Category Archives: The story of my life!

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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Saturday Nights

Posted on by Steve Higgins

My book, Floating in Space, is set in the Manchester of the late seventies. There were no smartphones, no internet and no wireless networks. In fact, ‘wireless’ was an old fashioned word for the radio. I’m tempted to say that things moved at a slower pace then but that’s not true. Things just moved at a different pace. In 2025 you hear a lot about pubs closing down but back in 1977, pubs were far from closing down; at the weekend they were the place to be! That was where my friends and I met up, drank beer, listened to music and chatted up the ladies. Saturdays were the focus of our week back then but these days I’m actually not that keen on going out on a Saturday. I much prefer a weekday night out; things are a little quieter and there are fewer drunken idiots.

Having said that, Liz and I went into St Annes last Saturday to see our friends, Ray and Dean, perform as the Boogie Brothers at the Pier Inn. The Pier Inn is only a few years old and it’s a rather small little pub. The night we went in it was a hot and muggy evening and even with the door open it was hot in there so we decided to take a break and pop into Wetherspoons which we expected to be much cooler and it was. It did strike me though that most of the clientele in both those pubs were pretty similar to my own age group. OK there were a few young people but most people out that night were in my particular age bracket. Where do young people go these days on a Saturday night?

Back in 1977 Saturday nights were the culmination of the weekend for my twenty-one year old self. I always preferred it to Friday nights because things were more relaxed, there was no rushing home from work, no rushing to get your tea down your neck so you can get changed, then leg it out for the bus. Saturday, you could take your time and leisurely work up to things. Sometimes I would go out shopping and buy myself something new to wear for that evening, a shirt, or perhaps even a new pair of trousers. Then later I would have a long relaxed soak in the bath and dress unhurriedly in my room to the tune of my favourite music. In 1977 my favourite album was Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ and as I dressed I would mimic Nigel Olsson’s measured and rhythmic drumming to ‘The Ballad of Danny Bailey’, or ‘Candle in the Wind’.

These days I just pop into the bathroom, have a shave and a shower and throw on one of a number of short sleeved shirts that I tend to favour. Still, even back in 1977 I could sometimes get bored with the usual pubs and bars in Manchester. I remember one boozy night in which my friend Chris and I decided to go out on the train somewhere. We ended up in Nantwich if I remember correctly. We took our tent and put it up somewhere in a field or a park and proceeded to spent the night drinking in a local pub.

The next morning we woke in our tent which had partially collapsed around us. We staggered up and packed everything away and thought about making our way to the railway station. As we walked into the town various people hailed us ‘Hi Steve!’ ‘Hi Chris!’

We dropped into the local pub and the barman greeted us like old friends. ‘Great night last night wasn’t it?’ he said.  I guess it must have been.

Here are a few facts about Saturday compiled after a quick search of the internet.

Saturday is named after Saturn, the Roman God of agriculture.

Saturday is the 6th day of the week in western culture although in some places the first day of the week is considered to be Sunday, making Saturday the last day of the week.

In Hinduism, Saturday is dedicated to the planet Saturn and is considered a day for spiritual cleansing and fasting. Devotees may visit temples and perform special rituals on this day, or abstain from certain foods and activities as a form of penance.

In the UK, Saturday is the busiest shopping day of the week. Many people use this day to do their weekly grocery shopping and high streets and shopping centres are often crowded with shoppers. One of my hard and fast rules is to never go shopping on a Saturday. Tuesday works better for me, it’s much quieter.

Time for a music break. I was going to go with Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting by Elton John but to be honest, as much as I like Elton, that song really isn’t my cup of tea these days. Here’s something much more enjoyable, Saturday Night at the Movies by the Drifters.

Talking about movies, Saturday Night Fever was a film released in 1977 starring John Travolta. Travolta plays Tony, a young man who spends his weekends drinking and dancing at a local disco. I haven’t seen the film for years until I watched it recently and was surprised to be reminded that, apart from the disco dancing interludes and the music of the Bee Gees, it is actually a gritty and dark film.

