Singing in the Rain

SWMBO and I spent New Year away this year, combining my middle god daughters 21st birthday with a chance to escape home life. We had eighteen for Christmas dinner and then 40 odd on Boxing Day as well as Emma's 30th on 23rd Dec. Two big do's back to back will not be repeated.

Anyway, we spent six hours on various parts of the English motorway system, stopping only for petrol and a coffee, trying to get to the 21st birthday. We left Scouseland at 10:00 expecting to be there for lunch, but arrived so late that that was all finished. The motorways in England are a bit like EasyJet, great when they work but the worst of the worst when there is even the slightest problem. The invitation did, however, motivate me to book a New Year's break. The challenge was where to go, as we had never done this sort of thing before.

The first thoughts take one back to tried and trusted locations. The Manor House on Dartmoor , now called Bovey Hall, has a wonderful golf course, and as well as laying on cookery demonstrations, there was ferret racing, organised walks and cream tea's. The price for two nights over New Year was over £2500 so I gave that one a miss. Moving closer to the party location, the New Forest had a certain appeal, so I tried the Lyndhurst Park hotel which I used to use when I was running education classes for IBM in the late 70's and early 80's. The girl on the switchboard was a bit slow and did not really do a good job of selling their gala dinner to me, so it was down to random hits on the internet.

The Christchurch Harbour Hotel won the vote, so tired and hungry we arrived in Mudeford to enjoy four days of unbridled pampering.
The first day we went to Highcliffe to blow away the cobwebs, then hit a Thai restaurant in the local pub. It was quiz night, but no drag queens in sight on this occasion. Next day we went to Burley and surprised ourselves by buying a walking guide and yomping through the New Forest for most of the day. This will shock our walking friends, although they will be reassured by the fact SWMBO had on a full length camel coat and I was in my pea coat!! You can't beat spontaneity

Joy of joys on the way back as we stumbled upon a Fuller's pub not too far from the hotel so a couple of pints of Pride were consumed in no time!

Our final outing was to Poole harbour and Sandbanks. Poole harbour has a most interesting and concentrated array of pub's as well as being home to the SunSeeker motor cruiser industry. Sandbanks is one of the most expensive areas of real estate in the Country. Not sure why exactly as very few properties have much land, and there must be equally impressive sea views elsewhere.

New Year's Eve was very pleasant. 140 people sat down for a black tie event which was relaxed and entertaining all at the same time. We may well do it again.

2011 and all that

So we enter a new year, and the blog stats are telling me I must do better. I only posted 29 times during 2011 compared with a peak of 88 during 2007, a year which was only 8 months long in blog land. My posts have steadily declined year on year, so one New Year resolution is to post more blogs! I also plan to launch 'The Philanderer, the first four years' as a mobi file, but more of that later in the month.

2011 has been a year of ups and downs for us. Its memory will be dominated by the untimely death of SWMBO's brother Martin in Boston, USA. He was in his forties and having suffered a heart attack and he was unable to be resuscitated in time by the crash team. The family flew to Boston and waited by his bed for good news, but sadly none came.

Similar sad news surrounds my good friend Dave 'Cellnet' Jones who was sectioned earlier in the year and subsequently diagnosed with dementia. He is younger than me and one does wonder whether his extensive work with mobile phones was a contributing factor to his illness. His neighbour Graham Jones lost his wife Judy, after a long battle with cancer. So not a year to be keeping up with the Joneses.

There were good family events though. The wedding of Rebecca and Jon was great and it was foll0wed soon after by the engagement of Kieran and Hannah . The year was topped and tailed by the arrival of more baby girls. My cousin Mike has three girls, and his oldest now also has three girls, so quite how you get a boy to pop out is something I will have to ask my mate Dick about, as he has three of them!!!

Work on the house continued, not always as planned, and while the redesign of the bathrooms ran over estimate, it was the roof expense which was an unfortunate addition to the maintenance budget. Anyway, hopefully we are all done now for a while. The basement is the final area to be subject to a face lift and that can wait a bit longer.

We managed a few trips, most notably to Mauritius, but also to the Lake District twice and Ireland. Golf took me to Portugal twice, and we spent a few days in Christchurch, Dorset over New Year.

So what of 2012, the year of the Diamond Jubilee of QEII and the olympic games?

I have already indicated I will be blogging more (than 2011 at least), I will be taking SWMBO away more and be trying to get back into my running regime. That though will depend on my knees holding out.

I would love to get to a golf championship final, with Turnberry being one such target, however, I am still in the Daily Telegraph knock-out with my 4th round match on the horizon, and a couple more events to come up.

Other than that I will continue to work hard and play as hard as I can manage these days, so hope to have plenty to report on in the coming months.

A Happy New Year to all my readers

Pint of Ordinary please

Further reminiscing about the old days came to mind again while I was in Limehouse. I was bored one night so went for a stroll 'inland'. You can imagine my surprise when I happened upon a small park, surrounded by the most wonderful Georgian terraces. These houses on York Square, and a few streets around it had survived the blitz and are now I am sure much sought after properties being walking distance from Canary Wharf and less than five minutes from the Docklands Light railway ( DLR).

