a few failed attempts. A year or so ago I almost met The Mighty Boosh, but had to escape, running out into the rain soaked street, grimacing in pain. After fifteen minutes of waiting in their queue my eardrums exploded from the noise of the screaming girls surrounding me. Screaming girls surrounding me is not something I'm entirely used to (violins please!).
More than a few years ago my Mum sent me into John Menzies to get Paul Young's autograph. Unfortunately she was most disappointed when I cam back informing her that it wasn't the young, quiffed eighties singer, signing autographs, but the Scottish fisherman with the cap and tash who usually sat on a boat, in a Loch somewhere, talking to a camera.
Simon Pegg's going to be in Sauchiehall Street tomorrow. Unfortunately I'm working. I would have hung around Waterstones to meet him, though I suspect there'd be more ear drum risk.
These large bookshops are great for hanging about in. Loads of people do it. Picking up large books they'd love to read, but have absolutely no intention of buying, probably because it's way too big and expensive to actually take home. Too big even for their coffee table. I'm sure some of the books people look at in these stores come in the form of coffee tables. Anyway, the 'customers' will then settle down on a large comfy, leather chair and enjoy a good, quiet read, probably a far quieter read than they'd get sitting at home. After a while, the time depending on the person and their objectives for the day, they'll set the giant book back on it's perch and then move on their way, back out into the rain and miserable shop strewn streets.
While I was browsing the tomes of the design section I searched for anything that was on my amazon wish list. My new tool that I'd just discovered a few weeks ago. Your amazon wish list, a tool I'm probably ridiculously late in using and one that's actually fairly fun to use, for a while at least. You can click away at products online to your hearts content, pretending your spending money, when in fact your not. Your account is just taking a note of all the products you'd like to buy but for one reason or another, you can't.
It's quite cruel really, doing that to yourself. Like the end of Bullseye when Jim Bowen shows you what you could have won. Even if it was a speedboat, it was still horrendously cruel. I wonder how many people actually wanted to punch him when they rolled out that speedboat? Even if they had lived in a one bedroom flat in the middle of EK, they hadn't realised how much they'd wanted that speedboat until that moment. Jim Bowen, you sick b****rd!
Anyway, torturing yourself for not being able to afford things is the big minus of the wish list. Spending hours wistfully staring at it's contents with that Scottish Power bill waving at you from the hall. "Yoohoo! Over here!"
Whilst browsing, in the actual shop, I came across a new hardcover by the name of 'Just My type', a book by author, Simon Garfield, about fonts.
Ahh, fonts. Those were the days. The days when I spent hours looking over books about fonts and actually caring about what fonts I used. Working on newspaper adverts you spend as little time as possible doing that kind of thing.
Helvetica? That'll do.
Something bold? Helvetica Black. It even sounds bold.
Something fancy? Times.
Something fancier? Time New Roman.
Something even fancier. Bloody hell. Palatino then.
No, let's really roll out the barrel.
Roll out the font barrel, are you nuts? Okay then, Zapf Chancery.
Nah, that's just too fancy. How about this one? I like this one?
But that's Courier..?
Corbusier Stencil. Apparently if I were a font I'd be Corbusier Stencil. According to Pantagram's website anyway... Balanced, geometrical, imposing but with good reason and impeccable judgement... hmmm. Not sure about the 'impeccable'. Looks a bit boring to me... I'd better go and pay that Scottish Power bill.

"It's in Bellahouston Park, you pagan!"