Here’s what I wrote in my book Floating in Space about Saturday nights;

“There was something about Saturday nights in Manchester. Some quality of security, of expectancy, a feeling that the night and the future were going to be good. A feeling that you might just meet some gorgeous girl and that even if you didn’t, it didn’t really matter because there was always the excitement of the people, the music, the drink, and everything else that made up the evening. And then there was always the expectancy of the next night, and the next, and on and on into the future. The past building up inside you like a great data bank, reminding you, reassuring you, like a light burning in some empty room in the corner of your mind.”

The Playground as it is today

Back in the late 70s, my friends and I used to go to a bar in Manchester called the Playground. We loved it in there. Inside the Playground, flickering multi-coloured spotlights rotated across the red carpeted room which, on Fridays and Saturdays, was generally packed. It had a small dance floor sunk low like a pit where people up on the raised bar level could look down at the gyrating girls and where also, on week day lunchtimes, a topless dancer appeared at the stroke of one o’clock to translate the soul and disco music of the time into pulsating physical motion, the eyes of jaded office workers glued to her as she did so.

There was a paltry fifty pence charge to get in, the solitary bouncer was silent but not unpleasant and the DJ, who always began the night with ‘Love’s Theme’ by the Love Unlimited Orchestra, played alternate sessions of rock, disco, and chart music. We were all mad about Jenny, the barmaid. She was lovely. She had a kind of round, open face framed by thick blonde hair and her skin was a creamy white. She served us Worthington ‘E’ and we melted into the hubbub of people on their Saturday night out while the music of the seventies drifted through us.

Yes, we had a lot of fun nights in the Playground until one night we turned up and the place was closed. We went somewhere else that night and for some reason it remained closed for a long while. Perhaps the owners had gone bust or their lease had expired. Eventually it was refurbished and opened under another name but it was never the same again. Even so, every time I walk down Oxford Road, I always stop for a moment and remember those long gone nights in the Playground.

What shall I do this Saturday night? Get dressed up and go into town?

Actually, I think I might just order a takeaway and watch television!

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Heatwaves and Barbecues

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week in the UK we have been subject to a heatwave. Well, the media have told us it’s a heatwave although it’s not a heatwave in the sense that I understand, which is weeks and perhaps months of intense heat, drought and hosepipe bans. The media also tends to link the heatwave to things like climate change and the melting of the ice cap and lots of other stuff but to be honest, this heatwave has just been what we used to call summer. That’s right, summer, you know when things get warmer and the sun comes out and the kids get a 6 week school holiday and it stops raining. Well, stops raining for a short while.

To be fair there were one or two really hot days up here in the north west of England. In fact, it might even have been three days. Liz and I put up her small pool in the garden and we got out the barbecue. One day was really hot, so hot that in the evening we were sat in the lounge in as little as clothing as possible, in my case just a pair of shorts. We had the doors open and the fan at full blast. Now I think of it, actually the perfect conditions for a robber/murderer to pop in, tie us up, take our valuables and bump us off. Happily, that didn’t happen but it was a hot and uncomfortable night.

The next day we realised all our usual parasols and sun brollies were a bit knackered so we ordered a small gazebo. Liz’s daughter and grandson were due round for a barbecue and we wanted to keep them out of the direct sun. After about an hour of effort and a surprisingly small amount of bad language, we managed to get the gazebo together and fully installed. Our guests arrived, we all had a bit of a potter about in the pool, ate our food and all was well. I thought about taking the gazebo down but thought otherwise, after all, we were in the middle of a heatwave so keeping it up seemed like good idea.

The next day it was slightly cooler, still warm of course but much pleasanter although a bit of a wind had sprung up. Later, just when we were about to begin an unprecedented third barbecue in a row, it had actually become so windy that we were hanging grimly on to the gazebo to prevent it from taking off. The only option was to take it apart which we did. I think it’s worth noting here how strange it is that things that come in a box will never ever fit back into that same box once you take them apart and try to put them away. Actually, its not only strange but one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Just looking back over my older posts, I see that July is a pretty regular slot for barbecue themed posts. Here’s something I wrote in 2022.

