Pete Pheasant

An open-and-shut case of men versus women

2010-09-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

IN the eternal debate about what sets men and women apart, it’s a giant of a question: What’s the natural state of a toilet seat – up or down?

There were times when it kept me awake at night. I thought I’d buried this particular demon but it reared it’s head again with a survey about the irritating things men do – apart from breathing, that is.

More than half the women questioned listed “failure to put the seat down” as their bloke’s most annoying habit.

Snoring and failing to replace the toilet roll were also cited, along with doing a bad job at household chores for fear of being asked to do them again, leaving toenail clippings and loose change around the home, drinking straight from milk bottles and refusing to ask for directions when lost.

So, let’s examine the lavatory outrage with a little logic: if a toilet seat is made to go up and down, how can one state be deemed a failure?

Drawers are made to open and close but leaving one open when you don’t need to get at what’s inside could rightly be deemed a failure. So could leaving a tap running when you don’t need water.

But since toilet seats are designed to go up for certain activities (generally confined to the male of the species) and down for others common to both sexes, blokes could argue that leaving the seat down is a failure because most of the time, we need it up.

Perhaps we should leave it down all the time. Imagine the grief we’d get then.

Meanwhile, in the interests of balance, I commissioned a survey of my own and can reveal some of the habits men find most annoying about women:

Not knowing when to stop talking.

Talking when it’s clear that their partner’s not listening.

Saying they don’t want anything to eat, then nibbling at their partner’s food.

Taking half an hour to say goodbye.

Claiming they never break wind.

Refusing help with household chores, then telling researchers their partners won’t help around the house.

Believing that buying a round of drinks is an exclusively male verb.

Talking while swimming.

Dawdling at the same supermarket display where they never buy anything, week after week.

Refusing to understand the LBW law.

Pulling a face at a gift of petrol station flowers that their bloke’s rushed out to buy on the morning of their anniversary (simply because that’s when they’re freshest).

For all the differences, though, men and women continue to co-exist under the same roof for much of their lives, happily putting up with each other’s failings, giving and taking, never going to bed on an argument and all those other lies they tell upon reaching great marriage milestones.

I’m lucky to have known the love of the same woman for 40 years and can honestly say I’ve never given much thought to whether she’d like the toilet seat up or down.

Mind you, in our younger, wilder days, what concerned us more was whether it was the toilet I’d find in the middle of the night, or the wardrobe.

Bingo! It's the way to keep courts local

2010-09-08T03:06:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 19.8.10

I WAS delighted when the law caught up with two homeless men who stole parts of a Derby war memorial.

But it wasn’t so much the resulting prison sentences that pleased me as the speed of local justice at work.

Within two weeks of a crime that outraged local people, the wrongdoers had been arrested, taken to court and locked up.

No lengthy adjournments fattening lawyers’ wallets. No expert reports blaming troubled childhoods.

It was a simple case and the public’s thirst for retribution was quenched quickly and cheaply.

It was also a throwback to a time when justice was done largely in the areas where crimes were committed. Magistrates met in town halls and chapels to deal with people who were often known to them. They passed sentence with an intimate knowledge of their community and the peculiar sensitivities of its people.

Police officers and solicitors walked to court from their stations and offices nearby. Many defendants faced them with a draft of Dutch courage from a local hostelry to which, if they were lucky, they would return afterwards, minus much of their spending money. (I remember one JP who laughed off feeble offers of payment of fines by instalment and quizzed defendants on their smoking and drinking habits, then made them turn out their pockets to show how impoverished they really were).

By the end of the week, everyone knew who had stolen from, beaten or abused their fellow citizens because the cases were reported in the local newspaper.

These were our towns and villages and we were glad that our people were dealing with those among us who had caused offence. Sadly, it’s a model of justice that is fast disappearing.

Derby sampled it last week because it has one of the two remaining magistrates’ courts in Derbyshire south of Chesterfield.

Long Eaton, Ripley, Alfreton, Belper, Heanor and others have long gone. Ilkeston could follow, with more than 100 nationwide facing the chop under Government cost-cutting plans.

We know that the country has to save money. But if we are to rebuild “broken Britain”, then restoring faith in the justice system is crucial. And it need not be so lumbering and expensive.

We don’t need purpose-built courts when we have schools, village halls, leisure centres – bingo halls, even – sitting empty for long periods.

Magistrates and lawyers could gather there to hear cases from the locality. What’s wrong with a simple chalk board outside announcing: “Trial here tonight. Alleged vandalism to children’s playground. Defendant: S. Croat”?

Come to think of it, do we always need magistrates? Why not have panels of ordinary folk – drawn from the neighbourhood and properly advised in law by a magistrates’ clerk – to hear straightforward cases?

Even in an age when many of us cower and hide, I believe there are still enough public-spirited people who would be willing to play a part in creating happier neighbourhoods.

Politicians talk a lot about reducing centralisation and giving power to the people. Here’s a chance for them to prove they’re not guilty under the Utterance of Weasel Words Act.

Young thugs need a good hiding...or a peashooter

2010-09-08T03:02:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 5.8.10

THE Asbo is dead, long live the peashooter.

Labour’s long list of powers for tackling anti-social behaviour has been torn up.

And toy firms say sales of old favourites like peashooters, catapults and cap guns are soaring. Parents, they claim, want kids to have fun-filled childhoods instead of being stuck in front of PCs,

I don’t know what this says about the drive to mend Broken Britain but I do know I’ll miss the Asbo.

It’s given us some fascinating stories, from hell-raising teenagers to neighbours disturbed by the sex lives of ladies old enough to know better.

And frankly, I’m worried: how will law-abiding citizens cope without such revelations to remind them of how lucky they are?

I’m also suspicious. Is Prime Minister Cameron simply trying to conceal the extent of the yobbery and bedroom grunting that police and councils will have to handle in some other way, with even less power to their elbows once spending cuts bite? But, above all, I’m curious to know who’s going to combat the mayhem that will ensue if the toys of my youth make a lasting comeback.

You can do serious damage with a peashooter, not to mention the anti-social behaviour those dried missiles can induce once they’ve been soaked in bicarbonate of soda and served with Sunday dinner.

Firing at shoppers and cars was as bad as I got as a youth. But a friend, aged ten at the time, was beaten with a slipper (named George) by his teacher for getting a pea stuck in another pupil’s ear, resulting in surgery.

Then there were spud-guns and rice cannons, balsa wood planes with metal tips and blotting-paper bullets fired from huge elastic bands – all capable of taking an eye out, though the fear of a good hiding from dad kept most of us in check.

We scrumped apples, took bangers to school in our satchels, dropped cap rockets next to nervous dogs and incontinent relatives, door-knocked, hedge-hopped and threw plastic-flighted darts into our brothers’ legs, knowing we’d get a smack (or at least a week without sweets) if our parents found out.

At some point, babies grew into monsters, stealing cars, terrorising estates and sticking two fingers up at authority in all its forms. So, where did it all go wrong?

I don’t yearn for the days of Dixon of Dock Green, steam trains, lard sandwiches and shops shut on Sundays. I don’t want working men tugging their forelocks and children speaking only when spoken to.

But 17,000 Asbos in eight years represents, largely, 17,000 parental failures.

If Cameron is to get his “big society”, he’ll have to turn the focus away from children and on to parents. It’s their job to control their offspring and it would be nice to think they could do it with bucket loads of love and persuasion.

Ultimately, though, it’s fear that keeps us in check: fear of losing our homes, jobs, liberty, the respect of those we care for – and fear of pain.

That’s why, when I see TV images of kids brawling and wrecking property when they should be tucked up in bed with loving families, I can’t help thinking: What they need is a good thrashing – the parents, too.

It's been a mad summer for buzzy pests

2010-09-08T02:59:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 22.7.10

WHAT’S got into the flies this summer?

They’re everywhere they shouldn’t be, and they’re mad for human contact.

I can accept this when I visit their gaff – the great outdoors – like the night I went for a bike ride and almost swallowed one black buzzy thing while trying to extricate another from my nose.

It was an unpleasant experience, but a flea bite beside the horror of learning that a friend had spotted me spluttering and flailing as I committed a fashion crime – jeans tucked into ankle socks to guard against amputation by bike chain.

It was my first offence, too.

But at least I can avoid the outdoors if I wish, unlike the place I called home before it was turned into Flies’ Paradise.

Open the tiniest of gaps in door or window and in they come in their dozens, from minute midges to big, bonkers bluebottles and an army of common in-betweeners.

It may not be very PC to dismiss them thus. There are, after all, nearly 7,000 species of fly in this country and I’m sure they’re all complex individuals, beautiful beings in their own way, a maze of colours and textures: the apple of their mummy’s multi-sectioned eye.

They probably have names like Horatio and Eugenie and organise poetry readings on their favourite dog droppings.

But we’d get on so much better if they kept out of my face.

Irritating as it is, their attention at meal times is understandable. I don’t like them hovering around my plate or trying to follow a forkful of food down my throat but, hey, a fly guy’s gotta eat.

At any other time, though, they should be doing what flies did in the old days – bombing around lampshades and watching TV in ultra close-up.

But this modern generation has no respect. They just want to dart around eyes and ears or play bounce on my balding pate – the bird’s nest, as my kids call it, though nowadays it’s more a heron’s hotel than a sparrow’s squat.

They (flies and kids) taunt me because I’m getting on in years, my sight’s dimmed, my reactions slow.

Time was when I’d waft them dead (the flies, that is) as soon as look at them, but now they have time to weigh me up and chat…

“Buzz! Look! The old lad’s picked up a newspaper. Pretending he’s gonna read it, and swearing like mad, he is! Oops, wait, he’s got to find his glasses. Now’s he’s putting them on. Where’ve we gone? Ah, he’s clocked us! Rolling up the newspaper, taking aim and….seya sucker!”

Back in the real world, scientists in California have established why me and millions of others face an uphill battle in our bid to splatter the invaders.

Using high-speed cameras, they discovered that flies calculate the location of the impending threat, come up with an escape plan, and place their legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way, all within 100 milliseconds of spotting the enemy.

Undeterred, I’m off to the pound shop. They’ve got an offer on fly-swatters.

The gladiator will rise again!

But first, I think I’ll renew the house insurance and warn the local hospital.

Doctor Who would be proud of my journey to the Vortex of Vexation

2010-07-17T01:33:00.000-07:00

IT may be mere coincidence but I’m intrigued by the fact that one magical box arrived in my life as another departed.

While TV’s Doctor Who was zooming off in a revitalised Tardis in the series finale, a tin shed from the land of Argos was materialising in my garden.

Helpfully, the huge cardboard box in which it arrived was marked: “This product must be assembled before use.”

Over two sweat-drenched days, I played cack-handed assistant to an engineer friend as a galaxy of screws and steel bars, washers and tin sheets were transformed into a shelter for my bike and the wife’s lawnmower and tools.

It’s not a time machine and I’ve not closed a tear in the space-time continuum. But I do journey occasionally to the Vortex of Vexation, wherein, a bit like the good Doctor, I fight the enemies of justice and common sense.

My latest foe was the media monster that provides my internet service, phone line and cable TV.

Unable to record telly programmes since my video recorder died, I was lured by the monster’s adverts for a “free” digi box. Except it wasn’t free, but £35, according to my reading of the company’s website.

A series of phone battles with the inhabitants of Planet Call Centre followed.

GoodafternoonMynameisScott spoke in an alien tongue, or it might have been Glaswegian, but I could make out the bottom line: £75. I told him what the website said. He told me there was an installation fee of £49. “But that’s not £75,” I said. “Forty-nine quid plus 35 makes 84.”

I’d not counted on GoodAfternoonMynameisScott’s special powers. He was able to make that offer to me on that particular day as I was a loyal customer. I said I’d think about it.

Next day, same phone number, different voice: the price was £110.

Suppressing the urge to yell unpleasantries, I hung up and wrote to the monster’s HQ with a simple question: How much?

Then MynameisJav phoned. He promised that the price was £75 and said that, once the digi box had been delivered, I was to call and arrange for an engineer to fit it.

The box duly arrived and I phoned again… to be told there’d been a mistake all along and the price was only £35.

How nice. But what if I hadn’t hesitated and argued? I might have ended up paying £110.

Isn’t that a disgraceful way to treat customers?

Sadly, though, it seems it’s par for the course with many companies these days. They’ll weave and wriggle to get out of you what they can, until they’re rumbled.

Special bargains, two-for-ones, loyalty deals that you have to stumble across –it’s all smoke and mirrors in the age of the digital spiv, outwardly respectable but as shady as Del Boy Trotter with a barrow load of unlockable suitcases.

I’ve since received a “contract” that says the price is £75 – but I’m assured that the “bill” will show a £75 refund. We shall see.

For now, the Vortex of Vexation has closed. I’m at peace with my digi box. But further battles lie ahead– and if Doctor Who wants to lend a hand, I know where I’d like to insert a sonic screwdriver.

In a weird world, someone's got to stand up for the likes of Bob

2010-07-03T02:46:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, June 24, 2010

FORGET the BP oil scandal, Bloody Sunday and the World Cup. The story that’s fascinated me lately concerns two Leicestershire men whose legs were thrown away.

Obviously, they’d been amputated first. And the patients wanted to keep them (their own legs, that is, not each others’) but surgeons said no.

You’re probably expecting me to poke fun. You might be confusing me with the old grump who writes here under my name occasionally, railing against dad-dancing, cucumbers and the grime behind cookers.

But the plight of Bob Brownlow and Gareth Ferrin is too tragic for levity.

I can’t imagine anything worse, short of having a terminal illness, than losing a limb. So let me assure you there’ll be no cheap gags about people being stumped or knee-jerk reactions or not having a leg to stand on.

Bob’s right leg had been amputated after he caught an infection following knee replacement surgery. Gareth lost both legs because of complications arising from spina bifida. Both asked if they could take their legs home after amputation. Instead, the limbs were incinerated as clinical waste.

“It was dropped in a yellow sack with all the other swabs and sent off to be burnt,” said Bob. “That leg has been mine for 50 years. It’s part of me and, though people might think it strange, I wanted to be buried with it as a complete person.”

As Gareth put it: “Somebody owns their legs whether they are attached or not.”

You might think a surgeon would pop the severed limb at the foot of the bed – the first thing the patient saw when he awoke from anaesthetic; with a little ribbon, perhaps.

You might wonder what the unfortunate amputees would do with their legs once they got them home. Mount them in display cases on the mantelpiece? Stick them in the freezer with labels saying “do not eat”?

But not I because, bizarre as Bob and Gareth’s, erm, stance might seem, I can see their point. If we don’t own our bodies, what do we own?

I bet David Cameron didn’t think of this when he promised to increase personal freedom.

Even the medical authorities are in uncharted waters. As a spokeswoman for the hospital said: “It’s very rare for a patient to ask to keep a body part following its removal. We would deal with such requests on an individual basis.”

That’s nice to know. Perhaps they’ll reword the consent-to-surgery form along the lines of: Please tick Box A if you’d like to take your body part with you when you leave hospital: If you ticked Box A, please choose a style of container: A, luxury. B, standard, C, economy. Now indicate your choice of delivery: A, courier. B, bus. C, post.

The Government’s Human Tissue Authority had never heard of an amputee wanting to keep a limb and says the law does not address the issue.

“If it is a diseased limb,” said a spokesman, “one would imagine a hospital would be right to dispose of it on health grounds, and why would a limb be removed if it was not infected in some way?”

I’m sure we could trust our legal system to sort out disputes over what is and what isn’t an infected limb, don’t you? The ensuing court cases would make enthralling reading.

There is, however, a danger of opening Pandora’s box. We might be comfortable with patients keeping arms and legs but what about fingers and toenails, warts and moles, spleens and varicose veins?

In these troubled economic times, I sense a world of opportunity for lawyers, entrepreneurs and bureaucrats.

But first we need the law to be clarified, which means an MP being bold enough to go out on a limb.

What?

There's a place in the house where a man shouldn't go

2010-07-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, June 10, 2010

I’VE been to a dark place and come out the other side. The scars, however, will remain.

Let me set the scene: Day off work, house to myself, no must-do jobs to be done.

I can slob about, unwashed, unshaven, reading the paper, watching TV, feasting on tea and biscuits. Sounds heavenly.

Or I can stop being a sad, stereotypical bloke and Do Something Useful – aargh, the words won’t stop coming – Around The House.

I mop my brow and pinch myself. No, not dreaming.

When I said “no must-do jobs to be done”, I meant the man-of-the-house variety, which excludes ironing, washing, dusting, putting clothes away, shopping, cleaning windows and minor plumbing and electrical work, for all of which I have a perfectly able wife.

So what will it be? Something that won’t deprive the lady of the house of job satisfaction; something, perhaps, that she doesn’t enjoy doing. Difficult.

Tea. Biscuits. Deep breaths. I’ve decided: I’ll de-crud the hole where the cooker sits.

Despite the absence of safety suit and rubber gloves (must remind the better half of her health and safety responsibilities) I set to work, twisting the cooker this way and that to ease it out – and trapping my hand between cooker and cupboard. Fffffflip, that hurt!

The gunk down here is unbelievable: caked-on rivers and pimples of grease, a few hairs, a pasta spiral, two raisins and a new species of fluff. Think I’ll phone David Attenborough.

This would never have happened years ago. Families would have wiped up the gunk with a slice of bread and fed it to Grannie for her supper. That’s why the wartime generation’s so ’ard.

Out comes the hoover (I don’t care who made it and which trademark lawyer’s watching, that carpet sucker will always be a hoover) and I spend ages disconnecting the hose and finding somewhere to slot it into, then taking one nozzle out of another out of another. And still it won’t work, even though I’ve cunningly located the on-off switch. Ah yes: it’s not plugged in.

Bowl of water and scouring pad at the ready, it’s time to choose my weapon, the kitchen-cleaner’s equivalent of napalm: I snub the one that goes with a flash in favour of the one that boasts a bang (despite the horrifying safety instructions: do not gargle, snort, spray in eyes, bathe in – that sort of thing)

There follows much frantic fiddling for the “on” bit of the nozzle because it’s the same colour as the rest. Don’t they consider squinting old buffoons when they design these things?

Three applications later, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

A hairy spider, a foot wide if it’s an inch, squeezes out from behind a working unit and as I recoil, my elbow meets some of the cleaning fluid that’s supposedly eating its way into the grime. Now I’m going to lose an arm.

Feverish, I read the instructions once more: Do not leave on enamel surfaces for more than five minutes. Now they tell me. Still, if I get a move on and put the cooker back, the missus might never notice that the sides have disintegrated.

It seems like weeks have passed but it’s little more than half an hour. Gunk and grease have all gone, floor spotless.

All that remains is to disconnect the hoover and curse the invisible fiend who’s tied the cable in a knot, the same one, I suspect, who steals half my cutlery, eats my pens and hides my glasses in the most bizarre places.

I stand back to admire my work, arms raised in triumph to the adulation of an unseen crowd, and think: This housework lark’s a doddle.

It's a hard life for women..and drivers stuck behind Tailback Charlies

2010-07-03T02:35:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, May 27, 2010

I FEEL sorry for women these days. OK, that’s a lie. I was trying to endear myself to female readers because I treasure them, I really do, especially since I heard about the tough time they’re having in the reality department.

One in six British women, according to a new survey, no longer has time for old-fashioned escapism.

“For many of us,” sighs the press release, “a bit of escapist day-dreaming is what gets us through the day but new research shows the modern British woman is so snowed under she can’t even afford a couple of minutes to gather her thoughts.

“In the age of 50-hour weeks, information overload and multiple commitments…blah, blah.”

Now, I’m not saying women have it easy but I think their lot has improved considerably in my lifetime. Coincidentally, I might add.

Gone are the days of corsets and wringing the washing out by hand, of hair rollers and chaffed knees from scrubbing slate floors. There’s more equality in the workplace and the contraceptive pill, couple with society’s more liberal attitudes in general, have freed women from the belief that they must spend eternity in bitter union with a beer-bellied bore who spends his evenings picking his nose in front of the telly.

Instead, if they so choose, they can hitch up with a succession of aimless, tattooed young men who’ll give them a dolly-mixture family.

I’m joking, of course.

Yearning for a little escapism is perfectly natural, though I find the survey at odds with another just published, claiming that some UK women – the Sex And The City generation, they’re called – think nothing of spending £200 on a night out with the girls.

We blokes can’t help escaping reality. Problem is, it sometimes involves our eyes falling on other female forms while we’re with our partners. We can’t help it. As a result, we’re likely to escape the normal culinary delights of home for a spell of that good old marital dish, cold shoulder and tongue.

I had several escapes from reality as summer burst upon us last week. Fresh from escaping the office equipped with make-believe air conditioning and overlooking a courtyard of bars where jobless people spent half the day getting drunk and tanned, I was driving home when I crossed a hump-backed bridge and almost hit a boy doing a wheelie on a bike, on my side.

Naturally, I used the car’s horn for its only true purpose. But it makes a girlie sound and, as I looked in the rear mirror, I could see the lad and his mates giggling and making finger gestures.

For a king-sized helping of escapism, the traffic-queue dawdler takes some beating. He – and yes, girls, it’s always a man – makes my blood boil in the worst of weathers but he’s in his element when the sun shines.

You must know the sort: he’s always three or four vehicles ahead of you in a slow-moving queue, so you can’t overtake, and he insists on leaving 50 yards between him and the vehicle in front.

Why? What’s he expecting? A bus pulling out of someone’s drive? A car transporter falling from the sky? A high-speed pile-up from half a mile back, so violent that it closes his comfort gap?

These are 30mph roads I’m talking about, so move it, moron!

That gap you’ve been saving for yourself (no doubt while smirking at the thought of all those behind you, seething) that gap might mean the difference between me getting through the lights next time and having to queue again.

Better still, let’s all follow your example, then we’ll have a tailback to my front door and I won’t be able to get the car out at all. But at least I’ll have a few moments to escape, not like some people I could mention.

Enjoy the summer.

Poor service puts me in a fry-up frenzy

2010-07-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, 13.5.2010

HOW mad can a grown man get about sausages? Watch me.

I know they’re not good for my health. I don’t care if they’re made of pigs’ nether regions.

I spend all week eating rabbit food, because five portions of fruit and veg a day will balance out all those years of bad habits.

But, come the weekend, I sometimes find food heaven in a good old fry-up.

It is, after all, a meal as British as fish and chips.

So have you tried buying one on a Saturday afternoon?

I’ve done it often; try, that is. Last weekend, I visited a certain Derbyshire town that boasts two supermarket giants a few hundred yards apart. Both advertise a restaurant, so I headed for the least crowded. It was half-past one in the afternoon, and the “breakfast menu” had finished two hours earlier.

Still, there was fish on offer. Pity it resembled the plastic variety you used to find in Christmas crackers, that curled up on the palm of your hand to show how sexy you were.

There was also a vat of brown sludge with a crust on top: chilli. Four quid? I think not.

Good job they were doing toasties. You can’t go far wrong with a toastie.

“What toasties have you got, love?” I asked the woman at the till.

“Round t’corner,” came a surly voice from a vacant face. And, sure enough, round t’corner was a tray containing packs of cheap white bread at £2.20 for cheese and ham. At least the cellophane wrapping looked appetising.

Never mind, there was soup on the menu. That would go well with one of the brown, rock-like objects in a basket marked “croutons”.

“No soup left,” said the man behind the counter.

No soup? It’s a soup-ermarket, for chrissake! They’d got aisles full of the stuff a few yards away.

I should have complained – we all should – but I figured it would get me nowhere but high blood pressure.

Off to the car park I marched, convinced a quick tour of the town centre would satisfy my yearning. Soon I was passing cafes a plenty. And, this being England, every one was shut.

There was me thinking small businesses were struggling.

Big and small, they’re united in an unholy anti-sausage dictatorship.

One well-known burger chain stops serving sausages and other “breakfast” food at 10.30. This means that at 10.29, little patties of pig meat are sizzling on a hot plate before being sandwiched in bread buns. At 10.31, they’ve been replaced by little patties of cow meat sizzling on the same sheet of metal.

Here’s a radical idea: why not cook both and give me a choice? What hardship is it to them? I’d be much more likely to “have a nice day” if I could order a sausage concoction at 10.29 and 61 seconds.

Will someone explain the logic of this cut-off time for fry-ups? Is there a law against eating sausages in the afternoon?

Just don’t tell me I could pop into a pub for an all-day breakfast at two in the afternoon. I may be peculiar but I don’t want a boozer at that time of day.

Talking of pubs, I thought we were learning from the Europeans: we love garlic and we can drink all night if we wish.

So perhaps things will change on the pork front now Mr Cameron’s in power. He and his Conservative pals are more pro-European than the other fella, aren’t they?

Wasn’t he a nice chap, by the way, that Mr Brown? We hated him a week ago and then he resigned. So dignified, so statesmanlike. What a good egg...

Which reminds me: the new Government should learn quickly from the alcohol lesson and bring liberation to the processed pig market.

Otherwise, I might be heading for an Asbo, for torturing supermarket café staff with cream of tomato and cellophane sandwiches.

I’m The Equaliser and I aim to rid Britain of tooth dazzle and slobs

2010-04-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 29.4.10

THERE now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of the Change The Face of Britain Party.

Hello.

Everyone’s talking about change. But for most politicians, that’s all it is: talk. I want to spell out how we can make a real difference to our society.

I want to change the face of Britain... literally.

You don’t have to be a genius to realise there is vast inequality in our country and that this is at the root of many social problems.

A lot of people have nowhere near enough money and others have far too much. Some are – there’s not a nice way to say this – not particularly bright; others are too clever by half. Many are not very nice to look at, while others are much too pretty. And as these two types continue in their own little worlds, the inequality hardens and grows.

What an awful thing to say, you’re probably thinking. But let’s be honest with ourselves.

Have you never observed a member of the idle rich, stunningly good-looking, dressed in the finest clothes, dripping with expensive jewellery, driving to their beautiful house in a flash car loaded with fresh fruit and veg’ from their weekly shop and thought: “That’s not fair. I should be like that. He/she shouldn’t have all that wealth. I should have some, or they should share it with poor people in Africa”?

I bet you’ve also come across poor people who were apparently beaten at birth with the Ugly Stick, who are unwashed, overweight from eating junk food because that’s all they can afford and who seem unable to speak without swearing VERY LOUDLY.

If you have a dreg of compassion, I bet you’ve thought: “That’s not fair either; there’s enough wealth and cleverness for everyone but some poor souls don’t stand a chance of breaking their chains and going up in the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could bring these diverse people together?”

So, dear voter, my plan is to institute a radical programme of equalisation.

I will encourage people from opposite ends of the social spectrum to pair up. As a result of voluntary cross-breeding, some of the more unpleasant characteristics on both sides will gradually be removed.

Just think how much nicer the world would be if there were fewer hairy-faced ladies with enormous backsides barely covered by grubby tracksuit bottoms, and fewer suntanned, I’m-all-right-Jack types with 4x4s and gleaming teeth.

Put these people together and the result will be quieter neighbourhoods, less crime, more tolerance, and fewer road accidents as a result of the drop in tooth dazzle.

Obviously, we can’t expect either side to make such a leap away from their comfort zones without an incentive, so I will offer tax breaks to those willing to marry above or below their stations.

Citizens’ panels will assess the size of the social divide, based on various indicators of deprivation and wealth, and approved couples will be given a year’s honeymoon from income tax.

I will appoint inspectors to ensure the rough edges are indeed being smoothed out and not merely put side by side. The last thing we want is some suntanned, blinged-up businessman in a hoodie thrashing a Porsche around a council estate while swigging chardonnay.

As with any major programme of social engineering, there are risks, but imagine the change we could bring about in a few short years.

I will also increase spending on health, the police and education, reduce income tax for all and bring back some good old British values by introducing puddings with custard for the under-eights.

So don’t let the three big parties tell you there’s no alternative to the tired, old political system.

Vote for real change on May 6.

Culture and refinement can wait, this year I need more peculiar fun

2010-04-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 15.4.10

IT’S no good. I’ve tried to quit but I must face facts: I’m addicted.

One quick fix at the weekend left all good intentions in tatters.

But first, an SOS moment (that’s Silly Old Sausage).

I’d gone to the east coast – Bridlington, to be precise – with my mate because it was a Saturday and my son’s football team was in action.

We’d arrived long before kick-off, so we decided to see the beach. It would be rude not to. And in the half-hour between going there and returning to the football ground, I lost my jacket, the one I wear under my big coat because I’m a wuss who’s come to realise that for everything there is a season: a season to look young and cool and a season to be old and warm.

How I could have lost something so bulky – presumably after parking up, opening the car boot and donning my big coat before heading for our stroll on the beach – was beyond me. It must have fallen on to the ground. Anyway, by the time we arrived at the ground, it was missing.

