A New Chapter

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Today, is the first day of the rest of my life… as someone once said.

Of course, that applies to every day, but today actually holds some significance for me, because today, I haven’t gone in to work.

I won’t be going in tomorrow, either.

In fact, I don’t plan on ever going in to work again.

Yes, I have quit the rat race and have taken early retirement.

It feels a little bit strange on this, the first day… it just feels like I am on holiday.  Speaking with friends who have already taken this path, it can apparently take between a month and six months to get used to it.  Personally, I reckon I’ll have the hang of it after a couple of weeks!

I’ve also been advised that the trick is to keep busy, and to that end I have been making plans to keep myself occupied. Obviously, there will be more time spent playing on the radio and on my motorbike, but also I’d like to get back into taking pictures – a hobby that I’ve always enjoyed, ever since failing ‘O’ Level Photography at school, but also a hobby that in more recent years, I’ve not found the time to properly partake in.

Dabbling in electronics and computers will also feature heavily in my activities, along with some renewed vigour (hopefully) on the geneological side of things – my family tree research has hit a wall recently and needs some proper time devoted to it.

And indeed, even this very website will likely benefit from some more activity.

Along with the myriad of little DIY jobs around the house and garden, I’m sure I will be kept pretty busy and hopefully won’t let the mundanity of modern life get to me.

Anyhow, gotta shoot, Homes Under The Hammer is on shortly.

Flutter By

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Whilst channel surfing t’other day, I happened across an episode of Butterflies on… BBC3, I think it was.

I’d not seen this programme since it’s original airing back in 1978 so, despite having missed half of the show, I sat and revelled in its somewhat dated humour.

In one particular scene, Ria – the main protagonist of the show, played by the wonderful Wendy Craig – was moaning to herself about the state of her humdrum life, as she was doing the housework.  She complained about how bored she was, doing the same thing, day in, day out. And then she indulged herself in several flights of fancy:

“I want to run naked through Harrods, shouting Woolworths!’”

“… and I want to run barefooted and knickerless through fields of buttercups”.

That sort of thing.

And then she shouted something that shocked me – and I don’t shock easily when it comes to watching telly. She shouted, “I want to be raped!”, before falling down onto the sofa with a harumph.

Of course, she didn’t mean what she said: she was obviously making the point that her romantic life was just as boring as the rest of it. And we the viewers didn’t believe there was any truth to it either, because her frustration – sexual or otherwise – was quite evident.

But say it, she did.

A line that assuages, almost, what is widely considered to be one of the most abhorrent acts that can be committed against a woman.

“Well, she was literally asking for it”.

I can’t imagine any actress saying such a thing today, even though TV is far more sexually permissive and promiscuous nowadays, compared to what it was forty-odd years ago.

And I’m surprised that the Beeb – so nanny-ish in the seventies and early eighties – even allowed such a line to be said.  They’d have had Mary Whitehouse all over them, surely?

I wondered whether, because the line was also written by a woman – Carla Lane (Liver Birds, Bread, etc) – does that make it more acceptable?

No, I don’t think it does.

TW3

/ masher / 5 Comments

It’s been a busy seven days.

On Tuesday, Mrs M and I went to see  Mind Mangler.
A comedy theatrical show with some magic thrown in.   It was pretty good and we both enjoyed it.
A good night out

On Wednesday I was walking the dog in the woods, when I happened across two young men setting fire to a pushbike.
They were using several aerosol cans of deodorant as flame throwers, to set light to this bike which they had propped up against a tree.
It was well aflame by the time I came across them.   I questioned them as to their actions and told them to put it out, which they tried to do, but the tyres were stubbornly alight and took some extinguishing. Nonetheless, I stood with them until it was done and then continued to berate them, explaining  just how stupid they were. They looked somewhat abashed at my dressing down of them. Thing is, they weren’t kids, these were grown men of about 19 or 20 years old, I’d say.  A sudden police siren from just outside the woods had them scarpering off, however, it wasn’t a police car but rather, a big red fire engine: someone had seen the smoke rising and had called the Fire Service. I explained to the fire men (people) what had happened and they thanked me for making sure it was put out, but I sensed they felt a little annoyed, having driven halfway across town to find just a smouldering bicycle.