A regular visitor to our barbecues is a large seabird which we have christened CBS. Nothing to do with the American TV channel but that bird is one heck of a Cheeky Bastard Seagull.

He usually arrives on our garden wall and struts around in the manner of an avian Mussolini. If he gets no response from us, he will tend to have a bit of a stretch before going into a major squawking session. Now he has made his presence felt we can expect some more strutting about until we put some bits of sausage or fat from our steak on the wall. He’ll gobble that up with the occasional foray into the sky to fend off any other birds who might be after a nibble before beginning his ritual again. When the gas goes off and he knows no more food will be forthcoming, CBS will usually have a final strut, give us a last squawk and be off into the sky.

These last few weeks however, CBS has not appeared. We’ve saved him some bits and pieces but our familiar feathered friend has not made an appearance. I’ve often wondered what has happened to him. Has he emigrated somewhere? No, surely it’s not the time of the year for birds to migrate? Has he passed away? It’s hard to tell if he was a young or an old bird. Has he been hit by a car trying to peck at some stray leftover sandwich accidentally dropped in the road?

At our last barbecue a large seabird appeared on our wall. At first, we thought it was CBS but there was no strutting or squawking and the bird did seem a little timid. He wouldn’t come close to collect his titbits on the wall. Was he a doppelganger trying to muscle in on CBS’s patch knowing the real CBS has passed away? We’ll never know.

Still on the subject of barbecues, here’s something I wrote in 2021, the year of Covid 19;

Because of Covid and now also because of my sore shoulder (did I mention the trapped nerve and my shoulder pain?) we haven’t used our motorhome much this year. We did have a run out to Yorkshire a while back and a pub stop over before that but otherwise the only trip was a run out to the garage for the MOT. Liz had bought a small portable gas barbecue ready for our travels and it was lying unused in the corner so we thought it was time to give it a trial run.

I do like barbecues but the flip side is that they are dirty and smelly and greasy. I always start off with some dry wood, pack in the charcoal and light up with some firelighters. Sometimes we’ll get a slow burner barbecue so we end up supping too much wine while we wait for things to get going. Other times we’ll get the reverse, a barbecue that catches quickly and voom, goes off in a big hot burn. That’s usually when we are expecting a slow burner and are still finishing off the salad and so when we sit down I realise I’m going to have to slap all the meat on quickly before the coals burn themselves out. The really annoying thing is when we are in the motorhome and I realise that after the barby has finished, I am somehow going to have to clean this horrible, greasy mess and get it packed away so we can move on.

So how have things gone with the gas barby? Pretty smoothly actually. None of that messing about with the coals and lighter fluid. The portable job snaps quickly together, slap in the calor gas cylinder, press the starter and hey presto, we are ready to barbecue. The other great thing about this one is that there is a water reservoir that catches all the grease and fat. Just swill that away somewhere in a corner of the garden, a quick wipe with a paper towel and we are all ready for next time. Barbecuing with gas, I love it!

Back to that unprecedented third barbecue.

In 2025 we are still using that little gas barbecue, so much easier than lighting all those coals. On the day we removed the gazebo the wind finally died down a little and we settled down for another meal. We started with some Padron peppers and some baby corn (so much nicer than full grown sweetcorn) followed by a couple of small steaks and some kofta kebabs with some French wine to wash it all down. It was almost but not quite like being on one of our French holidays.

The next day it was raining and normal British weather had resumed. The ‘heatwave’ was over.

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Fragments of a Life

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s sad enough to have to lose a loved one but what is sometimes even worse is dealing with the things they have left behind; their clothes, their books, their personal items. The shampoo and shower gel in the bathroom, the uneaten items in their fridge, the notes on the coffee table; the fragments of their lives.

