Tag Archives: humor

When Good Service Makes Your Meal.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I do love my food as anyone will tell you. And I do love dining out. The food is important of course but just as important is the service and I do hate bad service.

Not so long ago Liz and I were in a local pub and I noticed that on the next table there were a couple finishing off their meals. One meal was half eaten; the other looked to be almost untouched. What was wrong with it I wanted to say? Had any staff member been over to ask if it was OK? If so, what did the two diners say? I think we, the English, tend not to like to complain. I’ve had poor meals and eaten more of it than I wanted just because I didn’t want to leave a half full plate. Even so, the meal I mentioned above was hardly touched. Why hadn’t the staff done something? Most pubs these days have someone who comes round and asks ’is everything ok with your meal?’ The thing is, a lot of those people are not prepared or trained when the answer is ‘well it wasn’t very warm’ or ‘the steak was overdone’ or ‘the chips are cold.’ In Wetherspoons not long ago we were asked just that question, was our meal OK? Liz replied that her steak was cold and the waiter just said ‘sorry’ and went away. Was he doing something about the food? Evidently not as he never returned! Why ask about the state of the food if you are not prepared to do something about it? These days I just won’t stand for bad food or service. Complain! We British should complain more. We owe it to the subsequent customers to complain so that the pub or bar or restaurant will get it right.

One little bit of advice I will give is if that if you want a decent meal and decent service, go for a restaurant rather than a pub. No matter what anyone may tell you, a pub is all about drinks, and food is just secondary. A restaurant on the other hand is all about food and it seems to me that staff in a restaurant know more about service than staff in a pub who are used to standing behind a bar. OK, there’s the cost factor, but when you add it up I believe a restaurant is better value in the long run.

Anyway, enough about bad food; I’d much rather talk about good food. One of my favourite meals ever was at a restaurant in France. I can’t tell you the name of it but it is on a winding road coming out of Calais and heading towards St Omer. My starter was celery soup and Liz had the pate; simple French country food. A pichet of red wine and jug of water appeared. An empty bowl and spoon came and sadly I looked down at the rather small bowl that had arrived. The pate came with a huge basket of fresh French bread and a healthy portion of home-made pate with side salad. The waiter soon arrived with a large tureen of soup with a ladle and as I waited for him to dish me out a small portion, he just put the tureen on the table and left. Needless to say, Liz and I had several bowls of that wonderful soup each. It was lovely and the pate was tasty and just perfect with a small salad and French bread.

My next course was a ham and cheese omelette, the lightest, fluffiest omelette. Delicieux! Even the fish that Liz had was nice and I am not a fish lover. Pity I was driving that day as I could have sat there and consumed another pichet of wine as we enjoyed our cheese board.

Just to finish with I’d like to say a few words about my favourite restaurant. It’s the Ego restaurant in Lytham. The food is always good; I’d say it alternates between good and very good and on the rare occasion it isn’t that good, maybe the steak is overcooked or the salad comes with a dressing that we didn’t want, there are no arguments. It’s not like some places where we hear the excuses, sorry, we didn’t get a delivery of that today or the oven’s not working properly or the chef’s not feeling well or something. The staff just whisk the meal away and come back with a new one or with the missing item replaced. The staff in Ego are really exceptional and as we’ve been going there for a while we’ve got to know the staff and they’ve got to know us. They know without us saying that we don’t care for the anchovies on the Spanish sharing board and they always replace them with something we prefer, like the chorizo in red wine and garlic. I have to say hats off to Jay, Tony, Paul, John, Christian, Natasha, Camilla and Sandra, not forgetting the chefs, Ben, who makes a superb Spanish sharing board and Adam who rustles up our main courses; they certainly know how to look after us and as long as they do, we’ll keep coming back for more!

If you enjoyed this post, why not try my book, Floating in Space, set in Manchester, 1977?

Competitions and Getting Even With Your Brother.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve always been one for competitions and in my younger days I was always clipping a coupon from a newspaper or magazine and trying to win something or other. I once won a Thunderbirds water pistol from the 1970’s comic TV21, which my brother then broke, thus commencing a lifetime of sibling squabbles and differences.

competitions and getting even with your brother

image courtesy MorgueFile.