My friend found it hard to believe that he couldn’t recall whether I’d actually worn the jacket during the two hours he’d sat next to me on our drive up from Derbyshire after I’d picked him up. How did he think I felt? I’d been wearing the damned thing.

Panic set in. My wallet was in the coat, with bank card and driving licence. I did what any sensible bloke would do in the circumstances. I phoned the missus, who arranged for my card to be cancelled and contacted the Department of Lost Jackets at Bridlington police station.

On the North Beach promenade, a frantic search was under way. We checked the spot where we’d parked and called at nearby hotels and bars. Nothing. Back at the ground, I spent a stomach-churning hour trying to watch the match. Then, my mate’s wife rang to say she’d found something on the back of a chair at their house: my jacket.

The relief was delicious and an equaliser for Our Boys crowned another chapter in the story of confusion that is my life. But the sensation that remained was of those 30 minutes on an English beach.

Like many British families, we’ve done the foreign sunspots, me and Mrs P. There’s something to be said for toasting yourself beside a hotel pool but we fancied something different this year, somewhere with interesting places to visit, so we’d settled on a few days in Paris.

If only this country of ours could guarantee decent weather, Continental destinations wouldn’t get a look-in. But for all nature’s burdens, the British seaside is fighting back. Hemsby, in Norfolk, has plans for an adventurous take on self-catering accommodation: Hobbit-style domes built into the earth. Bournemouth boasts Europe’s first artificial reef. Mablethorpe has bizarre beach huts.

“Brid”, like many more traditional British resorts, still smacks of kiss-me-quick hats and pie-and-peas; hardly a serious rival for the likes of Benalmadena, with its cheap fags and booze and Mediterranean waters.

But as I ambled around a little stretch of the east coast and ate crunchy sandwiches on a cushion of boulders washed silky-smooth by decades of waves, a thought gnawed at me.

As I watched the grubby sea lapping in with a promise to shrink the bodily parts of bathers on contact, I longed to get in there, like the mad old woman who’s always in the sea at first light, whatever the weather.

As I listened to the screech of gulls, stared into the vast, unending nothing beyond the seashore and filled my lungs with the intoxicating breath of the North Sea, I realised how much I’d missed places like this.

And I knew that, whatever culture and refinement Paris served up, I simply couldn’t go another year without the peculiar delights of the British seaside.

Is it too much to hope that politicians will change their ways?

2010-04-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, 8.4.10

GORDON the Grey has finally named the day and I should be thrilled.
Instead, I’m angry at the prospect of four weeks of high-octane blather as politicians beg for our votes.

Don’t they get it? We’ve had enough of Old Politics.

I’m not talking of healthy cynicism but of a public mistrust more widespread and intense than anything I’ve known.

On policies, it seems, there’s hardly a gnat’s chuff between the two parties most likely to gain power. So, for many of us, the election will be not about who we passionately believe in but who we mistrust the least.

I feel sorry for young people about to vote for the first time but facing a choice between bland and blander. Oh, how I hated Denis Healey’s eyebrows and Margaret Thatcher’s voice. But at least, back then, I could tell the difference.

I’ve voted in every election since I was 18 and nothing would make me give up that right. In all that time, though, I’ve waited in vain for radical change in two areas.

The first is unemployment, the largest single cause of misery in a society that prides itself on equality.

How many millions of our citizens are trapped in poverty and despair because they or their loved ones can’t earn a decent wage and raise their living standards?

And how many of our streets are awash with litter? How many parks are in need of repairs and supervision? How many potholes need filling? How many charities need help with the simplest of tasks? How many old folk would benefit from the comfort of a friendly visitor who could help with their shopping and odd jobs?

Why don’t we match those needs with the resources - the unemployed?

Put them to work on community projects. Pay them enough to make the effort worthwhile…and stop all benefits for those (a small number, I genuinely believe) who would rather slob around at home than take on work within their capabilities.

We’d raise the living standards of the poorest in society and give them a feeling of belonging, from which would grow pride and a sense of being valued, leading to greater community spirit and, ultimately, safer streets.

A gigantic challenge, perhaps, but is it really beyond a nation that has fought two world wars, with all the logistical nightmares of conscription, rationing and equipping the armed forces?

And don’t tell me we can’t afford it. This country is still swimming in cash. If we can throw billions at the banks, we can surely invest in the unemployed. The only difference is that the latter would give us a fair return.

Item 2 on my utopian agenda is: honesty.

When will politicians give us straight answers? I’m sick and tired of hearing them spout figures and dodge and weave and blame each other instead of telling us the truth.

Watching TV’s Question Time recently has provided a small but powerful demonstration of a nation desperate for change. Applause erupts whenever someone in the audience tells the panel to “stop treating us like idiots and tell us the truth”.

The MPs’ expenses scandal has cracked public confidence in politicians like never before. Labour engineered a fresh era with New Labour. Now, the people want New Politics – a different kind of relationship with those we elect to represent us.

“Transparency” and “accountability” sound like buzzwords from a rotten system. What we want is honesty.

If you’re listening, politicians, start behaving like the vast majority of your voters do in their everyday lives. Do things because they’re right, not because you can get away with them. Tell us if you don’t know all the answers. Give us facts instead of platitudes. Say sorry when you make a bad decision (and promise you‘ll try harder in future).

We’re grown-ups. We can take it. We’ll also trust you more.

You may say I’m a dreamer. But isn’t that what politics is all about?

Leave the dad dancer in peace or make him the next telly sensation

2010-02-18T07:01:00.000-08:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 18.2.10

“COME on. Stop being miserable – let’s have you on that dance floor.”

Words that strike dread in the heart of the dad dancer.

There he is, savouring a pint while trying to talk over the disco to a distant relative of the happy couple at a wedding reception in a village hall somewhere, anywhere – they all look the same – when someone decides he’s not enjoying himself.

And so begins a tug-of-war that occasionally takes him into a throng of gyrating teenagers and mums and aunts doing Skippy the bush kangaroo impressions around handbags, and he has to do it: dance.

So he jogs from leg to leg, pumps his arms like a choo-choo train, allows the head to loll from side to side and tries to throw in a pelvic thrust or winding waist, all the time thinking: Where’s it all gone, the rhythm? What became of the Northern Soul king of my youth, with his splits, his claps and spins?

When did I get turned into cardboard?

Or he does what most of us dad dancers do. We resist the tugging arm even if we have to grab on to a nearby table leg or curtain, and say: “You must be joking. I need more ale down me first.”

Yes, we know, it’s sad when people can’t enjoy themselves without getting drunk. But can’t you get it, girls? We don’t want to dance. Don’t ask why. We just don’t enjoy it any longer, OK?

No, we’re not being miserable when we sit on our own in a corner of a noisy, flashing room with everyone else doing the Birdie Song or YMCA. We might not be having the time of our lives but we’re just existing as sanely as we can because we hate “dos” like these, precisely because we know what you dancing girls will try to make us do.

So you go ahead and dance. You love it and you’re great at it. Enjoy. Just leave us in peace.

And then, when we’ve had “enough”, which means too much, then we dad dancers will strut our stuff, as long as they play Baggy Trousers or Hi Ho Silver Lining or something else we can yell along to while we march up and down or gyrate with arms in the air and head spinning.

We’ll only last for 10 minutes or so, then we’ll be lathered in sweat and need a sit down and another pint. But it’s a spectacle not to be missed, a glimpse back to times when dad was A Person and did the things he warns his teenage sons and daughters against – and all they can do now is watch in toe-curling embarrassment as he flings his ageing frame around and makes unseemly movements with his hips, while older relatives and so-called pals cheer and capture the horrors on their mobile phones, to torment him with in months to come.

It’s taken several decades of suffering for my idea to dawn but now that it has, I can’t believe no-one else thought of it and cashed in, because I reckon there could be big money in it

Half the country’s hooked on dancing. Just look at the success of TV shows like Strictly Come Dancing, So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing on Wheels.

I look forward to Blind Tango Incontinent Elderly Dancing in Bed.

So why not Dad Dancing?

It would take a big prize to lure the contestants out of their shell but it would make great viewing.

Each dad would be partnered by a teenage son or daughter. The first half of the show would be alcohol-free, with music chosen by the child; the second would follow a lengthy binge-drink break, with music chosen by dad.

To give all abilities a chance, I’d like to have marks awarded for rhythm and agility on the one hand and pure cringeability on the other. I’ve even thought of a judging panel: Ozzy Osbourne, Rab C. Nesbitt, Gary out of Men Behaving Badly and Waynetta Slob.

Remember: you heard it here first.

Where babies come from and the truth about waistbands

2010-02-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 4.2.10

MEN like to see less of their trousers on Saturday nights and more of them once they reach 40.

These are the findings of two new consumer surveys and I’d advise those of a delicate disposition to read no further.

Researchers who looked at the nation’s baby-making and trouser-wearing habits did so independently of each other, though I detect a thread.

A poll of 1,000 parents-to-be found that almost half conceived “outside the bedroom”. I don’t understand this at all. Do they mean an area close to the bedroom door? Was the bedroom being decorated, so they’d edged the bed on to the landing? The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

But then, some couples revealed that they conceived in cars, while 9.5% did it on holiday. And I thought holidays were meant to get us away from the chores of everyday life.

Shockingly, one in nine babies was conceived in the afternoon. That’s in daylight. No wonder this country’s going down the pan. I blame the Sixties.

Monday, according to the survey, is the least popular time for making a baby.

The most popular is in April, between six and 10 o’clock on a Saturday evening and there, at last, is a concept that normal folk can relate to: a couple deeply in love, both relaxed after a day off work; the lady of the female persuasion is feeling frivolous after Strictly Something; the gentlemen of the opposite gender is belching Eau de Vindaloo after a curry and a few beers. An ideal time to get the unpleasantness out of the way before Match of the Day comes on the telly with the football season reaching its, erm, climax.

These lusty couples would probably bury their desires in a room locked “do not disturb, ever”, if they knew that – according to another survey – the average cost of raising a child to the age of 21 now tops £194,000.

But logic goes out of the window in the heat of passion, which may explain the findings of the trouser pollsters.

They report that pop mogul Simon Cowell isn’t alone in wearing eye-wateringly high waistbands. It seems that, while teenagers like their trousers slumped below the hips, in later life the only way is up.

This will comfort grumpy old men like me. I grew up with the wartime generation as my elders. They were always grumbling and wore their waistbands just below the nipples. I presumed the constrictive effect was one of the reasons they complained so much. I came to view the high waistband as a badge of honour of the ageing grump and looked forward to wearing it with pride as my grasp of the dark arts developed.

Those old codgers may be dying out but their habits live on, according to research on behalf of a department store chain. It suggests that men’s waistbands climb higher from the age of 39 and reach a peak – seven inches below the armpits – at 57. Researchers think this is due to the fact that men’s body shapes change in middle age, but say most of us are in denial.

“From our experience,” says a spokesman, “men still prefer to assume that their trousers no longer fit because their legs have suddenly grown.”

I suspect the real reason blokes hide themselves in big pants is that they’ve grown wise to the perils of parenthood and are determined to keep their nether regions well hidden.

Once we’re over 57, it seems, waistbands come down. By 65, they average three inches above the waist. At 75, it’s an inch.

The researchers didn’t delve further but it’s safe to assume that the trend continues with age. So one day, if I live that long, I’ll be able to look back on the joys of parenting and decades of relentless whingeing, while displaying an 80-year-old builder’s bum.

How good can life get?

Days are numbered for ‘offensive’ bingo calls in sensitive, PC world

2010-01-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 7.1.10

IT was with a sense of indignation bordering on indigestion that I read of the latest attack by the PC Police on another great British institution; bingo.

The story could have come from a Christmas cracker. But it was true: a councillor who called the numbers at charity bingo sessions had stopped saying “two fat ladies, 88” and “legs 11” because council officials feared players might take offence and sue.

I took a few indigestion tablets, just in case, and read on.

“The concern was that there might be two large ladies in the audience when I said ‘two fat ladies, 88’ or someone might think I was looking at their legs when I said ‘legs 11’,” said 75-year-old bingo caller John Sayers, a former mayor of Sudbury, in Suffolk.

I was incensed, not at the thought of some spoilsport trying to put the mockers on a bit of harmless fun but because I had naively believed that this sort of thing had been stamped out years ago.

It’s all very well bingo website organiser Rob Hutchinson saying: “I’m sure any ladies of larger size who go to bingo don’t find it insulting. What’s the alternative, ‘two generously proportioned people of either gender?’”

And why ever not, Rob?

Admittedly, it’s some years since I took up one of those special dwarf pens (er, sorry, vertically challenged writing implements) for a game of “eyes down.”

But I know what sensitive souls go in for this form of entertainment and can imagine a dumplinged darling choking on her barley wine when smirks are cast in her direction as “two fat ladies, 88” is called. She’s probably spent her life surrounded by Twiggy mirrors and pantomime scales and believes she’s a perfect size 12.

As for “legs 11”, John Sayers and the rest of the cheeky-chappy Britcom brigade should be prosecuted for crimes against the truth. There’s no such thing as an 11-legged creature, unless you count mutilated millipedes. And making fun of disabled creatures is not clever.

But even these two examples are fairly harmless compared with some of the outrageous bingo calls still used in this so-called age of enlightenment.

Take number five; “man alive”. What’s wrong with “non-specific creature”?

“Dancing queen, 17” smacks to me of homophobia, especially when followed by “Danny La Rue, 52”.

“Dirty Gertie, 30”? Now, what’s that all about?

“Tickle me, 63” could be seen as incitement to lewd behaviour (though not as disturbing as “young and keen, 15”) and the spectre of prostitution in grandad’s day (urgh!) is evoked by “was she worth it, five and six, 56.”

“Clickety-click, 66” might embarrass those with a loose dentures.

“Heinz varieties, 57” smacks of product placement, while “pick and mix, 26” is a kick in the teeth for those who mourn the passing of Woolworths. “Six dozen, 72” is yet another example of our tedious refusal to join the metric age.

“Snakes alive, 55” could distress any ophidiophobics who happen to be in the audience at the British Legion Club.

The middle-aged get a right thumping: there’s “naughty forty”, “down on your knees, 43” “droopy drawers, 44” and “clean the floor, 54”.

And pity the fortysomething incontinent lady named after a cartoon bear; “Winnie the pooh, 42”.

But for blatant misrepresentation, 22 takes some beating.

“Two little ducks”? Forgive my insensitivity in raising this when the nation is mourning the death in Hampshire last week of Edwina, a 22-year-old tea-drinking mallard, believed to be one of the oldest ducks on record, but anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of wildlife will tell you that a figure two looks just like a swan, not a duck.

Incidentally, taking a few indigestion tablets “just in case” may result in drowsiness and lower-limb amputations

Giants of the choccie tin in a Christmas match of the day

2009-12-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, 18.12.09

FIRSTLY, an apology. There are those who feel that the topics I explore on such an important platform as this are at times a touch lightweight.

I will today attempt to redress the balance by tackling a subject of great public concern.

It is the big question concerning Christmas, the one that divides mankind:
Quality Street or Roses?

These two choccie giants have been battling it out for the public’s palates every Christmas for seven decades.

Both present themselves in similar-sized tins.

Both bring us a selection of centres that aren’t available elsewhere, which is why Miniature Heroes and Celebrations don’t enter the equation.

Both are munched mindlessly to the brink of biliousness as we loll in front of the telly, barely able to move after a gigantic Christmas dinner.

Both linger into the new year, the neglected varieties lurking beneath tins full of empty wrappers.

We love some and loathe others (and yet studies show that as we get older, we tend to develop a taste for those we snubbed in our youth).

But one thing’s for sure: we’re on one side or the other. It’s like living, as I do, on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border: you’re either a Ram or a Red.

And what better way to settle this confectionery Match of the Day than by a football-style analysis of the players?

Make way for the referee: yours truly – chocoholic supreme, fudge fanatic, liquorice-sucker (third dan), mint-cruncher, king of the biscuit barrel, veteran of the Toffee Wars, a dentist’s nightmare with a PhD in Excess.

Ladies and gentleman, I am at your service, steeled for the nauseating task of sampling one of each sweet from each tin in the name of research.

As they come on to the field, both teams look stunning in their colourful strips.

Nothing between them so far.

The Qs are managed by N. Estle and have the edge historically. Launched in 1936 at 10 bob (50p) a tin they’ve claimed the world twistwrap assortment crown for the past four years.

But Reds coach C. Adbury has an impressive pedigree. His team has been around since 1938 and claims worldwide sales of 1.3 billion sweets a year.

The players are going head-to-head for marks out of 10. And we kick off with the public’s favourite from each side: Quality Street’s The Purple One (hazelnut in caramel) versus Roses’ er…Hazelnut in Caramel.

QS The Purple One: Solid, dependable but relies too much on his nut. 6
R Hazelnut in Caramel: Scores on caramel content. 8

QS Strawberry Delight: Fruity fondant runs at the palate like Ronaldo. 9
R Strawberry Dream: Teams up well with milk chocolate. 8

QS Vanilla Fudge: Nice bit of grit to his game 8
R Country Fudge: Too stiff to be a star. 6

QS Caramel Swirl: Hits the spot for case and content 8
R Golden Barrel There’s caramel all over the pitch! It’s a classic.10

QS Milk Choc Block: Tough to get past but lacks
flair. 6
R Cadbury Dairy Milk: No-frills veteran. 7

QS Orange Crème: Fancy sort with a foreign name and a sweet kick. 9
R Tangy Orange Crème: Another foreigner! Slips down like Eduardo. 7

QS Toffee Penny: Tough as they come. Potential match-winner.10
R Caramel: Sticks to his man. Watch those dentures, grandad 8

QS The Green Triangle: Melts any defence. 9
R Caramel Velvet: A real smoothie. 8

QS Toffee Finger: Good dribbler when tackled whole. 8
R Brazilian Darkness: Heads straight for the gaps with rich, earthy caramel. 9

QS Orange Chocolate Crunch: Sweet striker with too many fancy bits. 7
R Hazel Whirl: Nut in chocolate. Nuff said. 8

Final score: Quality Street 80 Roses 79

So there’s my verdict after a close and largely enjoyable match:

Trouble is, the missus has discovered I’ve been raiding the Christmas chocs. Think a red card’s coming my way.

When the novelty of talking dogs wears off, just use your marbles

2009-12-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 3.12.09

THESE are tense times for the parents of Santa Claus doubters.

The little darlings who believed everything Mummy and Daddy told them are suddenly asking awkward questions.

How does Santa get down the chimney when there’s a gas fire? How can he deliver toys to millions of homes across the world in one night? Won’t he get drunk on all the sherry left out next to Rudolph’s carrots?

Mums and dads aren’t daft. They know that since gas fires and central heating came along, Santa’s had a magic key that opens all doors; that he travels the world at Santa speed and in Santa time; that he takes only little sips of sherry and it wears off when he breathes in cloud air.

When Christmas Day comes and a games console won’t work or a football shirt’s too small, they can explain that Santa sends receipts to parents and has a deal with every shop in the world to swap broken or ill-fitting gifts.

But what about the killer question: “Does Santa Claus really exist?”

What on earth gives children such ideas? Ah, friends…

“Jack says his mum and dad have got his Christmas presents already cus he’s seen them under their bed…”

Mmm, that’s a difficult one.

“…but I said that’s stupid. I told him my mum and dad could never afford all the things I get from Santa!”

Bless ‘em! Safe for another year. Then one look into those adoring eyes reveals the faintest hint of disbelief. The age of innocence is almost over.

But kids can be cunning. A friend’s nine-year-old daughter approached the subject scientifically last year. On Christmas Eve, she left her digital camera out, with a note to Santa asking him to take a picture of himself. Teachers aren’t much help, either. Our elder son was still clinging to the faith in his last year at junior school when he came home long-faced one day. His teacher had told the class that Father Christmas was made up. So who was lying, he demanded: his parents or his teacher?

We couldn’t have him thinking his teacher was a liar or he’d never believe another word she said, so we pretended it was us…and warned him he’d get nothing in his stocking if he spoiled it for his little brother.

Worse than the loss of innocence is the knowledge that life as a parent is about to get much more expensive. For the one sure thing about Santa Claus is that he exists as long as you believe in him. After that, it really is down to mums and dads to buy the presents.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, here’s some free advice for those struggling to match budgets with kids’ expectations: when the novelty of hi-tech phones and talking dogs wears off, the magic of a few simple games will endure.

It’s 10 years since we spent £25 on a table football set with screw-in legs for easy packing-away when not in use. Our sons are now in their 20s but we’ll still unpack that table occasionally and have a family tournament that’s sure to end with shrieks of laughter.

Guess Who? is another favourite. I know it’s time I grew up, but I was so bored by the telly this week that I dug out the flip-up trays of funny faces and tried to outwit the missus with questions like: “Has yours got facial hair?”

For lasting value, though, there’s nothing quite like a marble gallery. Build one with wood if you’re not a DIY plank like me, or get a shoebox and turn it upside down. Cut a series of arches in the bottom, write a different score and stick a silly picture of family or friends above each one, spend a few quid on a couple of bags of marbles, lie face down on carpet and aim. From tots to grandparents, the fun will last for years.

But be prepared for some awkward questions about how Santa got his hands on the family photos.

5.11.09

How chattering swimmers could bring us Olympic gold

2009-11-05T06:54:00.000-08:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 5.11.09

STILL 995 days to go to the London Olympics and already I scent glory for British swimmers.

All we need is a new category: swalking.

This mixture of swimming and talking is practised to perfection by ladies of a certain age at municipal pools up and down the country.

And with swimming now Britain’s number one participation sport, it is fast gaining in popularity.

From a neutral’s point of view, the beauty of swalking is that it requires very little stamina and rudimentary swimming technique.

Participants usually swalk in pairs, though this author has observed a threesome in action.

Essential qualities are a nice perm and the ability to chatter ceaselessly for at least an hour, while remaining dry above the shoulders.

With more than three million Britons swimming regularly, top coaches have warned that going up and down at the same speed does little to improve fitness or help with slimming. Better, they say, to develop a strong stroke and push oneself in short bursts.

But the swalker is not the sort to be conned by so-called experts. She believes that gentle circular movements of the hands, coupled with legs trailing idly in the water, will transform her from jelly-bellied frump to finely honed beach goddess in the month before her holiday in Majorca.

The talking element of swalking is vital to the performance but serious topics are frowned upon – metaphorically, of course, since any lapse in the rigidity of facial muscles might disturb the rhythm required to keep chin above water.

Instead, conversations are peppered with phrases like “I said to him” and “she never!” and “have you seen the size of her lately?”, preferably rehearsed on the journey to the baths, or even on the phone while arranging the outing.

Above all, the swalker understands the health benefits of swimming very slowly and ensuring that no-one else in the pool disturbs her performance. If this means holding up the entire lane, so be it, for the swalker knows that, since good health is relative, if others around her become more tense, she occupies a happier place. For this reason, poolside observers (sensing, perhaps, a role for themselves as judges on sport’s greatest stage) have suggested that marks be awarded for irritation value, as judged on the faces of those trying desperately to pass swalkers, in addition to before-and-after tests using masking tape to assess jaw strength.

Clearly, not everyone is a fan of the swalker. The middle-aged male torpedo, bent on going head-under hell-for-leather up and down the lanes until he’s a red-faced soaking wreck who needs half an hour to recover in the changing rooms, has been known to protest that swalkers spoil his enjoyment.

One local leisure centre responded to this concern by abandoning its wide, swim-clockwise lanes at adults-only sessions in favour of narrow, gala-style lanes. But male torpedoes complained that they didn’t have room to pass each other. Officials quickly realised the folly of their ways and reverted to wide lanes but stuck up posters saying: “Please swim in single file only”.

But the swalker is nothing if not resilient and pairs were soon spotted swimming in staggered file – the one in front floating on her back so that she could talk to her pal a few feet behind.

In town hall corridors, the air is thick with talk of a trial prosecution.

Meanwhile, swalkers’ numbers continue to grow and jaws are dropping perilously close to water at the prospect of London 2012.

Getting to the Games might be by the swalker’s main problem, however. She’ll need all the mouth exercise she can get if she’s to take on the world’s finest, so she’ll have to persuade the old man to drive her there while she chatters, knowing he’ll delight in telling her: “I always said you could talk for England.”

Crumbs, Prime Minister, why keep the teatime assortment in limbo?

2009-10-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 22.10.09

IF Gordon Brown fails to get my vote at the next general election, it won’t be because of the economy, Afghanistan or MPs’ expenses. It will be all about biscuits.

I’ve backed Labour ever since I first cast a vote, more years ago than I care to remember, but I’m seriously wavering.

Voting Tory isn’t an option. It would be like suddenly deciding I loved cucumber or hated Marmite.

The Lib Dems have a novelty-act appeal but they’ll remain a protest vote as long as people like me think they’ll never get into power.

So I’m left with a party already preparing for its own funeral and led by a prime minister so ludicrous that he might as well wear a shock of green hair, falling-down trousers and a big red nose.

At least he’d have some colour and might make us laugh.

Instead, he’s dull, uninspiring, unconvincing and, since the biscuit fiasco, downright ridiculous.

His performance at Labour’s annual conference plunged me to a new level of despair as he declared that “starting now”, the country’s 50,000 “most chaotic families” would be part of a family intervention project.

No they won’t. It’s just another of those Downing Street schemes/programmes/initiatives that grab the headlines, then fade back into Fairyland. We heard them all the time under Tony Blair but at least he made us feel better.

Then, last week, Gordie hit rock-bottom.

The prime minister of this country, a man we entrust with our taxes, our health service, our education system and the defence of the realm, faced parents on a social networking site and failed to answer a simple and utterly innocuous question: What is your favourite biscuit? Again and again the question was put to him by parents on Mumsnet and not once did he answer.

What on earth were you thinking, Gordon?

Did you fear a tabloid backlash? Would a liking for Rich Tea or Millionaire’s Shortbread forever link you with snouts-in-the-trough bankers? Did you dread being cast as a snob for enjoying Hobnobs?

I understand how difficult life in the spotlight must be if you don’t have a briefing paper with you, like those that allowed you to field serious topics such as climate change and childcare vouchers.

You might even have thought the biscuit question silly or beneath you.

But to say nothing – not even a diplomatic “I don’t really have a favourite biscuit” – made you look like a quivering wreck, unable to think on your feet enough to charm, just a little, a potentially powerful group of voters.

Worse still, it deprived us of leadership. We, the teatime assortment of Great Britain, want to know what our leaders think on matters dear to our hearts – not least because we might be steered towards new cuppa-time delights.

By the time you wrote on Twitter that you’d “missed” the question and liked “anything with a bit of chocolate on it”, the tabloids had had a field day.

So, in case the wretched subject ever crops up again and you fancy being a little more original, here are a few tips from one who may not know much about the economy or Afghanistan but who knows a lot about biscuits (which, if Heaven exists, will be in endless supply, along with hot, strong tea, cold lager and non-stop football on the telly).

Avoid Jammie Dodgers – you might be one but don’t gloat. Likewise Breakaway: could raise rumours of a splinter party. Liking Lincoln might boost your support in the East Midlands. Malted Milk would raise the dairy industry’s profile. Support for Penguin might persuade us to eat more fish, while Digestive is a good, solid, serious biscuit that always does the business – “a bit like myself”, you might joke, eh, Gordie?

And who could object to a penchant for Happy Faces, or Nice? You could misquote the old saying: “It’s nice to be important but more important to eat Nice.” But unless you want to incur the wrath of the follicly challenged or red-haired head cases, I’d steer clear of Garibaldi and Ginger Nuts.

Catching fag-flingers is easy but what about the Mr Bigs of litter?

2009-10-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 15.10.09

RECENT reports in this newspaper put my mind at rest. After all the hype, the forces of law and order really are being applied to cleaning up our streets.

Yes, the Fag-end Cops are in town.

In the Borough of Erewash, community wardens hauled two wrong-doers who epitomise the modern malaise known as anti-social behaviour before the courts.

A warden following a vehicle in Sandiacre saw the driver toss a cigarette end out of the window. Magistrates would subsequently hear that the offending nub was still smouldering when the warden passed the crime scene.

So, not only had the litter laws been broken but the atmosphere had been polluted. A passing child could have got cancer!

The offender was given a fixed-penalty ticket but failed to attend court or send in a written plea. “You must be chuffing joking,” he was probably thinking, until he was fined £175, ordered to pay £50 prosecution costs and £15 to a Government fund to improve services to victims of crime.

Another driver was fined £200. He’d been spotted throwing cig ends out of his car – twice.

On that dark day, the age of the serial fag-flinger dawned.

Now, I don’t like litter and what those drivers were doing was littering; no argument.