On Thursday, upon discovering that I’d been somewhat remiss with my weekly grocery shopping and hadn’t got us anything to eat, Mrs M and I went to dine at our local pub. Turns out that Thursday night is Build-A-Burger night, and so we built ourseves a couple of fantastic burgers, served up with a side order of chips and onion rings.  We left the pub feeling absolutely stuffed.   And all for a fiver each. Can’t complain at that. We’ll probably go again this week!

On Friday night, we went out to the pictures to see the new Bad Boys film.  It was alright.  I quite enjoyed it, actually… despite missing all the previous Bad Boys films.
Even better, though, was the Nandos we had beforehand.

Saturday evening saw us driving down to Basingstoke for a family function.
I won’t go into the details of that, here.

And on Sunday, Son and I went down to (what was) the Olympic Stadium – but is now home to West Ham FC – to watch some American men playing rounders. Major League Baseball (MLB) came to London for the weekend and as Son is a bit of a baseball fan – and a fan of the Phillies (Philadelphia) in particular –  we went along to watch them play against the New York Mets.  I have to say, it was a fun, friendly event and everyone seemed to enjoy it… even fans of the Phillies, who ultimately managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, right at the last… er, innings(?)  (I really had no idea what was going on).  But it was a good day out and everyone had a great time and there was no trouble… despite the copious amounts of alcohol being consumed in the stands.

I had a chilli dog.

It was enormous and lasted me all day.

 

Big Weekend

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This last weekend saw the Radio 1 Big Weekend come to town.

Held in Stockwood Park – the largest bit of greenspace in town – and attended by approximately 100,000 people over the course of three days, it was – by all accounts in the local and national press – a resounding success.

Which I am pleased about: we normally only get in the news for bad shit.

I didn’t attend the festival, of course, but I could just about hear it sometimes when I was walking the dog and the wind was blowing in the right direction.

The Radio 1 Big Weekend (as an aside, I own a Shure microphone that Noel Edmonds used, back when it was called The Radio 1 Roadshow.) isn’t something I would normally take any notice of, but as it was in my home town my interest was piqued and I watched snippets of it over the course of the weekend, as it was being shown live on iPlayer.  I’m not ashamed to say that I didn’t recognise any of the acts or any of the Radio 1 DJ’s (are they still called that, or is it just ‘presenters’ now?) as I stopped listening to Radio 1 many, many years ago.

The one act that I did recognise, was the headline act that closed the festival on Sunday night: a band called Coldplay. Whilst I’m aware of them, I’ve not really paid any attention to their work. But as we watched, I found myself saying things like “Oh, I like this one” or “Ahh, didn’t realise this was one of theirs”.  By the end of the night, I found I was becoming a bit of a Coldplay fan… especially when Chris Martin sang a short song he had composed, just for Luton Town FC fans, which he called Orange.

The next morning, I found myself perusing YouTube videos of Coldplay songs, when I stumbled across this one. If the sheer look of joy on The Doctor’s face doesn’t brighten your day, I’m not sure anything will!

 

Le Grand Weekend

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Friday evening saw me catching the train into St Pancras and then taking a five-minute walk in the direction of the British Library.

No, I wasn’t heading that way because I had an overdue book to return, but because it was pretty much opposite a pub that I was to be frequenting, that night.

To recognise a successful year of hard graft and achieving targets at work, our contractor company threw a big party and – as ‘The Client’ – I was one of the few from the Water Board invited along to help them celebrate.

They laid on a free bar… it would have been rude of me to not go.

Despite the free drinks, I left the bar in a reasonable state of sobriety, I thought.  This was proved not to be the case, as I then went on to catch the wrong train and found myself heading toward Peterborough.  Fortunately, I realised my mistake and got off at Hitchin, where a phone call to my son elicited a free taxi ride home at one in the morning. I knew I’d had kids for a reason.