I noticed in my inbox today an email from the Daily Express inviting me to compete for a brand new Fiat. Now a Fiat isn’t my favourite car or even on my want list but hey, I’m not going to turn down a free one!

When I clicked on the link a box appeared telling me I so far had nil entries but to in order to build up entries I had to ‘like’ various options. The first link offered me a new iPhone. Fair enough I thought, I can like that easily, but as I progressed further, sucked in, in the way some web sites suck you in, I saw that they wanted my name, address, mobile phone number, email address, gender, marital status, inside leg measurement and so on. Competitions just aren’t what they used to be are they? I used to enter a whole lot of motor racing competitions because not only do I know my motor racing onions but I also used to have a big stack of racing annuals and reference books in order to look up the answers.

Answer this simple question to win a trip to next year’s Monaco Grand Prix! Who won the Monaco grand Prix in 1955? Easy peasy, run upstairs, get out my F1 statistics book and look it up-  yes it was Maurice Trintignant driving a Ferrari! How long did that take? Well, running upstairs, -say, one minute. Finding the right book -five minutes. Skimming through to the appropriate page -one minute. Running back down stairs -one minute, total time elapsed; eight minutes! Then complete the caption, there was always a caption, I always use shell petrol because . . .and then it’s off to the post box and sit and wait for my tickets, which incidentally went, most unfairly, to some other lucky person who usually resided in Kent, or Luton, or somewhere else down south!

The fact is that to answer the question above (which, until I looked it up, I actually thought was Juan Manuel Fangio) I did what everybody else does these days, I clicked onto google and I had the answer in 0.38 seconds.( Incidentally, Fangio took pole position but retired from the race.) Yes, competitions these days are more like a lottery. Sometimes they don’t even ask a question they just ask for your e-mail address, then condemn you to an inbox full of spam for the next ten years, all in return for the remote possibility of winning a new car or an iPad or some other delectable delight that you have set your heart on but is just too expensive.

Anyway, going back to the Fiat competition, I ‘liked’ the iPhone link, filled out my life story and so got five entries into the Fiat competition. I hope I won’t get too many nuisance calls about the iPhone. Well, come to think of it, I doubt if I will actually get any as I entered my brother’s mobile phone number into the box! Well, serves him right if he thinks I’ve forgotten about that water pistol!

If you liked this post, why not check out my book? Click on the links at the top of the page for more information.

Sychronicity, Care Bears, and My Very last day ‘On the Buses.’

Posted on by Steve Higgins

When I first moved from Manchester to Newton-Le-Willows I had been assured that the head office for our newly restructured bus company, GM Buses North, would be in Atherton, a mere ten to fifteen minutes from Newton.

The government had begun deregulation in passenger transport in 1986 but the final act in the saga came in the early 1990s when they forced GM Buses to split into two separate companies because as a whole, GM had an unfair monopoly over bus services in Manchester. The irony is that today, companies like Stagecoach and Arriva are ten times bigger than GM buses ever was.

005ediyAnyway, just after I moved to Newton-Le-Willows, GM Buses North decided their new head office would not be as previously agreed in Atherton, but in Oldham. I wasn’t amused and after some time commuting from Newton to Oldham I jumped ship for a job in Warrington. I had decided to go back to being a bus driver for a short while just so I could get settled in my new location without a lot of commuting.

My new bus company was called Warrington Goldlines and they were running buses every few minutes in Warrington in direct competition to Warrington Borough Transport. They were following a trend set by Stagecoach of aggressive competition, flooding an area with buses to overwhelm and eventually take over their competitors. These techniques didn’t quite work in Warrington. Perhaps the locals were loyal to the Warrington Transport that had served them for years, perhaps they saw through the hype, perhaps they thought wait a minute; these new buses don’t run at night or Sundays so why should we support them?