I suppose those of us who pay council tax should be glad that community wardens are doing what they’re paid to do – ensuring that people abide by certain rules and catching those who don’t.

But how often have you heard the voice of the law-abiding majority rise up against the evil of cigarette ends in the street?

Do opinion polls on what makes Joe Public angry rank discarded fags alongside knife crime, drunken brawls, theft from cars and cider-swigging hoodies beating up grandads who confront them about noise and vandalism?

Does the subject even get a mention at party conferences?

Answers on a filter tip, please.

None of this makes it right, of course. And I’m not daft enough to think that discarded cigarette butts don’t damage the environment. They’re made of cellulose acetate and can take years to decompose. They’re mistaken for food and eaten by birds. They wash down drains and into rivers, where they’ve been found in the stomachs of fish and other marine creatures.

But let’s keep a sense of perspective.

Last weekend, in the name of research, I gave the local populace further reason to think I’m an ageing nutter who walks the streets muttering to himself, by counting litter on a half-mile stretch of road in my corner of Erewash.

I found 61 items, each much larger than a cigarette end: pizza boxes, polystyrene chip trays, tinfoil takeaway cartons, lager cans, pop bottles, juice packs, plastic forks and furniture foam.

This is the sort of litter that people do complain about.

It was dropped in areas where large numbers of passers-by could see it and take offence – on pavements, on grass verges and in the gutter of a busy town centre road. And it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or a community warden in a van, to catch the culprits because most of it was deposited in a two-hour period on a Saturday evening (between my journeys to and from the pub, again in the name of research).

So where are all the prosecutions for dropping pizza boxes and tinfoil trays?

If someone in authority put two and two together, they might come up with the idea of setting community wardens to work when the Mr Bigs of the litter world are at large, around 11 o’clock on a Saturday night. Perhaps they could get the real police involved, too – and make use of those CCTV cameras we hear so much about (one for every 14 people in Britain, apparently).

Until then, I’ll find it difficult to see the scandal of the thrown-away fags as little more than a smokescreen.

The joys of vingear pie and being nice to nettles

2009-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, 1.10.09

EVERY dog has its day and so, it seems, does every major illness, politically correct cause and marketing idea.

In fact, some have a week or a month in which to take a bow. There are so many established anniversaries in this country alone that we can barely fit them into the calendar.

You will have heard of Christian Aid Week and World Aids Day but did you know that October is National Fireplace Month?

The fireplace is a great British institution. Before television, families made their own entertainment, sitting beside a roaring fire, talking, watching the flames change colour and hoping that a piece of hot coal would fly out and hit the dog.

There is anecdotal evidence that some of today’s social problems, such as knife crime and obesity, stem from the introduction of central heating and the demise of the fireplace and council officials will be knocking on doors throughout the month to establish how many families have abandoned the old ways. So if you’re one of them, now is a good time to ask yourself: Am I really a good citizen?

But we must be on our toes before then. Next week is British Cheese Week and anyone arriving at work with a lunchbox containing a hint of foreign fromage will be sent home without pay.

If you’ve not been paying attention, you will have missed the opportunity to celebrate hundreds of aspects of western culture since the start of this year.

Food Allergy and Intolerance Week (January 19-23) combined messages on diet with a licence for old duffers like me to have a good rant.

National Bramley Apple Week, at the start of February, coincided with National Salt Awareness Week, when we were offered practical advice on how to reduce salt in the diet, like hiding the salt pot. This was followed by National Chip Week. Talk about confusing messages.

March brought a flurry of worthy campaigns about literacy, science, kidney disease, smoking and women’s rights but organisers of Brain Awareness Week (March 16-22) must have felt pigged-off at having to share it with Bacon Connoisseurs’ Week.

Pubs, malaria, the hard of hearing, compost, asthmatics, sandwich-makers, vegetarians, foster carers, honey, turtles, volunteers, windsurfers and teddy bears all had a deserved spell in the spotlight in April, May and June and I can see good reason to celebrate Dawn Chorus Day (May 4). But Be Nice to Nettles Week (May 13-24)? They must be joking. And it's not even a proper week.

Things started to get silly during what we used to call summer. Wrong Trousers Day was followed by Ill-fitting Underpants Fortnight, International Left Handers Day led to a lot of untidy writing, Orangemen’s Day celebrated the growth of tanning parlours and European Bat Weekend marked England’s victory at cricket against the Aussies.

Just think how much fun you could have had if you’d known of all these in advance.

But take heart, for the alternative calendar still has much to offer.

October brings World Smile Day, National Customer Service Week, International Stammering Awareness Day, Seed Gathering Sunday, International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction, and Bug Busting Day (motto: head lice beware!) to name but a few, while November’s highlights include World Toilet Day, which aims to “increase awareness of toilet user's right to a better toilet environment”, and Vinegar Day, the organisers of which recommend vinegar-tasting with friends or making a vinegar pie.

I’ve saved the best till last because tomorrow is National Moth Night (a reminder of the supremacy of a rolled-up newspaper against those hideous creatures) and Saturday is International Talk Like Pirate Day.

Oo-arr, it really is!

Absent fathers are missing out on the time of their lives

2009-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, 1.10.09

A FUNNY thing happened in the Pheasant household this week. We lost a teenager.

Our Little Lad celebrated his 20th birthday, though with some reluctance. “I’m a twenteen,” he insisted as his mum and I half-sang, half-croaked Happy Birthday to You while he sat on our bed, opening his cards and presents as he had done every year since his first birthday.

It was one of those milestones in parenting that come around all too rarely as kids grow up but the fact that I’ve had more than my fair share of magic was underlined by a new report from the Children’s Society.

The charity is enlisting volunteer mentors to provide positive role models to kids who “lack appropriate adult support” – that is, they’ve been abandoned by one or more of their parents.

According to a survey, four out of five adults think children these days don’t have good role models in their lives. Most think kids no longer look up to their dad but are more likely to be inspired by David Beckham.

Isn’t that sad? Not just for the children but for those who father them, then disappear – physically or emotionally.

It’s difficult for me to comprehend now but there was a time when I had no interest in being a parent. At family gatherings, my wife was the playful aunt and gleeful baby-cuddler, while I slunk into the background, thinking: Don’t pass it to me!

But when our first child arrived, I swapped my brain for mush without hesitation.
Suddenly, I rediscovered the meaning of joy.

In the months and years ahead, my boys would sweep me on a voyage of discovery for which I was woefully ill-prepared but which seemed the most natural thing in the world.

“What’s it like to be a dad?” everyone asked and I wanted to say: what’s it like to be alive? It’s the bee’s knees, brilliant to the power of a million, the jewel in every crown, the thing that came before sliced bread.

I’d gorge myself on tactile pleasures, dashing home from work to spend evenings smelling baby scalps, nibbling tiny toes after bathtime, burying a stubbly chin gently in oh-so-ticklish bellies until they kicked and squealed, staring into cavernous, wonder-filled, adoring eyes while holding my little chaps aloft…and occasionally catching a snake of milky saliva on my lips.

I found myself laughing as I hadn’t laughed for years as pureed vegetables were scooped up by little fingers that flicked and flailed and rubbed in hair and on furniture.

Challenge reared up around every corner, forcing me on to my mettle, demanding the best. But victories came in torrents, against the evil of backache from winding after a 3am bottle or shopping with baby in one arm and carrier bags in the other; against the dread of embarrassment at playgroup parties and school concerts; against bilious battles with nappy splats, beds full of hot sick and the first grazed knees and torn fingers of my daring little adventurers, who had everywhere to run and climb and not a warning light in sight.

Then, in the blink of an eye, came school and sport, first bikes and first cars, puberty and adolescent strops, girls and jobs. The teenage years were bumpy at times but those early bonds held us together. Today, I’m blessed with two fine young men who embody all the values I hold dear and whose love and companionship I wouldn’t swap for all the gold on Earth.

Have I been lucky or justly rewarded? I don’t know. But what I’m sure of is that the dads who run away and leave groups like the Children’s Society to find someone for their kids to look up to are denying themselves the time of their lives.

Foreign car-washers have plum job we don’t have a taste for

2009-09-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 3.9.09

IN these times of economic woe, allow me to salute a shining example to British business … from foreign workers.

I refer to the human car-wash.

All over our towns and cities, this marvel of entrepreneurial spirit is flourishing.

Little gangs of wiry men and women are cleaning up in more ways than one, taking over petrol stations abandoned in the futile petrol pump war with supermarket giants, boarding up the broken windows that blight roadsides and earning an honest crust in testament to the power of elbow grease.

Africans, Turks, Poles … it’s a United Nations of spongers and scrubbers, in the nicest possible way.

Their nationality is a complete irrelevance to me and before anyone lectures me about foreign workers taking jobs that could be done by native Brits, I should say that I’d be happy to patronise Derbyshire lads and lasses offering a similar service, though they’ve clearly not capitalised on the market opportunity on their doorstep.

All I care about is that the car-wash gangs do a cracking job for the price of a few pints, which is what I’d lose in perspiration if tempted to tackle the task myself. In fact, just watching them work brings me out in a sweat.

A fiver not only gets the outside bits sparkling; they even open the doors, clean the sills and trims and blacken the tyres. Double it and you get the inside valeted, too – Hoovered out, windows cleaned, seats brushed or polished.

It’s real service with a smile, a throwback to the days when the customer at least felt he was always right. And they throw in a free air-freshener.

Call me idle but I can’t think of a tenner better spent.

It’s no surprise that garages are offering loyalty discounts on the mechanical version. Serves ’em right for all those years they made us queue to work out how to operate those annoying little keypads before sitting in a whirl of brushes that don’t even get the brake dust off alloy wheels – presuming that you can find a car wash that hasn’t broken down on a Sunday morning.

No wonder, too, that dads are abandoning the tradition of giving the kids a few quid to clean the car. It was painful enough having to badger them into doing it in the first place, let alone helping them to finish off, out of pity or irritation, or sloping off to a garage afterwards to remove the streaks.

Simply watching the roadside gangs at work is a pleasure. But I decided last weekend to combine the car’s treat with another departure from the world of big business and plastic money – a trip to the local market.

Leaving the car with the valet boys, I walked into town to load up with fresh fruit and veg, including a huge bag of fresh English plums, a joy that comes along ever so briefly amid the year-old supplies of hard, tart varieties served up big stores (by which I mean no disrespect to checkout girls).

“Fancy a plum, fellas?” is not something I ask many strangers in the tough former mining town where I live. But the car cleaners – who rarely seem to break sweat but who must sleep like logs at the end of their long days – were happy to take up my offer.

This little cultural difference was underlined later that day as my grown-up son prepared for a football match.

“Do you want to take a few plums for the team at half-time?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I was an unpleasant smell.

“Yeah, right!”

“What’s wrong with that?” I said. “We used to have half an orange at half-time when I was young.”

“Thanks, dad,” he snorted. “But Lucozade’s been discovered since then.”

Obsession with sex is one of the few things that doesn't wilt with age

2009-08-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 20.08.09

DO you ever think, “why do I bother?”? As Victor Meldrew’s love child, I find this a common feeling. But I excelled myself during a recent weekend loaded with ammunition for the ardent whinger.

It all started when the group of us who go out each Saturday decided to do something different.

We always go to the same pub, at the same time, and spend a couple of hours getting merry and chewing the cud. The conversation gets increasingly ribald as the evening goes on and invariably turns to toilet humour or sex, or both. The more we drink, the louder we get, of course, and anyone under 40 who happens to listen in must feel slightly nauseous. But then, as my parents used to say, young folk think they invented sex.

This obsession with sex seems to be one of the few things that doesn’t wilt with age. An old friend reckons that 80 must be the ideal time to be a letcher “because then I’d fancy everything”.

I had a rather disquieting peek into things to come after a relative remarried in her 70s and her roguish new husband engaged me in a few man-to-man chats, revealing that, on his visits to other old folk in their complex – he being more sprightly than most and able to help with odd jobs – one 90-year-old woman asked how his new marriage was getting along, adding that she’d “see him right” if he ever needed “a bit of the other”.

But enough of the s-word for now.

Much as we enjoy our Saturdays at the local, we fancied a change; nothing too adventurous – catch a bus into the city and have a nothing-fancy bite to eat.

A workmate had recommended a pub for its tapas selection but when I phoned to check, the landlord said they didn’t serve tapas in summer. Odd, I thought. Still, we’d give the other food a try.

Naturally, after we reached the bus stop in bags of time, our bus failed to turn up. Typical.

When the next one came, time was getting tight and the driver was clearly a man on a mission: to annoy me. He halted at every stop, even those where no-one was waiting, and we finally reached the pub 20 minutes before food service stopped.

My irritation was cranked when a drippy barmaid said, ever so quietly (why don’t young people speak up, for goodness sake?) that we had 10 minutes in which to order, then charged me £15.35 for three-and-a-half pints of lager and something resembling Old Monk’s Piddle for our real-ale drinker friend.

We hurriedly made our selections – me squinting, since I’d forgotten my glasses, as usual – and I returned to the bar with the order.

“We don’t have to pay in advance, do we?” I asked. OK, so that’s what usually happens in pubs. But I wanted to be awkward.

“Yes, unless you open a tab?” the barmaid replied.

And what, pray, did that entail?

“You have to give us a card,” the girl whispered.

What did she mean “a card”? What was she talking about? A business card? A birthday card? I didn’t even know her!

“Oh forget it!” I stormed and led my gang out into the street, where they hooted with derision at my inability to understand that the poor girl meant a credit or debit card, then continued to wind me up as we stomped off in search of food, knowing that all pubs would now have stopped serving meals and we’d have to visit a proper restaurant and pay restaurant prices.

Two hours later and much cash lighter, we headed home on a bus full of people young enough to talk loudly about sex without causing mass nausea. And as I stared in revulsion at the tattoos snaking across a middle-aged woman’s shoulders and the assortment of metal in her ears and nose, I couldn’t help thinking: Why can’t life be plain and simple?

Time we got tough with lowest of the low who prey on our elderly

2009-08-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 6.8.09

IT made just a few paragraphs in the local paper. But it meant a life ruined.

Two men had knocked on the door of an 84-year-old woman in Loscoe.

They claimed to be from the “electricity board” and said they needed to check her fuse box, so she let them in.

Why, you may wonder, don’t old people ever learn? Why don’t they just shut the door on strangers? Or better still, not open it?

Well, things aren’t the same when you’re in your 80s. You’re not as sharp and strong as you were. Besides, what can an old woman, alone and hidden from the world at her back door, do if she tells two young six-footers to go away and they turn nasty? Fear alone might make her think that letting them in could be the safer course.

So in the pair went, searching for what meagre fruits of a lifetime’s saving they might cash in for beer or drug money or whatever else their wasteful existence had failed to provide.

Finally, their prey was suspicious and brave enough to shout at them to leave. But, in her haste to slam the door behind them, she hurt her arm.

Though it was nothing a visit to A&E couldn’t put right, even minor injuries can take months to heal when you’re old. And life for that old lady will never be the same again. Her home, her sanctuary, has been defiled.

Such attacks – for that’s what so-called distraction burglaries are – may be mere blips in the annals of crime but the damage they do to families, to communities, to the way we live, is immense.

They make me want to spit with rage, to abandon all the liberal principles I’ve held dear throughout my life and demand that the culprits, if ever they’re caught, are horsewhipped in the town square or strung up by their nether regions.

It’s easy to think, when you grew up, as I did, at the tail-end of an age when people really could leave their doors unlocked without fear of some thieving toerag sneaking in, that bad things never happened in the 50s and 60s. Of course there were robberies, thefts, murders – and many a punch-up that went unreported.

But I’m damned sure old people weren’t preyed on in this way. There may not have been universal respect for the elderly but there was a deference that put them beyond range as a target for crime – recognition that they were someone’s parents or grandparents, just like your own, and so you knew how precious they were to their families. And because you lived among elderly people, you understood how frail they were and how easy it would be to dominate them. Doing so would make you a bully, the lowest of the low.

Somewhere along the line, the sanctity of the most vulnerable in society has become lost on a generation of law-breakers. The breakdown of traditional families and the growth of nursing homes have certainly played a part in detaching young people from their elders.

Whatever the reasons, it’s time we looked “outside the box” for a method of dealing with such vermin.

I’d like to see efforts to re-educate them. Force them to shop, cook and wash for their elderly victims. Make them listen and talk to them for hours, feed them the mush that’s all they can digest, clean them up when they’re incontinent and dress the pitiful wounds to skin that tears and bruises at the slightest touch.

All, of course, under constant supervision, all without food or drink unless they do it right, and between nights spent in cells with no TVs or creature comforts of any kind.

But let them re-offend again and I wouldn’t lose much sleep if we took a leaf out of the Romanians’ book when former dictators Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu appeared in court 20 years ago: Found guilty. Marched into a yard. Shot.

24.7.09

The penny’s dropped for me on a weird world of coincidencePete Pheasant on coincidence

The penny's dropped for me in a weird world of coincidence

2009-07-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column 24.7.09

“FIND a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck” the saying goes. I don’t know about all day, but a penny brought me good luck in the pub recently.

Sitting near a window, I saw a penny on the sill and put it in my pocket, not out of superstition (for the rhyme continues “find a penny, leave it be and bad luck will come to thee”) but simple greed.

By the time we’d bought a round apiece, I was ready for home but my friends fancied another pint, so I said I’d have a half and I’d buy.

Trouble is, I’d not anticipated this when I’d left home with a handful of cash and, as the barmaid added up the bill, I feared I might be short.

“That’s £7.31,” she said. And in my pocket I had exactly £7.31.

I don’t know if you can call this luck, since I’d gained a penny but lost £7.30. But it was another of the countless coincidences that make life interesting.

I often wake up and glance at the clock to find it’s 1.11, 2.22, 3.33 or 4.44. Cricket fans will understand when I say I’m tempted to hop about in honour of “a Nelson”.

One of the most remarkable coincidences I’ve witnessed occurred years ago when I was a young reporter on the Ilkeston Advertiser. It was a Sunday morning and I was phoning a relative. I dialled what I thought was his number but the phone was answered by a man saying: “Good morning, this is the Ilkeston Advertiser. How can I help?”

It was just a stranger’s idea of a joke – but how bizarre that he played it on me, of all the millions of people who might have misdialled at that moment.

Coincidence is a global fascination, judging by the vast number of books, articles and websites devoted to the subject. There are some bizarre stories and starkly opposing theories, from the existence of supernatural forces to the mathematician’s view that, with billions of people on the planet all thinking or doing something at any moment, it’s hardly surprising that astonishing coincidences arise.

It’s even been suggested that a monkey with a typewriter might, by chance, eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare, though when a group of university students tested this with six of them, all the creatures produced in six months was five pages containing virtually nothing but the letters.

I can’t vouch for the story of Henry Ziegland but I do like it. It’s said that in 1883, he broke up with his girlfriend, who, distraught, committed suicide. Her furious brother hunted Ziegland down and shot him, then turned the gun on himself. But Ziegland was not dead: the bullet had only grazed his face, then lodged in a tree. Years later, Ziegland set about cutting down the tree but it was such a formidable task that he decided to blow it up with dynamite. The resulting explosion propelled the bullet into his head, killing him.

I can, however, authenticate a strange coincidence experienced by a friend while travelling to Gibraltar. She thought a fellow passenger was trying to take her luggage from the conveyor at Luton Airport, only to discover that both had bought identical, unusual, suitcases. Luton Airport has more than 10 million passengers each year. Six months later, the same thing happened at the same conveyor to the same women.

But my favourite coincidence story concerns Joseph Figlock. He was walking along a street in Detroit in the 1930s when a baby fell on him from a high window. Both were injured but survived. A year later, the same baby fell on to the same man as he passed the same building, and again they survived.

Next month brings a moment in time that will delight coincidence freaks and won’t be repeated for a thousand years. At 12 hours, 34 minutes and 56 seconds on the seventh day of the eighth month of the ninth year in this millennium, the time will be: 123456789.

Spooky, eh?

What would visiting aliens make of our mangled frying pans?

2009-06-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, June 2009

SHIFTS that finish at three in the morning are rare in newspapers these days but this was one of those rarities and, as I stumbled through the front door, tired but wide awake, I knew what I needed: a can of lager and half an hour in front of the telly.

Very bacchanalian, I know - drinking alcohol at that time of the day. Made me feel like an early-rising hoodie.

But coming home from work and going straight to bed just isn’t natural, so I settled down with the remote control to channel-hop, discovering, with relief, that only a fraction of the prime-time advert-peppered, endlessly-repeated bilge was on offer and settling on the least objectionable, a show in which people try to set world records with the endorsement of a certain Irish stout.

What fascinates me about the participants in these stunts is not so much what they do but why. One man held the world speed speaking record – 12 words per second. That’s 720 words per minute, four times faster, apparently, than the average TV news presenter. Not surprisingly, I could hardly understand a word he was saying, though I was sharp enough to detect the record for daft questioning. This “fantastic talent”, asked the presenter, was it something he trained himself to do or did it come naturally? Guess.

Then it was the turn of two strongmen bent on creating a “pancake” in the shortest time. The ingredients were a steel frying pan.

By the time each man had mangled the metal beyond recognition with his bare hands in less than a minute, I’d had enough excitement for one day and hauled myself to bed for the obligatory half-hour of fidgeting, during which I delayed the prospect of sleep still further by wondering what the archaeologists and anthropologists of tomorrow would make of mankind in this golden age of amusement and diversion.

How rich in pastimes our race has become was underlined a few days later, when I visited a steam rally in a farm field on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border and mingled with fanatics whose passion for machines and manly things could hardly be further removed from my own effete, pen-pushing existence.

Here were giant steamrollers in red, green and brass and all manner of two-wheeled conveyances, from gleaming Lambrettas stacked high with mirrors to grocer boy’s bicycles of old.

There were stalls selling ancient fire extinguishers, barometers and rusty springs; prized and polished trucks bearing the names of long-gone farmers, coal merchants and scrapmen; saws and drills whirring aimlessly; trappers with animal furs and Davy Crocket hats; and vintage cars with names like Sunbean, Talbot, and Morris, bumpers glinting, leather seats burnished and sticky-out ears for indicators.

It was a world before the throw-away society and no-one embodied it more than an old timer in a grubby cardigan with two tables on which were lovingly arranged bodkins for darning socks before it was cheaper to buy afresh from the supermarket; marbles and snobs; penknives and inkwells; thermometers and cigarette lighters; tea-strainer spoons and potato-chippers; mincing machines and miners’ snap tins; wrenches by the dozen; mini-churns in which milk was left on doorsteps by kids going to school and collected, emptied, on their way home; butter pats and washer tongs; oil tins, pokers and can-openers; a bean-cutter and even a device for toasting bread on an open fire…

It was if he’d dug up everything I’d thrown away down the years, and more – remnants of a time when things were built to last and, when broken, were mended, not simply tossed away.

And not one of these precious relics belongings was for sale. Week after week, the old man toiled to pack, transport, unpack and display them, simply to amaze those too young to remember and stir memories in the rest.

I’d like to think that when he and others like him have gone, some of their treasures will end up buried, to be unearthed for the fascination of generations to come.

But I can’t imagine what they’ll make of those mangled frying pans.

Just give me the weather and cut out the jiv, Des

2009-06-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, June 2009

DERBY-born TV weather presenter Des Coleman has done well for himself and I’m sure he’s a very nice man.

It’s just that he irritates the hell out of me.

Every time he bounds on to our screens and delivers the forecast with all those hand movements and slinky hips, as though he’s about to hit the dancefloor or sell me a new car, my fingernails dig into my palms.

I half expect a Dr Dre soundtrack and a rapper-style hand to the crotch, though that would require a health warning to his army of admiring ladies of a certain age.

I don’t begrudge this son of Littleover his fame and fortune, especially since reading in the Telegraph this week about his battle with a near-fatal bout of cancer. One of six children of a Jamaican immigrant railway worker, he climbed from welder to TV star in a career that’s included a spell as EastEnders wideboy Lenny Wallace.

But it’s only the weather forecast, for goodness sake. And I don’t need it with a Des-style dollop of oomph.

Nor, in the interests of balance, do I want the swirling wrists of another Beeb big-shot, smart-suited, nice-haired Sian Lloyd, gently pushing a cloud mass across Europe with her petite hands, or the mumbling Rob McElwee almost sending me to sleep, only to jolt me awake with a blast of enunciation.

For all I know, Rob (described by the corporation as its “longest serving” national weatherman, though why we should be interested in his length is beyond me) is the epitome of sensible alcohol consumption. But whenever I see him, I think of the Harry Enfield character who was always “veh, veh dyunk”.

I suspect I’m in a minority where Des is concerned. Numerous websites celebrate Swadlincote’s most famous resident, including one that sets his evening forecast to a Numa Numa Dance video. And it’s clear that the cult of the weather forecaster extends way beyond Des There’s a website dedicated to “the hottest female presenters” - but any thoughts that this is the work of a budding meteorologist enchanted by airstreams and depressions is blown away by a photo gallery of screen-grabs and bikini shots

Frankly, the whole weather obsession leaves me cold.

Perhaps it’s because the weather in this country is so unsettled that we spend half our lives talking about what’s to come and how it’s been. Let’s face it, we can be dodging barbecue fat on freshly-exposed bellies one day and shivering in a hail of stair-rods the next.

I don’t suppose there’s much debate about the weather in countries where it hardly ever differs, like the West African state of Guinea, which has rain 130 days a year and a seven-months dry spell, or Cabo San Lucas, in Mexico, where it’s sunny for 350 days a year and temperatures average 80 Fahrenheit.

But what good does it do us if we know what tomorrow’s weather is going to be?

Chances are it’ll be depressing and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway
I’d be happy with a few simple words on the telly – “hot”, “cold”, “wet”, “dry”. Or if a little colour was deemed necessary, how about “caps on, baldies” for a heatwave, or “scrapers out” for an early-morning frost?

I could even cope with a pictures – a blown-inside-out umbrella in a litter bin to indicate gales, for example; a “school closed” sign, heralding a millimetre of snow; or a pair of fat, white, denim mini-skirted legs, sounding a sun cream alert.

Anything but gyrating Des, rambling Rob and simpering Sian. Keep it simple – then we’ll all have to find something else to talk about.

Mind you, I might have had difficulty filling this space.

Use your vote and give the hogs a roasting at the next election

2009-05-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

Pete Pheasant's Derby Telegraph column, May 14, 2009

AN OLD friend has a saying about elections: “Don’t vote, it only encourages them.”

It’s one of the few things we hotly disagree about.

I view the right to vote as one of the great privileges of living in a democracy, while my mate thinks politicians are all as bad as each other, so what’s the point?

I’m sad to say, however, that I saw some logic in his argument after the ghastly revelations about MPs’ expenses – talk about snouts in the trough!

What saddens me most is not the news that one Honourable Member – how discredited that first word now seems – claimed £75,000 for a flat, despite owning a £1.5m home 12 miles from his place of work.

Nor is it the curious case of a male minister who expected the taxpayer to reimburse him for buying panty liners and a woman’s blouse.

It’s not the case of the minister for tourism who claimed £25,000 for security patrols at her London home because she didn’t feel safe there, even though that made me wonder if she had the right credentials for promoting the capital as a tourist destination.

It’s not the claims for light bulbs or manure or pet food; not the tens of thousands spent on doing up properties; not the 23p claimed by one MP for a lemon, much as that demonstrates the depths of mean spiritedness displayed by the House of Hogs towards our money.

I admit I was genuinely shocked to learn about another MP’s 26p claim for a wooden spoon – I thought they were issued to everyone at Prime Minister’s Question Time.

As for the frontbench Labour MP who claimed 93p for a packet of Iced Gems, well! I wouldn’t trust anyone who’d pay so much for such a tasteless sweet to run the country.

But what’s sickened me the most is that all my confidence in politicians has simply been shattered.

You may find this difficult to believe, coming from someone who’s covered public affairs as a journalist for 30-odd years, but I’d always regarded politicians as being a generally honourable bunch who were actually trying to do the decent thing.

Many’s the time I’ve chided friends for branding them a grabbing, selfish lot.

I’ve argued passionately that we should give them a good wage to reflect the importance and pressure of their jobs and the fact that at least we can exert some control over them, unlike the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who really control out lives and over whom we have no say whatsoever.

Now I’m beginning to think that I’m just a naïve old fool.

The wave of apologies from Westminster left me unimpressed. It seemed more like a case of “sorry that we’ve been found out”.
It also left me thinking they should all resign and let the country speak.

The one good thing to come out of this affair is confirmation that the British free press – another great bastion of our precious democracy – is alive and kicking.
But for the Daily Telegraph cracking open the cesspit, I bet we’d never have known the half of it.

