Category Archives: anecdote

November, F1 and The Big Move

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Once again, we are back in that time of the year that I so dislike. It’s cold and getting colder. We’ve already had the two worst days of the year, in my book anyway. Hallowe’en and bonfire night.

How Hallowe’en has been sprung on to us I really don’t know. I’ve always thought of it as just an excuse for kids to knock on my door and demand sweets. When I was a child I don’t think I had ever even heard of Hallowe’en. Certainly no one I knew dressed up and knocked on doors expecting sweets. These days it seems to be a major event with shops full of Hallowe’en themed produce.

Back in the 1960s my childhood friends and I did put together a ‘guy’ and push it down to the local shops in an old pram where we exhibited our creation – basically a dummy made up of old clothes stuffed with rags and paper – to various passing shoppers in the hope that they would toss us a few coppers. Anyway, these days I turn out the lights and never answer the door on Hallowe’en and just turn up the volume on the TV on bonfire night.

F1

What is rather odd about the current F1 season is that here we are in November and there are still three races left on the calendar. I don’t subscribe to the Sky F1 channel so to watch F1 I have to wait for the highlights edition from Channel Four on terrestrial TV. Now we’re at the end of the season which really is going on far too long these days. C4 don’t even bother to send their usual crew to these last far away races. No David Coulthard and Lee McKenzie hosts the show from somewhere in London. There is a real feeling, certainly for me at any rate, that I’m ready for the season to be over. Twenty three races is just far too many. It must be difficult for the teams too as they have to get their new cars ready for the next season.

Even so it’s been quite an interesting season. Some time ago Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes to drive for Ferrari and Mercedes promoted young newcomer Kimi Antonelli to fill the vacant seat. George Russell must clearly have felt that now he was the Mercedes number one driver and given a good car he would be able to challenge for the world championship. Sadly for George things just didn’t turn out like that because Kimi has turned out to be a real natural talent and only a few weeks ago locked out the championship despite there being three races remaining. George was apparently so unsettled by this turn around of events that he declined to attend the post race press conference earning himself a 5000 euro fine at the Mexican Grand Prix. I’m not sure what that actually says about George. Was he that upset that he couldn’t answer questions about the new boy becoming the world champion?

Kimi Antonelli is the youngest ever world champion at only 20 years of age and he is actually only the third ever Italian world champion. The previous one was Alberto Ascari in in 1953 and before that Nino Farina in 1950 who was the sport’s first ever world champion.

The big disappointment of 2026 has to be the performance of the Aston Martin team. Top designer Adrian Newey who designed the race winning Red Bull cars of the past few years was lured to Aston Martin by billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll. However, despite a massive pay packet, the Aston Martin team have gradually moved from the back of the grid to round about the middle and it has taken them all season to do that. Fernando Alonso is the oldest driver on the grid and he seems set to stay on for another year in pursuit of a last championship or a last race win. Alonso has a lot of talent as a driver but he also has another talent which is choosing the wrong team to drive for. If only he had stuck it out at McLaren. Still, it would be nice to see Fernando on the podium once again.

The Big Move

This week I’ve decided that it’s time to give up my rented house in Manchester and move full time to St Annes on the Fylde coast. What has been really difficult is getting everything packed up ready for the move. I’ve been back and forth to the tip so many times getting rid of stuff that has been in this house for years. My mum and dad moved here in the mid 1980s. Prior to that we lived in Handforth but dad still worked in Manchester, cycling to work in all kinds of weather. When they moved back here he was happy for a while, especially as he was near to his brother, my uncle Raymond. Sadly, not long after moving Raymond died and dad was crushed.

He felt, I suppose, how I felt when my brother Colin died. Colin was younger than me so I just always assumed it would be me who would go first. Colin and I used to meet up in Manchester for a few beers and a wander around all our old city centre haunts. In recent years he found he couldn’t walk far so we tended to go to a local pub that was just a short bus ride away. Sometimes he would just get a taxi to my place where I could try out my limited cookery repertoire on him. The last time I ever saw him I cooked pizza from scratch and I’m happy to say it was a pretty nice meal.

One Last Memory

A lot of years ago I wrote a poem about the last dog that mum and dad ever had. He was a rescue dog called Bouncer as apparently, he was continually bouncing up and down. If that was the case dad certainly cured him of that.

The King of the garden is dead

And now the vultures come

For once before they would fear to tread

But not now, now the King is dead.

 

The King was a battered mongrel dog

Who kept his enemies at bay

And no cat would dare to enter his domain

Whatever the time of day

 

The cats roam fearless now

And in the midday sun can quietly lie

Or dance and play upon the ground

Under which the King’s bones do lie.

 

His memory seems to linger though for when I spied a feline gang

And called out ‘CATS’ as in days gone by

Tomcat, tortoiseshell and tabby too

Pelted hell for leather and rushed away

 

Now once again they fear to tread

This garden, this hallowed ground

And that mongrel dog, that former King

Who kept this land free from cats -His memory still lives on

Bouncer made sure no cat would ever trespass on the back garden and even today I too chase away the cats. Bouncer outlived my dad otherwise dad would have buried Bouncer in a corner of the garden somewhere.

Good job really. I wouldn’t want the cats to dance on his grave when I’m gone.

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Bob, Butch and Consequences

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Just lately I’ve been seeing a lot of those silly videos involving cats. Cats dancing to that old track by Bronski Beat, cats working in a coffee shop and slurping the milk and so on. I’ve written about cats in the past so I think it’s time for a quick post about dogs.

Here we go.

Looking back to my childhood, one thing I’ll always remember is our dog, Bob. My brother and I always wanted a dog and one day I remember playing outside, waiting for Mum and she came towards us holding a wicker basket and in the basket was Bob, a mongrel puppy but, according to my dad, ninety per cent Manchester Terrier.

He was named Bob because all my dad’s pet dogs were called Bob. There was Old Bob, before him there was Even Older Bob and then the Last Bob. Presumably if there had been one before him, he would have been In-between Bob.

Anyway, we grew up, my brother and I with Bob. He was a wonderful dog and we had some great times together. In the late 1960s we moved from Wythenshawe to Handforth, a distance of just over five and a half miles and after a few days in our new home Bob disappeared. We searched and searched but couldn’t find him. We went to the Police and the officer suggested that maybe Bob had gone back to our old house. “What? All the way to Manchester?” we asked.

“It’s been known!” he said.

We had no car so we walked back to our old house, and believe me it felt like a lot more than five miles. The neighbours had seen Bob about and after waiting a while he turned up, very pleased to see us.

Bob the Dog.

Where we lived in Handforth there was a dog called Butch who lived around the corner. Butch looked like the meanest, nastiest dog ever but he was actually a really friendly dog. When we took Bob out, Butch would follow us to the old RAF camp where we went for walks. Of course, Bob would not allow Butch to actually walk with us. Oh no! Butch would have to walk about five yards behind us and if he approached, Bob would bark and growl until Butch went back to his proper station. When we got to the field and Bob’s lead came off then all bets were off and the two raced about and played together but on the way back home, protocol had to be observed and Butch had to adopt the proper position or be barked and growled at.