Woke up this morning after a rough dream involving grand parents passing away in the wrong order, family members being eaten by swamp monsters and houses being demolished, all seeming, in that mad, crazy, dream-like way, so tangible and real. The swamp monster was particularly horrible as part of it's murderous routine was spewing acid over it's prey before taking off large chunks from the head by pummeling it's catch with it's tremendous tentacles. A rather disturbing vision to have in your head as you wake from your slumber.
My liking for science fiction can sometimes have odd effects on my dreams...
At the moment I'm reading Adam Roberts' 'Salt'. A science fiction novel telling the story of a large human colony setting up camp on a new world which, due to it's white, arid landscape, and near uninhabitable and hostile atmosphere is christened, you guessed it, 'Salt'.
The various factions of the colony settle at different points throughout the land, each with their own philosophies, beliefs and religions. Of course, once each clan settles it all breaks into a bloody war. The two larger, main colonies, the Senaarians and the Als, are the main protagonists in the book's events which are told from the viewpoint of each of these clans' leaders . The Senaarians live with their militaristic, ordered dictatorship and the Als, with their unordered, unruly, free-living ways. Both eventually break from their strained toleration of each other and give in to battle and death.
Through it Roberts paints a pretty pessimistic vision. The basic bones of the tale being, of course, human nature. Roberts is basically saying that no matter how long the human race survives, in the end we'll always end up fighting internally with the inevitability of fear and hostility, the results of a lack of understanding and tolerance in differing cultures and beliefs.
Talking of beliefs, the Pope's in town today with his Popemobile.
After waking from my swamp monster filled dream this morning and getting ready for work, I text my Mum and told her to enjoy herself at Glasgow Green today.
Mum text back, rather abruptly, "It's in Bellahouston Park, you pagan!".
Police are swarming the city centre, motorways have been closed off and a large black stage has been erected in Bellahouston Park for Mass, taking place this afternoon led by the Pontiff himself.
Ka and myself were in the Gallowgate area of Glasgow on Saturday morning with Dougie and Grace, heading for the Pram Centre to investigate some baby mobiles for our own coming visitor. On our way we passed the Barrowlands and the Bairds bar where loud, angry anthems were belting out, echoing through the street. Stalls had been set up, framed with Celtic scarves, selling T-shirts, adorned with Benedict's mug. Slogans not unlike 'Glasgow Celtic welcomes the Pope' and such like plastered over the 'quality' prints. Unfortunately I was walking down the street with my dark blue sweater on and was certain I was getting more than a few hostile looks from the grumpy old Glaswegian men milling around the stalls. One passed me by who, I swear, was almost ready to spit on me, the look on his face. Maybe he was just upset by the fact I wasn't buying a T-shirt.
Anyway, I'm sure there'll be a few T-shirts on today. It's an unbelievably sunny afternoon after the terrential rain of earlier in the week... almost as if there has been some kind of divine intervention throughout the skies of Scotland.
Great weather for his Holiness' £20 a ticket gig.
Surely the Pope could have put on a free mass for all his followers when they number so many and when his visits number so few? This is the richest global organisation in the world after all. With Susan Boyle and Michelle McManus singing on stage surely they should be paying us to attend?

Sales, biographies and diamond pattern waistcoats

With our streets still looking like our freezer in need of a severe defrosting we've had a quiet weekend only venturing out for a short trip to the local shopping centre yesterday and the gym today for our Sunday worship (body worship in this case). The trip to the shopping centre was the first time Ka and myself had plucked up the courage to face the shops since before Christmas and it turned out to be a marginally successful trip with an exchange being made and a few items being found in the sales and a few chance encounters with other friends battling through the mob. I managed to get a rather excellent suit jacket, reduced from £90 to £26 after hesitantly asking a reluctant sales assistant for a chest measurement. Asking her if she reckoned the jacket would fit I ended up having to talk her into throwing her measuring tape around me. As it happened the jacket was a perfect fit and will prove perfect for when the wife takes me out to dinner. In the same store I also got a spiffing navy jumper with a blue diamond design over it's front. Ben Sherman, reduced from £30 to £15. In fact, after purchasing it, I realised it reminded me a lot of a waistcoat that came with the suit I hired for my High School formal. The occasion when you all go out, at the end of your last, or second last, school year and hire a suit, dressing like move stars for a night. Most people getting the smart black tuxedos which I did indeed get but me, having to be different, decided for an additional diamond pattern coloured waistcoat. Maybe the jumper wasn't such a great buy after all - I seem to remember that waistcoat made me look like one of those comedy snooker players. All I needed was a large pair of square spectacles. It certainly did not have much of an effect on the night as I failed to get a dance for the duration of the formal but then I never got a dance at those High School functions anyway (violins please!). In retrospect maybe that's why I wore the waistcoat anyway, because I knew I had no chance. The only vague chance I had that night was with a bottle of MD 20/20, lime flavour, and that was shared between four of us.
Ka managed to buy a couple of pair of shoes in the sale too, surprise surprise. Soon we'll be needing a Carrie Bradshaw wardrobe for the amount of shoes she has. As I sit at my computer writing this blog the shoes are stacked in the open wardrobe above me, the large shelf trembling with the shoe strain. Ka will say the same about me though with books.
I've just finished 'The Moon's a Balloon' the late, great David Niven's autobiography, written around thirty eight years ago. My Dad lent me it to read just before Christmas as I had always been curious about this book which had lasted for so long at the top of my Mum and Dad's living room unit. Niven was an actor through the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties and played opposite many of the old greats including Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn and the like. One of the old school before I was even born. What a life Niven led. Now he did have plenty to write about. I wonder if he ever had the fashion sense to get a diamond pattern waistcoat?
There's always a slight influx of biographies and/or autobiographies at Christmas. This year Ka got me the Chris Evans book and Auntie Tricia got me the Jack Dee autobiography. Jack Dee I've always liked because of his great dry sense of humour and his fantastic smile. A few years back I would not have even considered reading a autobiography by Chris Evans but ever since he took on the evening job at Radio 2 he's got me through many a late night Tuesday shift with his banter. Of course that'll be no more now that he's taken Wogan's show on in the mornings so I'll just have to hope they'll have a half decent replacement for the evening shift. Either that or I switch on the old iPod.
My Chrimbo present from Ka this year was a belter. A beautiful deep purple iPod Nano. There's no Deep Purple on it yet but maybe I'll look into remedying that. It's both funky and functional with stunning graphics to help you navigate through your music library. The library I've just started to build up in the past week. Fantastic. I'm just off to put more tunes on it.