And at least one old belief is as strong as ever. My mate can save his legs if he likes, but I’ll be walking to the polling station on June 4 to exercise my democratic right to make my voice heard in the county council and European Union elections.

If you’re tempted to stay at home, consider this: only two-thirds of us bothered to vote for MPs last time around – and look how that encouraged them.

Jam sarnies and butter? Get away!

2009-02-26T06:18:00.000-08:00

MARKS and Spencer may be on to a winner with its new strawberry jam sandwich.

For 75p, it is offering two slices of white bread, buttered and spread with jam, cut into triangles and displayed in a box beside loftier butty creations like prawn and mayonnaise.

M&S has already earned tens of thousands of pounds in free publicity for what it calls “one of the greatest simple pleasures of life”.

According to the high street chain’s Sandwich Specialist, “one bite takes you straight back to your childhood”.

Journalists on Fleet Street’s posh papers have been getting dewy-eyed with nostalgia over what’s probably no more than a distant cousin of the homemade granary with dollops of conserve that nanny used to dish out with a silver spoon when they were kids.

But I’m all for cheap, down-to-earth food and that’s the attitude M&S is banking on in these times of recession to lift its sagging profits (£297m at the last count).

There are, however, a few serious flaws in the concept.

For starters, I was way ahead of them in spotting the potential of the jam sarnie revival. I served up a tray of white bread and jam sandwiches at a wedding anniversary party last year and they went down a storm.

Notice something missing there? It’s butter. Not a scrape was allowed to contaminate my jam butties. And that’s Marks and Sparks’ first offence against the Spread Sandwich Code.

To purists like me, there can be no butter in a sandwich containing spread. When I say “butter”, I mean either the real thing or one of the many yellow imitations which, unlike the margarine of my youth, don’t require softening in front of a fire prior to spreading and don’t taste like axle grease.

Butter’s fine with the likes of cheese, tuna and cold meat but not with jam, nor with the rest of my spread sandwich top five, which I can now reveal after days of meditation.

Undisputed king of the crusts is Marmite – and if you’re in that half of the population who think it’s not the devil’s sputum, you’ll surely agree that bread and the brown stuff need no other spreadfellow.

Challenging strongly for top spot are two born-again additions to my food cupboard – lemon curd and honey (the thick, creamy variety), with cheese spread bringing up the rear, its fortunes having revived considerably since it came in tubs instead of those tinfoil triangles that had to be warmed in the hand prior to unwrapping, unless you preferred gooey lumps to a true spread.

So, no butter. And, almost as important, no cutting.

Those well-meaning folk at M&S may think they’re helping the common man through the credit crunch with a cheap lunch. But slicing through a jam sarnie is like serving warm lager in a mug.

Nor is this feast to be packaged and planned. No normal person is going to think: “I fancy a jam sandwich for my lunch today”, then seek out a supermarket and take two prissy little triangles back to the office or building site.

Jam is too sticky to eat while pounding a computer keyboard, for example – and the whole point about spread sarnies is spontaneity.

When you’re standing in the kitchen thinking “what can I have for dinner?” and you haven’t a clue but your stomach’s growling, you reach for a slice of cheap white bread, slap it on to the working surface (no breadboard, mind!) pile on the jam, fold the bread without cutting and devour, while wandering around until you can think of a proper meal (or settle on more sarnies, followed by a cup of tea and a pile of biscuits).

Now that’s how to eat a jam sandwich.

The joys of Sunday morning football

2009-02-12T06:14:00.000-08:00

HALF an hour to kick-off and our centre-half is devouring a giant hot dog drenched in tomato sauce.

“Need some fat inside me,” he says with a grin. “On the ale last night!”

It soon becomes clear that he was not the only one.

A team-mate sucks on a cigarette as if his life depends on it and a rival group amble by, smoking something illegal and slurping from cans of Stella Artois.

It’s 10 o’clock on Sunday morning and football is about to get under way.
Weeks of rain have left the outer edges of half a dozen pitches on an inner-city park ankle-deep in mud but the refs have ruled them fit for play. They’ve got out of bed and made the journey, so they want their match fees.

Besides, what’s wrong with ruts and puddles? Even the pros put up with them in Cloughie’s day. And scores of eager young men and a smattering of diehard baldies with beer bellies are desperate for their weekly dose of parklife Wembley.

Our boys are facing a pub side and, as the ref blows for action 20 minutes late, having inspected goal nets tethered with yards of masking tape and bent-over twigs, it seems the visiting team are still wearing their beer goggles.

I’m there only as a watching dad (hoping to avoid getting roped in as linesman) but even I want to cheer as the opposition finally manage a pass on target.

Five minutes gone, and our striker is sent sprawling by a tackle so clumsy that even the perpetrator doesn’t protest as the ref signals a penalty. Our man smashes the ball against a post.

It falls at the feet of a startled defender facing his own goal eight yards out and he fires his attempted clearance with great precision past his own keeper and into the top of the net.

His team-mates are helpless with laughter.

We’re two-up at half-time but then lose the plot. Our goalie lets a shot sail through his hands and gets just what he needs to bolster his confidence – a barrage of abuse from his own players.

I flag for offside seconds before the visitors score again (naturally, I’ve been roped in as “lino”) and my honesty and parentage are called into question as the scorer runs towards me, snarling.

Then the worst thing happens. Their pretty-boy would-be Ronaldo (there’s always one) who’s been whingeing and arguing from the outset, finally produces a flash of brilliance to equalise and there’s hardly time for another kick before the ref calls it a day. Elation and dismay in equal measure but handshakes all round.

This is football how it used to be, and I love it. But I’m having severe withdrawal symptoms at present, thanks to this wretched weather.

When will it ever end? Even basement league footie bows to the snow, leaving me to mooch around or do something useful, like clean the car.

I don’t care what it’s like in the week.

I’ll brave iced-up windscreens and skidding wheels to get to work. I’ll humour others who take the day off at the first sign of winters like they used to be, when people were ’ard.

I’ll forgive teachers who shut schools for fear of being sued if one child slips over (though they’re depriving a generation of the ancient art of slide-building, which once spawned glassy playground tracks that always seemed to end with a thud and a groan against railings or thorn bush).

I’ll totter oh-so-gingerly across icy patches that linger when most of the snow and slush have cleared, threatening to send me bottom-over-breast.

I’ll even suffer cutesy pictures of Mr and Mrs Snowman and their snow children
But just give me my Sunday morning football fix!

How a boy of six was locked away for life in a lunatic asylum

2009-01-29T09:38:00.000-08:00

1966: England’s footballers are kings of the world, the Beatles are at their peak and mini-skirts are rising.

It’s a time of freedom and tolerance, of long hair and all-you-need-is-love.

And, in an unmarked grave, a boy condemned to a lunatic asylum for almost 50 years is finally laid to rest.

This is the story of my great-uncle Harold.

I had not heard of him until a few years ago. Then I decided to research my family history.

What drove me to this I cannot say for sure. Perhaps it was the fact that, with my parents long dead, I had only one remaining link with my past — my grandmother, who was nearing her 100th birthday.

So I decided to get her talking about the old days and recorded the conversation.

She was one of 13 children born to a miner and his wife in a pit village in the north of England.

Although unable to recall the names of all of her siblings, she remembered the youngest, Harold, with clear fondness.

They called him Hally. He was “a bonny lad” with a mop of curly hair but he “wasn’t all there” and my grandmother spent much of her time looking after him.

Hally’s mischief-making included hanging from a bedroom window by his feet.

Times were hard and their father – a coalface worker whose sense of compassion drove him to fight for the rights of fellow miners as a union man but who apparently boasted that he never cuddled his children – decided that Hally should be put into care.

Eighty-odd years on, my gran could still remember the day a welfare man turned up at the house. He put a hand on the boy’s head and declared: “Oh, I see. He’s an idiot.”

Hally was taken off to an asylum and there he remained until he died, my grandmother said.

She recalled visiting him occasionally with her mother, making the journey across country by pony and trap. On one such occasion, her mum announced that she had come to see her son. She did not recognise the grubby, shaven-headed urchin standing next to her.

I was shocked and fascinated by the story and had to find out more.

But, since my gran had long lost touch with her family, I had to rely on official records.

I began scouring the internet and, knowing roughly when Hally was born, managed fairly easily to obtain his birth certificate.

Months of searching for a record of his death, however, proved fruitless until I established which health authority had inherited the records of the long-gone asylum and requested details of the time he spent there.

Weeks passed before the arrival of a letter that would reveal all that was officially known about my great-uncle Harold’s pitiful existence.

In a few short lines, it gave his date of entry to the institution, his patient number, date of death, where buried and by whom.

He had been confined to the asylum since the age of six. And there he had remained until his death an astonishing 49 years later.

He had died not as a boy, as I had suspected and which would have been sad enough, but at the age of 55.

I was now able to obtain his death certificate, showing that he choked on vomit after contracting pneumonia.

Local council records revealed that he was buried in an unmarked grave with two other asylum inmates, as was the custom.

This was in 1966, just 43 years ago, when I was about to become a teenager in the Summer of Love in oh-so-civilised England.

How could such an outrage have happened? How bad could a child of six have been to warrant being locked away for the rest of his life in the presence, I guessed, of people far more deserving of the term “lunatic” (which, in Hally’s childhood, was still one used in the government census)?

How many more had suffered like him?

I came across the blog of someone who was a patient at the asylum in 1972. He wrote of the ordeal of “sane people” having to mix with “the mentally subnormal” in an apathy and depression:

“People sit smoking and staring about... treatment basically consists of prescribed pills for all and electroconvulsive therapy for most... after each shock, it takes a good while for one’s memory to return.”

I felt sure that, if Hally hadn’t been mad when he arrived there, he would certainly have gone mad before long, and so any hope of being let out would have gone.

And yet perhaps all that afflicted him as a six-year-old was one of those conditions now diagnosed and regarded with sympathy, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

If he were to have died today in such circumstances, there would be newspaper headlines. But life was very different back then and attitudes were different, too.

His confinement began before women had the vote and, even when it ended in the enlightened 1960s, unmarried mums were being shut away in hospitals and convents.

In the intervening years, I guess, mental illness was regarded by the authorities as something to be hidden away and, consequently, viewed with shame by the victims’ families.

I’m not sure what my discovery has achieved, other than to satisfy curiosity and serve as a cautionary tale for others tempted to delve into their families’ past.

But I feel better for knowing more than just a name in the memory of an old woman and for realising that, however grim life might seem today, however bad the news on the economy and how shocking contemporary cases of child abuse might be, we’ve come a little way since kids of six were consigned to the scrapheap for being different

Revealed: secret plans to silence old whingers

2009-01-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

NEWS that Derbyshire police want more Taser guns to combat violent offenders has alarmed civil liberties groups.

But a much bigger hoo-hah is about to erupt, because I can exclusively reveal plans to use a new electronic weapon to curb another type of social pest: the grumpy old man.

A secret Home Office study has concluded that firing 50,000 volts of electricity at bellyachers of a certain age who go around putting the world to rights would be excessive.So scientists have come up with a new stun gun.

It’s called the Daser and is set to silence whingers of a certain age. While Taser gets its name from a fictional weapon – Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle – Daser stands for Disarm And Stabilise Elderly Ranter.

The Daser emits high-frequency radio waves which are picked up by hi-tech wristbands that anyone over 50 would be forced to wear on entering a public building.

The result is a numbing sensation that makes the silly old sausage forget what he was talking about just long enough to end confrontation, restore peace and send the whinger on his way, none the wiser.

“ERs (elderly ranters) are a well-meaning and generally law-abiding group,” says a leaked report.

“But they undermine Government attempts to promote social inclusion.

“By venting their frustration and anger in public at minor failings by everyone from big business (for instance, by telling supermarket checkout girls they will report them to the chairman of Tesco for not saying ‘please’) to private individuals (e.g. chastising parents in the street over the behaviour of their children), ERs are widening the social divide.

“Such over-zealous self-righteousness carries two risks: 1, ERs may be subjected to physical abuse; 2, More people may begin to think like ERs and make a fuss about bigger issues, like the economy.

“Tests have shown that the Daser quickly and quietly immobilises ERs with no lasting harm to the target.”

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

And I, too, was sceptical, especially since the plans are outlined in “top secret” papers discovered after a darts match at the Horse and Jockey.

But I am now utterly convinced, because I put the theory to the test. Yes, I have been Dasered.

I had to call in some big favours from contacts in Whitehall but finally tracked down the report’s author and arranged for a demonstration.

I’ll call him D.We arranged to meet at my local swimming baths, where he handed me a wristband identical to those used for lockers and told me to make a minor scene about another swimmer.

Regular readers will understand my unease at the prospect of such uncharacteristic behaviour.

But I swallowed my pride, attached the wristband, entered the pool and launched myself into old man’s up-and-down swimming.

I could see D in the spectator gallery, holding what looked like a mobile phone.Within minutes, I found my way blocked by two old biddies inching side by side through the water in a display of world championship nattering.

“Some people,” I muttered loudly as we passed, “have no manners”.Suddenly, my wrist tingled.

Then my body went numb and I was engulfed by a wave of pleasant memories. There was a song running through my head – “Happy Daser here again” – and all I could think of was shop signs with apostrophes in the right place, tired feet soaked in hot water and digestive biscuits dunked in strong tea.

I have no recollection of what happened from that moment until I arrived home half an hour later but D phoned to tell me I’d calmly climbed out of the water, waved goodbye to my fellow swimmers, dressed and left the building.

I guess I should be disturbed by the Daser’s implications for civil liberties. Truth is, I can’t even be bothered to have a rant about it.

Why I'm heading under the stairs

2009-01-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

I’M determined to spend more time under the stairs in 2009.

This might strike you as a little odd, but then I am.

It’s also, however, the starting point for a new year’s resolution that comes with a reasonable chance of success.

Who really wants to get fit, stop smoking, stop drinking, be a better person, live a greener lifestyle, do more for charity, cut down on chocolates and all those other worthy things we pledge to do at this time of year?

OK, perhaps most of us – but are we being realistic? Judging by some statistics floating around this week, it’s all hot air that quickly vanishes.

Three million people in this country apparently sign up for gym membership but half a million never bother to go.So sorting out the clutter under my stairs seems an eminently sensible goal.

The mess in what used to be the pantry has been driving me nuts for years. I can’t understand where all that junk lived before we liberated the space from tins and boxes of food.Well, “junk” is a bit unfair.

A cursory inspection reveals that, in addition to a bottle of rum that’s only ever touched once a year (for Santa’s little tot, alongside his mince pie and Rudolph’s half a carrot), a copy of the Yellow Pages rendered redundant by the internet, a set of scales untouched since the kids did cookery at school, my fourth-form copy of Julius Caesar, two boxes of vinyl LPs I can no longer play but can’t bring myself to get rid of, a piece of skirting board awaiting its destiny and two broken torches, this 4ft by 7ft hidey-hole is teeming with useful things.

Among them are 15 pairs of shoes, an ironing board, two tubs of assorted screws (waiting to gash my fingertips on the odd occasion that I make a fruitless rummage for one of the right size), a set of stepladders and a golfing umbrella.There are two bags of football kit, an assortment of light bulbs, two boxes of Christmas beer, several bottles of wine that will probably serve as emergency birthday presents, two cans of air freshener and a bag of clothes that may one day make it to a charity shop.

Perhaps I should invite people in off the street for a variation of the Generation Game.

If we were talking people, my one-time larder would be more densely populated than Hong Kong.

Oh, I forgot: two picnic chairs, two electric drills, several dozen CDs that have fallen out of fashion, umpteen carrier bags, pots of paint and varnish, a punctured football, a cricket bat, bags of brushes and rollers, baking tins and a battery charger.

I could go on but I can’t get at the rest.

And that’s the whole point of this new mission because, when a household appliance has broken and ignoring it doesn’t work, or one of my handy pals isn’t available to fix it, there’s nothing left but to reach for my tool kit, which involves sprawling over some of the aforesaid clutter (having negotiated the newly-ironed shirts that hang from the door jamb, waiting for me to take them upstairs) and scrabbling around for an implement with which to practise my own perverse form of DIY. The only problem is that, when I look back on my life, even from childhood there was always a den of clutter.

My wife’s family called theirs a lobby hole and the kids would bury themselves under dad’s pit clothes during games of hide-and-seek.So perhaps it’s just meant to be.

Perhaps the rest of the house needs a bin so that the rest of it can stay reasonably tidy.

It’s still New Year’s Day and I’ve ditched my only resolution. Is this a record?

Christmas cards? Bah humbug!

2008-12-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

TIS the season to do Tippex, cos I’ve made a mess, tra-la-la-la.

Mr Cackhands here, reporting for Christmas card duty. And that means a return to the glory days for the little bottle of correction fluid that hides in a drawer for most of the year, remembering when people used typewriters and Control-Z was but a twinkle in Microsoft’s eye.

Talking of eyes, as I write, that stupid cartoon paper-clip that pops up whenever a new Word document is created is staring at me from the corner of my PC screen, occasionally glancing right or left, or shifting his body slightly, or raising his eyebrows and scratching his head when I pause for thought.

I’d like to grab hold of him, straighten him out like a real paper clip and use him to delouse the keyboard.

But it’s the season of goodwill and I’m spending a few hours writing Christmas cards to a few people I don’t see all year and the dozens I see day after day.

It’s a farce, isn’t it?

The Department of Civil Servants with Nothing Better To Do estimates that a billion Christmas cards are sent in the UK each year.

Apparently, recycling just a tenth of them instead of sending them to holes in the ground would save 2,600 tonnes of greenhouse gases, which is like taking 800 cars off the road, though I doubt that paper cars would be much use in this weather.

That’s something to chew on when the turkey’s out of the way. For now, I’m doing the annual chore and making the annual pig’s ear of it.

Common sense tells me it’s pointless giving workmates dozens of folded-up pieces of card bearing my name in exchange for dozens of folded-up pieces of card bearing theirs. But it’s what we do.

And I don’t want to be branded a bah-humbug merchant, so I’m reviving the ancient art of handwriting and hoping I’ve remembered everyone who’s likely to send me a card.

In previous years, I’ve tried doing charity collections instead. But there’s always someone who breaks ranks and gives me a card as well, usually on the day before I break up for Christmas.

I’ve also tried writing out a few extras, just in case someone I wasn’t expecting one from popped up with one, then I could rummage in a pile of envelopes and say “how nice – and here’s yours”.

However, that invariably left me with a few spare because certain individuals hadn’t played the game, so I ended up giving them one anyway and making them feeling guilty because they’d missed me out. Ha ha!

You can tell how insincere this exercise is when you have to ask the missus: “What are so-and-so’s children called?”

Or: “Is he still with her?” Or worse still, you have to phone the supposedly-dear friend with whom you’ve had so little contact to check: a) that they’re still alive and b) where they live.

And my handwriting’s shocking. It gets worse as I get older and the years spent working at a computer slip by.

My age-induced slide into scattiness and a love of spoonerisms don’t help either. I spotted an unsavoury-looking parcel in the street recently and described it as a “dog of bag muck”.

Hence, a slight distraction during this card-writing palaver can turn “from” into “frog” or “merry” into “cherry” or suggest that my sexual orientation has changed and I’ve acquired a daughter, because I’ve written my son’s name immediately after mine and before his mum’s.

But it’s the thought that counts and I guess every card purchased helps during the credit crunch.

Come to think of it, I’d better get down the off-licence. Brothers and sisters-in-law will be visiting soon and I need some gifts of cheap wine to swap for theirs

Synergy and the decline of the British boozer

2008-12-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

MOVE over Market Inn and Royal Oak. There’s a new boozer in town and it’s got attitude.

Synergy is the name of the latest watering-hole to open in my little corner of Derbyshire.

A bit posh for an old mining town, innit? But then, it’s easy to take the Michael. Doing it for a living is what takes years of practice.

Synergy, as any Sun-reading, darts-playing drinker will tell you, is the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

It says on the internet that synergism stems from the 1657 theological doctrine that humans will co-operate with the Divine Grace in regeneration. I’d love to be able to verify this but left my Theologian’s Weekly on the bar of my local.

I suspect, though, that the new boozer got its name because the word has become trendy in recent years – and not just in clever dinner-party conversation.

Recently, I overheard two old dears in Tesco discussing what to get their blokes for dinner. “He moans when I give him egg, chips and spam,” said one. “So I tell him: ‘Don’t look at it as three boring things – think of the synergy!”

I wonder if synergy’s at work when you have your head down the toilet after a bellyful of beer and kebab.

Times change and pub names with them. Down the years, they reflected famous figures – Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, for instance – and industry (Jolly Colliers, Railway Tavern, Needlemakers’ Arms, etc).

Local landmarks gave us the Yew Tree and the Bridge Inn, hobbies the Dog and Duck, wildlife the Red Lion (a creature once rampant in Spondon, I’m told). There were even pubs dedicated to wives (Nag’s Head).

So why not have pub names that reflect the hi-tech age?

Fancy the Google Inn, the Crooked Cursor or the Hoodie Hotel? How about OMG or LOL?
The BeBo-ozer’s an obvious one but I like the thought of the iBinge, the Strictly Come Boozing, the Off Yer Facebook and the Big Wii.

OMG. I’ve just realised that that irritating little txt phrase is a fraud. Not only does it take as long to say as “oh my god”, it takes the same number of letters to write out the sounds: oh em gee. Some abbreviation!

But I digress. If it takes a silly name to get people into pubs and halt the decline of a once-great British tradition, I’ll drink to it.

Aside from the violence and illness that too much alcohol can induce, the pub is a place where friends and strangers can unwind and converse while looking each other in the eye – and that, too, is a dying tradition in our increasingly insular world.

Family shopping trips are giving way to online ordering, more people work from home and teenagers spend their evenings alone in their bedrooms, chatting on the internet instead of risking an Asbo for hanging about with their mates on the street.

Will the day come when we see only our families and interact with everyone else in a virtual world?

A bizarre illustration of what can happen when people lose touch with reality has been reported by psychiatrists in Britain and the United States.

They’ve seen an increase in the number of patients who think their lives are nothing more than a reality TV show. The condition has been dubbed “the Truman Show delusion” after the 1998 film with Jim Carrey.

One patient walked into a building in New York and asked for asylum so that he could get off his reality show. He said he wanted to see if the Twin Towers were still standing because he believed that seeing their destruction on television was part of his show.

Having accidentally witnessed (I’d never purposefully watch I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here) people drinking a cockroach and worm smoothie “for fun”, I can understand why TV reality and fantasy sometimes blur into one.

There’s only one way to escape from this madness…get yourself down the pub

Rise of the bighead culture

2008-10-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

THERE’S a word we hardly hear these days but it’s more appropriate then ever:
Bighead.

I’m not referring to the swelling of tissues in a sheep’s head, caused by anaerobic bacillus. That would make me a show-off with a dictionary.

Nor do I mean someone with a large bonce, though I can’t think of the term without thinking of Bessie Bighead, the farm girl in Under Milk Wood, who dreams of the man who “kissed her once by the pig sty when she wasn’t looking and never kissed her again although she was looking all the time”.

I’m talking about “bighead” as a derogatory remark, a put-down that was once applied to people with an inflated view of their own importance.

It was common parlance when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. People knew their place and for most of us, that was below the parapet. You kept your head down and did your best and, if it happened to bring you honour or applause, you accepted it modestly.

The legendary British upper lip was suitably stiff. Clown around in the wrong company or shout out the answer to a question that had foxed everyone else, and add a few references to boot, and you could bet some old duffer aged 25-plus in braces and cloth cap would mutter “bigheaded b*****”.

No-one typified that era more than Alf Ramsey, a dour little man who shied away from public pronouncements while assembling a squad of understated players who achieved what remains this country’s greatest footballing triumph.

Contrast his majestic skipper, Bobby Moore, with Wayne Rooney and you understand the meaning of “bighead”.

Football aside, the late 60s and 70s gave us the Summer of Love, union power and a cultural revolution that banished the forelock-tugging Britain of old – and, as my grandad was fond of saying, proved that, rich or poor, we all wipe our backsides the same way.

Thankfully, we’ve moved on and people of all backgrounds and abilities now feel free to express themselves.

But we’ve entered the age of the bighead, a me-me-me world in which the loudest and most vulgar are often feted and rewarded.

And there’s no finer examples than Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, a pair so lost in celebrity that they couldn’t draw a line between what’s acceptable among mates at the pub and what’s fit to air to millions of licence-payers on mainstream radio.

Those wisecracking, overpaid buffoons have had contempt heaped upon them by commentators loftier and more eloquent than me.

And if I thought that ignoring them would make them go away, I’d gladly play my part.

But they’re symptoms of a national illness: egomania.

You see it everywhere, from the restaurant diner deafening all about with talk of his holiday villa, to the mega-rich footballer who greets the dreariest of goals with a clenched-fist, snarling celebration that screams “Look at me, aren’t I fantastic?”

And perhaps he is. But do we need to smell his breath before we get the point?

Freedom of expression is a wonderful thing but we might have a richer, more progressive society if the brilliant people among us didn’t crow about their brilliance so loudly and so often, because by doing so, they make lesser mortals feel uncomfortable and inhibited.

We’ve done a bit of growing up during the past 50 years. In some ways, though, we’ve become more childish.

People shout more and think less, and quieter souls who may have much to offer are ducking below the parapet, just as their grandparents did for different reasons.

I’m reminded of another old saying goes: Empty vessels make the most noise.

Losing it with shirts and sponge cakes

2008-10-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

I FACED the world with new resolve after watching a TV programme about people “losing it”.

Sadly, it reminded me of myself.

Comedian Griff Rhys Jones set out to discover why apparently sane and intelligent people occasionally turned into raving lunatics.

It is, apparently, a complaint so common that it has spawned a long list of phrases.

These include going bananas, doing one’s nut, throwing a tantrum, freaking out, flipping or throwing a wobbly, hissy-fit, strop or paddy to name but a few.

You won’t find “having an Eric” in a thesaurus but it’s one I grew up with, though who Eric is and what he did to deserve the tag eludes me.

The programme revealed that, in one of Griff’s own voyages into the land of red mist, he threw himself to the ground and banged his hands and feet in fury and frustration while his family looked on.

This made for uncomfortable viewing because I was sitting next to the wife who had witnessed countless similar episodes from yours truly. It may shock those who know me, at work and socially, as a rather placid chap.

But in the sanctity of home, I have flown into many a rage, not against people but objects.

“Get in!” is one of the red-faced, veins-bulging, spittle-inducing screams that my family have become familiar with – as in “get in you rotten little bleep-bleep!” when I’m trying to fit two pounds of muesli into a one-pound Tupperware container; or when faced with a screw that won’t go into the wall, even though I’m straining every sinew, until I whale it with a hammer and bring half a ton of plaster down.

“Come here!” is another – useful when I can’t unbutton a shirt and am about to rip it open and tear a hole in the fabric.

I recently decided to try my hand at baking, after a long absence, and ended up throwing away what set out to be a Victoria sponge, because it had risen to the pitiful thickness of one centimetre.

The idea of turning my culinary disaster into some kind of custard-covered pudding never occurred to me in my blind rage.

And the knowledge that I was entirely to blame because I’d set the mixture aside in the fridge while I prepared the filling, then cooked it in a cold oven, was of no consolation as I tried in vain to ease the hot sponge out of its tray before gouging it out with my hands and squeezing it into gooey balls, which I hurled into the waste bin.

It’s not big and it’s not clever.

Nor is it harmless, as the programme showed when Griff’s personal assistant revealed, to his horror, that his behaviour had been “quite a burden” to her down the years.

I hope my nearest and dearest recover from the scars left by my own tantrums.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report that my inner calm has kicked in twice since the programme was screened, averting that all-too-familiar phenomena to which – as is the fashion these days – I’ve given an acronym: GOME (Grumpy Old Man Explosion).

When a little boy at the local swimming baths banged the door of his locker open and shut 11 times (of course I counted!) for fun as his father looked on benignly, I simply said in a calm voice: “Excuse me, mate, would you mind not doing that?”

And when I passed a teenage girl seconds after she’d crumpled up her empty Coke tin and dropped it in the street, I did no more than avert my gaze and seethe in silence.

But next time I come to open a packet of biscuits and struggle to locate the “pull here” tag, I’d advise my family to stand well clear.

Believe what you like but don't inflict it on me

2008-10-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

LAUGH? I nearly choked on my pint at the story of the Derby Muslim who took Tesco to a tribunal for making him handle crates of alcohol against his beliefs.

What, I wondered, did Mohammed Ahmed expect when he landed a job as a warehouseman with the supermarket giant?

Evidently, it didn’t involve alcohol, because we were asked to believe that Mr Ahmed – who grew up in Saudi Arabia and moved to Derby in 2006 – had not visited a Tesco store before starting work at the firm’s Lichfield warehouse and he didn’t realise Tesco sold booze.