I spent a lot of time on that old RAF camp as a child. It covered a huge area and there were various buildings all in various states of dilapidation. I made maps of the whole place and laid out various circuits among the camp roads. The main one I called Monza after the famous Italian race track. I used to charge around the place on my bike and my brother would time me and all my lap times would be entered into my notebook where I would highlight my weekly and monthly fastest laps.

One day a kart racing team appeared. I say team although it was just a father and son and a kart. We chatted about motorsport and I was always asking for a go in the kart but they always declined. Did that young kart racer go on to success as a racing driver? I don’t know but I’ve often wondered.

One day the council decided to address the state of the camp and bulldozers moved in and flattened all the old buildings. Later they dumped debris in various places across the camps roads so there were no more testing sessions and no more fast laps for me on my bike.

Butch’s owners were not the best or most responsible dog owners. Butch was an outside dog and when they went on holiday Butch was left to fend for himself until they returned and some of our neighbours thought Butch was a menace, a wild dog but he really wasn’t.

One day, during the school holidays, there was a knock on the door. Now, I do mean a proper knock, a real rat-tat-tat on the door knocker. When I opened the door no one was there except Butch, looking at me in askance. I assumed some kids had been messing about knocking on our door so I told Butch to go away and shut the door but a few minutes later there was the rat-tat-tat again. My Mum opened the door looked at Butch and said “Round the back Butch” and a few minutes later Butch turned up at the back door and my Mum gave him a few scraps to eat. It turned out this was a regular visit from Butch and Mum explained how Butch used to tap on the letterbox with his foot or his nose. He was a bright lad that Butch.

Anyway, one final dog story to finish with. I must be careful how I tell this one because I always seem to give the punch line away before the end. Anyway, here goes.

When I lived in a place called Newton le Willows back in the 1990’s I used to take our Labrador for a walk on the playing field round the corner after finishing work. There was a little snicket you walked down to the playing field and further up was some rough ground and a bit of a pond where we’d have a run around. On this particular day as I approached the path a youth on a mountain bike came hurtling down the path, passed me and was off. As I came to the field there was an old lady there who looked a little odd. Something about her wasn’t quite right so I went over and asked if everything was ok.

image courtesy of Grok

“No,” she answered. A lad on a mountain bike had just grabbed her hand bag and shot off. “I saw him,” I said. “He went off towards Newton. Stay here and I’ll run home and call the Police.”

“No,” said the lady. “It doesn’t matter,” and then she started to laugh, slowly at first, then developing into a great big hysterical laugh.

I wondered if this was some sort of shock reaction. Should I perhaps slap or shake her or something? The lady could see where my thinking was taking me and held up her hand. “I’m not mad, just a minute and I’ll explain.”

When she had calmed down, she told me that she came here every day to walk her dog but the dog always liked to have a poo on the football field. Well, she was aware of the kids playing football so she always used her poop scoop and picked up the dog mess but felt a little self-conscious walking back home carrying a bag of dog poo. Now this is the bit where you’ve probably pre-empted me and guessed what happened. The lady brought an old handbag with her to carry the poo and that’s what the hoodie biker had grabbed!

I can just imagine the face on him when he stopped to examine his goods. What would he find? Had it been pension day? Would he find a purse filled with money?

Well, when it comes down to it, he found exactly what he deserved!

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A Place in The Sun

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s nice to be back home in the UK after a month away in France. In France the late summer weather was wonderful and warm and back in England it looked for a while as if we had brought that lovely weather back with us. A few days later though, the temperature dropped and it began to rain and suddenly England was back to its usual default mode: cold and wet.

I’ve often wondered if I could survive away from England, if I could successfully move to somewhere like France for instance. Moving abroad is a bit of a pipe dream for me although I do subscribe to a number of French property pages and Liz and I have visited some potential homes but so far I haven’t found one that I have really wanted to buy.

We looked at a really attractive house near the village of Champagne-Mouton while we were away. It was a little on the small side but certainly big enough for me. It had two bedrooms although the second one was only accessible through the first one. Outside was a delightful garden area and the owners -they were both English- had put together an outside bar area where they entertained friends and neighbours.

Across the road was a barn where the couple had a large freezer and a washing machine. Their old lounge suite was in there and it was clear the man of the house used it as a man-cave. Next to the barn was a huge garden area and a short walk away was another outside area full of fruit trees and vines and where they grew various vegetables. That sort of layout with a garden across the road or even a short walk away is typical of French country properties. A few years ago we viewed a property near to the village of Mouliherne which also had land across the road and as much as I liked that place it was just too far away from civilisation.

There are numerous properties for sale in the French countryside and most of them are really cheap compared to property in the UK. There is a saying though in the property business which is location, location, location and that’s the thing. Once you find a place close to shops, bars and restaurants, all three of which -especially the last two- are high on my list, then prices begin to go up. Perhaps I’ll find a place one day, perhaps not. Until then we’ll carry on renting our favourite place in the village of Parçay les Pins and touring about in our little motorhome.

Why would I want to move to France? Well as I get older I find I really want somewhere warmer to live. I hate the cold, really hate the cold with a passion so I want to live somewhere warmer. France of course is not universally warm, except further south and even there I suppose they must have cooler weather in the winter. I do like the relaxed lifestyle of rural France and I like the food. In particular I like the multiple courses and especially the cheese course. In France we tend to look for routiers or routiers style restaurants. These restaurants are primarily for truck drivers but I’ve noticed lately that more and more of the general public are using them.

We found a new routier this year, it was called Le Maison Blanc. We were able to park in the car park for the night alongside the wagons and for a mere 35 euros for two we had a bottle of wine each (rosé for me, red for Liz) and a bottle of water. Over on the buffet starter table there were cold meats, pâtés and salads and on one side was a section with crushed ice with a choice of prawns, snails, crab and oysters and on the other side was a warm section offering slices of pizza and different pastries. On Thursdays the restaurant has a steak night. Liz had a steak but for me I’ve never really been keen on the way the French cook steaks. They do it with the minimal amount of cooking which is not quite enough for me. Anyway, normally at a routiers there is a choice of about three or four main dishes. Here at Le Maison Blanche the mains, apart from the steak, consists of a hot buffet. I think we visited about three times while we were in the area and I went for the meatballs and pasta one night and on another I had Bolognese with frites. On the third visit I had a mixture of everything and ate far too much.

In the main the French prefer a big lunch to a large evening meal. Perhaps things are different in the cities like Paris but out in the country that seems to be the norm. In the town we used to visit a few years ago, Doué la Fontaine, you can be hard pushed to get a restaurant seat on Saturday lunchtime but on Saturday evenings, in the few places that are open, most of the diners are English tourists.

The pool at our rented gite in France

What would I do in France? Well I suppose my day would be pretty much like a day when I stay in our rented gite. I usually wake round about 9:30 to 10 and drag myself up to make a brew. We always bring a good supply of tea bags but now I think about it, are tea bags available in French supermarkets? Well I’ve never actually looked but I suppose they must be. Well, I hope so otherwise I’d have to take steps to secure a supply of tea bags from friends in the UK. (I can see myself having to send out urgent messages. Tea bag supplies low. Please send urgent PG Tips!)

