Out clubbing and looking for trouble

Two young fellows enjoy a drink at Newark Working Mens Club. One is a retired window cleaner the other an aspiring keyboard player. So if any band has a vacancy........

Sonia keeps a keen eye on them. She has just had to step in to curb an outbreak of riotous behaviour from the lads. She won't take much more of it! She knows their "couldn't care less" grins betray a thinly disguised rebel nature. They could explode at any moment.

Racism alive and well

I live in Newark, a small though growing market town in the East of England. It has a very small population of what are termed ethnic minorities. There are some black people in the town most of whose original family members arrived here in the 1950's. More recently Eastern Europeans have become resident in the town and I understand are working locally often in posts whch do not reflect their qualifications. Perhaps we should not be surprised that these newcomers are now attracting vilification from some people in the indigenous population that their black counterparts did some fifty years ago. The critical comments have not changed much over time for example:

• Large numbers share accommodation
  
• They take our jobs
  
• But they won't work and are after every benefit they can get

I was in the local working mens club the other night talking to a group of people. Another man joined us and said he had a racist joke to tell which he had had relayed to him on his mobile phone. The "joke" was unfunny and offensive and went like this.

Two old men had been playing bowls, and having put their bowls in the boot of the car set off home. On the way they had an accident and knocked a young black boy off his bike and killed him. Not knowing what to do they put the bike and his body in the boot and carried on. They were then stopped by the police who asked to look in the boot. The officer who did this was heard to radio in to his station, "we've discovered a n*****s nest, ones hatched out and he's already stolen a bike". As I said an unfunny and vile story. But think, this kind of thing is being spread like a virus through mobile phone texting, mostly eliciting sniggers, but in some cases possibly underpinning or encouraging a propensity to engage in racial violence.

The teller of this "joke" then went on to inform us that blacks are unable to "retain" information. "You mean like Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Nelson Mandella" I said. "Right f*** it! I'm off, I've had enough", he said and walked out leaving nearly a whole pint.

Work began in 1963

Some time during late 1962 or early 1963 I was seen by the careers officer at school. I hadn't given any serious thought to post school employment apart from being certain that I did not to become an engineering apprentice in Lincoln. This was the fate of most lads from the area who were of average ability. The working classes all thought, get a trade, job for life. Little did we know.

My main interests at the time were motorbikes, fishing, model making, pop music and pretty unsuccessfully, trying to get off with young women. The careers officer asked me what I wanted to be.
"An AA man", I said (this would have enabled me to ride a motorbike and sidecar and get paid for it).
"Don't be ridiculous" he said "you're at grammar school. Have you thought of joining the forces?"
"No, I'm a pacifist" I replied confident in my status as I had been on two Aldermaston marches. I knew the words of the songs:

"Can't you hear the H Bomb thunder

Echo like the crack of doom

As it rends the sky asunder

Fall out makes the earth a tomb

Men and women stand together

Do not heed the men of war

Make your mind up now or never

Ban the Bomb for evermore"

This was obviously not a line of discussion he came up against frequently and he abandoned trying to get me to "join the Army and see the world" as I think the saying went at the time. After half an hours careers counselling I left his room with the names of five engineering firms in Lincoln in my hand. The first one, Allen Gwynnes Pumps was the first to offer me an interview and gave me a job. So much for my resolve.

I started in September 1963. The firm was making huge cooling pumps for Wylfa nuclear power station (pictured above) and I was roped in to help film the mock up of the project. Not as bad as I thought this engineering. Alas this was a temporary highspot. Within a couple of weeks all the new apprentices were in the training shop where we would remain for one year. The majority of the work was the completion of fitting and turning tests which I found deadly dull. It was not for me and I left at the end of the first year. We were indentured apprentices then and the firm could insist you stayed. In my case they didn't so I assume we were in agreement about my suitability.

The experience was not without it's benefits. Most notably you had to make a rapid transition from schoolboy to developing adult. If you were unlucky you might undergo initiations like having your testicles smeared with grease or engineers blue. Less unpleasant would be to be sent to the tool store for "a long rest". The storeman would tell you to wait. After some time you would ask again, only to be told you had now had the rest and could return to your bench. Bollocking from foreman likely. Every industry has these tricks to make you realise how little you know. In later life when working as a ward assistant in a hospital I was told by a group of worried looking female nurses grouped round a patient that there was an emergency and I should run and get the Fallopian tubes. I realised I had been duped as I arrived panting at the door of the room which I had been told contained them.

Anyway I left in 1964 and the firm went bust and closed soon afterwards. See they should never have let me go.

Too Much Time on My Mind Shannon

A first. I have just had someone from Denver Colorado respond to my blog with a question. Tried to answer the query but the email was returned. In the unlikely event of Shannon returning to my blog, here is the email I tried to send on the subject of pub quizzes:


"Hello Shannon,

I've not been so excited in ages, one person on earth has read my blog.

I haven't been to Denver (or indeed America) but I assume, perhaps wrongly that you don't have pubs (public houses) there. So therefore no pub quizzes? Quizzes have joined darts, dominoes, arguing about nothing, talking bollocks and saying things you will regret tomorrow as a popular activity to accompany drinking in English pubs. Not sure about Scotland and Ireland.

Are they difficult? It depends if you know the answers, and I often don't. But my fellow team members do so we win free beer from time to time. The Castle and Falcon in Newark where we have a go at the quiz is a decent pub with a predominantly working class clientele and our quizmaster sets what you might call "tabloid questions". The questions tend to require knowledge of "facts" about TV soaps, films, celebrities, sport, kings, queens, historical dates, capital cities, acronyms, biggest, smallest etc, things I'm either not interested in, or can't be bothered to remember. I suppose the questions are aimed at "what" rather then "why" or "how". Example from week before last "what is a mysoginist?" - not many of the men knew but a few would qualify. By the way about equal numbers of women and men participate.