I’m afraid I found this hard to swallow. I’d expect anyone who held the Muslim ban on contact with alcohol so dear to make sure their prospective employer didn’t trade in the evil stuff before they accepted a job.

I also think it would make sense to check out the sort of society you’re moving to before taking the plunge. This is, after all, a free country and, for many people, freedom at work means take it or leave it.

I couldn’t help wondering what sort of reception I’d get if I took my Western concept of freedom to Saudi Arabia and walked down the main street of Riyadh, swigging cider from a can.

When Mr Ahmed asked for alternative work that didn’t involve touching alcohol, his supervisor allegedly replied: “You do the job or go home”.

And who could blame him? I mean, where might it all end?

Roman Catholic checkout girls suing Boots the chemist for making them sell condoms?

Vegetarian lorry drivers boycotting major roads because they’d have to pass transport cafes thick with the smell of sizzling pork?

Eco-warrior airline pilots turning back at France to cut their carbon footprint?

OK, so saving the environment is not a religion. But some people feel as passionately about it as devout Muslims do about alcohol – and that’s where this subject becomes slightly worrying, rather than ridiculous.

It’s easy to take the Mickey out of Mr Ahmed and his battle with Tesco because the vast majority of Brits – or rather, native white Brits – don’t take religion very seriously.

We have a well-established culture (enshrined in law since shops were freed to open on Sundays) of not allowing our beliefs to interfere with work, the pub, football or any other object of devotion.

That was an easy position to defend and take pride in 30 or 40 years ago, when white Brits were in a much bigger majority than they are today.

That’s why we could get away with laughing at Love Thy Neighbour and Till Death Us Do Part.

But what’s considered acceptable in a society changes with the make-up of its population – and I’m not beating a drum for the PC police, simply stating a fact.

Millions more people who take religion very seriously are entering or being born into this country, so the proportion of those who think religion is an irrelevance, to be treated frivolously, naturally grows smaller.

I feel passionately that people should feel free to worship whatever they wish, as long as they don’t make others feel uncomfortable.

Sadly, though, that is a view shared by a shrinking proportion of our society. It’s an unfortunate consequence of the growing multiculturalism that I have, in many ways, been happy to embrace.

I wish Mr Ahmed well but hope his case fails. I don’t think the country as a whole is ready to go down that path – not without a thorough debate in Parliament, where MPs would be expected to consider all the issues fairly, honestly, and openly.

And that might sit rather uncomfortably with a politician’s job description.

Kids of yesteryear were no angels

2008-09-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

MY wife has been mugged by a slug.

She’d spent the evening at a wedding reception (my wife, that is, though for all I know, the slug may have done much the same thing) and was approaching our front door when the beast struck.

Now, I don’t know if the maximum speed at which one foot can become parted from the other by the greatest possible distance, while remaining attached to the body, has ever been calculated.

But it’s dramatically illustrated when one steps inadvertently on a slug on a wet pavement.

And so it was that my better half’s knee crashed on to the ground, causing a graze that would hurt for several days, and even such a charitable soul as her could find little consolation in the thought that the slug came off worse.

I hope this won’t sour our view of slugs. A keen gardener friend detests them for the damage they cause to his crops and misses no opportunity to consign them to the great cabbage patch in the sky.

But unless they happen to be hiding on the backside of a milk bottle, or fixed to a bathroom wall, indicating an urgent need for re-plastering, I’ve always found them rather fascinating, especially the ones that look like they’re made of white chocolate or Caramac – and the shrivelled-up variety which, as Blackadder’s Baldrick famously illustrated, make a marvellous Charlie Chaplin moustache.

Did you know, for instance, that the Large Black, native to these shores, can be 20cm long, while Great Greys mate by climbing fences or walls and dangling from a tough rope of mucus with their genitalia entwined, after which one drops to the ground and the other climbs up the rope, eating it as it goes?

It’s difficult not to admire such sexual athleticism but it’s purely out of self-preservation that I’ll tread very gingerly at night during this seemingly-unending spell of wet weather, which has brought the slugs and their posh cousins, the snails, out in force.

It was not always the case, however. I’m rather ashamed to admit that there was a time, back in the 60s, when schoolboys, huddled behind the bike sheds for a playtime fag followed by a mouthful of Polos, considered it very amusing to stamp on one end of a slug and watch the poor creature’s innards shoot out of the other.

Such barbarous behaviour can’t be excused by the fact that we had no pocket computers or mobile phones to occupy us.

But it went on, along with blowing up frogs with straws, shooting birds with airguns and stealing their eggs, burning ants’ nests with magnifying glasses, assaulting classmates with spud guns, pea-shooters and laggy bands loaded with ink-soaked blotting-paper, cutting worms in half to see if both bits went their separate ways and jabbing girls’ bottoms with compasses in the school dinner queue.

Not like the little horrors of today!

I DIDN’T know whether to laugh or cry at a story that appeared in the national press about Marks and Spencer and a Superman suit.

Mum Debbie Lamb had bought the suit as a birthday present for her seven-year-old son but found that the yellow belt was missing.

So she phoned M&S to complain - only to be told that the boy would have to speak for himself because of the Data Protection Act.

M&S subsequently apologised but it shows how common sense can be strangled by red tape in the hands of monkeys.

It’s a good job the Health and Safety Executive wasn’t around when I was a wannabe Superman or we’d never have got that kryptonite past the checkout.

Fear of beards and beautiful women

2008-08-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

HAS there ever been a more irritating summer?

It’s not the miserable weather that’s driving me nuts but the gnats and other tiny flying things that get in my face.

They never bothered me when I was younger. Perhaps they prefer rancid old meat.
I can’t even remember being bitten by one until a few years ago.

But ever since news of the sweetness of my shin and shoulder blood leaked out, the armies of mozzydom have been making up for lost time.

This summer, I’ve not been able to sit outside of an evening for more than a few minutes without having to flick some little black pest out of my eyes, nose or ears, and the sparse vegetation of my ageing scalp is apparently viewed as the promised land by flying nippers everywhere.

I thought it was just me until I glanced around the beer garden where I was relaxing one night to find other demented orchestra conductors wafting hands at some invisible menace.

Even indoors there’s no escape. The wretched things are at me when I’m watching the telly at home. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect it’s the same gnat all the time because, for all my fearful flapping, I’ve yet to register a kill.

This may be a time of plenty for the gnat and his cousins but our changing climate seems to have dealt a bad hand to several other families of insects and creepy-crawlies.

Where have all the wasps and bees gone?

Where are the big, crunchy spiders that used to lollop across my living-room floor?

Where are the daddy long-legs (surely the daftest, most cumbersome creature on the planet, after me) that would drift in through every open door and ping senselessly against light bulb and TV screen?

What became of the flying red beetles we used to call bloodsuckers?

Moths, however, appear as common as ever, which is bad news if, like me, you have a thing about them. I know it’s completely illogical and I should stop being a baby but I hate the whirling, twirling, dive-bombing lot of them to the point that whenever one appears nearby, I have a twinge of panic.

There were some the size of a man’s hand on the BBC’s brilliant Lost Land of the Jaguar series. I needed extra sugar in my bedtime cocoa.

This fear does not extend to other flying insects. They keep their distance or are easily evaded, or murdered.

Moths, however, insist on invading my space and are such cunning adversaries that even I, black belt in the art of fly-swatting with a rolled-up newspaper, have been known to bundle my wife into the battleground and close the door behind her until it’s safe to come out.

I might spot a moth dancing around a light bulb some yards away and think: just stay there and we’ll both be happy.

I’ll try acting cool in company. But I know it’s bulging eyes have picked me out and that the moment I look away, it will swoop unseen to a point near my feet, then shoot up and flutter around my head, sending me scurrying off like a big girl’s blouse.

There’s a name for this condition – mottephobia, according to a list of phobias on the internet.

I couldn’t find one for my ex-workmate’s spine-tingling dread – of peas – but among the hundreds listed are apeirophobia (fear of infinity), consecotaleophobia (chopsticks), dikephobia (justice), euphobia (hearing good news), geliophobia (laughter), hippopoto- monstrosesquippedaliophobia (long words), kathisophobia (sitting down), levophobia (things to the left side of the body), neophobia (anything new), pogonophobia (beards), syngenesophobia (relatives) and venustraphobia (beautiful women).

And I thought I was weird.

The case for coffee-coloured people

2008-08-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

ON one of the few scorching days of this miserable summer, I stood on a hillside in Denby.

I was watching a game of cricket and surveying the green fields, peppered with little red-brick settlements, that stretched as far as the eye could see. I was thinking to myself: How quintessentially English.

It could not have been much further from the multiculturalism that has enveloped this country.

And yet that little corner of Derbyshire is about to become the focus of extreme political views as the British National Party holds its Red, White and Blue festival.

A few weeks later, I attended a university graduation ceremony. It was a novel experience and a cause of great pride because, for the first time ever, we have a doctor in the family. My brother, Bob, was receiving his PhD – not bad for a lad who failed his 11-plus.

I, on the other hand, showed why I never progressed beyond a few O-levels by stifling a titter when the dean of Our Kid’s school, having flawlessly pronounced “Samir Ghulam Rasoul Omar Al-Balushi”, “Enock Mong’Are-Nyong’A” and scores of other foreign-sounding names on the list of graduates, stumbled over simple, English “Michael Waller”.

We were at Bradford, so it was a bit like the United Nations. But more significantly, it was like any gathering of children who’ve done well and are taking a bow before proud parents.

Being a son of Ilkeston, I can’t pretend that such multiracial assemblies figure often in my life.

But it so happened that the very next weekend, the Pheasants found themselves guests at a Hindu wedding, where ours were among the few dozen white faces in a sea of 500 people.

Our Asian neighbours’ daughter was the bride and we spent several hours enjoying the elaborate ceremony and colourful costumes while chanting to ourselves “bring on the food” and finally being rewarded with some toe-curlingly spicy nibbles.

We – the English guests – were treated with great courtesy and hospitality. And why ever not? This was, after all, just a gathering of people, and most people, in my experience, are basically decent and friendly.

We are bound by so many similarities and yet allow ourselves to be divided by trifling differences like the colour of our skin.

The fact that such thoughts even crossed my mind may make me a closet racist but I’m happy to say that I emerged from both occasions without the slightest feeling of being a stranger in my own land.

On the contrary: I felt a stronger sense of belonging than ever – privileged to be part of a society in which, for the most part, people of so many different races and cultures live happily side by side.

It may not surprise you to learn that I won’t be at the Red, White and Blue festival. I’ve seen enough unpublished letters to the Evening Telegraph from the likes of “Mr and Mrs English” to know what some of the BNP’s supporters are about.

Nor will I be joining in any of the parties or protests organised by those on the opposite side of the political fence.

I’m lucky in that I can manage without hatred in my life.

But if I wanted to be mischievous, I might fit a large sound system into a van, park it beside the green fields of Denby and blast out a Blue Mink song from 1969.

It was never a musical masterpiece but the chorus made its mark on me and continues to say something more eloquently than I’ve managed so far:

What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world and all it’s got
Keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out coffee-coloured people by the score

A council attack on the weak bladder

2008-07-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

IT was many years ago, when I was a rookie reporter, that I first sniggered at toilet humour in a council chamber.

An elderly lady member told Ilkeston Corporation’s health committee that a peep-hole had been created between the men’s and women’s cubicles in a block of public toilets – and she thought officials should “look into it”.

If you think that’s funny, urine for a treat because the corporation’s successor, Erewash Borough Council, now has its knickers in a twist over public toilets. It wants to close at least six in an exercise that might make me want to wet myself if it wasn’t so petty, penny-pinching, perverse, pitiful and many words not beginning with P.

Naturally, it’s all about numbers. Maintaining public loos is a big job and one, you might think, that strikes at the heart of a modern, caring society.

But the council wants to slash spending by washing its hands of those oases of relief that nobody cares about until they need one.

So, officials have been trying to weed out the least important. They’ve come up with what they call “the favoured toilet disposal option” which would, I presume, involve considerable dumping of rubble if the buildings were demolished.

And, of course, nothing could happen without a motion approved by councillors.

Fifteen toilet jokes and I’ve hardly got going! Sixteen!
But the biggest joke is the council itself. Since its inception in 1974, it’s been bogged down with a funny name and, now that people have finally stopped calling it Earwash instead of Errywash, it’s trying to re-brand itself Ere(un)wash Borough Council.

OK, I’ll cut the cr…etinous humour. This is a serious business because it begs the question: have councillors and officials got nothing better to do with their time and the public’s money than plan the closure of six of the borough’s 22 public loos?

And all to save a piddling Â£45,000 a year from a multi-million-pound budget.
They’ve done their sums and that, it seems, is all that matters. The residents of Erewash have one public toilet per 5,789 residents compared with one per 11,000 in 20 other district council areas and one per 140,000 in Liverpool.

The Merseyside bladder is clearly made of strong stuff.

Scrutiny committee chairman Darren Adams-Shaw says this “smacks of over-provision”, though the council’s latest figures on the number of people who actually use the threatened loos are from 1998, when they ranged from 31 to 56 per day.

These statistics, incidentally, were gained despite the fact that the Public Lavatories (Turnstiles) Act 1963 prohibits the installation of turnstiles in public conveniences!

I guess Mr Adams-Shaw hasn’t reached that age when comparisons with toilet provision in Liverpool are of little comfort when one is overcome by the urge to “go” while walking home from, say, the shops or pub; when “holding it in” is a task so demanding of concentration that something as simple as talking or coughing cannot be accomplished at the same time.

As a friend nearing the age of 60 put it recently: “Once upon a time, I could be out in the garden and think, ‘I’ll need a wee in a bit’. Now, it’s, ‘I need a… oh my god!”

Nor, I suspect, has Mr Adams-Smith and his colleagues considered that, if there were fewer public toilets, shoppers might be less inclined to walk. How does that help the environment and the campaign to cut obesity?

But since they’re so keen on figures, here are some from my own little study. From the outskirts of Ilkeston’s shopping centre to parts of Cotmanhay and Kirk Hallam, where many of the town’s oldest and poorest people live, it’s 1.3 miles.

If these closures go ahead, there won’t be a public toilet anywhere along those routes.

Does that sound like over-provision if you’re caught short?

Sun, sea and strange trees

2008-07-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

WELL, we did it. The fact that my name’s not appeared in the court or obituary columns proves that me and the missus managed our first holiday alone in 21 years without strangling each other.

We didn’t even come close. But we did learn quite a bit during our week on the Med’ – mainly that we can still get along pretty well after 38 years together.

I’ll skip the mushy stuff (it makes my kids nauseous) but I can reveal that we discovered the universal language of a hot body entering cold water, debated morality as it applies to sunbeds and made friends with a tree.

What’s more, the sour old so-and-so whose rants occasionally amuse you in this column was notable by his absence.

Not an unpleasant word passed my lips until an elderly Italian, who clearly had so much of importance to say that the whole beach had to hear it, prattled on and on to his family, while I lay muttering “does he ever shut up?” until a voice at my side snapped: “Now, now Victor Meldrew – we’re on holiday!”

My wife, bless her, has an extremely long fuse but I sensed it was nearing its final threads that day.

All suncreamed up, we’d stretched out to do some serious sunbathing.

Then I remembered I hadn’t protected what my younger son rather cruelly calls my bird’s nest, so out came the cream again.

Now we could settle down. Two minutes passed. No, sorry: tummy too tender from previous exposure. Must wriggle on to my front.

Much better…except that lying with head in best position left sunburnt feet dangling painfully on sunbed frame.

Up I got again and dragged the towel over the offending plastic.
This meant that my face – by now drenched with sweat – was directly against the scratchy fabric. I could have lived with that but my arms quickly became glued to my body as I tried to turn the white bits towards the sun.It was no good, I’d have to turn round.

“Where’s my book?” I said, rummaging in my beach bag. “Did you bring my glasses?”

I could almost hear someone thinking: For heaven’s sake, stop fidgeting!

After all that, it was too bright to read, so we hit the sea and, as my head emerged from that fearful first dunking, I uttered the immortal words of sea-dippers the world over: “Twoh!”, then “whaw!”.

“Brrr,” I said, turning to Mrs P, whose bottom lip was now doing a Gordon Brown,

“I’ve got nipples like happle chatpegs!”

Meanwhile, the beach bandit had come for his Â£15 a day for two sunbeds and a parasol. He’d been on his break when we arrived and must have mistaken us for the couple he’d collected from earlier. Several curious glances in our direction met only the vacant stare of the brain-fried tourist and off he went to pester someone else.

The thought of offering to pay him crossed my mind (which is not a long journey) but I figured that he’d charged once for our equipment and if the previous users had stayed all day, he’d have made only Â£15 anyway.

All we were doing was taking up the slack.

Did this make me a thief, or just lucky? It was not a dilemma that troubled me for long.

Back at the apartment, we took in the view from the verandah and said a quiet “hello” to the roadside tree that we’d nicknamed George.

It was no more than a bare trunk about six feet tall but a gnarled and knotted piece of timber had twisted over at right angles to it at the top and bore a striking resemblance to a seahorse.

There was, however, no sign of the magnificent red kite that had swooped up and down the street in search of food for several days, and all we could think was: “George must have eaten him!”

See what a week in the sun can do?

Sunshine holidays and the horrors of shorts

2008-06-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

DEPARTURE minus four days: me and the missus are going on holiday.

It’s 21 years since we’ve had more than a day on our own, ever since we traded in our brains for the parent model, and we’re wondering how we’ll cope.

Will we be ready to kill each other by the end of it? Or will it will be a heavenly week of sand, sun, sea and… sleep?

Will she be driven into the arms of some slinky-hipped Spanish waiter as I fall prey to that holiday sickness that makes men’s eyes linger on female forms other than their loved one’s? It is a dreadful burden we bear.

At least I’ve not had the burden of deciding where to go this year. My wife booked us on a late cheapie (most of our spare dosh having paid for our sons and their girlfriends to get away) and the fact that I’ve had absolutely nothing to do with the arrangements will never be spoken of by me again. Honest.

We’ve had a week at home to avoid last-minute panics but four days have slipped by and we’ve still not been shopping, so off we set, armed with a list of holiday essentials, from flip-flops to insect repellent, but still not knowing where we’re headed.

The two nearest towns are Tescotown and Ikeatown. Tescotown wins on grocery points and we’re soon tetchy.

She buys a bikini and insists on keeping the hanger.

Me: Why do you need the hanger?

She: Because they’re useful. Anyway, you always forget them and we run out.

Shop assistant: You tell him, love. Here, have a few more…
Me: Why do we need two tubes of toothpaste?

She: Because the one at home’s run out.

Me: Well, buy a tube for going away, not a pump.

She: I am doing!

She: Do you need any deodorant?

Me: No. Stinking is one of the joys of being off work. Like not shaving, and eating baked beans.

She: I need some face cream.

Me: That’s true.

I NEED some shorts but I’m not much of a shorts person. Having what a friend’s mum at primary school once called “sparrow legs” (if only that woman knew what psychological damage she wrought!)

I prefer the type that end halfway up the thigh because what bit of leg muscle I possess is there. But I’m told they’re old-fashioned and fear I’ll look like Charles Hawtrey from a Carry On film, prancing about a sea of well-honed bodies on the beach, yelling: “Oh, I say!”

So I take a few pairs of fashionable knee-length pairs, decorated like curtains from 70s B-movies, into the changing room and settle on the least worst before discovering, to my horror, that they fasten at the front with two Velcro strips. Is there no getting away from that stuff?

Will it stick in water? I can see myself coming undone in front of a group of children and ending up in the Court In Brief section of the Menorcan Weekly Whatsit.
My legs look like turkey drumsticks. I’m convinced they wouldn’t go brown if I roasted them in 90-degree sunshine for a year.

And where did that roll of fat around my waist come from?

These shorts are never size 34! I think I’ll complain…

But as I reach the checkout – minus hanger – where the wife who’ll tell me I look great in anything is waiting patiently to pay, I think: Let’s have the holiday first. Then she can strangle me.

Chocolate masterpieces melt into memories

2008-06-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Whatever happened to innovation?

Research on human embryos and the quest for renewable energy are all very well but I'm thinking of something closer to my heart: chocolate.

Things have gone so dull in Sweetie Land that Willy Wonka must be melting in his grave.When did you last see something really different in the supermarket choccie rack?

It was probably in the past few weeks if, like me, you've discovered Twisted - a Cadbury's Cr??me Egg in a bar.

Now that's a stroke of genius because, delicious as they are, Creme Eggs come with two major irritations.

First, you have to peel off the silver foil, which never comes away in one piece, resulting in chocolate fingernails. Then, you have to choose between demolishing them in two or three bites - and getting all stuck-up - or popping them in whole and feeling sick.

My excitement at Twisted's release only underlines the paucity of new ideas from the big brands' chocolatiers.

No wonder the NHS dentistry system is being dismantled when the most tempting bar in the vending machine that greets you after you've worked up a sweat at the leisure centre is a Mars wearing its great-grandad's overcoat.

Talking of vending machines, have you noticed that no matter how hi-tech they become, the coin that slips straight through can still be made to work with a bit of spit?

I was reminded of how jaded life had become for the chocoholic when I mentioned Fry's Five Boys to a group of younger friends and they looked at me askance.

Five Boys first appeared in 1866 and was still doing the rounds in the mid-60s. The chocolate itself was nothing special but decorating it with the faces of five boys in relief - depicting desperation, pacification, expectation, acclamation and realisation - gave it the edge over the mundane.

Nestle tried to ape it (and lion it and giraffe it) with the Wildlife Bar but fell into the trap of making products ever smaller while upping the price.

Even more creative were two other lost souls from my youth - Milk Tray Bar and Fry's Five Centres.The first was a selection of Milk Tray centres - I can only remember Lime Barrel and Strawberry Cream - looking just like they do in the box but laid on a thin slab of chocolate.

But the second really was the creme de la creme - a dark chocolate bar the size and shape of Fry's Chocolate Cream but encasing five different fondant centres: lime, pineapple, orange, lemon and raspberry. I used to love breaking them mid-segment and savouring two flavours at once.

Did such masterpieces really go out of fashion? It's difficult to believe that they were eclipsed by the likes of Marathon and Ripple. Sweetie firms aren't in it for charity, though, so they can't have been selling enough.

But then, Cadbury and co are notoriously slow to pick up on public demand. Just look at Galaxy. It's now being made thinner, more like it was 30 years ago, and - illogical, I know - it tastes much better.

I suspect that readers of a serious disposition have by now abandoned me, or damned me as a lightweight for using this platform to explore such a topic.

But I always thought a columnist's job was to give people something to chew on.

Which reminds me, whatever happened to Arrow bars?

Noisy neighbour puts me in a fowl mood

2008-05-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

IT’S 7am and the sun is shining. If I didn’t have to drag myself to work, it would be a perfect spring day.

But nature and machine have colluded to cause a little tension headache at the nape of my neck. The neighbourhood cockerel is in full flow, as he has been since 4am, and the shower I need to bring me to life seems determined to outdo the wretched creature for irritation value.

Admittedly, the shower fulfils its primary purpose, producing a steady stream of water at a steady temperature. But almost since the moment it was out of warranty, it’s made a hideous squeaking sound that can be heard downstairs.

Meanwhile, a few gardens away, the cockerel is cock-a-doodle-flaming-doing like there’s no tomorrow. One day, I counted it going off 15 times in 10 minutes.

And in between the crowing, the shower ascends and descends its short scale of squeaks, silenced only briefly by my frantic twisting of the temperature control, which makes the water freeze one moment and scald the next, adding the shrieks of a cock Pheasant to the cacophony.

Even without such obstacles to serenity, the bathroom is a dangerous place for one of my advanced years, with an array of containers seemingly designed to confuse.

The day will surely come when I try shaving with aerosol deodorant and squirt shaving foam under my arms, or wash my hands with toothpaste and squirt hand-wash on the toothbrush. Mercifully, they now put shampoo bottles one way up and conditioner the other, though the expanse of shiny head that greets me from the mirror suggests I’ll soon have no use for either.

Years of experience have taught me that the body towel-dries quicker inside the shower than out but still I step dripping from the bath and the cock crows immediately. I suspect he can see me and is having a laugh. Childishly, I crow back but in Norwegian – “kykkeliky!” – which I prefer of all the foreign language versions listed on the internet (though the Croatian ku-ku-ri-ku and the Japanese ko-ke kokkoh run it close).

Goodness knows what the neighbours think.

Then I squirt after-shave into my eyes and lumber downstairs doing a series of foot exercises designed not to dislodge the elderly, fraying, flapping slippers I insist on carrying around on my feet like a dear old relative.

And a familiar cry echoes around the neighbourhood.

Rural readers may wince at my ignorance but I was under the impression that cocks crowed as a sign that they wanted some rumpy-pumpy. I could have told them that shouting for it doesn’t work.

Apparently, it’s a male’s declaration of territorial rights but it can also be triggered by looking into bright sunlight or even the moon. If you’re a cockerel, that is.

I could put up with it if I lived in the countryside. Indeed, the sound is celebrated in some countries. Germany has a crowing competition. Turkey, appropriately, has cross-breeds that can keep it up for 30 seconds. And in the United States, hundreds of roosters are gathered in a huge hall to see which can crow the most in 30 minutes. Sounds like a great day out.

But it’s not a noise you expect in the middle of a housing estate, on top of car and burglar alarms, lawnmowers, strimmers, barking dogs, chainsaws, kids on scrambling bikes, the police helicopter whirring overhead in pursuit of car thieves and the shrieks of young girls falling over on cheap cider.

The local council advises aggrieved neighbours to keep noise diaries, noting the time of each cock-a-doodle-do, before it will consider taking action under the noise nuisance rules. In York, the owner of a pair of two cockerels, Norman and Albert, was ordered by the local authority to curb their crowing after neighbours complained.

Officials suggested raising the height of the cocks’ perch or lowering the height of the roof to prevent the necessary neck-stretching, or putting a sock over their heads.

More extreme measures have been known in the States, where some people take their cockerels to the vet to have their vocal chords removed. Cruel but not altogether surprising, since some Americans have their cats’ claws removed so they don’t scratch the furniture.

In the end, Norman and Albert were silenced by nature, in the form of a fox.

Now I’d not wish any harm on my throaty feathered neighbour – and, even for me, life’s too short to make a note every time a cockerel crows and report it to the council. But he just might get a Christmas card from me this year.

The front of a Paxo stuffing box should do nicely.

Why young killers are victims, too

2008-05-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

IFIND myself haunted by a face that has become an icon of our age.

It is that of a young man’s face with sallow cheeks and empty eyes. There is no hint of warmth or compassion, nor, more disturbingly, of anger, hatred or contempt – nothing. It is like a rabbit caught in headlights; a zombie.

It could belong to any of the legion of young men who stare out from newspapers and television screens as another criminal outrage unfolds in this Asbo-rich land.

One day, it’s a heroin addict who’s mugged an old lady for the few pounds in her purse; the next, a 13-year-old car thief filmed thrusting a finger in the face of a policeman.

Ryan Harris is just 15 and has already registered a blip in the annals of notoriety. He murdered a young woman who dared to look different. Sophie Lancaster and her boyfriend were Goths – a fairly inoffensive bunch, in my experience.

But that was reason enough for Harris and four other youths, who’d spent the night boozing in a Lancashire park, to set about them.

They kicked Sophie’s boyfriend unconscious, then, as she tried to protect him, jumped and stamped upon on her head with such force that paramedics could not tell if she was a man or a woman.

The judge who sentenced these brutes gave an eloquent assessment that few would argue with. They had, he said, degraded humanity itself with a feral thuggery that raised serious questions about society.

The victims in that case and, sadly, many more like it are easy to identify. But I’d like to offer you a view of Ryan Harris as a victim, too, with the help of a snapshot from my childhood in the cosier world of the 50s and 60s.

Like most of my generation, I spent my spare time hanging around the streets and parks. Even if there’d been lager on sale cheaper than milk, the grown-ups would have made sure it didn’t fall into young hands.

So we got drunk on fresh air, playing endless games of cricket, football and hide-and-seek, building dens, climbing railings, hunting out birds’ nests and getting up to minor mischief like hedge-hopping and door-knocking.

A favourite haunt was a street on a steep hill, where all the terraced houses opened on to the pavement, so it was easy to rap on one door, then the next and speed off with little chance of being caught – except at the end house, which was inhabited by an elderly gent who must have spent much of his time lurking behind his door, ready to spring out and terrify us with curses and shaking fists – and, on one memorable occasion, showering us with the contents of a chamber pot from his bedroom window.