Usually we’ll have a cup of tea in bed while we check our messages and emails then it’s time for a wash (no point in having a shower as I’ll soon be in the pool). We usually bring supplies of bacon for breakfast but when we’ve used that up or just fancy a change, I’m pretty partial to eggs on toast but a favourite breakfast dish when we’re in France is a bacon omelette. It goes pretty well with a French baguette which is good when you can’t get hold of a medium Warburton’s loaf. (Not usually available in France.)

You can of course get UK style sliced bread in France but it isn’t particularly nice and seems designed to last for ages making me think it’s full of preservatives. It’s ok toasted but that’s about it. Most of the time we’ll just fall in with the French and buy a baguette.

Anyway that brings me to around 12 and it’s time to get out there to the pool and do my first ten laps. After that Liz and I will usually compete against each other to solve a sudoku. I don’t like to admit it but she usually wins. Then we’ll spend the afternoon reading and swimming which is altogether very relaxing. Of course to continue this lifestyle when living in France I’d have to buy a house with a pool or at least a house with space to build a pool.

Various things on the barbecue, Liz’s salad and of course, a glass of wine.

Later on we start to think about food and round about 6pm it’s probably time for me to decant some wine and get the barbecue set up. We have a small portable gas barbecue which when it comes down to it is really more of a grill but it’s really handy and cooks the food pretty well. If I lived in France, I reckon I’d be wanting a proper barbecue, you know, one with real coals. I do like a proper barbecue.

Anyway, we’d be eating pretty healthily, Liz makes a fabulous salad and although we drink a lot of red wine over there, red wine is supposed to be good for you. Later on when our steak, burgers and sausages have been eaten and everything has been cleaned up, it’s rather nice to sit out on the porch and take in the night sky. Out in the country where there is little light pollution, the night sky is a great vista of stars. I reckon that living out in France I’d be doing quite a lot of sitting out on the porch, with a glass of something naturally.

So, I could deal with the two possible issues, the tea and the bread situation. A bigger problem might be getting to grips with the French language but I’ve noticed in places like Parçay les Pins there is a pretty close knit English community so I’m sure I’d get help there and it’s always easier to learn a language when you’re actually in the place where that language is spoken.

The only real problem would be if I happened to want a donner kebab on a Saturday night when the nearest takeaway is 20 miles away and they don’t deliver.

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The Big Seven Zero

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It was my birthday last week and it was time for me to enter a new decade in my life. Yes, I’m now in my seventies and I’m not sure how I really feel about it. Anyway I thought I’d have a quick look back at some other milestones in my life just to get things in perspective.

On my 40th birthday, my partner at the time had arranged for me to have a helicopter flight. If I remember correctly it took place at Barton Aerodrome, not far from Manchester’s Trafford Centre. The helicopter was similar to one of those in one of my favourite childhood TV shows, Whirlybirds. It had a big glass bubble cockpit which had no doors, you just entered through an opening in the sides of the bubble.

There were only two passenger seats in the aircraft and there were actually quite a few people waiting to be taken up. As I watched the first trip go up, a young lad was called forward to fly next and as most people were in twos they asked for another singleton to go up next. That of course was me.

The helicopter landed and we ran forward with our heads down towards the helicopter. It was a little bit like the opening sequence of the TV show MASH except that instead of removing wounded soldiers, we were quickly strapped inside the passenger seats. The young lad went next to the pilot and I sat by the entrance opening. The helicopter lifted up and did a few circuits of the airfield including a tight right turn in which I felt that if my seat belt were to come undone, I would plummet out of the cockpit to my death. Anyway, I survived and after about 15 minutes we were back on the ground and the support staff were quickly helping us out and strapping in the next passengers.

When I became 50, I had just met Liz and she took me for a weekend to Barrow where we stayed at a really lovely bed and breakfast place in Barrow at a place called Roa Island.

For my 60th Liz and I had a weekend in Southport, a place I’ve always loved. It has all my favourite things, great bars and restaurants and lots of bookshops.  Then we returned home to spend my actual birthday at Ego in Lytham, another of our favourite restaurants.

The problem with being 70 is that my own image of a seventy-year-old is not really compatible with how I actually feel. Inside of course I don’t feel like 70 at all. To be honest, I haven’t actually changed much inside since I was about 19. I think I was about 19 when I became a bus conductor which was an occupation that forced me to confront my crippling shyness. Even today, 50 years later, I’m a quiet man lacking confidence in social situations. I’ve developed ways of dealing with shyness but sometimes I find myself feeling just how I was all those years ago.

Some time ago, and I can’t remember when it was, I went from looking forward to my birthdays to not being interested in them at all. In fact, I even think I’ve gone a little the other way. I don’t hate my birthdays but they worry me as with each one I just get older and older.

I’ve had 70 birthdays now which is quite a considerable number and one thing is certain, I won’t get another 70.

A few years ago I took my birthday off Facebook, I’m not sure why, perhaps I just don’t want people to know I’m so ancient. Perhaps inwardly I’m ashamed of being old but either way, Liz posted birthday wishes on Facebook which meant that removing my birthday was a pretty pointless exercise so I put it back on again.

Some time ago Liz and I joined a social group call Meetup. It’s a way of meeting new people and going to new social occasions. Members who are hosts will organise a night out at a restaurant for instance and anyone who is interested will put their names down to attend. You meet new people, have a bit of a natter and at the very least, have a nice meal.

For my birthday Liz asked Sophie, our local Meetup organiser, to arrange for a night out at a local restaurant called Tiggis and I have to say I was really surprised to find that thirty people attended instead of the six or so I was expecting.

Quite a few people mentioned that it was hard to believe I am actually 70. I suppose when it comes down to it, I’m not in bad shape for my age. Okay my neck gives me a lot of pain as well as my lower back. I can’t stand for long periods but I am alive and breathing. My vision is good and I can walk a fair distance.

Of course, those people who thought I was looking good are seeing me after a month in France where I was swimming or walking every day as well as having a pretty good tan so just lately, I’m looking my absolute best.

My father passed away when he was 72. All his working life he cycled to work and he was a much fitter man than me. I sometimes wonder if I’ll last until 72 but then as Liz reminded me the other day, my mother lived on until she was 93. I reckon I’ll be happy to settle for somewhere in between.

A few years ago, Pete, one of our favourite taxi drivers, got himself a new taxi. He used to have a traditional black hackney cab. Lots of room and easy to get into. The other month he picked us up driving a car which I first thought was a Range Rover. It’s not a Range Rover and the crazy thing is that on the outside it looks pretty big but on the inside it’s actually really small and the last time we used Pete I actually hurt my back trying to squeeze in. Sorry Pete but we’ll be calling someone else next time.

Of course, getting old isn’t all bad news. I’ve got a free bus pass which is quite handy. I can’t say I use it a great deal but travelling on the bus is much more comfortable than Pete’s taxi. (Sorry Pete) Also I am now eligible for those pensioners’ meal deals you sometimes see in pubs.

Number 23 anyone?