After completing my normal Saturday morning chores, The Current Mrs. Masher™ and I caught a train back down to St Pancras and then jumped on the tube down to Hammersmith, where we took in a show.  Now, I’m not sure where or when ‘Minority Report – the play’ entered my consciousness, but as soon I I heard about it, I knew I wanted to see it. I think I read the book many years ago (by Philip K Dick) and I certainly enjoyed the cinematic interpretation starring Tom Cruise, but I was keen to see how they could successfully transfer this to the stage.

Not very successfully, it would seem.  I enjoyed it, but it’s not one I would recommend.

Afterward, Mrs M and I had a couple of drinks in the pub across the road and were delighted to be entertained by the security staff trying to eject a young girl for not having ID.  There were four burly men, all afraid to physically touch this young girl for fear of later repercussions. She and her friends were filming them on their phones and the security guys were filming them back on their phones and bodycams. Many of those seated at tables around all this, were filming it on their phones. Everyone was filming everyone and no-one was making a move.  This went on for about fifteen minutes, before one guy – who was obviously the head of the security personnel – decided that he’d had enough and  forcibly ejected her from the pub.  The girl made no effort to resist and allowed herself to be dragged through the pub like one of those passive protesters you see on the news, all the time holding her phone to her ear, pretending she was talking to the police. There was a small cheer from the pub’s clientele, as she was thrown out the door.

Sunday morning, Mrs M and I grabbed a late breakfast in the hotel and then caught the train back to Luton.   Well, we tried to, but we were turned away by the ticket turnstile. Seems Mrs M had bought the wrong tickets!  Instead of the London to Bedford Thameslink train, she had – for some reason – bought an EWR ticket to Corby.  And it didn’t leave for another hour!

We sat outside a Costa, drinking coffee and watching the Eurostar trains coming and going.  To be fair, it was a most pleasant way to while away an hour.   I marvelled at the tall impressive roof and googled some information on the station itself.  When it was opened in 1868, it was reckoned to be the largest enclosed space in the world.  It survived two world wars – albeit with some damage – and was due to be knocked down in the late 1960s, but was saved just ten days before demolition was due to start, with a Grade 1 listing being placed on it.  I’m so glad it was saved – it’s a fantastic building.

We caught the train, but it didn’t call in at our stop, so Son (who now has the nickname Uber) was drafted in once again to pick us up.

Sunday night, Son and I went to the pictures to see Fall Guy (Mrs M was too tired).  A thoroughly enjoyable film with lots of action, comedy and relatable characters. Those of us old enough to remember the original TV series on which the film is based, will enjoy picking out the many easter eggs embedded in the film.  I got most of them I think.  In one scene, I heard the Wilhelm Scream, but I can’t find any reference to it in any of the websites that are talking about this picture and its various nods to film lore, so maybe I’ve found one that no-one else has… or maybe I’m just mistaken.  If you catch it, let me know, please. And make sure you catch the mid-credits scene at the end!

Afterwards, we grabbed a bite to eat and I treated Son to a Five Guys.  We both had a cheeseburger and chips and a fizzy drink.  Forty quid!  Yes, the meal was very nice and was a big step up from a McDonalds or a Burger King, but… forty quid?

As I write this, it’s pissing down with rain, which makes it a proper Bank Holiday Monday with nothing to do except sit down in front of the telly.

I think we might watch Minority Report.

Nicked Nanas

/ masher / 8 Comments

I went to our local Sainsbury’s supermarket yesterday morning, to do the weekly grocery shop.

At the Self Service checkout, I was randomly selected for a trolley scan.  “Helping you make sure you haven’t missed anything”, it said on the handheld device. Or words to that effect. Obviously, what it was really saying was “We’re checking that you haven’t nicked anything”.

As I don’t nick stuff, I wasn’t concerned.