My brother Colin died almost two months ago and even now I find it hard to believe. Going home a couple of weeks ago I picked up two pizza bases from the shops. I bought two without thinking because I’d usually make Colin and me a couple of small pizzas for when he came round for one of our regular bi-weekly chats.

One of the first things I looked at when I went into my brother’s flat was his phone. He had two phones. One was unlocked but contained little information. No banking app or email account. The other phone was locked and I tried all of what I thought would be memorable numbers for him to use as a phone password. His date of birth….. no. My birthdate…… no. I tried my mother’s and father’s birthdates but no, the phone refused to open.

Colin and I used to speak on the phone every few days. A long time ago when mobile phones first became popular, we decided that when we would speak together on the phone, we would talk in either German or east European accents. I’m not quite sure why we did it but we maintained it over a number of years, although it could be a little embarrassing if I suddenly answered the phone in a German accent in the bar or in a restaurant.

Looking on the internet I searched for what are the most used codes for unlocking a phone. The most popular was 1-2-3-4. I trolled through the list but nothing seemed to work. 2-2-2-2….. no! 6-9-6-9….. no! About halfway through the list I got to the point where the phone would lock up for a minute after each failed attempt. Finally, I tried 3-3-3-3. I was watching a TV show at the time and was about to move on to the next suggestion when as if by magic the phone opened up.

There was no banking app which was what I was looking for in order to sort out his financial affairs. Looking through his house there didn’t seem to be any particular place for important documents. I found some in the bedroom, some in the lounge and some in the kitchen. Colin wasn’t very tidy. He was also the laziest man I have ever met. His first job after leaving school was in a high-class men’s tailors in Manchester city centre. Among the clientèle were presenters from the local TV news shows Look North and Granada Reports. Colin once told me he had served the guy who played Alec Gilroy in Coronation Street. His boss was a very well to do fellow who lived in Wilmslow and every morning he picked up Colin for work at a busy junction by the Bluebell pub. He used to drive a Rolls Royce and Colin was living at home in Handforth then and you might think that with his boss picking him up in a Rolls Royce, and waiting at a very busy junction, he would be keen to get up out of bed and get ready for work.

Well, things worked out ok for a short while but as time went on, Colin realised that getting out of bed in a morning was not for him. My mother told me that she used to sometimes throw a pan of cold water in his face to get him up but even so, he began to leave his boss stranded at the Bluebell and would arrive at work round about lunchtime. Soon he was presented with his p45.

The only other job he ever had, to my knowledge anyway, was a sales job in Rome in Italy, selling timeshares or insurance or something to English speaking people in that far away city. He didn’t last long there and made his way across Europe to a place called Nijmegen in Holland. He stayed there for quite a while and he even met his first girlfriend there, a girl called Inge with whom he stayed friends for the rest of his life.

Soon his money ran out and he was repatriated back to the UK with my mother, as usual, paying for his return.

Not long after coming home he had a nervous breakdown and that began a cycle of mental health issues that plagued him for the remainder of his life. He once told me that it all stemmed from bullying at school although I have to say, I always remember him as being such a happy and cheerful youngster. Clearly, things are not always what they seem.

He had arranged a funeral plan with a company called One Life which went bust back in 2024, however, I was sure he had taken out an insurance policy with Sun Life some time ago. I called them but they had never heard of my brother. I called another company and they said the same thing. ‘Have you tried Sun Life?’ they asked. I had but they had no record of my brother. Try again, they suggested. I tried again and this time the company came up with Colin’s policy which was actually linked to a funeral company so I was able to quickly begin the funeral arrangements.

I thought his laptop would probably tell me a lot about his affairs but it too was locked. I once again tried various numbers to no avail but I noticed that his email account was on his newly unlocked mobile phone. I clicked on the ‘forgotten passcode’ button on his laptop; a new code went to his emails and soon I had access to his laptop even though I found nothing of interest there. It’s interesting though how his digital footprints leave hints about things that he did. There was an email from Netflix reminding him to finish an episode of Star Trek he had been watching. Another was from a mail order company thanking him for his recent clothing purchases and offering him discounts on his next order.