Not so long ago we went for Sunday lunch and I noticed the sign for the senior citizens’ meal which was almost half the normal price. Well, I thought, I’ll have some of that. We got in the queue for the carvery and the server handed me my plate. I handed him my ticket; he looked at it then took my plate back and gave me a half size one. Whoa, what’s this about I asked? It turned out that was the reason for the cheap price, it’s a smaller meal for us old age pensioners. That’s all very well but so far, despite being old, I’ve still got the same size stomach and I’ve still got a good appetite. Anyway, the server gave me a really funny look when he saw me going back to my table with this small plate piled about a foot high with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pud, mash, carrots and sprouts.

Here’s one final birthday story to finish. Mike, the DJ at our local pub quiz always calls out a birthday boy or girl for special attention. Last year I thought great, he’s forgotten about me but then when I went to look at the picture round who was that at number 23 staring back at me? Yep, it was old picture of me downloaded from Facebook.

Not many people got a point for that one but the team next to us thought it was a young Roger Moore. Yes, I can see the resemblance . .

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Heatwaves and Quizzes

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’m not sure what counts as a heatwave in other countries but here in the UK it seems to be a run of a few hot days. The recent heatwave lasted for around two weeks and during that time perhaps only five days were really extraordinarily hot. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking it, I like the warm weather even though we’re not really equipped to deal with it here in England.

Trains have been cancelled due to the heat, rails were expanding apparently but then, don’t they expand in hot places like Spain and Mexico? Apparently not. Why are we getting these heatwaves? Is the climate changing? Well, it certainly seems like it. Can we do anything about it? My opinion is no, we can’t. This planet that we all call home has gone through various different climatic periods throughout its 4.54 billion year existence. It’s been hot and it’s been cold and no doubt it looks like it going to be hot, or at least warmer again.

Extinct animals have been found in Siberia with fruits and grasses in their stomachs and I read recently that the sphinx in the Egypt has been weathered by water, meaning that for a time, the pyramids and the sphinx must have been underwater in the past, as well as Siberia once had a much warmer climate. Times change, just like the weather. This year Liz and I had disappointing weather in France in the spring. The previous year at the same time, the weather was wonderful.

As soon as the first cooler day appeared I have to say I did feel a certain amount of relief. Things were more comfortable. I could sleep without waking up sweating but then I actually began to miss the heatwave. I enjoyed lying in the sun in the back garden reading and doing puzzles with Liz. I enjoyed having barbecues. I enjoyed watching TV with the back door open and a comfortable breeze slipping through the house. I enjoyed going out for meals wearing just a short sleeved shirt, shorts and canvas shoes.

Typical press reporting of the heatwave. (Image credit: Daily Express)

After a few cooler days though, the sun came out and the temperatures began to rise and at bedtime we once again had the fan on in the bedroom.

At the moment I’ve got a big legal problem that’s occupying my mind and perhaps that’s why I haven’t really made full use of this lovely weather despite having a motorhome in which to travel. Anyway, I’ve been happy enough, reading and writing, watching TV and dining out with friends and of course having our weekly visit to our favourite pub quiz.

Our friend Mike runs the quiz night at the Lord Derby in St Annes. Liz and I are not accomplished quiz people but between us we have a fair knowledge of most things and when it comes to music, we both have our ‘specialist’ areas. Mine is the 1980s and Liz is pretty good with the 1970s. Neither of us are that great with the sixties though (we’re both far too young) but it’s even harder when you have a tricky quiz master to contend with.

I’m not sure how long we’ve been going to this particular quiz but it’s a very long time. We’ve had a few wins and plenty of disasters. In the past the winners received beer vouchers but recently they have upped the prize to a £25 voucher which is always nice to win.

The quiz starts off as usual with the picture round. Twenty five pictures of famous and not so famous people and always portrayed in the picture sheet at their very worst so as to make it so much harder to guess who they are. I have to say we are pretty good at this round and Liz and I are good at prompting each other. (Who is that guy who played Steed in the Avengers I might ask? Was it Patrick Macnee says Liz? Who is that comedian you like Liz asks? Is it Jack Dee I answer?) Of course, there are always the problem faces and sometimes we have to barter with other teams (tell me number four and I’ll tell you number fifteen!)

Patrick Macnee in a photo he sent to me after I wrote to him as a child fan of The Avengers

On one occasion I remember being foxed by a picture of a football manager but I was pretty certain he was an Italian. I texted my friend Andy ‘Tell me some Italian football managers who manage a UK team!’ Andy gave me various options, none sounded right but I chose one. The guy turned out to be José Mourinho, a football manager from Portugal! Sometimes, no knowledge at all is better than a little! Oh well, another point lost.

The next part is the music quiz. Ten decades and two tracks for each decade. Our quiz master will usually give us a bit of a clue so he’ll throw in two numbers to help us with the years. Now on the particular occasion I want to talk about he gave us 1 and 7 so the first year would be 1961, the next 1967 then 1971 and so on. Now, and this is pretty important, Mike mentioned that as usual, the year he is after is the year of highest chart placing. Starting to get a hint of his trickiness? I thought so.

We quickly identified the two sixties tracks, Del Shannon and the hit single ‘Runaway’ and the Kinks with ‘Waterloo Sunset’.

So, all the sixties tracks out of the way so we could concentrate on the others and in this endeavour, we used to invite John and Kurt, two young guys in their twenties to our table for their up to date music knowledge. (You can see how ruthless we are!) Sadly, we haven’t seen either of those two for a long time but of course there are other quizzers willing to barter answers.

The final music track was designed to totally confuse us because Mike played another sixties release, Frank Ifield and the yodelling song! We should have been ready for it really because, as I’ve said, Mike made much of the importance of the year of highest chart placing, however, we were snookered. I personally thought Runaway had been a re-release and we changed our answers but the sad truth is that Frank Ifield’s single ‘She taught me how to Yodel’ was re-released in 1991 and was a bigger seller then than in the sixties.

The final round is a fairly quick fire general knowledge round. It always starts with a long forgotten music track from an eighties one hit wonder singer or band. It’s always something that we know and that rings a bell but reaching out for that elusive performer isn’t always easy. After that we get questions like what year did the Titanic sink? (1912)

Name 4 US states that begin with the word ‘New’? (New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey and New York)

Which battle started on the 1st July 1916? (Battle of the Somme)

What was the name of the famous streaker at Twickenham in January 1982 during an England v Australia rugby match? (Erika Roe)

Time to get a quick pint in before marking the answers and then we find out that two guys sat out at the far end of the pub were the winners. Despite accusations of using their mobile phones they take the big prize.

Oh well, no £25 voucher for us on that occasion. But we’ll be back next Thursday for another shot.

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1973

Posted on by Steve Higgins

1973 was really a significant year for me. It was my first record buying year and the year I left school and for this week I thought I’d have another look back in the dusty avenues of my memory and see what was happening back then.

For Christmas the previous year my mother had given my brother and me a shared present. It was a portable stereo record player. At the time neither myself nor my brother were that interested in the pop charts. The first album I bought was a collection of TV theme tunes by composer John Barry. Barry wrote a number of famous tunes for both TV and the cinema. He is probably best remembered for a tune he didn’t write, the James Bond theme tune. There was actually quite a controversy over the authorship of the tune. Monty Norman is credited as the writer of the music although it was John Barry’s jazz arrangement of the theme that most people are familiar with.