Indeed, Warrington Goldlines ran bus services from six am to six pm Monday to Saturday which is what appealed to me when I went for the job. Anyway, I learned the routes then settled down in my new role. Goldlines had a special offer ‘dayrider’ ticket which cost 99p and lasted all day so a lot of daytime travellers and workers came aboard our buses. Unfortunately we also gained a lot of passengers who felt that even 99p was too much to pay. Frequently people boarded my bus waving any old bus ticket and expecting a free ride. Well, not on my watch as they say. I soon cracked down on a whole bunch of wasters, cheaters and fare dodgers and after a month I had banned a whole bunch of people from my bus. Not that they were bothered much as there was another one in ten minutes so if they couldn’t get on my bus they would wait for the next.

One day a regular scruffy couple boarded my bus saying “we’ve got dayriders!” and when I asked to see the actual ticket they had to make a thorough search of their pockets and bags which took some time. The ticket they eventually found was at least a week out of date so I declined to take them aboard. Now, in Warrington we had a bunch of passenger helpers known as the ‘care bears’ and my rejected passengers complained to the care bears about me but no, they weren’t coming aboard without a ticket. However, our one inspector decided that at this stage of our battle with Warrington Transport, public relations were more important than the small matter of not having a ticket or paying any bus fare so he decided this couple could travel for free. I wasn’t amused and when they left the bus at their stop and turned to say, “Thanks driver!” I was tempted to say something other than “have a nice day!”

Youths larking about and swearing was another problem especially on the number 123 service which went to Houghton Green and I banned about six youths from travelling on my bus. However, as it was a ten minute service when I turned back to Warrington I would see the lads on the bus behind me giving me the ‘V’ sign from the back seat. Still, karma, as I have mentioned in a previous blog, plays a great role in the life of a bus driver. All things are connected and if you are patient and at one with the universe, like me, synchronicity will turn the hand of fate into your favour.

One day the powers that be at both Warrington Borough Transport and Warrington Goldlines decided to sit down and work out their issues. Clearly WBT had not been driven into the ground as expected and the time had come for a discussion. The result was that Warrington was divided up by the two companies, WBT had their patch and Goldlines had theirs. Gone were the buses every ten minutes. Gone was the six pm finish and soon regular Sundays off would be just a memory. Time, I thought, for a new job!

On my very last day I was on the 123 service. The foul-mouthed youths were once again declined the opportunity to wreak verbal havoc on my bus and I left on my journey. Now, this was after six pm and there were no buses every ten minutes and of course no WBT buses as this route was now part of our exclusive patch of Warrington. After six pm buses dropped to every hour and when I returned to the bus station those same lads were still waiting. One of them knocked on my door. How could they get home now? What were they to do? Well, it was my last day so I took pity on them and picked them up. As we approached their stop I waited for the abuse that was sure to come. The muttered curses. The V sign as I drove off. Instead, when the doors opened the leader of the group came forward.

“Sorry for swearing at you in the past,” he said.

“Yes,” mumbled the others as they left.

No swearing, no abuse, just a simple apology. That was my last day as a bus driver. My last day ever in fact as I have no intention of ever doing that job again but those lads really made my day, in fact I even felt kind of mean for excluding them from my bus in the past. Then again, if that was what made them examine their behaviour then perhaps it was a good thing.

Either way, thanks to them I still have a good feeling about my last day on the buses.

If you enjoyed this post then why not try my book Floating in Space, set in Manchester, 1977? Click the links at the top of the page or the icon below to go straight to amazon.

A Shaggy Dog Story and how a Hoodie got his Just Desserts!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

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.

Bob the Dog.

Bob the Dog.

Anyway, we grew up, my brother and I with Bob. He was a wonderful dog and we had some great times together. When we moved from Wythenshawe to Handforth Bob disappeared after a few days. 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, a good five or six miles away, nothing in a car I suppose but a fair walk. The neighbours had seen Bob about and after waiting a while he turned up, very pleased to see us.

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 for a walk 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.

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 Newton le Willows 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 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.

“No,” she answered. A man 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.

Well, I thought, I wonder if this is 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 poop 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 poop. Now this is the bit where you’ve probably preempted me and guessed what happened. The lady brought an old handbag with her to carry the poop and that’s what the hoodie biker had grabbed!

I can just imagine the face on that hoodie 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!