Colin lived in a council flat and I was sure they would be keen to take over the place and get new tenants in but happily, the staff I dealt with at the housing office were friendly and sympathetic and gave me time to sort things out.

I took lots of his old clothes to the recycling centre and quite a few charity shops were the beneficiaries of his numerous DVDs although I must admit, I kept quite a few for myself. Colin was an avid buyer of leather jackets and although some of his older ones went to the recycling centre, I still have about five of his newer ones.

A charity place called The Tree of Life came and took away his washing machine, fridge freezer and microwave. I took away his big television screen on which I’ll probably watch the British Grand Prix this weekend. I went to hand his keys into the council but first I thought I’d take a last look around. I checked everywhere and picked up a few last items I thought I’d keep. I had been surprised that I hadn’t found a great big box of photographs as a long time ago Colin always used to be taking pictures.

As I took a last look around, I noticed a bin bag in the corner of a cupboard just by the door. More old clothes I thought but when I picked it up it was full of photographs, the very ones I had been looking for. I was so glad I had found those pictures as there were so many taken at home when he and my mother and father were still alive.

Colin: a self portrait

I dropped off his keys and later I found myself watching one of his old DVDs, sat in a chair wearing his aftershave, sporting one of his newly purchased T-shirts and drinking one of his leftover bottles of Pepsi Max, his favourite drink. That is the thing with death, someone dies but the world does not stop or even take a breath. The buses keep on running, the sun continues to rise and the dead man’s possessions are still there, waiting to be sold or given away or distributed to others via charity shops and other outlets.

Despite never having any money Colin had an expensive TV package from Virgin Media. He loved his black and white classic films and spent a fortune on numerous leather jackets as well as going everywhere by taxi. Until our mother died, he was forever asking me to bail him out of debt but in recent years helped by a PIP claim (Personal Independence Payment) and a small inheritance from mum he finally had some money in his pocket.

He was looking forward to getting himself a free bus pass but sadly, he was taken away much too soon. He was 64 years old.

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Sadness, Memories and those Telephone Menus

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Dealing with death is difficult. Not just the emotional side of death, losing a loved one but dealing with the other side of death, the practical side, can be just as hard.

My brother died recently. He loved his TV and despite not having much money he had a top package from Virgin media. He mentioned only a few weeks before his death that he could even get the Sky F1 channel and I told him over the phone that I would be round to watch some live races. The only chance I got was actually the recent Spanish Grand Prix which wasn’t such a great race until a late safety car livened things up towards the end. Anyway, once I’d watched the race I called up Virgin to advise them that my brother had died. I must have gone through about three menus; press one for this, press two for that and so on. After menu 3 I finally got to an ‘other’ option. I clicked on that and finally there was an option for bereavement. When I went through to option 5 I think it was, the recorded voice advised me to ring a special bereavement line and quickly rattled off the number. I wasn’t expecting that so I reached for my pen expecting a repeat of the number but all I got was a thank you for your call and a dialling tone as the call was ended.

OK, I dialed again, at least I had my pen and paper ready. So, through the first menu, then the second and finally to the third. Press option 5 and the voice comes on with the phone number, I went to jot it down but the pen wouldn’t work!

Aaaagh!

After a few minutes of screaming I managed to calm down and realised that I had no choice but to go through the nightmare scenario again, this time with a working pen. I finally got the number but seriously, couldn’t they just put it on their web page; Bereavement, call this number 0800 blah blah blah. No, that’s clearly too easy. Anyway, now to repeat the process for his gas and electric, the DWP (actually pretty easy) his water rates, his insurance and of course I need to speak to the Undertakers.

My brother, despite never planning anything in his entire life actually bought himself a funeral plan. Sadly, the company he chose, One Life, went bust last year but he had even looked out for that eventuality, he had bought himself some life insurance with Sun Life which was happily linked to a funeral home.