Monty Norman won two libel actions against publishers for claiming that Barry wrote the theme, most recently against The Sunday Times in 2001.

The theme is used in the first Bond film Dr No and then in all the subsequent 007 films with varying different arrangements reflecting the musical tastes of the times in which the films were made. In Daniel Craig’s first Bond film Casino Royale, the theme isn’t heard until the very end of the film.

The title track from the album is the theme from The Persuaders, a TV show starring future James Bond, Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. The pair played Lord Brett Sinclair and US businessman Danny Wilde who are recruited by a retired judge to fight crime. Tony Curtis drove my favourite car of all time in the series, a Ferrari Dino 246 GT. Price tag today, anything between £500,000 to a million.

In 1973 Roger Moore made his debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die. My brother and I went to see it at the cinema. He enjoyed it, but as much as I’ve always loved Roger, I wasn’t keen on his Bond films. The film’s theme song was written and performed by Paul McCartney and Wings.

What else was on TV in 1973? The pilot episode of Porridge starring Ronnie Barker was first shown on BBC1. Another great comedy series making its TV debut was Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. The series was in the news a few years ago when Rodney Bewes who played Bob sadly passed away. He had wanted to appear in a follow up to the series set in the present day with the two ‘likely lads’ as old men. Co-star James Bolam declined and in fact there was a lot of talk in the media about a falling out between the two and the pair never speaking to each other again.

Bewes died in 2017 and Bolam denied any feud telling BBC Radio, “This is what happens in acting; you work with people, you get to know them, you like them, we have a great time and the job finishes and you go off and it all starts again with other people and you can’t keep contact with everybody that you know.”.

Two series from the US that I was very fond of were MASH and Kung Fu.

MASH was a series based on a book and film about US army surgeons in Korea who worked in a mobile army hospital unit. Alan Alda played the wisecracking Hawkeye Pierce and the series ran for many years combining humour and drama in a most impressive way. It perhaps ran a few years longer than it should have done and the later episodes were not as good as the earlier ones, at least in my opinion.

Kung Fu was a cowboy western series with a twist. It wasn’t about gun slinging cowboys but about Kwai Chang Caine, a half American, half Chinese boy who is accepted into a Shaolin monastery in China and tutored in the arts of philosophy as well as martial arts. As a grown man, Caine is forced to flee to America. Cue some impressive slow-motion fights where Caine, played by David Carradine, wipes out numerous knife wielding and gun toting bad guys. Cue a load of flashback philosophising too. I loved it and looking over at my DVD shelf where I can see Kung Fu and MASH DVD boxsets; I suppose I’m still fond of those shows today.

In 1973 I bought my first vinyl singles. They were Banks of the Ohio and What is Life both sung by Olivia Newton John. I got them for half price each as they were no longer in the charts, 48 pence if I remember correctly; what a bargain! Later in the year I discovered Elton John and began buying his albums. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was the first one I ever bought.

The poster that graced my bedroom wall back in 1973

My singles collection began to pile up as my interest in music flourished. My brother and I used to tape the weekly BBC Top Twenty and in the summer holidays we were glued to my combined radio and tape deck listening to the new chart which Johnny Walker played on a Tuesday lunchtime on Radio One.

My brother later became rather jealous of my singles collection and he saw an advert in one of those pop newspapers, New Musical Express or Rolling Stone perhaps, and bought a huge collection of ex jukebox records. We had a lot of fun sorting through and playing them and we commenced what would be a lifetime of swapping records which would end up, months later of repeated scenes of me finding a record in his collection which I claimed was mine and he would counter ‘yes but I swapped that one for this one so it’s really mine!’

What was happening in the UK in 1973? Well, I vaguely remember the ‘cod wars’ which was a dispute between the UK and Iceland over fishing rights. The Royal Navy even sent frigates out to protect British vessels.

The UK joined the EEC, the forerunner of the European Union.

On the 26th March, Noel Coward died. He was in bed reading a book by one of his favourite authors, E Nesbit. I knew Noel was a great fan of Nesbit and I’m sure I had heard or read somewhere that when he died, he was reading his favourite of that author’s books, The Railway Children. A quick bit of internet research and I see that Noel died after reading Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle. Coward discovered the books as a child and revisited them many times during his life.

In 1973 President Nixon began his second term as US president and not long after he signed a peace accord with Vietnam, ending the Vietnam war.

Later in the year the Watergate scandal seemed to grow and grow and numerous people were fired by Nixon. Various others resigned and in July, it was revealed in senate hearings that Richard Nixon had installed a tape recording system in the White House.

The former Refuge Assurance building

On October 20 the so-called Saturday Night Massacre began. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refuses and resigns, along with Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General Robert Bork, third in line at the Department of Justice, then fires Cox. The event started calls for Nixon’s impeachment. Nixon finally resigned in August, 1974.

In 1973 having left school clutching my four O levels I went for two interviews in Manchester city centre. One went really well. It was in a steel and glass modern office block with open plan working areas. I really liked the place and was hoping to get the job. Next, I had another interview at the Refuge Assurance Company on Oxford Road. The building and offices were very old fashioned and I didn’t really fancy working there. As it happened, Refuge offered me a job and I started work there a few weeks later.

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One Old Picture

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week’s post is about the picture just below. Not a particularly outstanding picture I know but that house is the one in which I spent most of my childhood. I took the picture a long time ago after a sort of nostalgic drive around my old neighbourhood of Wythenshawe in Manchester. Yes, the house with the white door, that’s my old home. It’s changed a bit since I lived there. The privet hedge has gone and the car space is new. One amazing thing I found out on that visit is that the walk to my old junior school, which seemed to be a heck of a walk as I remember it, (surely at least a thirty or even forty minute walk) was actually more of a ten minute walk, well, it was a long time since I walked to my junior school. I stopped in the road, took my picture, became lost in thought for a moment as a thousand memories crowded my mind, then drove off.

Those memories and other ones always come back every time I look at that picture. I happened to be looking at it this week as I scanned through some of my old posts looking for inspiration. The photo only took a moment to take but it’s nice to think about that house and all the happy times I had there. Not only that, my Grandmother and Grandfather lived there before us. They later moved to Prestatyn in Wales and my Mum and Dad took over the house when they were first married so it’s almost like a little bit of Higgins’ history, wrapped up in a picture.

Wythenshawe is supposed to be the biggest council estate in Europe, at least I remember reading that somewhere. When my dad left school at 14 during the Second World War the estate was surrounded by farms and market gardens. Gradually as the estate became larger the farms were swallowed up and built on. Dad worked on a farm in those early days and one day he decided to show me that same farm he’d worked on. I doubted there would be much to see but he took me through some unfamiliar streets and we came to a green with a few trees and there, just at the head of the green was an old house. The house was surrounded by the council estate which had been built around it. This, he told me used to be the farmhouse where he once worked. The green had once been part of the orchard. As we looked closer, I could see that the trees were pear trees and I tried to imagine this place in a rural setting, instead of the urban one it had become.