I waited – with my red light flashing on the till – until the lone girl working that section (and totally run off her feet) eventually managed to get to me. “Sorry about this”. I said.

She smiled. “No problem. I just have to scan… ” – she looked at her handheld device – “… fourteen items”.  I had quite a trolley load.

She started scanning a few items.  “You need to scan the items at the bottom of the bags… that’s where I put the stuff I’ve nicked”, I joked. She threw a withering smile at me, having never heard that before.

By now, there were a couple more people awaiting her attention and so I decided I’d help, rather than just make sarcastic comments.  I passed her a few items from the  Pets At Home bag that I always pack the fruit and veg into… hey, everyone has their own system.  “These aren’t on the list”, she said, as she scanned the bananas that I’d just passed her.  I was a bit perplexed by this. How could that be?  And then I remembered that just as I had weighed the bananas and stuck the ticket on them, Mrs M had phoned me to ask if I could get some chicken, some mayonaise and some bread rolls for lunch. Distracted,  I’d obviously forgotten to scan the bananas.

“Oh, sorry about that. Can we just add the bananas retrospectively?” I asked, feeling a bit embarrassed, as the waiting customers were standing there watching what was going on and were probably assuming I was trying to nick the bananas.

She shook her head. “No, sorry, we can’t”.

“OK, don’t worry, we’ll put them to one side and I’ll buy them seperately”.

She shook her head again. “Sorry, but because it found an item that you hadn’t scanned in, we need to re-scan the entire trolley”.

WTF!

There was nowhere to do this, other than where we were standing, so right in the middle of the SmartShop section – in front of everyone – I had to empty all the bags out onto the floor, and then the girl scanned everything back in, one by one.  There were even more people waiting now and some were getting quite agitated because some bloody idiot had tried to steal stuff and had been caught, and he was now slowing everything down by monopolising the only check-out assistant in a five-mile radius.  I could feel daggers raining down on me as I bent over the bags, throwing stuff into them as quickly as I could. My system was in  complete disarray, with everything going into the wrong bags, but I didn’t care, I just wanted out of there.

After a few mins – which felt a lot longer, I can tell you – we were done and the new total was 46 pence higher than my original. Funnily enough, 46p was the price showing on the ticket stuck to the bananas.

I then had to do the walk of shame, past all these waiting people, pushing my trolley – with its obligatory squeaky wheel – past all these annoyed people.

One woman glowered at me as I walked past.

I smiled at her and shrugged my shoulders in an apologetic manner. “It was the bananas”, I said.

She didn’t smile back.

Le Weekend

/ masher / 7 Comments

Ahh, Le Weekend… to coin a phrase nicked from us by the French.

Just because we nicked cul-de-sac from them.

Le tit pour la tat.

Or, should it be la tit pour le tat… what with tits being feminine and all?

I dunno.

Anyway… it was a good weekend because – despite the very blowy weather brought on by storm Kathy, I managed to get the bike out for a few hours, for the first time this year.

Saturday was a couple of hours up and down the A5, just to blow away the cobwebs. And then on Sunday, I met up with a couple of mates and we headed out for breakfast at one of our favourite biker cafés on the A10.  It was still a bit chilly, but my heated jacket did a marvelous job of keeping me toasty.

And we weren’t alone: it was packed in there.  I could barely hear myself think, as I tucked in to my Set 1 Breakfast – sausage, bacon, egg, beans and fried slice all washed down with a cup of slosh. Marvelous!

As we rode along some of the country lanes though, I found myself dismayed at the amount of fly-tipping… it seems to be getting worse. Rubbish everywhere. These people should be strung up!

Sunday afternoon, Mrs M and I decided to go out for a Sunday roast at a pub in the village up the road. To get there, we went along some of those very same country lanes that I’d travelled in the morning on my bike, but this time we were in her car.

Parked in a lay-by on one of these lanes where there was a lot of fly-tipped rubbish, was a black Astra. It’s boot was open and I could see lots of black bags full of rubbish, stowed in the back. A man and a woman appeared to be dumping their rubbish here.  I wound down the car window so that I could hurl some abuse at them as we passed.