If you liked this post, why not try my book? Click the links at the top of the page to buy or for more information!

 

 

Karma, Buses, and the Interconnected Universe.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

blogtitileI was on the late shift this week and indulged in some day time TV watching. I was actually on the lookout for a good old fashioned black and white film but instead I came across a new channel five series called ‘On The Yorkshire Buses.’ It is one of those reality TV shows, not something I’m really that interested in but watching this show took me back about twenty five years to when I used to be a bus driver. Things have changed a lot in those intervening years according to this programme. Computer screens, mobiles, vehicle tracking, on board CCTV, yes all the usual twenty-first century technology but applied to passenger transport.

One of the issues the staff at Yorkshire buses had to contend with was a driver shortage and we saw a man who had been unemployed for two years, pass his PSV test and become a bus driver. Of course, it’s not getting staff that is important; it’s getting the right staff.

I suppose getting the right staff is an issue wherever you work. Way back when I worked at GM Buses in Stockport, I remember that we had a rota officially called the 900 rota, although unofficially known as the ‘Sick, Lame, and Lazy Rota.’ This rota was staffed by a bunch of people all near to retirement age and they did a regular split shift, Monday to Friday only, no weekends, and it was all easy work; the odd works’ service and a couple of the easier school runs. Thrown in to their duties also was a gratuitous share of standby time. Standby was when you have spare drivers or conductors, ready to fill in when a bus has broken down way out in the country or a crew has called in sick. The thing was, with the 900 rota people, their standby time was only a couple of hours so they were ninety nine percent certain they would never be called to go out. The drivers were fairly amenable old chaps but the conductors, all clippies, (female conductresses) were all quite the opposite. Go out on their stand by time, when they could be supping tea and knitting? Not likely! As you can imagine the 900 staff were universally unpopular.

When I was a one man driver, in the latter days of conductor operations, we used to do a trip from Bramhall in the morning rush hour. When we got closer to Stockport the bus was always packed to the seams and the extra rush hour bus, covered by the 900 staff always used to hang back and let the one man driver do all the work. Well, can’t expect our senior 900 staff to cover that busy run can we? And knitting won’t do itself will it?

I remember pulling into Mersey Square in Stockport with a bus bursting at the seams and the 900 bus pulling in behind me with about five people on board. I went back to that bus and told them in no uncertain terms they were out of order. The driver was about to say something when his clippie, Doris, the laziest conductress you ever met, pushed him aside and gave me a right mouthful about how I hadn’t been doing the job five minutes and how she and her driver had been at it since before I was born and well, I think you get the picture.

Now I have always believed in the interconnectedness of the universe, how one good deed will come back to you twofold and how those evil doers, as they used to call them in my old comic days, will eventually be punished. Anyway, one fine day it came to pass that I was asked to work my day off. I came in for my stand by duty and sat down with a cuppa and a slice of toast hoping for a nice relaxing read. After a while the tannoy called my name and I went over to the desk to see what was in store for me.

Doris, the laziest conductress in the world was there waiting for me. “Are you driver Higgins?” she bellowed.

“What’s it to you?” I replied in the same happy tone.

Well, it turned out that Karma, that magical mystery force of the universe had poked its nose into our life that day and her driver had called in sick and, guess what? I was her driver for the day. Well, when we came to do the Bramhall rush hour bus I caught up the packed one man bus, overtook it and we did most of the work coming into Stockport. That’s the way it should have been done with the workload, and the passengers split evenly between the two buses. When we got to Stockport our passengers piled off leaving our flustered conductress in a state of disarray and her cash bag full of coins. Her ticket machine had issued more tickets in an hour than it normally did in a week. She was looking a little peaky, if I remember correctly .

Perhaps that’s why she went sick for the rest of the shift!

You can read more about life as a bus conductor in my book ‘Floating In Space’. Click the links at the top of the page for more information!