Crates full of fairytales

I'm ever so slightly achey today after the torture that was Ka's sister's house move at the weekend. Angela, her partner, Steven, and our niece, Morgan, were moving from Bellshill to Bothwell involving many a trip in the hired white van on Saturday and more than a few journeys with my own car filled to the roof with 'stuff'. 'Stuff' is actually quite an accurate description as it seemed to me there was a suspicious amount of 'stuff' kept especially for those infamous, mythical times when things might come in handy. Not only that but Dougie and myself had to deal with possibly the messiest garden shed I'd ever seen in my life. A garden shed which held pick axes, crowbars, thousands of coloured plastic balls, thousands of nails, spanners, skipping ropes, spades, hoes and at least five spirit levels. That was before we tackled the garden with it's collection of inflatable animals and balls of all shapes and sizes.
The presence of the spades along with the pick axes, drills, mallets and other nasty looking tools inside the nail floored shed made me suspect that Steven was perhaps slightly more than the innocent family man that he makes himself out to be. I was almost expecting to be knocked unconscious at some point and wake up strapped up in some horrible mechanism, surrounded by spirit levels, sawing my own hand off and chatting with a freaky looking puppet on a tricycle.
Don't get me wrong I'm a bit of a hoarder myself, at least, according to Ka anyway. I've still got hundreds of Empire, SFX and Q magazines lying around in large piles, some at home, some boxed up in Mum and Dads but I'll keep them. Boxes of issues soon to be stored away up in Mum and Dad's loft turning their attic into a smaller version of the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse. Just in case. You never know. Someone someday may ask me who played the supporting actor role in suchandsuch a film and I'll be able to spring up, go to my Empire collection and pull out the relevant issue, flick through the dusty pages and find the details after scouring through a large feature of that particular month. Either that or I'll just google it. In that case hanging on to the issues seems rather pointless. Better not let on to Ka... I don't think Steven had any mag collections though he certainly had some hefty books. As did Morgan who has at least two crates full of fairytales along with her many castles, dollshouses and plastic cars. Later in the day, at the new abode, whilst busily unpacking from the rear of the van, I almost dropped a box with fright as, squeaking out of the shadows inside the van trundled a tricycle.

Weird Watchmen

Seen the movie Watchmen on Wednesday night. A very odd but interesting movie which was generally good but with the usual silly moments that inhabit these kind of 'superhero' movies. There was even a love scene that went on for too long, exposing too much shiny, moonlit, bottom. One of the main 'superhero' characters even went everywhere naked. A tall, blue superpowered being named Doctor Manhatten who had been transformed accidentally from a normal, everyday nuclear scientist in the late fifties. Becoming a higher form of life with devastatingly god like powers this character considered it acceptable to walk around butt naked... except when he goes to funerals. The best character of the piece was the brilliant Rorschach, a street vigilante who wore a cloth mask with a moving ink pattern over the face. Weird and brilliant and by far the most interesting and psychotic of the characters. Sticking to the original graphic novel (or comic) rigidly, the director Zack Snyder brings the pictures and characters to life in fabulous, full blown fashion, illustrating the alternate New York and the world that goes with it in a bleak, dystopian, nuclear fuelled detail rarely seen in any other 'superhero' movie. Watchmen is not really a 'superhero' movie though. The 'superheroes' themselves possess no super powers, falling more in line with the Batman like character of rich weirdos who dress up to enact justice on the streets. Through these characters Watchmen shows the people that would do this as psychotic, naive, corny and troubled, all battling their own troubled characters in their own way and breaking some bones along the way. Completely unlike any movie I've probably ever seen, it was a bit of a puzzler but with the good outweighing the bad. More weird than anything else.

