Oh what a circus

Is it just me who is beginning to find certain aspects of the whole missing child story very distasteful?
It seems that what was initially a tragedy, and still is, has turned into a media bandwaggon with everyone from Gordon Brown, Beckham, businesses, newspapers, footballers, cricketers and now even the Pope becoming involved.
The big inflatable reward sign that was unveiled the other day seemed more about publicising the newspaper involved than anything else.
Sure, everyone wants to help but I can't see what can be achieved by all this overt breastbeating. Surely, there's hardly anybody left who doesn't know the circumstances.
And what's with this witness who has suddenly realised she saw a bloke carrying a blonde child away in a blanket and has come forward nearly a month after the event?
Didn't it click at the time?
Meanwhile, the chief "suspect" and just about anyone who knows him seems to be vilified daily with dripfed information being released about him to the waiting media throng. If the authorities really believe he is guilty, what's the point of looking elsewhere? I find this puzzling. Are they having to be seen to be doing something?
I know someone is going to say "Perhaps you'd feel differently if she were your child" and probably I would.
But there are thousands of parents whose children go missing and have been for years. I wonder how they are feeling? Will they be saying "why her - why not my child?"
Don't get me wrong. There had to be a campaign to find her and I throughly applaud the efforts of her family who have all pulled together. I hope and pray she is found soon. But it just seems to be such a blatant media feeding frenzy that I can't help feeling queasy about it.

A Crime

They let any criminal East European shite into this country.
But a brave Gurkha who WON THE VC fighting for us has "failed to demonstrate strong ties with the UK" and won't be allowed in to spend his last days here?
Now I know this country is totally screwed up. This is a total disgrace. The pissy little jobsworths at the Foreign Office should reconsider and hang their heads in shame.

Hindi best possible taste

I like to surprise the staff in Indian restaurants by speaking a bit of Hindi.
I know enough to say Hello; Thanks; See you later and this curry had best not be crap.
If you have time, have a listen to this broadcast which purports to teach Hindi from Bollywood movies.
I am still wondering whether it's a mickeytake or unintentionally funny.

Different ballpark

WTF is a ballpark cost?
When people say: "Get back to me with a ballpark cost" do they know what they are saying.
Does a ballpark cost as much as Wembley Stadium or that scruffy patch of scrub where the kids havea kickabout in the park?
What's a ballpark cost?
No idea.

Life's Little Annoyances: Number 9076

Those bloody handwash dispensers. You know, the poncy lavendar and ylangylangy or anti-bacterial stuff you get from the supermarket. Why do they make it so ruddy difficult for you to get the bit you press on top to pop up.
I try turning it this way and that way and end up gurning like a farmer with piles on a pushbike with no saddle.
After 17 weeks, I usually admit defeat, chuck the top away and end up pouring it from the bottle.
Is it just me or what?

Mam I'm Here!

Forget Tuscany.
As I was saying to my mate Alberto Cleggioni in the taproom of the Dog and Hitman the other day: We've got everything in Lancashire. Beautiful countryside; friendly folk; great food and a down to earth attitude that even the Mafia find hard to resist.
He agreed with me.
Then as I chipped out with a double nine to beat him in a game of dominoes, he screwed the silencer on his Beretta, fixed me with a piercing glare and remarked:"Hey a-Birdy. That's a-not a-friendly thing to do."
I agreed with him.
That's why I'm writing this from Naples. It's the safest place to be.
They're all in Oswaldtwistle.

Good lads

I read this bit of good news in the Manchester Evening News yesterday which I thought I would share with you. Two Manchester lads who were tearaways had their lives turned round by being a chance to redeem themselves - a chance they grabbed with both hands.
There's a lot of good kids out there who just need to be given the right advice at the right time. I'm certain I could have gone down the wrong path. I was no angel. Come to think of it, I'm still not.
Good to know that these lads are also helping others.

Age Concerned

Do you ever look at people on the telly and think you're a lot younger than them - when you aren't?
The news that George Galloway has fathered a sprog at 52 made me think about this today.
We all have a personal image of how we think we look as opposed to how we actually look to others.
In my case, there's a credibility gap of about 30 years.
Sometimes I look at a big hairy-buttocked rugby player on the box and think "I wouldn't like to look as old as him" and he's decades younger in reality.
The shock comes when you realise that you're older than the Prime Minister (though not as old as the Queen).
Age creeps up on you like a frozen shoulder.
That's another ruddy penalty of growing old but I never mention that. Much.
Anyway, you'll have to excuse me now. I'm just off to Boots for some face cream.

Dead bad for you.

Since the producers of Mars Bars have admitted putting bits of dead animals in their products, another list containing dead bits has come to light. I mean, what the hell is gelatine (basically boiled bones and hooves) doing in Orange Fanta? Ugh.