As I further explored the area, I revisited The Queens Head, a Young's pub which I and a work colleague, Mike McBride, had been to in the late 70's when we were attempting to join the 135 Club.
This club was open to anybody who had travel to, and drank in, every one of the pubs which made up the Young's estate. The number fluctuated as the brewery opened and closed pubs, but the 135 Club name remained.

We visited the Queens Head after we had knocked off The Ship in Rotherhithe, The Crown in Lee and The Richard I in Greenwich. We then darted through the tunnel, ticked off the Queens Head then bombed down the A11 to Barking to do The Britannia, a fine pub with a figurehead as the pub sign. Sadly it is no longer in the Young's estate. So much for drinking and driving.

The final pub we visited some time later to qualify for the 135 Club was The Bishop out of Residence, in Kingston, Surrey. It was its opening day and we were lucky enough to get John Young, the chairman, to sign our card. It was 31st October 1979.

Young's no longer brews beer after selling its Wandsworth brewery in 2007 and tying up with Charles Wells, the makers of Wells Fargo. Earlier this year it sold its last remaining share in the joint venture and now concentrates on its real estate. Young's beer is still available in its outlets, but it is now brewed exclusively by Charles Wells.

Anyway, back to The Queens Head, and York Square. It may be an urban myth, but the word is that the Square and the pub gave the producers of Eastenders, the perfect model for Albert Square and the Queen Vic which feature so prominently in the soap opera.
The pub was really quiet when I went in and messageboards do indicate this to be the case. You wonder how some of these small old traditional outlets do survive.

Across the square was another pub, The Old Ship, which was closed the night I was there. It is one of the major drag artist pubs in the East End and attracts a gay and mixed crowd on the nights it is open. On Thursdaynights one of the drag queens hosts a quiz night. That would be quite interesting.

Given the area these pubs are located I would have thought a gastro and a wine bar would have been a perfect combination, given the gay community in Limehouse seems to be well served elsewhere. That said, the pink pound is still a most welcome commodity!!

Betamax and 8 track tapes

This list was published in the paper this morning. Now I have highlighted those which I do, and there are quite a lot, but I don't think I am in any way a digital dinosaur.

Duties for digital dinosaurs:
1. Ring the cinema to find out times
2. Go to the travel agents’ to research a holiday
3. Record things using VHS
4. Dial directory enquiries
5. Use public phones
6. Book tickets over the phone
7. Print photos
8. Put an ad in the shop window
9. Ring the speaking clock
10. Carry portable CD players
11. Write handwritten letters
12. Buy disposable cameras
13. Take change for pay phones
14. Make mix tapes
15. Pay bills at the post office
16. Use an address book
17. Check a map for a car journey
18. Reverse charges in payphones
19. Visit a bank or building society
20. Buy TV listings
21. Own an encyclopedia
22. Queue for car tax at the post office
23. Develop and send off for photos
24. Read the Yellow Pages
25. Look up something in a dictionary
26. Remember phone numbers or have a phone book
27. Watch videos
28. Have pen friends
29. Use a phone directory
30. Use pagers
31. Fax things
32. Buy CDs or have a CD collection
33. Pay by cheque
34. Make photo albums
35. Watch programmes at the time they are shown
36. Dial 1471
37. Warm hot drinks on the stove
38. Try on lots of shoes in shops
39. Hand wash clothes
40. Advertise in trading papers
41. Send love letters
42. Hand-write essays/schoolwork
43. Buy flowers from a florist
44. Work out how to spell something yourself
45. Keep a personal diary
46. Send postcards
47. Buy newspapers
48. Hang washing out in winter
49. Keep printed bills or statements
50. Go to car boot sales

32 I did yesterday, and 45 is what this blog is all about. What is very worrying though is the implication that books, newspapers and other printed matter is considered old hat by the younger generation. That contrasts with the comments made recently by Peter Andre where he extolled the virtues of the bedtime story read from a book with pictures and charactures, and not a Kindle. People develop an imagination, and creativity by examining the written word and there isno better way of doing it than by using an encyclopedia or dictionary.

I remember my Uncle impressing on me the value of looking up a word in the dictionary or a topic in an encyclopedia, and then absorbing the work or article above and below it, that's how a vocabulary builds up, not by embracing Wikipedia.

As for number 50, what better way to spend a Sunday morning than rummaging through somebody elses cast offs looking for that one item you have craved for years. I love it, and indeed, one of my first blogs extolled the virtues of car boot sales

Docklands revisited

I am experiencing the East End of London at the moment in a way I have not done for over 35 years. Work has taken me down to Canary Wharf, and I am billeted in Shadwell between Wapping and Limehouse.

Now Shadwell is a huge tenement style development which recently has been populated by the Bangladeshi community. It contributes to Tower Hamlets challenge as a deprived inner city borough.This maintains the heritage of the area as it has been the home and settlement for South Asian sailors brought over to work for the East India Company as well as Chinese and Greek seaman many of whom intermarried and co-habited with locals. It is interesting how areas of high poverty can co-exist so close to wealthy financial districts like Canary Wharf.