"Messy, isn't it?"

Richard Brautigan! That was him. The poet I was writing about last night that I had done a project on in Art School. Richard Brautigan. After a while of googling various phrases including mayonnaise with poetry, I finally found him. It's all coming back to me now. By the looks of things he had a bit of a tough life and as a result was slightly disturbed in the head (a nutter). He was an alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic brought up by abusive, alcoholic parents and then put through a number of years of electroconvulsive treatment in his twenties. His biggest seller was called 'Trout Fishing in America' and that's where all my ideas of mayonnaise jars in libraries stemmed from. It's a book about American society and Brautigan's personal take on it at the time of writing in the sixties. My final project involved setting up a small library in his name and using old style library cards, the kind printed on easily worn out brown card that used to slot into each other. Brautigan commited suicide in 1984 at the age of 49 by shooting himself in the head with a .44 Magnum and it was a good few months till anyone found his body. His suicide note simply said "Messy, isn't it?".

One flamin' headless chicken please

Woke up at two minutes past ten this morning. I started work at ten... or rather was supposed to. Dived out of bed, jumped into the shower, brushed the old Hampstead Heath, flew down the old apples and pears (why am I talking in the cockney rhyming slang?) and into the car. Got to work at twenty five past only to find Felix was in a meeting so I think I managed to get away with it. I did stay later than everyone else though so I did make up for it. Don't you just hate it when you wake up late though? Rushing about the place like a flamin' headless chicken! A flamin' headless chicken... I bet they serve them in KFC. "One flamin' headless chicken please. Don't hold back with the cleaver now!" I've never had a KFC before but I suspect their chickens are headless most of the time but the flamin' part would be interesting. Straight off the grill, or the BBQ, or the spit then depending on what sauce you put on it the flames either extinguish or get worse. A good, spicey HP sauce to make the flames go higher or a creamy mayonnaise type stuff to put the flames out. Hate mayonnaise. Can't stand the stuff. I remember a project I worked on in art school that involved taking lots of photographs of jars of mayonnaise dotted about the Art school's library propping up books. Gawd knows why. Must have been another gawd awful art school project. It did not involve chickens though. Thinking back I remember it also involved coffee cups with plants growing out of them?! My daily dose of caffeine had obviously been exceeded that day. I think the project was based on some American poet... I'll need to look that up as it's annoying me now. American poet, mayonnaise, bookends... Talking of books I'm off to get back to my current perusal. Michael Palin's 'Sahara'. Yes, I know that was back in 2002 but I've still not read it. After meeting him at the end of last year and getting him to sign his latest - 'New Europe' - I thought I'd better read Sahara first before I go reading the latest. Ease my guilt for having not paid enough attention before! Long Way Round is also being repeated on the tv at the moment so I've been watching that again after having just finished McGregor and Boorman's 'Long Way Down', their own record of their trip from John O'Groats to Cape Town on their trusty motorbikes. I did watch 'Long Way Round' the first time round but it was such a great programme and journey it's easy to get caught up in it all over again. Fantastic. They were up against the clock on their travels too just like I was this morning except I wasn't going to Cape Town, I was going to Blantyre and I wasn't on a motor bike, I was in a wee clio, and I didn't leave from John O'Groats...etc

Ronnie

Finished reading Ronnie Wood's 'Ronnie' Autobiography last night. What a guy! Some of the stories in it are just great, most of the funniest involving (yes, you guessed it!) adventures with a certain 'Keef' Richards. (The story with the gun is both frightening and crazy!)The book has everything from a 'classic' rockers life, the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll (lots of drugs especially!). His obvious easy going nature in life comes across really well in his conversational way of writing making it an easily interesting, involving read.