And that was about as naughty as we got. It’s not something to be proud of but it never progressed to anything more sinister because, without the aid of anti-social behaviour orders or youth justice teams, there was a system that kept kids in check.

That system was built on fear and respect: fear of what our parents would do if we did anything really bad, and respect for those older and in positions of authority, from the school caretaker to the local bobby.

Essentially, though, my generation benefited from the respect that society – parents, principally, but also schools and the police, aided by nosey neighbours and busybody shopkeepers – showed towards children, by attaching great importance to the task of rearing young people with a sense of right and wrong.

There were some truly bad lads, of course, and they were caught and punished. But phrases like “beating up old ladies” simply did not exist.

Today’s young thugs and thieves are victims themselves, victims of a growing culture of disrespect for the rights of others.

They’ve been shown the ultimate lack of respect, firstly by parents who failed in their primary task – to rear a child capable of enjoying life without endangering the lives of others – and then by the whole apparatus of welfare and justice systems, which has allowed them to drift out of control.

It’s a poor society that writes off its young people at 15 but that’s what we’re doing. I don’t profess to know the answers but I won’t accept that it’s all down to poverty, because there were plenty of poor parents 30 or 40 years ago and most of them did a pretty good job with what they had: big hearts and a sense of duty.

What’s changed in the last decade or so is that we’ve become so awash with money in this country that some of those at the bottom of the pile feel they have a right to the trappings of consumerism they see all around them – PlayStations, holidays abroad, flash cars, designer clothes – and if they can’t earn them, it’s OK to steal and kill to get them.

That’s all about a lack of respect and we need a national crusade – not just political slogans – to put respect back at the heart of everyday life.

My hellish threesome for eternity

2008-04-30T02:58:00.001-07:00

IF hell meant spending eternity in a small room with three people, who would they be?

This was the starting point for one of those pub conversations that are handy for filling the long gaps between slurping beer since the smoking ban was introduced.

The sight of Newcastle United – or rather, manager Kevin Keegan – on the big screen sparked it off.

I can remember Kev lighting up the field as a player but my mate, Jim, can’t forgive his voice, his haircut of old and his habit of walking out on a job half-done. So Keegan was straight in as hellmate number one, quickly followed by Catherine Tate (“whingeing Cockney bint” with the audacity to be chosen as Dr Who’s sidekick) and Tina Turner, who edged out actress Glenn Close (“a good-looking bloke,” said Jim).

Come my turn, choice number one was easy: Little Britain’s Matt Lucas. His constant inability to make me laugh (or mine to be amused by him) irritates me almost as much as the current obsession with writing TV dramas around men snogging. I’ve never forgiven him for spoiling Reeves and Mortimer’s Shooting Stars.

Next on my list was Tory MP Ann Widdecombe. I’d like to feign maturity and say it was the combination of know-it-all schoolmarm and reactionary caricature that so offends me. The truth is, it’s her face.

My devilish threesome was made up by Alex Ferguson. He may be one of the greatest football managers ever and I love to watch his team play but he’s such a baby.

Anyone of his stature who chews so much gum (I wonder if he does it in his sleep) and is so adept at presenting a bland facade when interviewed on television by anyone but the BBC (whom he refuses to talk to) must harbour a seriously nasty streak.

Commiserations go to Match of the Day’s Mark Lawrenson, whose hideous pronunciation put him in fourth place.

All this proves not only that I have too much time on my hands and beer on the brain but that I judge celebrities by what I see on TV.

In reality, Sir Alex might tire of chewing gum after 2,000 years in my company and share the secrets of life in the Man U changing room. And Ann might grow a moustache and hitch up with a bald, unfunny, gay man.

Picking three screen stars in character is much easier. Hannibal Lecter is a no-brainer and I’d have to add two veterans of the cast of EastEnders: Ian Beale and Dot Cotton.

Then I could spend eternity with a man who wanted to eat my f-f-f-face, a wet lad who specialises in making a sow’s ear from a silk purse and a smokaholic hag with an unconvincing line in Biblical quotations.

“Ah,” said my mate Jim, “But what about three real people – people you know?”

Believe it or not, I don’t seriously dislike many people but just at that moment in the conversation, the gaunt figure of a lonely man appeared across the bar.

He’s more of a symbol than someone specific, the sort of person who’s brain is set to transmit only, so that when he offers a vaguely incisive comment on a story that’s in the news (“I bet Heather McCartney’s laughing all the way to the bank, ’ey?”) and you look to widen the topic (“Some might think she deserves it, mate”) he’ll reply: “I bet she’s laughing all the way to the bank, ’ey?” And on and on it goes, a bit like Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles, who could be quite funny if could break the habit of making a joke and then repeating it half-a-dozen times.

Joining my man with the block on incoming messages would be a grubby old woman I occasionally stand behind in the corner shop while trying not to imagine how long it must have been since she washed her hair.

Perhaps I’m being uncharitable to unfortunate souls but I have no compunction in naming my third companion: a middle-aged man who occasionally pops up in drinking establishments around my home town, one capable of depriving anyone within earshot of the power of thought as he lets rip the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard, a mixture of shrieks and guffaws that turn every faintly humorous remark into the best joke in the world.

So that’s about as close as me and my drinking pals get to acknowledging the existence of an afterlife. Not a very savoury pastime, you may think, but a little harmless character assassination is better than smoking yourself to death.

Apologies if I’ve offended anyone by making light of hell. They know I’ll get my comeuppance eventually. And they might appreciate my 18-year-old son’s reaction when I told him later that my friends and I had been discussing who we’d least like to spend eternity with.

“Hmm,” he muttered, “How many picked you?”

Plight of the Elephant Man in a mixed-up world

2008-04-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

DURING a commercial break, the voice-over man warned Channel 4 viewers that they were about to witness scenes of a pig being slaughtered.

Sickening as it was, the sight and sound of that animal being slit open alive and drained of its blood was almost light relief amid the most harrowing hour of television I have seen in a long time.

It was a tale of unbelievable human suffering, of poverty, courage and family love. And it had been packaged into an albeit-uncomfortable form of entertainment for the likes of me – unwinding with a beer in front of the telly at the end of another day in a satisfying, well-paid job.

I Am The Elephant Man should be compulsory viewing for anyone who complains about the health service in this country, for every obsessive slimmer desperate to lose a spare tyre, for every hard-done-to teenager with only one games console for entertainment. Monday's programme portrayed Huang Chuncai in all his monstrous deformity.

A victim of neurofibromatosis – thought to be the same condition that afflicted the Victorian Elephant Man, John Merrick – Huang suffered from tumours that had turned his face into a sagging mass of flesh as broad as his shoulders.

The growths weighed 25 kilos and, every time he wanted to move, Huang had to carry his face in his arms.

If that were not burden enough for one man, the condition had stunted his growth and turned him into a hunchback.

Huang, of course, is from a poor family – it could not happen to the rich – and as I watched the real-life horror story unfold in the comfort of my living room, it was impossible not to feel guilt and shame at the glaring inequalities of a world where vast fortunes are spent on questionable warfare and, in Haung’s native China, on the Olympic Games that will provide further evidence of that vast nation’s fitness to rank among the world’s great powers.

In the tiny village where Haung’s father – deprived of the support he might expect from a son – eked out a living selling dried noodles in the street, priceless human values shone through the misery. Poor they might be, but they knew right from wrong and had shooed off the men from the travelling circus who wanted Huang as a freak show.

As his tumours grew, Huang found life at school unbearable and finally fled the taunts of other children, shrinking beneath the protective clock of village life, spending his days playing cards in the local shop.

He was 31 by the time a renowned cancer surgeon agreed to operate on him. A 12-hour journey took Huang away from his village for only the second time in his life, to the hospital where his life hung in the balance as he faced the first in what would be a series of major operations.

The growths had long since obscured one eye and ear and were now eating into his brain and threatening to strangle him.

As Huang pulled his mouth apart to speak of his love for his family, his sister told of her dream that he would one day become a tall, handsome man.The brother who had failed to stick up for him at school, because he was ashamed of him, revealed that he now cried himself to sleep with worry.

Their wizened old mother sat on the bed, fighting back tears. After all, the creature that was barely recognisable as a human being was still her boy, about to go under the surgeon’s knife.

Two hours later, a lump the size of a baby had been removed from one side of Huang’s face and a long and painful recovery began.

We last saw him enjoying a meal with his family, happy that he could walk, talk and play cards better, perhaps with only months of life ahead but still with one great wish – to become a dutiful son who worked for his parents.

It was a painfully compelling programme and I felt truly privileged to be able to watch it, thanks merely to the throw of life’s dice, which cast me into a world where physical comfort is something so easily taken for granted.

But of all the contradictions it brought to mind, none was more disturbing than another story that had received far wider publicity a few days earlier. While a poor Chinese freak of nature was clinging to his wretched existence, a man-made freak was being paraded on US television – a woman who had undergone treatment to make her look like a man, while retaining the reproductive organs that allowed her to carry her lesbian lover’s child, thanks to artificial insemination.

I asked myself why? And all I could think was: because she could.

What's for dinner? A bit of bread and pull it!

2008-03-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

Gawber ruttles! You've widened my education and topped up the store of weird and wonderful sayings since my column of two weeks ago.

Stirred by whim-whams for ducks' bridles and pots calling kettles black, readers responded in style to my appeal for favourite colloquialisms.

Janette, of Burton, was among those with fond memories of our disappearing local dialect. "Well," she wrote, "a bin raidin wot yuh wrote and fun it quite interesting but ah got goo now and peg th'weshing out for it reens."

Scott, of Derby, nominated an old warning not to shed winter clothing too early in the year - "cast ne'er a clout 'til May is out".

Another www.thisisderby shire.co.uk visitor said that, although he left Derby a decade ago, he still used "nesh" to describe people who found it cold when others were warm.

Andrew, of Etwall, was quick to enlighten us: "'Nesh' is from Old English 'hnesce', meaning tender," he said."I always thought it was more of a North Staffs word - and so is 'surry'. Since moving to Derbyshire from Staffs I've been fascinated by the dialect similarities and differences."

Nick Wheat, of Dronfield, mourned the demise of a phrase once common in north Derbyshire - "to make Killamarsh Fender", meaning to huddle up with your family around the fire for warmth".

More pure Derbyshire came from Sally, of Belper, with her grandfather's favourite joke:
Man: "Where's mi shot? Where's mi shot?"
Wife: "Shert!"
Man: "Aahve sherted twice, woman!"

Sue Farthing, of Oakwood, recalled sitting on the doorstep as a child and being told by her mum: "You'll get a chin cough on a cold step."

"I never knew what a chin cough was," said Sue. "But as I got older, I assumed it was piles - so lord knows where the saying came from. I have mentioned this to friends in Derby and Nottingham and nobody claims to have heard it. My mum was an Allestree girl, born in 1921, and dad a true Derbeian born in 1909. I was born in 1952, so whether that saying was just local or common to that period, I do not know."

Similarly mystified was Viv Wigley, who recalled: "When I was a child, on a daily basis I would ask my mother what was for dinner. Her standard reply was, 'Duck under the table and jamb on the door.' I never did get round to asking where it came from. Then again, she was a Dublin lass."

Fellow Evening Telegraph columnist Anton Rippon never fathomed what his mother meant when he'd ask what was for dinner. "A run round the table and a kick at the pantry door," she'd say, or "a bit of bread and pull it".

Anton also offered a variation of one of my favourite oddities - "he/she used to chew bread of for ducks" - but merely confused me further with: "My dad's a masticator at the hospital. He chews the bread for the poultices."

"It's a bit black o'er Bill's mother's" (meaning rain is on the way) struck a chord with Peter Haslam, whose mother-in-law would say, when she hoped it was brightening up a bit: "There's a bit of blue o'er Bill's mother's."

Taking up the weather theme, Dave, of Derby, declared: "Wossamarrawiya? A birra rain ne'er 'ert no-one!"

Peter also offered a variation of "going to the foot of our stairs" as an expression of surprise. His dad used to say: "Well, I'll go to Shottle."

"He was from several generations of Derbyshire folk but his mother came from Huddersfield. Shottle is certainly in Derbyshire but why going there should be so surprising, I never understood."

He also recalled this bedtime wish from childhood: "Night night, sweet repose, hope the flies don't tickle your nose."

And I particularly liked his mum-in-law's sceptical observation when someone was claiming wide support for some statement, or saying how many people had been at an event.

"Oh yes," she'd say, "our cat and another, I suppose."

Being common as muck, I'd not expected a contribution from the world of opera. But fellow Ilkestonian Peter Featherstone shone light on one old saying with the help of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Peter, who has a lead role in Princess Ida, at Derby's Guildhall next week, quoted the judge in Trial by Jury, explaining how he rose to an eminent position by marrying a rich attorney's elderly, ugly daughter, who "may very well pass for 43 in the dusk with the light behind her".

Thanks for all your contributions. Please keep them coming.

I'll leave you with a real gem, from John Weston, of Breedon-on-the-Hill.

He still remembers the day 80 years ago when his father, a quarryman, said of another villager walking down the street in Tonge: "That chap's got gawber ruttles."

"Whatever's gawber ruttles?" asked John.

His dad replied: "Two stomachs for eating and never a one for work."

Why is it always black o'er Bill's mother's?

2008-03-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

“GIVE it here, you wazzock! You’ve made a right pig’s ear of it!”

After 33 years of marriage, I was enjoying a rare moment of triumph.

Me and the missus were changing the duvet cover but someone had fitted the press-studs into the wrong holes. This would normally have sent me into a paddy but, for once, I wasn’t the culprit.

This bedroom farce allowed me not only to blow my own trumpet but to harness the power of those old sayings that enrich everyday language.

I’d produced another old curiosity (no, not the missus) in the pub the previous night. One of our friends was clearly in some discomfort and began firtling with herself.

“What’s up with you?” I asked.

“I’ve got an itch.”

“Well, do what they do in China.”

“Ay?” she said, looking at me gone-out. “What’s that?”

“Scratch it, of course!”

That’s when I heard the tumbleweed, for no-one else in the group had ever come across that saying, which I’d learned from my dad when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

There were more blank faces when I dredged up two of my grandparents’ sayings – “you dripping tin!” (for “silly person”) and “I don’t know whether I’m on this earth or Fuller’s” ( “I’m very confused/not with it”).

So I decided to ask friends and workmates for their favourite sayings – and I hope you’ll tell me yours.

I’d expected lots of examples from popular culture, especially comedy programmes – Monty Python’s “I see, I see, I get the picture”, for example; Catherine Tate’s “Am I bovvered?”; or Del Boy’s “you plonker!”

But none of them figured. Instead, there were some I knew and understood but others I couldn’t make head nor tail of – and most had been around for donkey’s years.

“Night night, don’t let the bed bugs bite” means, obviously, “have a good sleep” but don’t ask me how a vision of creepy-crawlies under the covers is supposed to help.

“Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick” clearly means something’s not very good but it could be worse, while “It’s a bit black o’er Bill’s mother’s” signifies rain in the distance, though who Bill and his mum are and why their abode is thus cursed remains a mystery to me

“In heaven with the door shut” is one workmate’s favourite, denoting someone blissfully enjoying themselves. “What’s the good of a well without a bucket?” is pretty straightforward and I’m assured that “sitting here like Piffin on a rock bun” suggests a feeling of uselessness, while “it’ll pass in the dark with a light behind it” describes poor workmanship.

A Yorkshire friend was astonished when he first heard the Derbyshire saying “he’s got a bag on” and recalls: “I thought it was a reference to some very basic form of condom.” We locals, of course, know it means someone with a munk on.

There are still people in my part of the county who say of someone who’s bandy-legged “he couldna stop a pig in an entry”. “Scrating” (for crying) is one of those working-class words common to Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire but I’d never come across a phrase favoured by a friend from across the county border –“neither mickle nor muckle”, meaning neither here nor there.

A colleague used to ask her mum what was in her shopping bag and was invariably told: “It’s a whim-wham for a duck’s bridle.” The poor girl never knew what this meant but found herself saying it to her own children years later.

My survey elicited some clever sayings – “controlled urgency instead of panic”, and “champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”.

Several people quoted “the pot calling the kettle black” and there’s really no finer way to sum up someone accusing another of faults similar to their own. But did you know that it comes from the days when families had a copper kettle and an iron pot on the hearth?

The kettle would be kept polished, while the iron pot remained black, so the kettle would reflect the pot and on seeing its reflection – seeing black – the pot could accuse the kettle of a fault it did not have.

“Foul as a hobbing iron” is another golden oldie but my all-time favourite, for oddity value more than anything else, is “he/she used to chew bread for our ducks”.

Trouble is, I’ve always used it when I’m supposed to know who someone is talking about but I haven’t a clue.

But a little research on the internet threw up another definition, alluding to a made-up friend, as in: “Ah yes, Tony Blair, knew him well, his mum used to chew bread for our ducks.”

Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!

Exclusive: Motorists could face the Equality Police

2008-02-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

SMILE – you’re on car-share cam!

Yes, it’s the latest idea to tackle congestion on our roads and what a brilliantly simple one it is: a camera that shows whether you’re all alone at the wheel when you’re supposed to be.

It makes so much more sense than having the integrated transport policy that politicians have been promising us for 30 years, doesn’t it?

Making public transport so attractive that people wouldn’t want to use their cars was never going to happen.

But I do have some concerns on the personal freedom front. What will we have next? Cameras on street corners? Electronic voices telling us to pick up that chewing gum? Smoking banned in pubs? High-pitched alarms to scare away kids outside McDonald’s?

Perhaps I’m being paranoid. Blame George Orwell.

Besides, the Government thinks that car-share lanes could cut congestion by five per cent, and it does seem daft that four out of five vehicles entering cities at rush hour have only one person inside. That’ll be the driver, then.

And since cheating has become something of a national pastime (growing, it seems, with each new curb on our freedom) dedicating part of the road to car-sharers without some means of enforcing the rules would be like trusting MPs to come clean about their expenses.

They know a thing or two about car-share cheats in the US, with 125 HOVs (High Occupancy Vehicle) cameras in operation.

Drivers there have been dressing up shop dummies in wigs and clothes and sitting them in the passenger seat.

Goody Two Shoes-types have been calling shop-a-lane-cheat hotlines in droves to report lone drivers sneaking into their space.

Strangers line the roads for free lifts from lone drivers desperate to cut journey times by taking advantage of HOV lanes.

Enter dtect, a camera system developed at Loughborough University and set to go on trial in car-share lanes in Leeds.
Apparently, it works by projecting two beams of infra-red light into a vehicle at different frequencies. The two pictures are processed to produce an enhanced image of the occupants’ skin, with non-facial features discarded using software.

The system is said to work with all skin types and all types of vehicle glass.

What will happen to the drivers thus exposed has not been revealed, but I can exclusively reveal that Ministers are thinking of setting up a roadside army equipped with clown horns to parp loudly as cheats pass by.

Persistent offenders could expect a ceremonial door-scratching by a civil servant with a sharp stone.

The new camera is causing great excitement in security circles, where it’s seen as only a first step to discovering what people have inside their cars, and then controlling how they behave.

“It should very soon be possible, for example, to detect whether someone is smoking in their vehicle,” a Whitehall source told me. “If that was the case and passengers were being carried, the driver may be committing a health and safety offence.

“One day, we might also be able to use cameras to establish the contents of a child’s lunchbox to see whether there are any banned substances inside, such as Mars bars or crisps, or to pinpoint a driver’s body mass index to see whether they are too fat to drive.”

The source refused to speculate on what might happen in those circumstances, but civil liberties groups are furious.

One campaigner raised the prospect of fat people being ordered out of their cars in mid-traffic jam and forced to join jogging crocodiles.

Another suggested it may not be long before cameras were able to detect the age, ethnicity and sexual orientation of a vehicle’s occupants, rendering drivers liable to be stopped and ordered to transport wandering transsexuals or illegal immigrants if a particular stretch of road fell below social inclusion targets.

Last night, a Government spokesman dismissed such fears as “silly” and insisted that Ministers had not banned crisps from school lunchboxes, only Monster Munch. He told me I could sink to cheap jibes if I wished, but said that serious action had to be taken to cut road congestion and car-sharing was a legitimate tool.

Quite right. I just hope that MPs and civil servants will face similar pressure to share their vehicles (and drivers).

I’m off to the north-east for a family reunion next Wednesday and I hear the Prime Minister is giving a speech there on the same evening. So how about it, Gord – pick me up at the Market Place at five?

Do we want to track serious criminals forever?

2008-02-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

RUMOURS that Maxine Carr has been living in various parts of Derbyshire have been circulating for months.

But even if there was proof that the woman who covered up for Soham murderer Ian Huntley had made Derbyshire her home, the Evening Telegraph couldn't report it. A court injunction imposed after Carr's release from jail bans newspapers and broadcasters from publishing her new name, pictures of her since she left prison and details of where she lives or has lived previously.

Leaving aside for a moment the rights or wrongs of giving this wretched woman such protection, one thing the Evening Telegraph has been able to report is that Maxine Carr is not Debbie Knowles, a Tesco worker in Ilkeston.

Poor Mrs Knowles is 11 years older than Carr and looks nothing like her. But after morons used the internet to spread rumours that she was Huntley's ex, she took her daughter out of school and stayed away from work, fearing for their lives.

The discovery of such tiny brains at work reminds me of the people who attacked the home of a respected doctor a few years ago because they confused "paediatrician" with "paedophile".

I live in Ilkeston, so I had more than a passing interest in the latest rumours and believe me, they were rife. In pubs and shops all over town, people confidently named not only where Carr was working but the housing estate where she lived.

What amazes me most about these stories is: how would that information get out if it was true? Just imagine that a corporate giant like Tesco decided to give Carr a job.

Can you believe for a moment that a decision of that magnitude would be made by a spotty-faced young store manager fresh out of business school?

It's hardly likely, if faced with a disturbingly familiar figure who'd just shuffled into his store with her coat collar up and a headscarf hiding most of her face and asked if there were any jobs dealing with the public day in day out, that he'd hand her an application form and promise to call her if anything cropped up.

Such a decision, with its potential for a public relations disaster, would only be made at the very highest level. And then, having agreed to employ her under whatever name she'd acquired, it's inconceivable that the firm would allow that fact to become common knowledge

I've seen Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy being interviewed several times and he doesn't strike me as the sort who'd phone his store in Ilkeston one day and ask: "Is the manager in? Oh, no worries. Ah, I see, you're a cleaner and just happen to be passing his office. Well, do us a favour, duck, and tell him he'll have Maxine Carr working the checkout from next week, only she'll go under a different name. But don't say owt to anyone else, will you?"

Unusually, I have a serious point to make: Who cares where Maxine Carr is now? I

know she did a terrible thing and I hope the knowledge makes her miserable for the rest of her life. But that doesn't mean she should be hounded and unmasked wherever she goes.

Our jails are full of nasty people who've committed unspeakable crimes and, one day, most of them will be free to mingle among us in our ignorance.

I can understand the fears of those who argue that we should "out" paedophiles so that everyone knows where they are and there's less chance of them committing more crimes.

They might also wish to add rapists and murders to the list. But what about fraudsters, who've wrecked lives by stealing pension funds?

Why not add muggers who think nothing of beating up old ladies for the sake of a handbag to pay for a heroin fix, and drunks with a tendency to glass anyone who look at them inadvertently in a nightclub - all of them more likely, I suspect, to spread further misery than weirdos like Maxine Carr, who have fallen under the spell of evil men.

Talking of which, shouldn't we watch out for the wife batterers before they settle on their next victims?

Taken to its logical conclusion, this lynch-mob mentality would mean millions more surveillance devices to constantly monitor tens of thousands of thousands of potentially dangerous ex-cons, who, let's face it, have paid the penalty our legal system decided was the right one.

Are we prepared for spy cameras in every lamppost and microphones in every hedgerow, recording the millions of innocents along with the guilty?

Do we really want a society where we're forever chasing our demons, or should we leave that to the people who are paid to do it and try to get on with our lives?

'Of no fixed abode' at the age of 100

2008-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

MY grandmother was 95 when she was mugged in her own home. Five years later, she became a victim of our welfare state bureaucracy.

She could not have imagined, as she opened the door to her warden-aided flat, that the independence she had proudly clung to was about to end.

Callers were a rarity and besides, what harm could a young woman do? This one, however, was a heroin addict, who threw the little, brittle pensioner around and ransacked her meagre possessions in search of something to fund a fix.

Gran had resisted my many appeals to leave her native Doncaster and move near to me, in Derbyshire. But as she lay in hospital, shaken and bruised from her terrifying ordeal, she bowed to the inevitable.

For five years, she enjoyed a sort of independence in a Derbyshire residential home. My wife and I could visit regularly and the bill for her care was met by Doncaster social services, taking all her pension and state benefits except for grandad's pit pension, which paid for little luxuries like the cigarettes she had enjoyed since her youth.

But as her body and mind grew weaker, her needs began to outstrip the attention that staff at the home could provide. Dementia was setting in, she was almost blind and deaf and, though the staff coped with her late-night wailing and wandering, a series of falls led to several emergency trips to hospital.

Last month, at the age of 100, she was admitted to Queen's Medical Centre, in Nottingham, after cutting and bruising her arm.

She has told us for years that she was fed up and wanted to die but, whether she likes it or not, she is made of strong stuff and it was clear that the consequences of a fall were not going to finish her off.

There was little medically wrong with her that required an extended hospital stay; it was simply a case of deciding where to put her next. Our working hours prevented us from visiting often and perhaps this accentuated the picture of decline that greeted us.

The understandable lack of companionship in a hospital ward coincided with growing dementia. Nor was hospital good for her physical health: even nursing staff acknowledged she was more likely to catch an infection on a ward than in a care home.

When staff from the home visited the ward, their verdict was unequivocal: they would not take her back. The next step was for a hospital social worker to assess her needs. Then, Doncaster social services would have to agree funding.

Gran had been on the ward for three weeks when the appraisal took place. As I pressed for news, I realised she was caught in what even the Doncaster social worker described as a bureaucratic nightmare.

He said the paperwork from Nottingham had taken six days to reach Doncaster. When it did arrive, he thought it meant one thing - residential care, which she had been receiving and which was within Doncaster's funding; Nottingham said it meant an other - "residential with dementia", which was more expensive and harder to find.

By now, she was increasingly sleepy and frail. I had no delusions about her prospects but hoped she could die with dignity.

I asked if she could be moved to the community hospital in my home town, where her GP would oversee her care. The GP agreed - but the hospital refused. Since her residential care was no longer funded by Doncaster, it said, she was not classed as a Derbyshire resident. At the age of 100, my gran was, effectively, of no fixed abode.

Angry and frustrated, I appealed to welfare agencies in Derbyshire. Why, I asked, couldn't someone put her at the centre of the equation and make things happen in her best interests.

What did it matter who paid the bill, since it was all public money? Why couldn't Derbyshire take over her care needs? Wouldn't that have happened if she'd caught a bus to Derbyshire five years ago, hired herself a flat and then become in need of residential care?

After all, it wasn't her fault that she had been robbed.

Derbyshire Primary Care Trust (NHS) sympathised but said it was a social services matter. Derbyshire social services (council) said she was Doncaster's responsibility. They, too, did not class her as a Derbyshire resident.

With Nottingham and Doncaster sides finally agreed that she was a "residential with dementia" case, the search for somewhere to put her could begin in earnest but there were only two such homes that were convenient for me.

One had been the subject of abuse allegations; the other was half-decorated, unsuitable for a wheelchair and without a hoist to ensure that she could have a bath. Putting her there, I felt, would be like punishing her for losing her marbles.

And so the search goes on.

Just a month earlier, my gran had been spending her days in the residential home dozing in an armchair, pottering to the loo and eating meals brought to her by staff who always made time for a chat and a hug.

As she entered her fifth week in hospital, more confused than ever and now unable to stand, I was left to wonder how the combined might of the welfare services had helped her as she neared the end of life's road

A journey into Toyland stirs happy memories

2008-02-14T12:25:00.000-08:00

I'm lost in Toyland and in a quandary.

On bended knees that lock with frightening speed, I dust down a tower of Where's Wally magazines. How prized they once were and how quickly forgotten!

Beside them, old Dandy annuals recall the age of Corporal Clott and Dirty Dick, when bad lads faced dad's slipper, when Wun Tun was a Chinese spy and "drat" the foulest expression of displeasure.

A Quality Street jar propels me 30 years down the line, to Pogs, the overpriced tiddly winks fad that held, for my kids, a fascination I never quite fathomed.

But the action figures: now there's a magic I could understand - sophisticated descendants of my own toy-soldier childhood - and as I rummage through a stacking case in search of my favourites among the dozens of beasts and warriors, memories of make-believe battles that snaked upstairs and over sofas flood back

Here a Biker Mice from Mars, there a Power Ranger. I grip Wolverine by the throat with the Batplane's pincers, then drop the vanquished X- Man into a scrum of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, whose enemies I played with many a twisted face and devilish voice.