Checking the Temperature and the British Summer

Posted on by Steve Higgins

checking the temperatureHot, boiling, sweltering, humid: Any way you look at it the UK is hot! We can’t complain about a rainy summer this year but in the UK we are just not prepared for heat. In Spain for instance it’s perfect for a hot, sunny, holiday. They have their cool outdoor pools, their outdoor bars and restaurants, and if we want to cool down more then we can go inside where traditionally built Spanish properties with their tiled interiors and whitewashed exteriors positively hug any coolness that might be about.

In the UK with our insulated walls and roofing, our houses seem to hug the warmth, it’s hotter in our homes than outside and when we leave our windows open to cool down you can guarantee some inconsiderate noisy sod will be playing his or her music far too loud, Well, that’s the British summer for you.

Something that really bugs me lately is the way the metric system has started to grip it’s clammy fingers around the UK media. When I’m watching a rather interesting documentary on the BBC I’m not interested in the least about how many metres long this or that is, or how many kilometres it is to there from here, I want to know it in feet and inches, I want to know in miles! I’m English and OK when I’m travelling in Europe I accept kilometres and KPH and do the mental adjustment but in the UK I shouldn’t have to do that. On the motorway I understand what it means when I hit the 300 yard marker to the next exit. I know what a yard is, I can visualise it. I understand that the next services are twenty miles away because I understand what a mile is and how long a mile is so don’t start putting kilometres on the motorway to confuse me!

image courtesy wikipedia

image courtesy wikipedia

And, coming back to the heat, when did all this Celsius start creeping in. The temperature today will be a maximum of twenty degrees? What is that about? If you are going to tell me the temperature tell me in the Fahrenheit that I have been  brought up with and understand then I know that seventy is hot and eighty is even hotter!

This is the time of year when the papers will say one day, it was hotter in Dartford that it was in Barcelona or hotter in Brighton than the Costa Del Sol! Interesting. Of course, they don’t say that happened on one day out of three hundred and sixty five or that the last time it happened it was 1973 but either way it’s still pretty interesting. But, and here’s something you should know, on the day the temperature  hits 37 degrees Celcius in somewhere like Blackpool the papers won’t tell you that. No, what they will say will be this ‘Temperature hits 100 degrees in Blackpool!’‘

Yes, the big one hundred, that’s Fahrenheit of course . .

Enjoyed this post? Well, if you did why not try my book, Floating In Space? Click the links at the top of the page for more information or HERE to go straight to Amazon!

 

Growing up with the Motor Car

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Ever look back at those old cars you used to own? I sometimes do and looking back, cars are pretty synonymous with growing up, certainly from a male point of view anyway.

9o698i3bgeI’m probably pushed to tell you the registration number of my current car but PDB 71M, the VRM (Vehicle Registration Mark) of my very first car is still firmly anchored in my old memory bank. My first car was a Bond Bug. You may not remember the name but they were sporty little three wheeler cars and I bought one because I failed my driving test twice and I could drive the Bug on my motorbike licence.

It was actually a pretty eye catching car for a three wheeler. No doors but the roof lifted up to gain access and the side windows were plastic held on by Velcro. I always remember bringing it home and showing it off to my family with a certain amount of pride and my Dad looking at it and saying “How are we all going to get into that?” Perhaps he thought I was going to take us all away for a holiday!

Still, we had some nice times, me and the Bond Bug but then one cold and snowy Christmas I decided to chance going out to a Christmas party in the car even though it was losing coolant. I topped it up with water and went off for a night of Christmas cheer. I walked home sensibly, I might add, but when I returned the next day I found that the car had frozen overnight and it ended up having to have an engine rebuild. That was a pretty expensive night out! Later when I passed my driving test I got myself a proper car.

I’m pretty happy with my current car generally, it’s a Renault Megane convertible and I kind of like being just a bit of a poser, driving round when its sunny with the roof down and looking generally pretty cool what with my leather seats and my shades but you do get those days when things go wrong.

I spent a lot of time the other day burning a few new cds to play in my car and just as I joined the motorway on the way to work I pressed the eject button on my CD player but the old cd wouldn’t eject. I could hardly pull over on the motorway so already my journey had not started well.

The other thing is that one of my electric windows, the rear off side one to be exact, has jammed. OK, at least it jammed in the up position but the car automatically drops the windows when raising or lowering the roof, so that means I can’t open my roof.  Add to that the recent lovely weather – perfect for open top driving – and as you can imagine, I’m not happy!