Good fun on a Sunday night but feelings can run high both within teams and between them. All the teams think that the others are getting more help from the quizmaster. Any way is there a quiz culture in the States?

A final word on pubs. Sadly the traditional smallish local English pub is on the decline. This is for many reasons but importantly it is much cheaper to drink at home now here. Not the same I am afraid.

Anyway thanks the comment, and if you get the time let me know about quizzes and bars in Denver.

All the best,

David"

Which is best Exercise Bike or Honda ANF 125?

For the majority of my adult life I have engaged in some sort of physical activity. I am useless at sport so it has usually been something worthy like running or swimming to keep fit.

Christ isn't swimming boring, the only saving grace is you are always clean (or maybe with a thin coating of other participants urine). My regular exercise is now two trips to the gym each week.

Do I enjoy it? Well like the curate's egg it is good in parts. It is easy to think of reasons to put off going. However if I don't go then I am riddled with anxiety about imminent heart failure which I have convinced myself I am one gym session away from. So the pattern of my life is:

• Go to the gym and leave feeling self righteous, robust and also elated that I do not have to go for a few days
• Any aches and pains I get in the next day or so are seen by me as due to the vigorous life enhancing exercise
• The euphoria wears off and aches and pains are now surely evidence of an impending heart attack
• Lethargy and depression set in due to expected life threatening condition
• Check symptoms on Web, situation even worse than expected
• Go to gym one last time but leave feeling self righteous etc
• Repeat process

Is it really worth exercising to keep fit when fish, fowl, sheep and beef may all tainted. What did you have for Sunday lunch today? Poached mercury, or roast bird flu, scrapie or CJD?

It's not possible that I am a neurotic hypochondriac, is it?

Anyway to cheer myself up this week I bought the Honda Innove ANF 125 pictured above from a very nice guy in Barnet. I have probably saved it from a lifetime of pizza hauling and now like an old seaside donkey it can retire to an easier life in the country. In my garage I now have examples from the last forty years of two wheel commuters. Why? Don't ask me. I do know that riding them is better fun than going to the gym.

Catholic church is wrong on adoption in UK

The Catholic Children's Society is a respected adoption agency that has certainly helped find good families for very disadvantaged children over the years. It now seems that to gain approval through the adoption assessment process with the CCS couples have had to pass the additional test of not being gay. This is not part of the formal assessment and one wonders what other unstated judgmental hurdles have been part of their vetting process. One could speculate that this phenomena is an extension of the original activities of the religious adoption agencies, assisting the removal of children from feckless single poor mothers to middle class conventional (Catholic?) families.


New proposed government legislation would prevent them discriminating against otherwise satisfactory gay adoptive parents and should be supported. The UK government must not dilute these proposed anti discriminatory measures, as they did with education issues recently. Why? There are many reasons but two spring to mind:

• It will be the thin end of a wedge and the church knows this. It will give the green light for other organisations or child care social workers to argue that in conscience they cannot process the applications of or place children with prospective gay adopters.
  
  
• The children who are placed with Catholic Children's Society adopters are not the property of that organisation. The state through UK local authorities decides who should be adopted, why and what their needs are. CCS are an integral part of this government activity as contracted providers and as such should be bound by the law which regulates it's operation.

It will be a sad day if the Catholic Children's Society adoption operation closes. However the truth is they are unable to accept (but are very mealy mouthed about saying in the current debate) the legitimacy of gay partnerships and what they believe they entail. They appear to be prepared to sacrifice their service to children on the altar of this belief which is an anachronism in modern day UK.

Lets face it the Catholic Church has not covered itself in glory in dealing with child care and child protection in the past. If potential Catholic priests had been vetted as closely as heterosexual and homosexual prospective adopters children in contact with the Catholic Church might have been safer.

So come on Mr Blair equality before the law must take precedence over outdated belief, prejudice and discrimination which has no place in the "modernised" world.

Pits and Puchs and Plates

Bang on 10.30 on Sunday morning the front door bell rang. Rob and his wife Beryl had come all the way from North Wales to collect the Puch moped they had bought off me on Ebay.

They were a friendly couple and we were soon chatting about our mutual interest in two wheeled transport in general and Puch mopeds in particular. During the course of our conversation Rob said that he had retired as a beat police officer in Wales four years previously. They now had a motorhome as well as their bikes and enjoyed life and followed the sun.

I fished his new acquisition out of my garage and after an embarrassing few minutes managed to get it going. Rob is satisfied and we load the little bike onto his trailer. As we are lashing the Puch on Beryl says how nice Newark is and how they have never been before "since Rob was here during the miners strike".

It will be remembered that Thatcher had large numbers of officers drafted into Nottinghamshire from outside to make sure the local miners could continue to work during the strike. Sadly it did not do them much good as most of the mining opportunities in the county were to subsequently disappear. Ex-pit villages have become areas of social deprivation.

Anyway I digress. We finished lashing the bike on and returned to the house so I could show Rob some Puch websites and manuals. For some reason I changed my mind about showing Rob the websites (emailed them on later) and brought the manuals down to the kitchen to show him. Rob and Beryl then went on their way.

I was later telling Susan that Rob had been here in the miners strike. "Good job you didn't take him in the study then, he might have seen The Plate". The Plate is displayed on the wall next to the stack of manuals and the computer. It is a rather aesthetically unattractive ceramic produced by the National Union of Mineworkers to celebrate the achievement of the thirty five strikers who stuck the dispute out to the bitter end. I wonder what they are doing now and if they met Rob?