I free Raphael from Action Man's rope and the jaws of a shark, pausing to press the howl button on a husky fitted with telescopic sights, and marvel as a flick of the wrist opens a secret compartment in the Turtle's tunic and flips a Samurai helmet over his head.

Less advanced but just as much fun were the squashy monsters, a thumb-high fluorescent rubber breed of werewolves, witches, dragons, hunchbacks and lizard men that slipped into our fantasy world as breakfast cereal gifts, their timeless power to fire the imagination now trapped in an old bath-gel tub.

Three decades before my children came along, I, too, was playing with little figures that came free with Kellogg's Cornflakes but mine were Robin Hood and his gang and (much to my embarrassment when my mother reminded me years later) I was so wrapped up in this make-believe world that I held doors open for Maid Marian when we went shopping.

Thankfully, teasing one's offspring is another timeless joy and, as a second stacking case yields The Undertaker, The Rock and Hulk Hogan, I make a mental note to remind my hairy, gruff-voiced, grown-up sons that, not only did they spend much of their early years playing with dolls by any other name, but they fell for the World Wrestling Federation pantomime like a WWF wrestler falling to order against an opponent.

Many a sulk or tantrum was sparked by my insistence that it was all a put-up job - and I realise I'm now playing with fire, because some years ago, when my mickey-taking article on a wrestling show in Derbyshire was published, I received a very unpleasant letter from a wrestling nut, whose best defence of the charade I'd witnessed was to ask how I'd like it if Giant Haystacks pinned me to the canvas beneath his 45 stone.

What's in that big, green box? Ah, Subbuteo! I remember the thrill as I wrapped the boys' surprise gift one Christmas Eve.

How could they fail to be smitten by the game that had kept me enthralled for whole days well into my teens, as I sprawled beside the baize field of dreams in our living room, commentating out loud on my one-man games before writing up the results and league tables?

They never really took to it. But then, they had computer games that did much the same thing.

My journey through Toyland is almost over. I peep inside a dustbin liner, crammed with soft toys destined for a charity shop and check that Grandad Teddy isn't among them. Relief: he's sitting safely on the bookcase, staring out at the spare room now littered with so many happy memories.

Almost as old as me, and with a tummy as threadbare as my scalp, he's seen two generations of playful boys come and go, presided over countless teddy bears' picnics, drunk mud tea and dined on Plasticine cakes.

So what am I to do with it all, this mountain of playthings that no-one plays with? Shall I give it away and claw back a little space to make the house tidier, then spend years of anguish watching bits of it pop up on Antiques Roadshow?

I should get some shelves and cabinets to showcase and preserve the stars of playtime. But that sounds like a monster DIY effort and, as I cast a final glance at my old teddy before going downstairs to reality, I notice that his head has lolled forward, as if in disbelief.

"No, you're right, Ted," I think. "Best just to give it the odd once-over with a duster and let it be."

Don't start feeling superior...

2008-01-31T02:50:00.000-08:00

Aren't we so very civilised, we Westerners, with our nice houses, our abundance of food and clothes, our fast cars and free education, our welfare services and our liberal view of other cultures, races and religions?

Thank goodness we're not like the natives of some developing countries, running around butchering each other with sticks and machetes, setting fire to churches full of children and driving car bombs into crowded streets in the name of god.

How little they value human life!This is a common view of the world here in Derbyshire, as in the rest of Britain and, indeed, throughout the affluent West.

And when we hear of recent atrocities in Kenya and consider that it's less than 15 years since the genocide in Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands died in a few months as neighbours hacked each other to death, it is tempting to think that we white Westerners are superior beings.

How hollow that philosophy is was underlined at the weekend by Holocaust memorial events, marking the deaths of millions of Jews at the hands of the German Nazis in World, War Two.
The more I learn about this chapter in recent history - our fathers and grandfathers were still young men - I find it almost unbelievable, but for the fact that it was so well-documented.

Horrific as the consequences may be, there is the sense of a fair fight about modern-day gladiators doing battle with tanks, planes and guns but I don't think I will ever understand how one human being could treat another with such savagery as the Nazis did the Jews, murdering and mutilating at close quarters, while they could see the whites of their eyes - and worse, studying, cataloguing and glorifying in it, like pulling the wings of a fly.

I read recently of the work of Hitler's extermination squads, the Einstazgruppen, conservatively credited with the deaths of more than 600,000 Jews in Russia alone.

They would enter towns and villages, round up all Jews, pack them into trucks and take them to a place of execution by firing squad.

One witness told the Nuremberg trials of a pit containing a thousand or more victims, wedged side by side and on top of each other, some lifting their arms or turning their heads to show they were still alive.

A new group arrived, completely naked, among them an old woman cradling a baby and a man holding the hands of his son, aged about 10. Then they walked down the steps into the pit, clambered over the bodies, lay down beside the dead and wounded, some of whom they caressed and spoke to, and awaited their turn.

Even if you were warped enough to share Hitler's philosophy (and he made it crystal-clear in a book bought by millions of Germans and often given as wedding presents) that one race was vermin, which deserved to be wiped out to allow your own, superior race more living space, how could you claim any morality in the mass executions that took place at concentration camps, where some prisoners were killed purely for their skin (all the better if tattooed) so that it could be made into lampshades and other ornamental household items?

But what I struggle to comprehend, more then the Nazis' sheer sadism, is how a supposedly-civilised nation allowed itself to fall under Hitler's spell.

How could so many give succour, or at least passive support, to the regime and stay silent for so long? Like the thousands of eminent physicians who knew about the concentration camp experiments in which prisoners were subjected to high altitudes in pressure chambers, submersed in freezing water or injected with lethal doses of typhus. Like the reputable businessmen who supplied vast quantities of cyanide crystals for the gas chambers and elaborate equipment for the effective workings of crematoria.

I have nothing against the German people. Their outlook and way of life seems much like ours and there is no point, or justice, in demonising a nation for past sins. Its collective guilt is burden enough for those now taking the country forward, most of whom were not even born when the Nazi madness was rampant.

Nor is this intended as an essay in bashing the white man, who has much of which to be proud.
But the knowledge that the Holocaust happened just 70 years ago - the blink of an eye in the evolution of mankind - should serve as a sobering thought whenever we're tempted to feel superior, and a reminder of how centuries of civilisation can count for nothing when democracy dies and extremists are given their head.

We're too busy ticking boxes to get things done

2008-01-15T03:18:00.000-08:00

THE most tragically comic story I’ve read for some time concerned two young men who went on an “orgy of vandalism” on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border one night last summer.

As Russell Nelson drove around Ilkeston and Long Eaton, his friend Jason Millward leaned out of the passenger window with a crowbar and smashed 123 wing mirrors on parked cars. Their “lark” caused £10,000 damage and untold inconvenience to the vehicles’ owners.

But it wasn’t their antics I found amusing, or the richly deserved nine-month jail sentences they received at Nottingham Crown Court. It was the judge’s revelation about what happened when one of the victims phoned police to report the mayhem.

I imagine the one thing that calmed his fevered brow as he dialled 999 was the fact that he’d noted the car’s registration number.

But the script the 999 operator was following meant he had to answer a number of questions before giving the registration – by which time he’d forgotten it.

Isn’t that typical of today’s tick-box society? We’re so obsessed with following procedure that we sometimes miss the big picture.

Teachers are so busy filling in forms to say they’ve met Government demands that they don’t have time to teach kids to Government standards.

Health authorities employ armies of pen-pushers to draw up strategy documents and carry out surveys, then cut nurses’ pay to make ends meet. Investors in People certificates are proudly displayed in company offices.

But the nearest some employers get to investing in their workforce is to pay someone to fill in the accreditation documents. Still, at least they can say they’ve done it. And even when you try to give praise, the Checklist Charlies get in the way.

Try telling some call-centre robot who’s rung to ask if you’d mind completing a customer satisfaction survey that you haven’t time because you’re just about to eat but you’re delighted with whichever firm they’re calling about.

They simply don’t compute. They have a set list of questions and it has to be followed, one step after another.

By the time they’ve assured you it will take only five minutes and you’ve told them again that you’re busy and to put down “satisfied customer”, your dinner’s gone cold, so you send the robot away with a flea in his ear, he’s not ticked all the boxes to assure the company that’s hired him that it really doing a good job – and your experience of that business has been tarnished.

FEELING grumpy? You bet I am.

I was reunited with my glasses at home after a full 24 hours of frustration, during which I trebled-checked every usual resting-place, every cupboard, drawer and coat pocket, searched on hands and knees under sofas and even emptied the kitchen bin – before my wife found them on top of a wardrobe. Don’t ask!

In the same week, there must have been a blue moon because I missed Friday night at the pub through a combination of having no mates and the rain stair-rodding down outside. But never mind, I thought: it would be good to do something different.

So me and the missus settled down to a rare DVD and laughed through one-and-half hours of it – only to miss the last 10 minutes because the DVD player was on the blink and froze every other frame.

Next day, I went to visit my 100-year-old gran in her nursing home and was a tad put-out when, now barely able to see, she asked: “Is it Peter?” and just to assure herself, patted my head and declared: “Ah yes, bald!”

But what really crowned my week was a dream. It wasn’t a nightmare, though it was very odd and while I don’t go for any of that meaning-of-dreams stuff (preferring to view dreams as merely the mind at play) it was so vivid that I was able to write it down. I was dead. But other people could still see me because I’d been given a few days to warn those close to me, to help ease their distress when my end came.

As I wandered around my vaguely-recognisable home town, which had acquired a wooden church arch across the high street, I broke the news to a head teacher I hadn’t seen for 10 years, a former boss who’s been dead for 20 – and my wife, who I met outside a shop.

She seemed momentarily upset by my news but I told her the last thing I wanted was for her to become a lonely old woman and I hoped she’d find a nice bloke to take care of her. “That’s funny,” she replied, “I’m going away in a couple of weeks’ time. Perhaps I’ll meet someone then.”

I know it’s only a dream but I might feel permitted to sulk if she suddenly starts planning a bus trip for one to Skegness.

There's no joy quite like reading a book

2008-01-03T03:25:00.000-08:00

Did you know that the practice of drilling holes in the head to relieve illness dates back 6,000 years? They used to do it with bits of pointed flint.

In Victorian London, a domestic servant was so angry at being sacked by her employer that she killed her, boiled her body and sold the fat as dripping.

The world's worst fire happened in Moscow in the 16th century, killing 200,000 people.Indians working in countries around the world send £20bn back home to their families each year.

Adolf Hitler once addressed a rally of one million Germans - 30 times the size of a Sunday crowd at Pride Park.

And if all that doesn't give you something to chew on, consider this: more than 750,000 tons of chewing gum is consumed worldwide each year, with jaw ache at record levels in Denmark, where the average citizen gets through 2lbs 10oz of the stuff.

This random nonsense comes to you courtesy of my Christmas break. For, as well as changing my blood-to-beer ratio and becoming a Quality Street wrappers expert, I've been indulging in the ancient art of reading.

Bored by TV, bloated by over-indulgence and wilted by man flu, I've spent much of my spare time with my head in a book.

One in particular has gripped me, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a 500,000-word epic based on 485 tons of German documents seized after the Second World War.

Oh yes, we know how to have fun at Pheasant Towers!

But I've also been dipping into some of the reference books I've grown up with or gathered over the years and which, come the occasional this-house-is-full-of-junk-clean-up campaign, live in peril of being shipped off to a charity shop - until heart rules head and the store of knowledge and fascination is preserved.

It's all stuff I could do without, of course, but my life is the richer for it.

My latest literary acquisition measures 12 inches by 18 and weighs half a stone. It's a National Geographic atlas, bought from a friend who won it in a competition and instantly realised he had nowhere to put it.

I know the feeling, so it spends most of its time gathering dust under a settee but, now and then, I'll dip in and discover a little nugget about the world.

And all I paid for it was fifteen quid. That's six pints at my local and, though I've learned many things at the pub, the location of every administrative centre and the concentrations of fresh water, food, minerals and languages on this planet aren't among them.

The glory of books is the way imagery and information greet you unbidden.The internet is a marvellous invention but its main value is in answering questions, so you have to know what you're looking for. Books, on the other hand, are full of surprises.

There's nothing quite like getting lost in a good novel, where landscapes are evoked and make-believe characters brought to life with unique clarity as that sweetest of human attributes, the power of imagination, is unleashed.

Reference books may lack the benefits of electronic search engines but a flick through their pages leads you up alleys and around corners to pockets of enlightenment.

They can show you how some things have never changed. I remember, for example, my first sight, as a pubescent teenager, of the Kama Sutra.

A friend's copy had been passed around so many fevered schoolboys that the pages were almost disintegrating but that didn't stop me reading it (when it was my turn) on my paper round, with the result that I once walked into a lamppost and had some explaining to do when I got home.

They can also show you how our view of the world has changed dramatically.

I inherited from my parents a series of glossy hardbacks called Lands and Peoples, published in the early 1900s and describing the world's various "primitive natives" in terms that would make today's politically-correct brigade blow a gasket.

A chapter on the Aboriginal Australians, for instance, declares that they are not true "blackfellows but more dark chocolate brown in colour" and "do not present a pleasing picture. In intelligence, the Australian native does not compare favourably with the coloured people of other lands."

That reminds me: only 200 more pages of Hitler to read and so many jaw-dropping horrors about the Nazis behind me that it's a wonder I can still shut my mouth.

I fancy something a little lighter might be called for next - perhaps an old Dandy annual.

One thing's for sure: reading more books is a New Year's resolution I can make with absolute confidence.

A wee problem of Government regulations

2007-12-29T03:35:00.000-08:00

The man from DOBS (Department of Bogs and Sinks) said he was very sorry but he really couldn't help.

I'd found his number scrawled on a toilet door.

"Can you tell me what British Standard 6465 says?" I'd asked.

It seemed a harmless query but there was a sharp intake of breath.

"Now why would you want to know a thing like that, sir?" he said at last.

"Well, I've just had an awful time shopping. I was at one of those big retail parks when I had to go."

"Go, sir? Where?"

"You know, go - for a wee."

"Ah," he replied. "Not very well-prepared, were we, sir?"

I felt like saying that was none of his boggin' business but thought better of it.

"It's not that simple when you get to my age, you know. The bladder's not as patient as it used to be. Anyway, I was buying the wife a new cooker for our wedding anniversary when I came over fit to burst. They didn't have a toilet for customers but said there was one at the shop next door."

"Did they indeed?"

"So I ran there as fast as my crossed legs could carry me but the loo was out of order and there wasn't another on the whole estate. Can you believe that? There must be 20 stores, with thousands of people shopping at any one time, yet there's not one toilet for shoppers. It's a scandal."

"Now, now, sir, don't let's exaggerate."

"That's easy for you to say. I was in a right two-and-eight. Thought I was going to have to slip behind a building and..."

"Careful! Don't incriminate yourself, sir."

"Don't worry, I didn't fancy a fine, or getting my name in the paper. But I did something worse."

The man from DOBS fell silent.

"I got in the car and drove to McDonald's. They've got a loo, thank goodness. I had to sneak in, though. The staff chased me across the car park, shouting 'have a nice day'."

"So all's well that ends well."

"Not quite. When I got home, I decided I couldn't let the matter rest. So I looked on the internet and..."

"Ah, the internet! Such a danger in the wrong hands."

"Quite. But I wanted to know if there were any laws on the provision of public toilets in shopping areas."

"And?" "I'm not sure. I found an academic paper on the subject. It said shopping malls didn't have to provide toilets at all but apparently there's a British Standard that makes certain recommendations."

"It said that, did it?"

"Yes and frankly I was appalled. It seems there are recommended standards for women but none for men."

"I couldn't confirm or deny that, sir," said the man from DOBS.

"Why?" I spluttered. "It's not a state secret, is it?"

"Come, come, sir - we don't have secrets in this country."

"Oh, this is ridiculous! Look, the report said that the latest position was covered by a British Standard, BS6465.."

I thought I could hear choking and a chair being knocked over.

"Oh dear," a shaky voice said at last.

"...so I thought if I could find out what BS6465 said, I'd know my rights."

"Ah yes, rights," said the man from DOBS. "Everyone talks of rights these days. But what about responsibilities, sir?"

"Precisely. What about the responsibilities of shop owners who drain millions of pounds out of people like me but can't spend a few pee - pardon the pun - on giving us a glorified drain here and there?"

"You're not a communist are you, sir?"

"Communist, no. Columnist, yes," I chuckled. "Anyway, I found BS6465 on the internet. Or rather, a description of it. But you can't just read it - you have to buy it. And it costs a hundred quid."

"Naturally."

"What's natural about that? I should be able to see things like that for free. Part of my taxes go to the British Standards Institute. Why should I pay to read what it produces, especially when what it's producing is in the public interest. Aren't public toilets in the public interest?"

"With all respect, sir, the country would go down the pan if organisations simply gave information away. Now, tell me how I can help."

"Well, you must have a copy of BS6465, so could you read the right bit to me?"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that, sir."

"Why?"

"You've got the wrong department. This is Bogs and Brushes (Brackets: Standards of Cleanliness thereof). You need CURD."

"What on earth's CURD?"

"Cubicles and Urinals in Retail Developments. Formerly known as POTIS - Provision of Toilets in Shops. We in the civil service like a good acronym."

"Sounds to me like you're taking the.."

"Policy of Government seriously? Yes, sir. Goodbye."

Call me a poof if you like but I've discovered ballet

2007-12-20T03:29:00.000-08:00

Ooer, I've come over all refined! It's taken me 50-odd years but I've finally been to a ballet - and what a joy it was.

I'd put money on a male friend and avid reader of this column muttering "poof!" at this revelation but I'm unashamed and undeterred.

I remain a hot-blooded male, even though it was me and not my wife who remarked upon the amazing bodies of the male dancers.

Well, there's nothing unmanly in recognising excellence in the human form, is there? Besides, the observation allowed me to add, without feeling guilty, that the senior ballerinas had the most extraordinary legs.

There, got out of that one quite well, I think.

So back to the ballet. It's true I'd gone along only because my 14-year-old niece was in the cast as a member of the youth dance group supporting a professional ballet company.

And it was a very modern version of Tchai-kovsky's The Nutcracker, involving a battle between Punk rats and New Romantic toy soldiers.

Even so, this was a huge cultural leap for one whose Saturday afternoons are normally spent shivering on a touchline as his sons play football.

For a little over an hour, I was lost in music and dance, mesmerised by the sheer grace and agility of more than 100 young people throwing themselves into their roles with obvious delight and awesome precision.

To be honest, if it hadn't been for the programme notes, I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on, though I doubt that that would have detracted from the pleasure of the imagery unfolding before me, with a classical soundtrack so well-known that even I'd heard it before.

But it wasn't just the spectacle that moved me, for while there's no denying that some of the kids of today are violent and destructive, that afternoon in a darkened amateur theatre showed me once again that many, many more are a force for good.

I've known this since my kids were little, having watched them grow up immersed in all manner of sports.

But to see young people so in love with artistic and creative pursuits, with the energy, enthusiasm, skill and discipline required to execute a performance like the one I witnessed in front of 200 spectators, was a new experience for me and I found it quite humbling.

I suspect it won't be my final outing to "the ballet" and though I won't be swapping my anorak and woolly hat for white gloves and binoculars just yet, I've taken a few small steps towards becoming cultured.

Just how far I have to go, however, was made wincingly clear when a familiar piece of music struck up and all I could think of was: "Everyone's a fruit and nut case..."

PHILISTINE I may be when it comes to the performing arts, but such is my passion for the correct use of words and punctuation that it's occasionally made me a figure of fun at home and work.

Years ago, when my elder son was still at junior school and I'd delivered yet another harangue on the need to speak properly, he reduced me to giggles by warning that I'd "die of poshness" if I wasn't careful.

His younger brother's Christmas wish-list this year included a request for "moneys". Naturally, I crossed it out, then added next to it: "Monies - 2/10".

It's not that I'm ashamed of our Derbyshire roots, just that I didn't want my kids to feel hamstrung by their natural dialect on occasions when it might put them at a disadvantage.

Imagine, then, the spluttering and vein-pulsing induced by the following example of "yufe" speak from the following letter to the Evening Telegraph, which could not be published at the time because it referred to an incident that was the subject of court proceedings:

"y dont ya'l jus shut up. u sayin stuf lyk youths r dis n youths r dat...one man aredy bin murdered n u der trying to get ureselves killed too. no1 noes ow *** is lyk, im from ***, liv nex to da guy hu got murdered...u dnt wna go dissin da youths down ere...if u do den dont say i dint warn u! u probly herd of 1 murder, bt trust me u dno half da stuf dat goes on down ere. n btw im a youth from *** too so u might wna stop stereotypin ppl! u mke out dat all youths r da sme! p.s i herd der was anova murder yday ne1 no bout dat?"

I give the author full marks for creativity but can't help wondering: Wouldn't it be easier to use real English?

HEARD over the tannoy in Tesco: "Staff announcement. Would the Back Door Man please go to the back door?"Now that's what I call dereliction of duty.

Mourning the death of the record shop

2007-11-15T03:46:00.000-08:00

The impending closure of Reveal Records, in St Peter's Street, Derby, is another nail in the coffin of a tradition rich in happy memories for oldies like me.

I bought my first record in 1965 from Boots, in Nottingham. It was a Rolling Stones EP, Five by Five, so there were five songs instead of the usual two that came on the vinyl singles sold for six shillings and eight pence.

That always seemed an odd price but it meant you could buy three for a quid, though it's taken me until now to realise that 6s/8d equates to 33p in today's money and 33 was, of course, how many times in a minute an LP, or album, went round on the record-player.

If you're too young to remember those days, you have my sympathy. You missed the golden age of record shops, be they true specialists or the likes of Boots and Wigfalls, the TV and radio store, which sold records as a sideline, probably to keep the kids occupied while mums and dads drooled over new tellies with tiny screens and three black-and-white channels in wooden cabinets the size of sofas.

I was 11 years old and felt dead groovy in my reefer jacket (long before I discovered another meaning for "reefer"), as I stood in one of the row of listening booths in Boots' basement while my record was played.

My parents had warmed to The Beatles after years of listening to Nat King Cole but couldn't hide their disgust when I emerged with a record sleeve showing Jagger and co with their surly faces and long hair.

I think my mother regarded them as the Antichrist but probably thought I was too young to be corrupted by rock and roll. Little did she know!

And so began my lifelong love affair with record shops.

Years later, I'd leave work on a Friday afternoon with my week's wages, in cash, in a little brown envelope and head straight for the record shop.

It was an Aladdin's cave, stacking everything from new singles and LPs to "underground" stuff, classical collections and even those hideous forerunners of the Now That's What I Call Music series - Music For Pleasure albums that contained the big pop songs of the day covered badly by obscure bands with names like Creme Brulee.

I got to know the shopkeeper pretty well and, on the odd occasion when I couldn't find something to my liking, he'd make what were usually excellent recommendations, though I never forgave him for my first taste of "world music", a collection of Turkish desert peasant songs that reminded me of the bouzouki soundtrack to Monty Python's cheese shop sketch.

But that was part of the fun of buying a record - you'd stumble across something that would open new horizons.

Today, there's not a proper record shop in my home town of 35,000 people but, if your mind's made up, you can find what you want on the internet and buy it without leaving the house - or copy it from a mate's CD or memory stick.

It's hardly surprising that record shops are going out of business. The real culprits, though, are record companies which whinge about pirating after decades of growing fat on vastly-inflated prices.

I still have The Beatles' double White Album on vinyl. It's at least 25 years since I bought it for the sum of £7 - a large chunk of my week's wages at the time. You can now buy it on the internet for £8.95.

REVEAL Records' demise isn't the only reason I've been thinking of long-players.

It's our 33rd wedding anniversary this month and we're planning a party for our 33rd , the logic of which had to be explained to our sons and other young relatives.

It's quite an achievement these days - by my wonderful wife, that is, who's given me perhaps 32 more years than I deserve - but we still have a long way to go to match a breed that figured prominently in my early days as a reporter: the golden wedding couple.

Interviewing those old folks brought many trials, like making sense of battalion and battlefield names when discussion turned to the war and trying to find a new angle for the story.

There was always the stock question to fall back on: "So, what's the secret of a long marriage?" To which the answer was nearly always "give and take", "never go to bed on an argument" or "we've never had a cross word in 50 years".

Now, I can handle the first but the second and third range from highly unlikely to preposterous - either that or I owe my beloved a heap of apologies.

And if that hasn't covered my back in the event of me forgetting to buy an anniversary card, I don't know what will.

The demise of good manners

2007-11-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

I'M a big believer in "what goes around comes around" and it's certainly true on the roads these days.

Have you noticed what a well-mannered bunch we drivers have become? Well, with a few notable exceptions. Pull up at a T-junction with traffic streaming towards you from both directions and, sooner or later, some kind soul will give up their turn and flash you through.

If you're unlucky, it will be one of those annoying elderly gents who insists on waving, not once but half a dozen times, as if clipping an idiot around the ear. But even they are a flea-bite against the soothing balm of liberation from the queue

This is all rather at odds with society in general because there's no doubt that old-fashioned good manners are disappearing.

Take e-mails for instance. How often do you open one that starts "Dear so-and-so.." or "Hello, my name's ....". No, most people just blunder straight in with their message and don't even bother to sign it.

The roads are different, I suspect, because we know what a crazy state they're in and realise that if we give a little one day, we'll get it back another.

But you've not endured me to this point to hear some nicey-nicey old rubbish, have you? So let me say a few words about the sort of driver I detest.

He's the self-appointed schoolteacher of the road and whenever you go wrong, he'll flash his lights or hoot his horn to tell you off.

Chances are, you'll also get a rude hand gesture from behind his steamed-up, spittle-flecked windscreen.

I came across one at the supermarket this week. Not having visited this store before, I wasn't sure of the road layout. I was so intent on finding a parking space, I failed to notice that I'd gone the wrong way down an access road, although there were no signs to tell me, other than a huge white arrow pointing my way, which I somehow missed.

There was no-one coming towards me, though, and I was not causing any danger but suddenly, this oaf was giving me the full lights and horn treatment as he began to pull out of his parking spot.

My blood pressure shot up to perilous levels and I screamed back something that would be mainly asterisks if I tried to replicate it here (though goodness knows why, since he couldn't hear me).

But the point is: what good did it do him? I know I was in the wrong and next time I won't make the same mistake, although the succession of huge white arrows pointing towards me as I continued my journey around the car park would have taken me to the same point in my education without his help.

As it was, he and I went our separate ways a little more tense than we'd started, leaving our respective partners in the passenger seats tut-tutting at the myth of New Man.

Of course, such unpleasantness could be avoided if car manufacturers did the decent thing and fitted electronic insult boards in our windscreens.

INSIDE the store, I was humbled by a lesson in anger management at the checkout queue. The woman in front was carrying a boy of about two (yes, definitely the Terrible Twos!) and he was in a right old lather.

As she strained to control him while unloading her trolley with her free hand, he wriggled and bounced on her hip, screaming himself hoarse, eyes and nose streaming, because the world was about to end.

Or rather, that she hadn't bought him a toy he'd had his eye on.

He was clearly not short of playthings because she produced a Power Rangers figure and several other toys from his Thomas the Tank Engine rucksack. But he was inconsolable. "Want it!" he screamed over and over. Then "yes!" each time she told him "no", firmly but gently.

The poor woman endured this for 10 minutes in a slow-moving queue. Her arm and back must have ached terribly but she maintained her cool admirably in front of a growing audience, refusing to do what I'd have done and take it out on the child.

Indeed, I suspect I'd have marched outside with him long ago and risked the attentions of the PC police by tanning his backside (which may go some way to explaining why I scream at fellow drivers who can't hear me).

Finally, her turn came to pay and the little angel in her arms fell silent as he handed mummy's debit card to the checkout girl with a big beaming smile.

As they headed for the door, a picture of serenity, I felt like applauding but figured I'd made enough of an ass of myself for one day. So let me say to that stranger who had no idea she was providing material for this man-watcher: Well done, girl!

Long johns and the age of forgetfulness

2007-10-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

OLD Fogeydom pulls me ever closer to its bosom: I've only gone and bought a pair of long johns.

Laugh if you like - and if I'm unfortunate enough to be knocked down and in need of surgery, I'm sure there'll be a few titters in A&E.

But there comes a time when warmth and comfort count for more than evading scorn.