Anyway, I have to look on the bright side. When I pulled up at work and switched off the radio, my CD ejected! At least I was OK for music on the return journey!

Here’s my car when it was new . .

 

 

Quiz night, Frank Ifield and a very Tricky Customer

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-60Years ago a very tricky customer on my one man bus gave me seventy pence in penny coins for his bus fare. He thought this was pretty funny at first but I can be just as tricky so I gave him seventy penny tickets in return. He wasn’t amused.

I was tempted to save that gem to the end of the blog to finish with something of a bang, but what the heck, using it at the beginning enables me to link one tricky customer to another and to explain further, I’m referring to Mike, our very tricky pub quizmaster.

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.

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 but 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!)

On one occasion I was 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 Jose 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 usually 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!)

Frank Ifield

Frank Ifield

However, our wily quiz master had set a trap because the final track he played was 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.

Oh well, no barrel of ale on that occasion. We’ll be back next Thursday for another shot.

If you liked this post why not try my book! Click the links at the top of the page for more information.

The Sound Barrier and My in-flight Canine Friend

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve always liked that lazy droning sound of light aircraft; maybe it comes from my childhood, brought up a stone’s throw from Manchester Airport which my friends and I would visit every weekend, cycling to the back of the airport down lanes and alleyways looking for obscure fields where we could get close to the aircraft. We spent many a lazy afternoon on the airport terraces, jotting down aircraft registrations and ticking them off in our flight books.

When I was younger I knew someone who had an ambition to be a pilot and was taking lessons at Blackpool Airport. He used to alleviate his tuition costs by taking friends or colleagues on his training flights if they would drive him down to Blackpool.

On the day that I joined James (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) as an eager passenger, I drove down to Blackpool Airport pretty excited. James advised that on the day he would be doing some instrument tests which involved flying the aircraft on instruments alone.

I stepped into the back of the small plane and strapped myself in. It was a hot day and the aircraft had a huge glass cockpit making it warmer still. I was at a point when I thought I would have to get out and cool off but just then the instructor turned up. He was an older chap and brought his big woolly dog along as he enjoyed, well so I was told, flying. Fido was led in to the rear seat with me and we eyed each other warily as he was strapped in.

The engine was started, we taxied out on to the runway and a few moments later we were aloft. It was exhilarating to look down on Blackpool and the tower, a place where I had spent many happy holidays as a child. After a while James had to put on a rather odd-shaped helmet which blocked out the view through the windscreen and he could only see his instruments. The small plane flew higher and higher, Blackpool Tower becoming the merest pinprick in the distance. Then the engine stopped.

image courtesy wikipedia.

image courtesy Wikipedia.

I’m not sure if you have ever seen one of those World War two films when German stuka bombers hurtled down at their targets with a banshee type wail. I only mention that because it seemed very much akin to our current situation and not only that, the pilot was lucky on this occasion that it wasn’t me issuing the wail but as we hurtled towards the ground Fido and I eyed each other with mutual fear in our eyes.

“Now come on James” said the instructor. “What have we forgotten?”

Fido pawed the back of the pilot’s seat in a vain attempt to jog his memory but our downward path continued. If you ever happen to see that rather old film ‘The Sound Barrier’ you might get some idea of our situation hurtling down towards the earth with Blackpool Tower looming ever closer in our windscreen.

“You’ve forgotten something haven’t you? The instructor might have been talking to a learner driver who had not put on his hand brake at the traffic lights.

“What if I mentioned the mixture?”

If that was a hint it was certainly in a much better class than his previous comments but either way the pilot got the message, adjusted the engine mixture and our tiny aircraft’s propeller burst into renewed life and not long later we touched down rather bumpily back in Blackpool.

“Watch out” said the instructor, “Fido gets a bit excited when we land.”

If this was a typical flight with his master then it was clear to me why Fido was excited when he landed but anyway, the dog gave me a look which said in its canine way “We made it!” and hopped out of the plane.