Dad worked for Manchester Highways and his job title was, if I remember correctly, a flagger’s mate. His job was to lay pavement flags throughout Wythenshawe in south Manchester as well as to work tarmacing roads and repairing potholes. He rode to work on his bicycle every day of his working life armed only with his backpack containing his lunch; his sandwiches made by my mother and his brewcan. He used to use that brewcan even when he retired. Where he got the hot water from when working on the roads I don’t know unless he either went back to the Highways office or perhaps asked people where he was working to top up his brewcan.

The Highways depot where dad worked closed down years ago and now a small private housing estate occupies the spot where he used to work. Funnily enough, just next door on Fenside Road was my old school, Sharston High School. It was demolished years ago and in its place there is now another private housing estate which is surrounded by the same old iron fence that encircled our school many years ago.

Our school gym still stands on Fenside road. It is now some sort of fitness or sports centre. Apart from those railings I mentioned it is the only surviving reminder of our old school.

The school was large and was built in a sort of ‘C’ shape. There was a north and a south side and inside the ‘C’ were the school playing fields; cricket and football for the boys and rounders for the girls. On the north side -to be honest I’ve always got the north and south sides mixed up, but the top of the ‘C’ anyway- there now stands a nursing home and it was here that my mother spent the last years of her life suffering with dementia.

Getting back to my old house, I was living there in July 1969 and one morning when mum got me up for school I came downstairs for breakfast to find that the TV was on. Now back in 1969 there were only two TV channels (or was it three?) Anyway, neither of them broadcast in the early morning but this was a pretty special day as Apollo 11 had landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking about on the moon’s surface.

I was 12 years old at the time and I was crazy about sci-fi and space travel and how on earth my mother managed to drag me away from the TV and off to school, I’ll never know.

Back in the late 60s was when I got my first adult sized bicycle and I learned to ride it in the very street in the picture. It was a big bike and my feet couldn’t quite reach the ground so it was important to either stop by the kerb or jump off the seat before coming to a stop.

Like many other local kids my friends and I made a soapbox cart with some wood and parts of an old pram and we careered through the streets with it. One time my friend Gary Chapman was given a set of walkie talkies by his dad for Christmas and he and I used to chat to each other at night as our houses were pretty close together. We used to have conversations like this;

ME: Gaz, are you receiving?

Gaz: Gaz here. Loud and clear. Are you receiving Ste?

ME: Steve here. Loud and clear.

GAZ: Receiving you loud and clear Ste.

Years later when I worked for the Highways Agency and became the radio dispatcher, I would be using the radio once again, this time to deploy officers to incidents on the motorway network in conversations like this:

Me at work in the Highways control room.

ME: Romeo Echo 24, can you make to an RTC on the M6 northbound just after junction 18, over.

RE24: Message received. ETA 10 minutes.

Once I was training a new staff member called Clive and he took a message from a patrol which had encountered a pedestrian on the network. We contacted the Police and they seemed quite interested and asked for the person’s name and date of birth. We passed the details over to the police but the pedestrian had one of those dual gender names, something like Leslie Smith. The police came back again asking for the pedestrian’s gender and Clive, the trainee was having a difficult time. He wasn’t making himself particularly clear over the airwaves which wasn’t helped by the patrol being stuck in one of those airwave black spots where reception was bad.

CLIVE: Is the pedestrian a man or woman? Over.

RE24; Say again control, over.

CLIVE: The police are asking for the sex of the person, over.

RE24: You’re breaking up control, please repeat, over.

CLIVE: Can you confirm the sex of the pedestrian, over.

RE24: No answer.

CLIVE: Romeo Echo 24, we need the sex, over.

No answer

CLIVE: Romeo Echo 24, I need the sex, I WANT THE SEX!

Cue for the entire control room to burst into gales of laughter.

That’s probably enough memories and personal history for this week, all inspired by one photo taken on my mobile phone so many years ago. Looking at it again, I find myself wondering what the house is like inside. Would I recognise any of it? Perhaps there will be a new kitchen. What is the garden like? Will our old coal bunker still be there? Will it all be different?

One thing is certain, the people who I remember, the people who used to live there, are all gone.

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More French Stuff

Posted on by Steve Higgins

When we get close to my publishing deadline, the usual one of Saturday at 10:00am UK time, my inner manager starts to mither me. I usually get things like Steve, it’s Thursday, has your proofreader checked your post yet? Have you got the graphics ready? Any pictures? What about video links? I get the same thing on Friday except in a slightly more urgent tone; STEVE! IS THE POST READY YET? And so on.

This week I seem to have arrived at Friday with only two partly written posts and one of those is a longer version of a post I’ve done before. I wasn’t sure what to do and then I came up with an idea. What about merging the two posts together?

Wait a minute, merging the two totally different themes into one stand alone post? Is that possible? Suppose I used all my writer/blogger creative authorly skills and actually did that? I’d be a sort of creative writing genius, well I would, wouldn’t I?

OK I said. Let’s give it a go.

Some weeks ago I thought it was about time I sorted out my water rates. They are pretty low but they are in my late mother’s name. She died many years ago and I did inform the water people. I mean they send messages to my phone, send emails to my email address. I had a feeling that they had mixed up Mr(s) Higgins with Mr S Higgins, just like they used to do years ago when I lived at home. Anyway, I called up the water people, put them straight and immediately they put up my water rates to a quite shocking figure. That can’t be right, I complained. Well, the only way they could reduce the bill further was by fitting a water meter. Could they sort it out before I left for France? As it happens, yes, they could.

As I don’t really spend a lot of time at home, I’m either up in St Annes with Liz or off out in our motorhome, I was hoping that the water meter could be a really big saving. Anyway, the guy from the water board (United Utilities in 21st century speak) arrived on time and he was really good, a really friendly, chatty and helpful guy, a huge improvement on the last person to come to my house to do work who had exactly zero people skills whatsoever.

I was a very happy guy but a few days later I got a text from the water people. It asked me to reply using numbers, 1-10, to rate the service I had received. Naturally I texted 10.

The response was instant. We don’t understand your message, please call 0800 blah blah blah. Text deleted. Why did I even bother?

Anyway, part of this blog is supposed to be about my holiday in France so let’s talk a little about that.

Our holiday was a sort of mixed bag. The first week we were away the weather was pretty good and then it went cold, actually really cold. The first week was spent travelling which can actually be really nice in a motorhome. My iPad and laptop come along with me as well as a selection of books so I have all sorts of things around to keep me entertained. Usually, we travel to places that have a plan d’eau, a swimming lake so we can have a dip and simultaneously cool down and enjoy a little exercise. This year we made straight for a house that we regularly rent in the village of Parçay les Pins and it was there, just as we settled down by the pool with the barbecue pretty much set up and ready to light, that the weather turned cold. It was like that for almost 3 weeks.

Although it was cold, our pool was heated so we could swim in it which we did, although the hard part was actually exiting the warm pool into a rather cold wind. Still, after a spirited swim and some equally spirited towelling followed by the quick popping on of a fleece, everything felt rather good. We even managed to barbecue outside, both wrapped up in our fleeces again although we were able to dispense with them when the sun came out and then quickly grab them when it went cold again.