So, after, after years of shivering on touchlines while watching my lads play football in horizontal rain and wind like needles, I've turned into my grandad. C

old weather certainly gets into your bones as you get older and though the sight of teenage girls out on the town with shoulders bared and knickers almost showing might have brought me out in a hot sweat once upon a time, all I want to do now is shiver for them.

I was amazed to hear that long johns were worn by some of my 18-year-old's trendy friends but they splash out a small fortune for designer labels, while mine cost a fiver from the market.

I'm determined to reserve them for football duty, though, and will try not to wear them while the wife's about, for fear of driving her into a frenzy. Of laughter, that is.

However, other recent signs of Old Fogeydom have left me worrying that I might get my days in a muddle and turn up for work flashing polyester-clad ankles beneath suit trousers. Very fetching.

Now, what was I going to say? Ah yes - forgetfulness.

It's hardly surprising, after 30-odd years of marriage, that my wife has caught the disease from me but lots of our friends in their 40s and 50s are afflicted, too.

Me and Mrs P went out for a drink at the weekend and began discussing what I could write my column about. "Us going dippy," she suggested.

"Good idea," I said. "But I can't remember any examples...."

At which point she ran her hands over her leggings to smooth out a few wrinkles and, with a look of horror, dashed to the loo, realising that the prominence of the seams meant she'd put them on inside out.

We were still giggling about this the next day when we went swimming. It was only when we climbed out of the pool and she pointed to the label above my buttocks that I discovered I'd done exactly the same thing with my trunks. Mercifully, they don't have a fluorescent-green gusset.

A colleague at work exhibited symptoms of this malaise when he called me over with a clear sense of urgency. "I must talk to you about three things," he said, then told me about the only one he could bring to mind.

I thought I'd have to go some to beat the friend who closed the door of his house behind him while calling his parents to say he was on the way round for Sunday dinner. He'd crossed the road and was about to get into his car when he cursed his forgetfulness and went back home to fetch the mobile phone that was in his hand.

But beat him I did on a visit to my 100-year-old grandmother, who's in hospital after a fall and, not surprisingly, is feeling rather confused.

She looked frailer than ever with her gums bared, so I steeled myself and asked if she'd like me to pop her false teeth in. I meant in her mouth, of course but made a mental note to self, just in case.

I don't know what it is about other people's teeth but I'm clearly not alone in finding them yukkish because when I asked a strapping male nurse if it was OK for me to do the honours, he asked if I'd like a pair of rubber gloves. "I do all sorts of things for the old people in this ward," he laughed, but I always wear gloves for teeth!"

Well, I emptied the watery detritus from the little plastic tub and set about inserting grandma's gnashers. I couldn't understand why the bottom set wouldn't go in. Surely, she hadn't shrunk that much in a few days. I tried pulling her mouth wider and tilting the falsies this way and that but it was no good.

Eventually, she grabbed them and tried to put them in the wrong way round. I protested that she'd do herself a mischief but by now she was very irritated and finally snapped: "I should know what I'm doing with my teeth!"

And then she turned the "bottom" set around and slotted them where they belonged - on her top gums - leaving me to wonder how I'd failed to spot the telltale sign: the false palate that would have pinned down her tongue and made her look like something from An American Werewolf in London if I'd had my way.

Perhaps patient and visitor should have swapped places. Still, you have to laugh. It just helps if you can remember now and again what you're laughing about.

Being a parent gets easier...then it gets worse

2007-09-06T05:36:00.000-07:00

IT'S been a particularly traumatic week for parents of kids starting new schools - traumatic for the children, too, but they have youth and innocence on their side, so my sympathy is limited.

Whether they are starting school for the first time or moving from junior to secondary and becoming the babies of the system all over again in a world of homework and boys with facial hair, it's a cruel world out there and all parents can do is wait and worry for their return, hoping they've drilled enough good sense into those insatiable young brains to see them safely from one day to the next

Nothing anyone says will do much to put mums' and dads' minds at rest but, trust me, as the dad of two boys aged 20 and 17, the worry does ease off. For a while. Then it gets worse.

The milestones in parenting are fewer and farther between as our children grow up but that doesn't make them any less scary.

If you think sending your son or daughter out on a bike without stabilisers for the first time is nerve-racking, just wait till they're driving.

Mine are both now in that category and though I'm spared the constant worry about Dan since he moved into a flat with his girlfriend (though soon to return home, I suspect, as they save up for a mortgage) I feel slightly sick every time younger brother Joe goes out on the roads alone.

He's a sensible lad and seems a careful driver but it's the others you worry about, of course, and the mates who might loon about in the back when he gives them a lift, and the boy racers who'll try goading him into deadly competition.

Why can't I just put my head under a pillow and make it all go away?

The perils of busy roads are bad enough but this week Joe's been even further beyond my help and control.

He and 18-year-old cousin Rick are in Spain, spending their first week abroad without parents, though not completely out of reach of their extended family, as they were to discover at a party to mark Rick's 18th birthday a few days before they set off for the sun.

That party, incidentally, brought several other milestones: the first family gathering on such a scale for a great-nephew born 10 weeks premature and still a tiny miracle at five months of age; the first time I'd seen my 15-year-old niece drunk (though given her own major health problems at birth and the fact that she's grown in to a feisty little beauty, she gets away with almost anything); and the first time I'd wrestled on a lawn with both sons while wearing a giant padded sumo suit, which cushioned me from the bumps and falls but could not stop mosquitoes getting inside my clothes and leaving me with a few more painful souvenirs of our insect-infested summer.

But such discomfort was a flea bite compared to the news that Joe and Rick learned that night.
Their 27-year-old party-animal cousin and her mate were not only flying to Malaga on the same day but would be staying just a few miles away.

And as the boys buried their heads in their hands at the thought of their idyllic getaway being disturbed by dizzy "old" birds, the ladies promised to join them on the beach for a spot of sunbathing - topless.

As I write, a text message tells me they've spent a night at a pole dancing club and Joe is plotting revenge on Rick for photographing him fast asleep, mouth wide open, with a large blob of suntan cream apparently dribbling from his lips.

Given their tender years, I assume they haven't touched a drop of alcohol.

BIG brother, meanwhile, has reached a milestone that will cost me a hundred quid.

That's what I promised him for his first century when he began playing cricket a decade ago and he did it in style in his last match of the season, hitting 143 not out.

Admittedly, it was against a mixture of men and teenagers and there were a few deliveries by that legendary bowler PI Flinger but that's not to lessen the achievement because even bad balls can get the best batsmen out, so I'll be happy to stump up.

I'd like to think the many hours I spent bowling to Dan on our lawn when his bat was almost as big as him played some small part in his achievement but, after years of nit-picking over his school work, I can certainly take credit for another little episode recently: having taken delivery of a set of training jackets for the football team he runs, he was horrified to see the name printed as Nott's Metropolis and promptly scratched out the aberrant apostrophe.

Smokers are going to the dogs at the pub

2007-08-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

A QUIET revolution is taking place in our fair land and it's all down to the ban on smoking in public places.

Pubs with beer gardens are finding themselves half-empty at even the busiest times, as smokers escape the stale air of their favourite bars, thick with sweat and cheap scent now that the nicotine cloak has been removed, and drift outside to enjoy the ancient pastime of chewing the cud over a fag and a pint.

This exodus is infuriating to non-smokers, complaining that they can't even go outside without getting smoke in their hair and clothes. There's no pleasing some folk.

So broken are smokers' spirits, they're half-expecting a ban on smoking at home. Then, they say, the Government will ban beer in pubs.

But this isn't the revolution I'm referring to. Deprived of piped music or a TV to gawp at when they should be listening to their mate's joke, or a barmaid to leer at, or someone ugly or noisy to take the mickey out of, smokers can be found huddled on garden benches and engaging in something approaching intelligent conversation.

My group fell into silent wonder the other night on hearing a beery crowd at the next table discussing politics.

One phrase that emerged was "this country's going to the dogs", which plunged us into a heated discussion of our own. And when at last we emerged from memory lane, we concluded that the country might be going to the dogs metaphorically but it certainly wasn't literally.

In fact, in another quiet revolution, dogs have become very much less a part of life in this country than they were.

Where, for instance, are those wild Alsatians of my youth that chased and snapped at my heels every time I went out on my bike?

Where are the dog gangs that roamed the streets, those mangy collectives of long-hairs and skinheads, terriers, Labradors and Heinz 57s that sought out rival packs for street scraps? What became of the copulating canine couples that attracted old dears wielding bucketfuls of water?

Where are the randy pets on leads that sought out the legs of genteel ladies to wrap their frenzied frames around?

And where's all the dog muck? Once so difficult to avoid that the smell of it being scraped off a shoe is embedded in my memory as firmly as that of garlic, it's now almost impossible to find, though years of practice have given me a very good aim.

They've all succumbed to neutering programmes, dog wardens and poop-scoop laws, of course, and the streets are much pleasanter for it.

But such changes also indicate that dogs' days as man's best friend are numbered. There are simply nowhere near as many of them around as there used to be.

Cats, on the other hand, are everywhere. Growing up in the late 50s and the 60s, I was aware of them being kept by old maids and farmers, but I can't recall any of my friends having cats as pets.

Then hippies came along and started filling their bedsits with them and those clever little fur balls (the cats, I mean) took on a sort of spiritual aura that has seen their numbers explode.

Though dogs' numbers have dwindled, their stature has grown. The dog has become a figure of respectability and reverence. No longer free to poo or fornicate in the neighbour's garden, he attracts media coverage whenever he falls victim of man's barbarity.

A puppy found abandoned and shivering gets newspaper headlines and photographs.

Would-be owners flood the RSPCA with calls in the sort of numbers that social workers, struggling to find foster parents for children who've been abandoned or abused by their parents, can only dream of.

There's a lot of difference between getting a new pet and taking on a child, of course, and what people choose to do with their money and affection is a matter for them.

Nor am I for one minute condoning cruelty to animals.

But further evidence of the dog's new place in society emerged recently, when the Evening Telegraph reported on a decision not to prosecute the owner of a Staffordshire bull terrier which had savaged to death a Yorkie out walking with its owner.

The CPS statement ran to seven paragraphs and indicated a CSI-style investigation but no grounds for a court case.

And I thought Labour had promised to be tough on crime.

But enough of this nonsense. I'm ambling home when I come across the new scourge of the streets: a gang of youths clutching Stella cans and trying to restrain one of their number, stripped to the waist and screaming that he's going to "do" someone.

Suddenly, a few stray hounds and a maze of a pavement deep in doggie doo don't seem so bad after all.

Another victory for the Food Police

2007-08-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

GOOD news for the Food Police: even those "healthy" supermarket salads can be bad for you.

After years of being weaned off bacon butties for elevenses and a "snap" box of cheese sarnies with crisps and a Penguin biscuit for lunch, the poor old worker finds there's danger lurking in those plastic pots of pasta and sweet corn.

It's a case of kick the fat and increase your chances of a stroke or heart attack through dangerous levels of salt consumption, according to a survey by Consensus Action on Salt and Health.

The campaign group claimed last month that 41 per cent of shop-bought sandwiches contained more salt than a Big Mac, while one specimen had as much as seven packets of crisps.

That's scary enough but this group of dieticians and scientists has now found that a fifth of 156 ready-made salads and pasta bowls bought from high street shops contain almost a third of the recommended daily limit of salt.

One noodle salad had 4.4g of salt per portion - 73 per cent of the "safe" daily dose. A crispy chicken Caesar salad sounds great when it comes with low-fat dressing. But that dressing has 3.5g of salt - while one pasta and tuna salad comes with salt added to the tuna!

It's all very confusing for someone who grew up in an age when not only were the three Rs mandatory but the three Ss - salt, sugar and smoking - were said to be good for you.

Not to mention undercooked eggs and the inch of fat around the Sunday roast that my dad would slurp his way through if the rest of the family resisted his offer to "put hairs on your chest". I was particularly proud of my sister in that respect.

But I've tried to be a New Man and when the invincibility of youth fades and you start to think of being around to see your grandchildren grow up, it gets harder to resist the men in white coats who say that too much salt could finish you off.

I thought I was doing well by eating five portions of fruit and veg a day - which sounds simple but takes a lot of willpower and not a little money, and even then it's a minefield: you need a mixture of colours, we're told; too much fruit juice rots your teeth; brown bananas are good for fibre but green good for starch. And on it goes.

Assuming that you're organised enough to prepare something healthy to take to work, there's the hassle of eating it, because, like most office workers these days, I suspect, lunch is eaten at the desk.

And while a tinfoil pack of sandwiches (my favourite being healthy tuna soaked in unhealthy mayonnaise) is easy to munch your way through while you're at your phone or PC, speaking to colleagues with a mouthful of lettuce and coleslaw brings new pressures.

Then, of course, you have to remember to take home that apple that's sat around in your top drawer - so that you can bring it back the next day.

Over the years, I've learned to enjoy the green bits I used to gulp down with a grimace before attacking the meat and potatoes.

I now look forward to orange bits that taste of carrot rather than sugared water, and crunchy cabbage in place of the stuff we used to chop with butter and mash to a pulp in my childhood. The problem is that I like fruit and veg as well as cakes and biscuits and chocolate, not instead of.

So, having spent half an hour the previous evening chopping lettuce and boiling pasta to take to work, I can't resist a Mars bar and a bag of Doritos from the machine when a burst of energy's required.

And even the most disciplined of packer-ups finds it hard to resist a supermarket concoction when time's tight.

But while many of those packaged salads and pastas really are healthy options, others should carry health warnings, according to Cash chairman Professor Graham MacGregor.

Here's my suggestion: Don't eat - it's bad for you.

TALKING of food, we've finally woken up to the growing problem of obesity in this country but finding a solution - beyond simply telling people to eat less - is proving tricky.

This is not surprising, judging by another survey published this week. Out of 400 nurses questioned, 45 per cent did not think obese patients had enough desire to alter their ways, while eight per cent believed that obese patients were lazier than other patients.

What I found most fascinating about was that 14 per cent of the nurses who took part were themselves obese and another 29 per cent were overweight. "Physician, heal thyself" springs to mind.

My poor spatial awareness is a real bummer

2007-07-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

I'M wrestling with a condition called WWF.

It has nothing to do with Hulk Hogan types throwing themselves around in mock combat but it does pit me against a superior foe.

WWF stands for Why Whitepainton Finger, a tell-tale sign that has ladies of a certain age cooing in admiration.

It denotes that the bearer has been decorating - a pursuit I hate with a passion almost as fierce as my loathing of cucumber.

I once wrote in this column that it wasn't the painting I detested so much as the washing and filling of walls in preparation for an assault with one of those big, cheap, slap-it-on brushes guaranteed to shed a thousand bristles an hour. I lied.

I hate everything about decorating and I'm constantly amazed that man can invent flying machines but can't devise a home decorating kit that works all by itself.

It can't be too difficult to create a paint bomb that you place in the middle of the room and activate with a simple fuse, then run for it and return half an hour later to find walls and skirting board flawlessly painted. Can it?

Unless such a wonder hits the market in the next few weeks, I'm condemned to the old-fashioned method, preparing big son's old bedroom for occupation by his younger brother.

But I've vowed that this will be the final chapter in my decorating story - a farce of unparalleled cackhandedness and world championship swearing.

In future, I'll get a man in.

One thing this episode has demonstrated, yet again, is what scientists might call my poor spatial awareness - ie, I'm a clumsy clot.

I've always been prone to attack by inanimate objects. They get in the way of my bodily bits. After years of replacing stained carpets, I've managed to kick the habit of leaving cups of tea and glasses of wine on the floor so that I can toe-end them moments later.

And experience has taught me the folly of leaving a drawer open while fixing the cupboard below it, or sawing wood on my knee, or unscrewing screws with my fingers.

Nevertheless, I'm forever grazing the same bit of thigh on the corner of the desk I sit at every working day and, even though the bathroom cabinet's been in the same position for years, I struggle to clean my teeth without crashing my head against it.

You can imagine, then, the fun I've had painting the sloping ceiling of an attic bedroom cunningly fitted with huge beams that pretend to hold the house up but get their kicks out of banging into my bonce.

Every time I paint the ceiling between beam and end wall, I have to stop and think: now, how does this go? Do I crouch this way or that? With roller in front of me or behind?

And each time, I get paint in my hair, which shocks me into rubbing my back against the wall, sparking a temper tantrum that invariably ends with forehead meeting beam.

My poor co-ordination led to an injury that will outlive all other memories of our recent holiday abroad - our first without the kids.

It's up there with the time I caught my toe on a step and went sprawling with an armful of shopping as we hurried back to our flat during torrential rain in Greece, resulting in an hour-long sulk during which no-one dared speak to dad, until mum could stand it no longer and almost had a little accident laughing.

This time, 10 days in glorious sunshine in Gibraltar allowed us to do very little but eat, drink and try not to worry that our home-alone teenager had thrown a party that disturbed the neighbours until four in the morning.

We soaked up glorious sunshine and spectacular scenery, learned a little of the Rock and its place in battles down the centuries, visited its famous wartime tunnels and glimpsed its even more famous apes, which, despite signs urging tourists not to feed them, are now venturing into the city, having developed a taste for crisps and Opal Fruits.

But what I learned above all is that heated towel rails are more dangerous than mosquitoes.

This is a pity because the joy of stepping straight from shower to hot towel is something my radiator at home has never been equal to.

One evening, having enjoyed this little luxury, I was standing naked in the bathroom when I heard the unmistakable buzz of a mozzy and spotted it dancing around the window. I grabbed a towel and went for the little blighter.

Then, victorious, I bent to pick up my shorts - and backed into the heated towel rail.

Suddenly, the horrors of decorating seemed like a walk in the park as my buttocks met hot steel, producing a squeal that belied my age and gender and leaving a four-inch scar shaped like a piece of jointed piping.

Today's young boozers don't know how lucky they are

2007-06-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

NEWS that 18 Derby licensees had been caught serving alcohol to children under the age of 16 left me thinking how lucky today's teenagers are.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not encouraging underage drinking - it's thrived quite nicely without my help, except for a small contribution in my mid-teens.

But I'm surprised that so many youngsters managed to get served. I've heard countless landlords complain that it's difficult to tell how old teenagers are, especially girls when they're out of school uniform and dolled up to the nines.

I thought, however, that demanding proof of age, rather than guessing, had become the norm.

The real luck of today's young boozers lies in the drinks on offer. They grow up drinking pop and fruit juice, then along comes alcohol - dressed up in pop and fruit juice.

It's no wonder that acting grown-up and getting squiffy is so appealing when spirits taste like cherry, orange and cranberry and you don't have to sink so much that curry and chips on the way home merely guarantees you'll have your head in the toilet before long.

Why, some of the little darlings probably think that watermelon-flavoured vodka counts as a portion of fruit.

It's all a far cry from my furtive forays into the world of drink in the late 60s.

First, you had to find a pub well away from home. People had much more contact with their neighbours in those days and, if you were spotted by someone your parents knew, they were sure to grass you up.

There were always a handful of city-centre pubs known to turn a blind eye but, even then, your chances of buying a pint were considerably improved if you were: a) smartly-dressed; b) accompanied by a girl; c) smoked (preferably cigars, which turned me green on many occasions); and d) sat quietly in a corner.

I'm not sure that repeatedly shaving off your adolescent bumfluff made any impression but it didn't half aggravate acne.

Notice I said "a pint", because that's what alcohol meant - beer. Cider was for girls, unless they were refined, in which case they drank Babycham or Cherry B, while spirits were the preserve of grannies and hardened alkies.

So, boys of my generation grew up drinking milk and dandelion and burdock and then had to train their bodies to handle bitter or mild.

The taste was so alien to our palates that a herculean effort was required but, as history shows, many of us rose (or sank) to the challenge.

Mild was nasty but cheaper, like soot in water topped with sea foam. I think it cost one-and-tenpence a pint (about 9p today), so imagine what damage you could do to yourself with a quid, especially if you had a pound in change in old money because you'd be in a rush to offload the weight before your trousers fell down.

Like most of my mates, I quickly graduated to bitter but found that it played havoc with the digestive system, partly because no two pints were the same. The first few were, therefore, consumed largely for anaesthetic value, after which you'd drink anything.

And they varied from brewer to brewer, with Nottingham's own Shippo's being renowned for its explosive effects on the gut.

As time went by and wages rose, we discovered fizzy ales like Double Diamond and a host of bottled beers, from Mackeson and Newcastle Brown to Worthington's White Shield (very strong, but requiring a steady hand to avoid disturbing the thick layer of sediment at the bottom) and the evil barley wine

Beer at home meant Davenport's, delivered to the door for the elderly or posh. For the rest of us, it was quart bottles of Shipstone's Gold Star or Nut Brown or, on special occasions, a Watney's Party Seven, though they were so difficult to open that party guests usually shared a pint or two on their clothes.

Today, with lager by far the biggest-selling alcoholic drink in this country, it's difficult to buy a bad pint.

Not all that long ago, it was virtually unheard of in pubs, as was decent food. I recall visiting a boozer in the early 80s in the hope of a refreshing lager and something to eat.

The elderly, toothless landlady shuffled off in her ankle socks and slippers and returned with a half-pint bottle of something lukewarm and a stale, white cob containing a centimetre-thick slab of toe-curling cheese and globs of axle grease posing as margarine.

Ah, such happy, innocent times for the vast majority of my generation.

But there's no denying that alcohol has also brought tens of thousands of deaths, injuries and broken homes.

It's a sobering thought when you consider that today's young drinkers are growing up on stuff that's very much stronger and easier to stomach.

The unrivalled joy of being a dad

2007-06-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

DADS can look forward to a lie-in on Sunday.

Cars will be washed and lawns mown in their honour, new mugs and slippers presented and a blind eye turned to after-dinner snoring in front of the TV.

It's Fathers' Day, of course - a time to be thankful for dads and the power of retailing.

We probably have an American woman to thank for our version of Fathers' Day. Sonora Smart Dodd held a day of celebration in Spokane, Washington, on June 19, 1910, in gratitude for her upbringing by her widowed father.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon established a permanent national observation of Fathers' Day on the third Sunday in June.

Sadly, Tricky Dicky spoiled his chances of being remembered for this by getting involved in something called Watergate.

Today, almost 40 countries worldwide observe the Nixon formula, though many more disagree. Thailand, for instance, prefers December 5, Brazil the second Sunday in August and Germany, with some logic, combines Fathers' Day with Ascension Day.

I suspect that most people, no matter now old they are, go back to childhood for their most vivid memories of their father. I have a particular reason for this.

By the time I was 15, my dad was also my best friend. The bud of my childish mind had begun to blossom and he relished the intellectual challenge.

In long and heated debates, we set the world to rights and even swapped tastes in women.

His romantic verses in the front cover of every book he bought for my mum introduced me to poetry.

He instilled in me an enduring passion for cricket, and lent me the batting gloves in which I made my school debut (out second ball, the first having paralysed me by finding the one small area of unprotected thumb).

As a Saturday boy sweeping up hair in his one-man barber's shop, I learned that sex was not the preserve of the young, as a succession of sheepish men aged 30 or 60 - they all looked old in their overcoats and trilbies in those days - rapped at the off-sales window, asked to see the proprietor and hurried off with "something for the weekend".

In a strange way, my father taught me to endure ridicule, inflicting on me a near-constant short-back-and-sides when all my mates were wannabe hippies.

And, few as they were, his good hidings had spawned respect in a household where no sin was graver than lying.

I can still picture him in boiler suit and bobble hat as he set off on an errand for the in-laws and popped his head around the door again and again to say "bye" in ever-more exaggerated fashion, until I was helpless with laughter.

Two hours later, grief made its entrance into my life. He had picked up a sack of coal in the street and dropped dead from a heart attack.

I last saw him in the chapel of rest as my mother screamed disbelievingly at a stiff, cold lump of flesh in a padded box. It looked like it needed a shave and reminded me of someone I once knew.

Within a few short years, I was struggling to remember his face, the feel of him, his voice, his smell.

But I continue to count myself lucky, for the rules of life that serve me to this day are those I learned during a happy childhood.

And my father taught me as much in death as in life because, from the moment I saw him dressed for his funeral, I resolved to live each day to the full, to value every experience, good or bad, and be glad for what I'd had, rather than mourn its loss.

Millions of children worldwide grow up without a father's love, many of them deprived by war or disease, others by the selfishness of males not man enough to finish the job they started.

And, at a time when those of us who in the affluent West are shelling out a fortune on cards and gifts we don't need ($5bn each Fathers' Day in the United States alone) a fifth of the world's population exists on about 50p a day and 30,000 children a day die in poverty.

It's enough to make me think I'll ask my grown-up sons to skip the presents this year and make a donation to the United Nations Children's Fund instead.

I'll also give their hairy, healthy frames a special hug and reflect on what Fathers' Day should really celebrate: the unrivalled privilege and joy of being a dad

Mugged by the welfare state at the age of 100

2007-05-25T04:24:00.000-07:00

MY grandmother was 95 when she was mugged in her own home. Five years later, she became a victim of our welfare state bureaucracy.

She could not have imagined, as she opened the door to her warden-aided flat, that the independence she had proudly clung to was about to end.

Callers were a rarity and besides, what harm could a young woman do? This one, however, was a heroin addict, who threw the little, brittle pensioner around and ransacked her meagre possessions in search of something to fund a fix.

Gran had resisted my many appeals to leave her native Doncaster and move near to me, in Derbyshire. But as she lay in hospital, shaken and bruised from her terrifying ordeal, she bowed to the inevitable.

For five years, she enjoyed a sort of independence in a Derbyshire residential home. My wife and I could visit regularly and the bill for her care was met by Doncaster social services, taking all her pension and state benefits except for grandad’s pit pension, which paid for little luxuries like the cigarettes she had enjoyed since her youth.

But as her body and mind grew weaker, her needs began to outstrip the attention that staff at the home could provide. Dementia was setting in, she was almost blind and deaf and, though the staff coped with her late-night wailing and wandering, a series of falls led to several emergency trips to hospital.

Last month, at the age of 100, she was admitted to Queen’s Medical Centre, in Nottingham, after cutting and bruising her arm. She has told us for years that she was fed up and wanted to die but, whether she likes it or not, she is made of strong stuff and it was clear that the consequences of a fall were not going to finish her off.

There was little medically wrong with her that required an extended hospital stay; it was simply a case of deciding where to put her next.

Our working hours prevented us from visiting often and perhaps this accentuated the picture of decline that greeted us. The understandable lack of companionship in a hospital ward coincided with growing dementia. Nor was hospital good for her physical health: even nursing staff acknowledged she was more likely to catch an infection on a ward than in a care home.

When staff from the home visited the ward, their verdict was unequivocal: they would not take her back. The next step was for a hospital social worker to assess her needs. Then, Doncaster social services would have to agree funding

Gran had been on the ward for three weeks when the appraisal took place. As I pressed for news, I realised she was caught in what even the Doncaster social worker described as a bureaucratic nightmare. He said the paperwork from Nottingham had taken six days to reach Doncaster.

When it did arrive, he thought it meant one thing – residential care, which she had been receiving and which was within Doncaster’s funding; Nottingham said it meant an other – “residential with dementia”, which was more expensive and harder to find.

By now, she was increasingly sleepy and frail. I had no delusions about her prospects but hoped she could die with dignity.

I asked if she could be moved to the community hospital in my home town, where her GP would oversee her care. The GP agreed – but the hospital refused. Since her residential care was no longer funded by Doncaster, it said, she was not classed as a Derbyshire resident.

At the age of 100, my gran was, effectively, of no fixed abode.

Angry and frustrated, I appealed to welfare agencies in Derbyshire. Why, I asked, couldn’t someone put her at the centre of the equation and make things happen in her best interests?

What did it matter who paid the bill, since it was all public money? Why couldn’t Derbyshire take over her care needs? Wouldn’t that have happened if she’d caught a bus to Derbyshire five years ago, hired herself a flat and then become in need of residential care?

After all, it wasn’t her fault that she had been robbed.

Derbyshire Primary Care Trust (NHS) sympathised but said it was a social services matter. Derbyshire social services (council) said she was Doncaster’s responsibility. They, too, did not class her as a Derbyshire resident.

With Nottingham and Doncaster sides finally agreed that she was a “residential with dementia” case, the search for somewhere to put her could begin in earnest but there were only two such homes that were convenient for me.

One had been the subject of abuse allegations; the other was half-decorated, unsuitable for a wheelchair and without a hoist to ensure that she could have a bath. Putting her there, I felt, would be like punishing her for losing her marbles.

And so the search goes on.

Just a month earlier, my gran had been spending her days in the residential home dozing in an armchair, pottering to the loo and eating meals brought to her by staff who always made time for a chat and a hug.

As she entered her fifth week in hospital, more confused than ever and now unable to stand, I was left to wonder how the combined might of the welfare services had helped her as she neared the end of life’s road.