Holiday Memoirs, September, 2010

Dog on the dole subjected to psychological cruelty in West Yorkshire

Frustration in Suffolk. The driver of this `Supermini` left it thus, after 10 attempts to park it close to the kerb. Immediately afterwards, a bloke got in the car behind it and drove off. I thought it was all part of a cruel hoax. Why is there never a double decker bus, to emphasise a point, when you need one?

On this ridge, on the Suffolk coast, there  once stood a hamlet, now washed away into the North Sea. The last house washed away in the 1920's. All that stands there now are people  taking photographs of the village that isn't there any more and a Martello Tower, built to repel a French Invasion that never came, thanks to our dear Lord Nelson and a bloke who had boots named after him (Not Dr Marten)

View from the table in a restaurant..... which is a Yurt.....in Norfolk.......oh to live in a country that embraces diversity

This is an Estate Agent's office in a town in Suffolk. I knew the housing market was slow, but this really did make me realise the seriousness of the current economic state of the bloody country.

Now here, the parking was straight (if half on the pavement),but the house was a tad off centre. You can't win. However, there is a reasonable excuse; this town was built just before the invention of the spirit level. In those days `spirit levelling` involved the burning of witches. I believe the will to perform this barbarous act is still out there amongst some of our population. Thank goodness it is now illegal, I mean, think of the risk to all those wooden buildings.

I've had a few of these over the years, but thankfully only one nasty one.

Peace on Earth - and the final resting place of a Bentley Boy.

Blitz on Britain

On the 70th Anniversary of the start of the Blitz on London, my thoughts turn to my late Father who was a bus driver for London Transport during those awful years. He regaled me with stories of incendiary bombs bursting around him and his double-decker bus as he weaved his way around the Capital. On one occasion he told me that London Bridge was on fire, or at least the wooden sleepers that lined the carriageway in those days. He was caught halfway across and so just `put his foot down` to hammer through the flames. He chanced a glance behind him to see all the passengers doing their best to hide under the seats. He told me that it sounded like a rushing express train as he hit the wall of flames, which opened up and then slapped shut as his bus passed through the inferno. There were many more stories of `dodging around bomb craters and partially collapsed buildings and one occasion where a Heinkel 111 bomber, crippled by the RAF or Anti Aircraft gunners, flew smoking and low along the river, it's crew machine gunning one of his mates who died in the ensuing inferno. When his body was recovered they found a solid lump of coins that had melted in his pockets as he died in the blazing cab. Many more of his colleagues were killed during the Blitz. But London and the rest of the Country kept on going or, `buggering on` as Winston would have said. Dad joined the Home Guard. I think all that must have affected him because post war, and post the arrival of Hogday jnr., he always seemed to drive me around in the family car like he was still dodging craters and German bombs! Or perhaps all bus drivers were trained to drive that way?

So why is it that today, one road traffic accident on the M6 motorway on a Friday afternoon, stops the entire country from moving at more than 3 mph?

A good case for the defence?

I know little about professional footballers and their antics on or off the pitch but I do know a lot about defence solicitors and how they can pull an acquittal seemingly out of thin air. So I have taken my brain down old memory lane and think I've come up with a likely scenario that a certain footballer's brief can put forward in his defence.I definitely think it has legs


"Your Honour, my client was merely mistaken as it was his intention to use a prosthetic, whislt his wife was pregnant.  His demise was due to nothing more than an unfortunate printing error and a mispronunciation, owing to a rather thick scouse accent". 

Over the years I've seen loads of magistrates fall for far less.

My kind of town?

 

This almost seems my kind of place....but something tells me its doomed.Best hope the humans don't breed like the flies.