One day, round about the beginning of our last week there, the heat suddenly ramped up very quickly. It was almost as if some unseen hand had switched on the exterior central heating and things went from cold -we were wearing fleeces and had the inside heating on- to T-shirt and shorts weather, in fact most of the time it was too hot for even a T shirt.

A typical day on holiday goes something like this. I usually wake up about 7am but as our motorhome has a fixed bed and my place is over by the window I either have to climb over Liz to get out or just turn over and go back to sleep.

Usually, I just go back to sleep. Round about 10am is a good time to surface and put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea. Like any decent English man and woman, we believe that the day’s business cannot possibly begin until after a cup of tea. Round about 12 we might gravitate towards the bathroom for a wash and brushing of the teeth and for me, a shave. On this trip our water pump conked out so we had no choice but to fill up numerous containers with water and use one of those to fill up the basin.

Breakfast, this being France, is usually a croissant sliced in half and buttered and filled with jam. Then we are all set to either hit the road or relax outside and perhaps read a book or take a swim, assuming we are parked by a lake somewhere. This year we didn’t do much lake swimming but we did spend a lot of time in the pool of our rented house.

At the weekends and bank holidays we tend to go off in search of village fêtes and vide greniers. Vide greniers are the French version of a car boot sale and usually these events will always have a bar serving beer and wine as well as a food tent which will usually be frîtes (chips) and sausages. Little village committee members man the bar and food areas and sometimes things will be very organised although some will be the exact opposite. One fête we visited had a caisse, a cashier who sold everyone plastic tokens (jetons) and these tokens were used to buy drinks and food. If you had any left over you had to return to the caisse and cash in your tokens.

In the evening we would usually have a barbecue, made much easier these days by our little ‘Camping Gaz’ gas barbecue which means we don’t have to wait yonks for the barbecue to get going or have to have it relit (a common occurrence when I’m in charge of the coals). Yes, our little gas barby clips together in minutes, the gas bottle is slapped into place and we are ready for those burgers.

On our last week it was so hot I was usually a big sweaty mess after carrying out the cutlery, food, drinks and everything else so it was actually pretty wonderful to slip into the pool just before eating and cool down.

Stepping out of the pool into a warm towel and a cold glass of rose must be the height of luxury. I certainly thought so!

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French Stuff

Posted on by Steve Higgins

We started out on our usual May mtorhome holiday with a trip down to the south of England staying at a place we have stopped at before. The Jolly Boatman is a pub by the side of the Oxford canal which winds its way from the south of England all the way to Birmingham. The Jolly Boatman is a little bit pricey for us northern folk but even so, it’s a friendly place and the food and beer are nice.

After a stay there we made our way over to Newhaven ready to board the ferry to Dieppe the next day. We stayed overnight at the Hope Inn in Newhaven, another pub which allows motorhomers to stay in their car park as long as you eat or drink in their establishment.

As it happens Liz had done some very thorough research and found that not only did the Hope Inn serve food but also there was a quiz night on the very night we had arranged to stay. So, we ordered some beers and a nice selection of Tapas and as much as I’d like to say we won the quiz, we sadly didn’t. Even so it was a fun night.

The next morning it was a short hop over to the ferry terminal and a few hours later we arrived in Dieppe. From there we drove down to one of our favourite stopovers in France, the L’Escale restaurant just south of Rouen.

The manager always welcomes us and lets us park in the staff car park away from all the overnighting wagons and HGVs. On this night though the following day was a bank holiday and as the place would be closed we had to park in the car park. We got chatting to a couple of English HGV drivers there who told us that French wagons are not allowed to run on the bank holiday but they were still planning to drive on anyway and risk being stopped by the French police as their boss wanted them back home.

The next day dawned lovely warm and sunny. The bank holiday was to celebrate VE Day, Victory in Europe Day back in 1945. 81 years ago!

For tea we had salad and cold meats, one of my favourite meals for a hot day, washed down with plenty of red wine of course. Afterwards the fromage came out and we sat and ate our cheese as the sun gradually dipped down over the horizon. In the warm evening the soft French cheeses melt and take on a new consistency as we smooth it over our crusty bread. There is something so very exotic about having cheese and wine on a warm evening, something that happens only rarely in England.

My favourites are Rondelé Bleu, a commercial cheese found in various supermarkets in France and a good Tomme. Tomme de Savoie is my real favourite but today we are eating Tomme de Montagne which is really lovely.

It is really only in restaurants where my poor schoolboy French comes into its own and I can ask for a table pour deux and a cinqante centilitre pichet of vin rouge and by the way what is the plat du jour?

One thing I feel I do know in France are my French numbers although I do have a blind spot around sixteen; onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, something (actually seize) and then dix sept, dix huit, dix neuf and vingt. Sixteen gets me every time.

I’ve always thought that it is interesting how the French use numbers for instance in a telephone number. Let’s take a made-up number, 0161 932 4646 for instance. We English would just repeat the digits so we’d say oh, one, six, one and so on. For the French this is far too easy, they say the number in multiples of two so for that 0161 number they would say, zero one, sixty one, ninety three, twenty four and so on! The larger numbers in French are really odd. Sixty in French is soixante but seventy is soixante dix; sixty and ten. Ninety is even more difficult: quatre vingt dix; in other words, four times twenty and ten!

I do love the French way of eating, the entrée, plat, fromage et dessert and plenty of bread, I do feel though that French cuisine is a little over rated. The fact of the matter is, some of the things that the French like to eat, well, they are just a little bit odd.

If you think about it, you can perhaps imagine ancient man many thousands of years ago. Picture him now, taking a good look at something like a cow for instance and thinking, “you know, bet there’s some tasty meat on that animal. I could slaughter it, cut a thick wedge of meat off, slap it on a griddle over the fire, some salt and pepper and bet it would taste lovely!” Yes, that’s thinking that I can understand, especially later when that same ancient man refined his original idea by adding a baked potato or a few chips to the meal and maybe even a side salad.

The ancestors of today’s Frenchmen must have thought in a different way, well different to us Anglo Saxons that is. Just imagine some ancient Frenchman in the same situation but instead of checking out the cow he has his eyes on a frog, hopping merrily about and croaking, as they do, and he begins to think like this: “Hey, wonder if I killed that frog, chopped its legs off and cooked them in a little garlic, what would they be like?” A thought that would never occur to any right minded Englishman in a million years! Imagine another Frenchman, coming out of his cave on a damp morning and noticing a lot of snails wandering about in his back garden: “Hey, why don’t I cook those with some shallots and garlic?” he thinks. “What a great idea!” Wrong! Crazy idea! Take another look at that cow Monsieur!

A few years ago a worrying situation occurred when a random warning light appeared on the dashboard of our van. A quick check on Google showed it to be an engine fault. I started to worry that the engine might be ready to conk out so we went to a friendly garage and they plugged in their diagnostic equipment. They weren’t sure what the problem actually was so they suggested we go to a Ford garage as our van was of course, a Ford. The garage wouldn’t accept any money so we went off to a Ford garage and after what seemed like hours they emerged from their garage and told us not to worry, the engine was ok to drive but you owe us 150 Euros!