Worcestershire Sauce - Lea & Perrins contains anchovies.
Liquorice Allsorts Bassetts contain gelatine.
Müller Light Yoghurts contain gelatine and fish oils.
Fruit Pastilles Rowntrees contain gelatine
Jelly Babies Bassett's contain gelatine.
St Ivel Advance (milk) contains fish oil.
Flora Omega 3 plus margarine contains fish oil.
Kellogg's Frosted Wheats (breakfast cereal) contains beef gelatine.
Orange Fanta drink Contains gelatine.
Walkers Cheddar Cheese crisps made using non-vegetarian cheese powder.
Trident Sugar Free Gum contains gelatine, unlike 99 per cent of other chewing gums on the market

Doggy do's.

I was in the pub yesterday and a young lady sporting a bare beer bellied midriff was blocking the way to the lavatory with her rather unattractive bull terrier.
"You shouldn't bring a dog like that into a pub" I admonished.
"What's it got to do with you - I can do as I like" she retorted.
"I was talking to the dog" I replied, exiting smartish.
When I came out the gents, she made it bark at me.

Mars Marred

I see that Mars Bars, Bounty, Twix and other fatty-sweety delights have a new added ingredient:
rennet extracted from the stomach lining of dead calves.

A spokesprick for Masterfoods who make this stuff said:
"If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable, but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate."

What's this pillock's definition of a "less strict vegetarian"? Someone who works in a slaughterhouse and eats raw sheeps' eyeballs? You're either a vegetarian or you're not a vegetarian. The definition precludes eating dead animals. The sugar must have rotted his brain.
As for his products, he can shove them now where the sun don't shine.
There's a campaign to get them to change their minds here.

Now what?

I think the osteo has given up on me.
I have had three treatments which mainly involves sticking and twiddling needles in me, inserting his very strong thumbs in painful places and pulling and twisting my head until my neck goes "crack" while telling me to relax at the same time. Relax? It's a bit like being lined up in front of a firing squad and being told: "Come on - smile you miserable sod."
All in all, thinking about it, I probably I prefer the frozen shoulder to the treatment. I think he used to do part-time work for Saddam loosening people's tongues.
He keeps saying it's the worst one he's seen and yesterday, he actually said I should go and see a doctor!
Hint hint. I don't think I can do anything for you...
Well, that was the reason I went to see him wasn't it? I don't want painkillers and physio. I can do all that myself. I want a bloody miracle cure. A "natural" bloody miracle cure if poss.
It put me off him a bit that, as he was sticking the needles in me, he said: "I've looked it up in a book where 's the best place to put these needles for a frozen shoulder."
That inspired confidence no end, I can tell you.
He then advised me to go on a raw food diet with no alcohol.
Pffft! It's not that serious...
I've sent off for another book about a treatment which purports to cure the ailment. In my desperation, I ordered it by express delivery from Amazon for 1pm yesterday. It failed to arrive and I had to speak with someone in the Phillipines about it. You should try that sometime. They are nice people but the accent is as indecipherable as a pissedup Geordie.
Shortly, I'll list all the "stuff" I've tried unsuccessfully on the shoulder.
If there's room.

Northern Yuma

I was looking at some plants on our local market yesterday.
An old farmer in a tweed jacket and flat cap, walked up, leaned on his walking stick and said to the stallholder:
"When are your cannabis plants due, Arthur?"
"They'll be couple of weeks yet, Harold" he laconically replied.
The young girl next to me almost dropped her Bizzy Lizzies.

Perspective

What do you say to a man who is dying of motor neurone disease?
I met such a man on my holidays. He walked with a stick and spoke like he was 20 yards away.
It was the first time I had encountered someone with this cruel illness.
He was with his lovely partner who was now his nurse.
Sometimes he had a faraway look in his eye. Sometimes he had a twinkle.
I decided to talk to the twinkle.
He'd been a fireman. A big, strapping, good-looking lad. I guessed he would enjoy a bit of banter. So I bantered. And threw in a bit of rudeness for good measure. He winked at my wife a lot.
Sometimes I couldn't tell what he was saying but other times, we had a great, if difficult, conversation and many laughs.
Other people seemed frightened of talking to him. Some talked to him as though he was deficient in brain power. He wasn't. He was a voice lost in a failing frame.
He liked to hold my hand. I reckon that as a fully-fit firefighter, he would not have been seen dead doing that.
I was privileged that he took to me as I took to him.
One night, we went to a nightclub. He knocked back, perhaps ill-advisedly, a few Jack Daniels and then got up to dance for a few precious minutes with one of the ladies in our party. His body paid the price the next day. We never saw him. But for that brief spell, he had been back to what he would like to have been and what he should be.
When the time came for us to say goodbye, he became emotional.
I took that as a compliment.
We'll keep in touch.

Alone. Terribly alone.