James completed his flying studies and left our company. He went on, I assume to a career in aviation and we never met again but I have learnt one thing.

Next time if, on the way to Spain, the engines of our jet airliner conk out I’ll be shouting to the pilot “What about the mixture!?”

If you liked this blog, why not try my book, available as a paperback or Kindle from amazon: Check out the links at the top of the page or click the icon below:

Catchphrases, Pub Friends, and Big Steve

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-23Not long ago at work I noticed something that wasn’t right on the rota so I spoke to our former rota lady about it. She agreed with me, there was a problem but she herself couldn’t do anything about it and I would have to contact the new ‘National Roster Team.’

“Drop them an e-mail.” She said, then added with a giggle. “Tell them you’re not happy!”

Now, at first I don’t think I quite understood that but the other day I had an e-mail from a colleague which was in reply to some procedural point I had raised. The e-mail said something like I’ll sort that out straight away because I wouldn’t want you to be ‘not happy!’

Now, we don’t always notice that something we say habitually has become a sort of personal catchphrase and I’m sure I don’t say ‘not happy’ that much but clearly some people think differently.

trawlboatHere’s another example of a catchphrase or saying that I always associate with a particular person but first I need to tell you about a pub that Liz and I regularly use. It’s called the Trawl Boat and we both know a lot of people in there. I don’t always know their names but then that’s the thing about pub friends, they’re acquaintances and beyond our pub chatter I don’t know much about most of them at all. Anyway, there are the two guys who always stand at the end of the bar and order double rounds (not sure if that’s a comment on the bar service or maybe they just like their ale!). The thin guy who works for British Aerospace and is not happy (oops, there’s that phrase again! ) about being sent by his company to work on a project in Australia. (Wish my employer would send me off on a project like that! ) Then there’s his colleague with the Kojak haircut and a group that I do know the names of, Colin and Dougie, B&B owners in St Annes and Nick who manages a hotel on St Annes front.

The very first guy we got chatting with in the Trawl boat was a guy we called Big Steve. I’m six-foot and Big Steve towered above me, he must have been six-foot six, easy. He was a pretty fit guy having been a former drayman, one of those people who lug big beer barrels about for a living and he was a really easy fellow to get on with. We always used to sit with Steve and have a drink and a natter and when he was due to leave his would pull his jacket on, say his goodbyes and then always say to us; “Nice to see you both again: As always.” And then he would be off.

A couple of years ago we saw Big Steve sometime in December and as usual at the end of the evening we said our goodbyes, wished each other a happy Christmas in case we didn’t see each other before the holidays and Steve said his usual “Nice to see you both: As always” and left.

We didn’t see Big Steve over Christmas, nor through the New Year period and one day we both said together in the Trawl Boat, ‘wonder where Steve is?’ Anyway we thought nothing of it and assumed we’d catch up with him soon.

Later, Liz was chatting to some of the regulars and one mentioned to her that he had been to a funeral the previous day. Liz asked idly who the deceased was and the man answered that it was someone they didn’t think Liz or I knew. It was a guy called Big Steve who used to be a drayman! Well, the words leapt up and hit Liz and I like a slap. Big Steve was gone and we’d hadn’t even had a chance to pay our respects at his funeral. I can’t tell you how sad we both felt.

Liz, being the amateur Sherlock Holmes she is, tracked down the widow and we went to see her to pass on our condolences. It turned out that Steve had died quietly in his sleep and his wife went into his room one morning to find him dead. Not very nice for her but a peaceful passing at least for Steve but here’s a thing about pub friends. I don’t have the phone numbers of any of those guys from the Trawl Boat and apart from the guys who own B&B’s I’ve no idea where they live. Luckily, Big Steve had mentioned Nick to his wife as being a hotel manager and one day they had popped in the hotel for a meal and when Big Steve passed away that was the one contact she had for Steve’s pub friends.

One day, in the next world, I’ll make a point of finding Big Steve and I can see myself now tapping him on the shoulder and saying “Nice to see you again Steve, as always.”

Hope he doesn’t turn round and say “Steve, I’m not happy!”

If you liked this, why not try my book? Click the icon below.