This year the same engine light popped up again even though the van had been serviced just a few days prior to us departing the UK. Once again I looked up the fault on Google and once again found the bland answer; engine fault. This time I noticed a YouTube video come up in the results and thought it might be worth a look. A slightly embarrassed Asian man told his viewers that the fault could be one of 4 things, the first one being that the diesel cap was not shut properly. Pause the video while I check the diesel cap and yes, I had not put it back on correctly. Cap sorted and I turned on the ignition and the fault had cleared! If only I had seen that video last year!

We had another small issue with our van on this holiday which I hate to admit was probably entirely my fault. After getting the van up and running again now that spring is here I filled up the water tanks ready for our trip. One thing I neglected to do was shut off the tap in the bathroom when I locked up. (During the winter months I drain all the water and leave the taps open.) With the tap still running all the water emptied but happily still left open was the waste water drain plug otherwise I would have flooded the van!

Anyway, I shut off the taps and filled up again and everything seemed ok but the taps kept making a harsh gurgling noise. Later they conked out completely so when we get home I’ll have to get a new water pump and find someone to fit it. I’ve always wished I was one of those men that can fix things, you know like leaky taps, fit outside electric lights, knock down and build walls, sort problems out on cars and so on. There was a time many years ago when I could change the oil on my car, change the spark plugs and do other stuff. Those days are but a distant memory and once back home I’ll be surfing through Google trying to find someone who can help.

Surfing though, I am quite good at that . . .

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Old Friends and School Memories

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This last week I met up with two of my old friends, both of whom I haven’t really seen for perhaps thirty years. Carl (names have been changed to protect the innocent) was a lad I first met at junior school. We met through a mutual school friend called Peter as Peter and Carl lived in the same avenue.

Carl’s brother Martin and I once shared a flat together in Didsbury. It was a rather nice place as I remember. It was small and I had the best bedroom because I think it was me who had paid the deposit or at least the bulk of it and it was right in the centre of Didsbury, a stone’s throw from numerous pubs, bars and takeaways.

Martin seemed to have a lot of health problems when he was younger. Once, many years ago, I used to work nights and when I came home one morning, Martin’s three alarm clocks went off in succession, each placed further away from his bed so he would have to get up to switch them off. I went to bed and was soon asleep. I woke up at about 3pm and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As I sat down in the lounge to drink it, Martin staggered in having just got out of bed. “What time is it?” he asked.

We laughed about that in the pub the other day. I and others used to pull his leg about being lazy and being a hypochondriac but as it turned out, Martin had MS; multiple sclerosis, not an easy disease to spot even now.

Carl was the best man at my wedding and I was his best man when he married. We lost regular contact over the years especially when I moved out of Manchester to Merseyside. Anyway, it was good to meet up again and after a while the three of us slipped pretty easily into the old comfortable camaraderie we used to have.

We filled each other in about marriages, divorces and new partners. About jobs and retirements as well as about old friends and acquaintances.

We talked a lot about our schooldays. We all went to the same school and way back then, my two top subjects were English language and art. In fact, now I think of it, I was the toast of the art class. People loved my paintings and drawings and I loved art. Our art teacher was a guy called Mr Markland. He wasn’t a man with a great affinity for people. In fact he was a rather cool customer but I always liked him and got on well with him. Martin though hated the guy.

Another teacher, probably the most disliked teacher in the school was Mr Ashton, the metalwork teacher. He had a rather bad habit of getting very angry at his students and throwing whatever was handy at them. As this was the metalwork class, that would be something metal and heavy. Many a time a hammer or a chunk of metal flew past my head towards some offending pupil. What would have happened had he hit someone, well I don’t know. Maybe he had a good aim and was choosing to deliberately miss students. Of course, that was an age free of the health and safety restraints that we currently endure. We all had our Mr Ashton stories to tell.

Mr Markland was a superb artist. I remember one day sketching something. I think we had to produce some kind of large human figure. I had chosen a cowboy for some reason and Mr Markland took my pencil and started to make some gentle curves on the paper. He held the pencil not like someone would hold a pencil to write but in the way someone would hold a paintbrush, holding it lightly at the top and making these confident curves on the paper.  After a few moments the shape of the cowboy became apparent; the waistcoat, the bandana tied around the neck, the gun belt at an angle, the hat and so on. I have always wished I could draw like that.

One day there came the moment when we had to choose. Choose which subjects we wanted to study and to take forward to O level or beyond. When I look back now my thinking then was just, well, bonkers!

My number one love in those days was motor racing and I harboured some kind of distant idea of working in motor sport, of perhaps even being a racing driver. Problem number 1: we had no family car and my dad couldn’t drive so any idea of doing what Jensen Button and his dad later did in Karts went out of the window. Anyway, that’s why I chose metalwork because I thought I could become a mechanic, get work with some motor sporting garage and maybe break into motorsport like that. The thing was that when we came to choose our subjects it wasn’t just ‘I want to study this’ and ‘I want to study that’, it was a case of this OR that. Chemistry or biology for instance, you couldn’t do both. I wasn’t happy and it had come to a straight choice of metalwork or art. Foolishly, metalwork won. After all, a metalwork O level would help me get a job whereas an art O level, well, what could that do for me? (What a fool I was!)

One day I met Mr Markland in the corridor and he stopped me and said “Steve, you’re going the wrong way. We’ve moved to the new art room on the first floor.”

It was then I had to tell him. “Mr Markland, I’m going to the metalwork class.”

“Metalwork?”

“Yes. I’m in the metalwork class.” Clearly, he didn’t understand. “I chose metalwork.”

Mr Markland looked as though he had been slapped in the face by a wet kipper. “You chose metalwork instead of art?”

“Yes,” I said meekly.

Mr Markland thought for a moment and then said, “I see,” and walked on. He never spoke to me again.

It would be nice to record that I excelled in metalwork, left school and became a mechanic for a formula one team. The fact is I hated metalwork although the hated Mr Ashton became a much nicer teacher now that he knew (well, thought he knew) that I actually liked his class. After many years of hard graft, I produced a metal bolt that was rather stiff. I thought I could attach it to the back door but when it was screwed to the door it proved rather difficult to open. One day my mum told my dad, “Get that bloody bolt off that door. I can’t get the door open in a morning!”

I gave up the idea of working in a formula one team. Instead, I had a new vocation. I would become a journalist. I went to my careers teacher, Mr Sherrif and told him.

“So how are you going to do that then?” he said.

Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to tell me what to do?

“I’m not sure,” I answered.

“Ever thought of going to the Manchester Evening News?”

Now, that’s more like it. “That’s a good idea,” I said.

“Only they don’t take trainees.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I’ve got just the thing for you.”

Mr Sherrif rummaged around on his desk, produced various papers, flicked through a notebook and dialled a number. After some idle chit chat he seemed to be arranging an appointment, I could hear my name mentioned and something about ‘nine thirty’ tomorrow. Of course, he’s onto the Evening News. He’s got me a job interview and to think people say Mr Sherrif is rubbish and all he ever does is get people interviews at Barclays Bank!

“There you are,” said Mr Sherrif when he put down the phone. He scribbled something on a slip of paper.

“Tomorrow at nine thirty. You know where Barclays bank is don’t you?”

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