Went for my latest treatment. The osteo stuck many needles in my shoulder and went away.
Fifteen minutes passed and I was beginning to get cold.
Thirty minutes passed and I was beginning to get cold and bored.
Fortyfive minutes passed and I was cold, bored and wishing I'd brought my iPod.
An hour passed and I was cold, bored, wishing I'd brought my iPod and worried. (I'd just heard the sound of hoovering along the corridors outside).
An hour and 15 minutes passed and I was cold, bored, wishing I'd brought my iPod, worried and getting rather angry.
An hour and 30 minutes passed and I was cold, bored, wishing I'd brought my iPod, worried, getting rather angry and wondering if we were going for the world acupuncture record.
Ten minutes later, I got off the treatment table and wandered half-naked around the clinic looking for someone. Anyone. My frozen shoulder was freezing.
The osteo wasn't there. The receptionist had gone home. I was alone with a limbful of rather long needles. What was I to do? Phone the police. Pull the needles out myself and risk setting off the burglar alarm as I left.
I phoned my wife and told her what was happening.
She laughed.
I hung up.
I came across a door marked Private.
I knocked on the door.
The osteo answered in his civvies. His jaw dropped.
"Have you forgotten me?" I enquired pitifully.
"Oh my. I..I'm terribly sorry. I'm afraid I have. This is unforgiveable."
It was.
Turns out he had been on the phone, consoling a female friend whose dad had just died and I'd slipped his mind.
He took me back to the treatment room, removed the pins, massaged my arm and my ego and let me off for the fee.
"Enjoy the rest of the day" he said as we bade farewell.
"What's left of it", he added somewhat unnecessarily.

"Spinetti" on the way to Home Rule for Scotland

Victor Spinetti










Alex Salmond

SNP leader Alex Salmond, who in his spare time earns decent money performing as a Victor Spinetti lookalike, has just announced that the SNP have the biggest single number of MSPs in the new Holyrood parliament.
This means several good things. A successful vote for Scottish independence will follow as sure as Hardy follows Laurel. Sean Connery will resume his milkround in Edinburgh. England will be shut of the Barnett Formula meaning lots more money for our illegal immigrants. Gordon Brown's fingernails will be non-existent as his constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is not adjacent and the English won't take kindly to him ruling from a seat in a foreign country. And his Party started it all off with devolution.
The best thing is we will be able to confiscate bagpipes at the border and charge the Scots for using our roads. (Only kidding, Jocksters!)
All previous bets are off. It's a whole new ball game.
Game on.

Worst Song Lyrics

Radio's Mark Riley is on a mission to find the worst song lyrics of all time.

I nominate: "Stonecutters made them from stones" from Midlake's otherwise excellent song: "Roscoe".
(Needs no explanation).
Can you beat it?

My shoulder

Sorry to bang on about my frozen shoulder but you know what we blokes are like.
Today, I did what I should have done ages ago. I saw an osteopath. (He was walking on the other side of the street and I said: Look - there's an osteopath). God, I'm turning into Ronnie Corbett. Well, they do say you shrink as you get older. But I digress...
The osteo took one look at me and said: "Your arm muscle has atrophied. There's hardly any there". I shat myself wondering what this could mean.
To digress again, I spoke to a bloke yesterday without mentioning my FS (frozen youknowwhat) and he casually dropped into the conversation that his grandad had a long-term pain in his shoulder which turned out to be cancer and they had to remove his nuts to stop it spreading.
Well that made me feel a whole lot better as you can imagine.
Anyway, back to the osteo. He wrapped his arms round mine and started to lift it in all directions to see what sort of mobility I had.
Bugger all would be the correct term.
Then he made me lie on a table and stuck acupuncture needles in my shoulder and arm. He left the room. Then he came back and stuck some more in. I was beginning to feel like a bull before the matador comes in the ring.
Then he dug his fingers into some very painful spots on my body (no - not there!).
Then he put some gooey stuff on my arm and shoulder and started to work it like a lump of dough.
Then the coup de grace (which isn't a lawnmower btw).
He lifted my head and turned it sharply to one side and CRACK! went the third vertebra of my spine. Then he turned it to the other side and DOUBLE CRACK! went some other vertebrae (or vertebras, vertebri or whatever it is).
Now I've read about this stuff before and I had promised myself I would sooner stick rusty knitting needles in my eyes, ears and scrotum rather than subject myself to this necktwisting (chiropractic I think they call it) but the crafty so and so hadn't told me what he was going to do, which was just as well as I would have been halfway up the M6 faster than supersonic shit off a shovel.
Strangely, it didn't hurt a bit, which is just as well as I might well have cried.
He said it would free up some nerve supply wotnot to the shoulder.
At the end of the treatment, he said mine was the worst frozen shoulder he had seen in over 20 years as an osteo. I thanked him for the information, taking a certain perverse pride in it. I think I should have some sort of award from the Queen for it.
So, he wants to see me again in four days' time. He says he can't promise total success as the old FS is a mysterious ailment that can either respond to treatment or not, as it sees fit. I can only hope it sees fit.
PS:He advised me to sit semi-naked in the sun with a ball under my arm to get some fresh air to my armpit but you feel rather silly doing that in the park. Still, if that's going to help, look out for a rather large chaffinch chap looking like he's waiting for four others to join him in a five-a-side. Do say hello.