The stretch of land between the Limehouse Link , a four lane highway parallel to Commercial Road, and the river Thames is now a sought after settlement for people employed in Canary Wharf. New blocks of flats have been built and many of the old warehouses have been converted into sought after residences. Many have kept the name of the wharves on which they reside.

It was down to Wapping that I ventured initially to re-visit the Prospect of Whitby one of the oldest riverside pubs in the Capital. A regular haunt for 'hanging' Judge Jefferys in the 17th century, there has been a tavern on the site for over 400 years. Execution Dock next door got its name from the practise of tying pirates to stakes in the river and waiting for the tide to come in and drown them.

Last night there was no evidence of that, just a good traditional pub menu and a few good beers. The pub is now on the tourist track and two coach parties came while I was there, but the pub layout allowed one such to go upstairs to the function room and another into the restaurant, leaving the drinkers to the bar area.

Now when I was last here in about 1975, there was a roaring log fire. This has been replaced by an enclosed wood burning stove but other than that it stays a good old fashioned pub which befits the area.

The other 'trendy' riverside pub in the area is The Grapes in Narrow Street, and no premise could have been better placed. The pub was recently acquired by Ian McKellen, Gandalf in Lord of the Rings amongst other things, and an ex-gay lover, and must be one of the narrowest pubs in the C0untry. There is seating for 8 as you walk in, four stools beside the bar and seating for about 12 in the back bar. A small terrace overlooks the river at the back.

There is a restaurant upstairs, but I took the opportunity to try the bar menu, and found this delightful combination. The only thing to spoil the visit was the fact the two barmaids were amongst the most miserable and dull you could have. Pity really as the place needed a bit of vitality behind the bar to finish it off.

On the subject of gays, I was lucky to spot the local pub, The White Swan, was listed as a gay pub before I went in to it. otherwise I could have been in trouble, Limehouse must be a spot!

Swing low sweet chariot, you're as low as you can go

A comment by Des Kelly in the Daily Mail this weekend really hit the spot.
....'rugby union can no longer look down its nose at footballers in a condescending manner. The game is up. Posh lads misbehave too.....'

Both halves of the comment are true, the linkage, however, may be inappropriate. The rugby players who considered themselves superior to professional footballers were themselves professionals. They were, however, army officers, teachers, solicitors, bank managers, policemen and doctors. All five nations had them in their ranks, although the farmers of Scotland and the miners of Wales were only too happy to put it over the English toffs given the chance.

These days rugby players are sporting professionals. There are no career backgrounds to mould a stereotype out of, and thereby lies the problem which has been laid bare at the feet of the RFU in England. The players are interested in money, they want to do the job with as little effort as they can, and they have no respect for the old school who are trying to hang onto the remnants of the game as they knew it.

The other home nations, with maybe the French as an exception, have had less of a cultural upheaval as they embraced professionalism. There is less money, are less clubs and less players, and we all know the Welsh were being paid anyway, long before they were allowed to be!!

So English rugby is in one heck of a mess; no structure, no CEO and no team management. Who then is going to step forward as the catalyst of change? I wonder if Seb Coe knows anything about rugby?

The Dinner's in the Dog

Trouble is we never had a dog, so more than likely the dinner was in the bin. So what brought that on then? A bit of history will explain.

It has just come to my attention that a pub in East Croydon, The Porter and Sorter is about to be demolished to make way for a redevelopment. The site of which the pub is a part sits opposite a ten story building which used to house the major London computer centre for IBM.

It was here nearly forty years ago that I first started work. I attended the building for aptitude tests and interviews before being offered a job as a computer operator, working a three shift system for the princely sum of £1200 per annum plus shift premium. Occasionally one was required to work 'float' which meant you covered core hours 10am to 6pm and it was while working these hours that the Porter and Sorter came into its own.

The pub was the hub of the social network of the building. The management team would go there after work, and occasionally the sales director and other high flyers would join them. It was a place where all grades in the Company could go and socialise in a way rarely experienced now. The hours just passed in a blur, but with the station right next door, people would fall out of the pub and not need to think about drinking and driving. The problems occurred when you got home bladdered several hours later than expected.

At one point previous to my employment the brewery decided the pub needed a new name, so they commissioned a competition to find a suitable one. A smart man in IBM suggested The Sweaty Sock for no better reason than he was a Jocko. Word got round that this was the proposed IBM name and consequently it won hands down. The brewery, however, did not feel it was an appropriate name and given the pub sat between the station and the post office, The Porter and Sorter was the name they decided on.

The work ethic of the seventies and eighties was very much a work hard, play hard one, and the pub epitomised all that was good about the office. Sadly all that has now been lost as people work from home or are based on client premises. IBM is closing offices with great regularity now, with the Croydon branch closing nearly 15 years ago. The social fabric of the business is being fragmented as a result. Graduates joining the Compnay now know no different, and with their extensive training programme and intern arrangements, they are one part of the organisation which maintains a community feel.

Its we 'living legends' who watch with sadness as the fabric which we were such a part of crumbles before our eyes. The demolition of the Porter and Sorter may just be the final nail in the coffin. Its work Jim but not as we know it.