Another annoying thing is registering the death. Despite us being in the hi-tech age of 2025 you can’t do it over the phone or online. You have to do it in person which meant a bus ride into town because cars are decidedly unwelcome these days in Manchester city centre. The other thing with the register office is that you can’t just walk in, you have to have an appointment. I made my appointment online but arrived 45 minutes early. Could they see me early? Of course not, so I went for a wander round the area and even passed a small tapas bar which many years ago was a very exclusive men’s tailors where my brother Colin had his very first job. Among the clientele were the presenters of Look North, the BBC’s local news show and Granada Reports, the ITV version. I remember Colin telling me that he once served the guy who played Alec Gilroy on Coronation Street.

Colin’s former workplace. Once a menswear shop, now a tapas bar.

His boss was a very well to do fellow who lived in Wilmslow and drove a Rolls Royce. Every morning he picked up Colin for work at a busy junction by the Bluebell pub. Colin was living at home in Handforth then and you might think that with his boss picking him up he would be keen to get up out of bed and get ready for work.

Unfortunately, Colin just could not get out of bed in the morning. My mother told me that she used to throw a pan of cold water in his face to get him up but even so, he usually arrived at work round about lunchtime. His boss wasn’t happy at being left waiting and Colin was given his p45.

The coroner had already sent all the relevant info to the register office so all they really needed from me was a signature which I signed with the registrar’s old fashioned fountain pen.

Here’s a funny thing about death, the way things come around again. The vinyl albums that he and I argued over for instance, we swapped records, swapped back again and swapped back and forth so many times neither of us knew who finally owned what. Well, now all those vinyls have come back to me. Not only those but the audio tapes I was going to throw away, Colin took them and now they’ve come back too, as well as the copy of High Noon, the 1950 film starring Gary Cooper. I lent it to him ages ago and he told me he’d given it me back. I said he hadn’t but he insisted he didn’t have it. Either way, it’s come back to me again.

I took the bus into Manchester as I mentioned earlier. At one point we were stopped at a set of traffic lights and I looked up to see what appeared to be Colin crossing the road. A man looking just like him with his identical walk and his identical leather jacket was crossing and I was convinced it was him until he looked up straight at me and I realised that of course, it was someone else.

Later on, sipping a half of lager at a pavement pub table in Albert Square, a woman came past pushing one of those granny trolleys that old ladies push and she was the absolute image of my mother. I remember thinking that all I needed now was to see my dad. I scrutinised lots of people as I travelled back home on the bus and finally, I spotted someone who looked a little like dad. I convinced myself the man was the perfect double of my late father but when it came down to it, I knew he wasn’t. Death just messes with your head I suppose but, in a way, I felt that I had seen my entire family that day.

I tried to think of the last time we were all together and it was probably some occasion years ago when I visited home on a Sunday and we all ate Sunday dinner together. The time that came to mind though was a birthday. Perhaps it was my birthday but me, Colin and Mum and Dad, all met together in a pub on the border of Manchester and Salford called the Mark Addy. The pub was situated on the banks of the Irwell and at lunchtimes they served rather nice portions of either pate or cheese with plenty of fresh bread. It was a sunny afternoon and it was rather warm so I rather suspect it was my father’s birthday as his birthday was in August.

Some years ago, the Mark Addy was flooded when the river burst its banks. The insurers declined to insure it again and the pub has remained closed ever since but I often think about it and that last sunny afternoon we all spent together.

One last sad story. Years ago my brother had a dutch girlfriend named Inge. He has kept in touch with her and while I was sorting out his flat I came across a framed picture of Inge. She is one of my Facebook friends so I sent her a photo of the picture and we messaged each other for a while and talked about Colin. A little later she told me that she had had an online meeting with someone in the USA and during the meeting the woman’s three-year-old son came into the room. When the meeting was over the woman introduced the boy to Inge. She asked the boy to say goodbye to Inge and he did so. Inge asked his name and he told her.

She turned to the boy and said “goodbye Colin.”

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