But then, as we got closer, I noticed they weren’t dumping rubbish at all… on the contrary, they were wearing rubber gloves and were picking up the rubbish and bagging it and then putting it in their car… to take to the tip, I assume.

Rather than hurl abuse, I leaned out of the window and gave them a round of applause as we went past.

There are some bloody idiots out there, but there are some damn-right heroes as well.

Hi Honey… I’m Home!

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Not that you’d know I’d been away.

But I have.

We have just returned from a few days in the Big Apple… and we are knackered!

So much walking.

So much queueing.

So bloody expensive.

The current Mrs Masher and I have been several times before, but it’s been a while since we were there last.

2001, to be precise. The same year the towers came down.

Since then, not only has the pound dropped substantially against the dollar, but prices have risen dramatically.

For instance, for the four of us to have breakfast in the hotel – and trust me, although it was a posh hotel, the breakfast was exactly the same as you’d get here in a Premier Inn – it cost us $235.   That’s 186 pounds at today’s exchange rate.

A hundred and eighty-six quid!

For breakfast.

Jeez.

But – money aside – we had a great time and took in as many of the sights as we could, in the time we had available.

And we did some shopping – because it’s New York and you have to.

And we took in a show on Broadway(ish).

And we got lost on the subway.

But, we are back home now.

On the way home from Heathrow last night, Mrs M dropped me off in town and I met up with some of my old BT pals for the regular drink and a curry night.  “Just flew in from New York”, I told ’em.  “You can’t say I don’t make the effort.”

But it amazed me to think that only 18 hours earlier, I was in the Hard Rock Café in Times Square, and now, here I was in a Weatherspoons in Luton.

Long-haul travel and different time zones can really mess with your head.

 

 

A Good Night Out

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Drop The Dead Donkey was a satirical comedy show, shown on Channel 4 back in the nineties.

Though it wasn’t an avid watch for me, I generally enjoyed it, if I happened to stumble across it whilst channel surfing.

So, when Mrs M suggested we go see it at the theatre, I thought “Why not? Let’s give it a go”.

With the same cast (mostly) and written by the same scriptwriters, it should be a good show.

And, it was… alright.

I didn’t find it as funny as I’d hoped and some of the more topical news jokes felt like they’d been crowbarred in.

But it was… OK.

It didn’t help that the audio was bit echo-ey (to my ears) and I struggled to hear some parts of the dialogue.

Similarly, due to the way the set was designed, our favourite seats didn’t afford us a full view of the stage.

But, overall it was… OK.

However, our night out at the theatre was enhanced by Mrs M sneakily upgrading our package. This allowed us access to the lounge area, where we had our own attendant who waited on us and supplied drinks and nibbles. No hanging around outside and queueing with the proletariat for us! And during the interval, we headed back to the lounge to find ice cream and beer already waiting for us at our reserved table.

Very nice.

Mrs M enjoyed the experience so much, I have a feeling it might become a regular thing.

Horizons

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Last night, I dragged the current Mrs M along to a lecture talk on cosmology given by Professor Brian Cox.

To be fair, she came willingly. “You never know, I might enjoy it”, she said.

It started with lots of pretty pictures of stars and galaxies and over the next ninety minutes he went on to explain formation and expansion of the universe, ending on black hole singularities and event horizons, even using some ‘simple’ maths to explain black hole temperatures and Hawking Radiation.

It was fascinating.

Mrs M held up surprisingly well and found much of it very interesting, but I thnk that by the time we had reached Einstein’s General Theory, time in the theatre was moving somewhat slower for her than it was for me.

Relatively, of course.

Bike

/ masher / 4 Comments

My bike insurance is due this month and my insurance company – with whom I have been fora few years now – have just sent me the renewal premium.

It has gone up from £146 to £255.  An increase of seventy-five percent!

Yes… 75%  !!

I’ve not made any claim in the last year.

I’ve not even contacted them –  at all – in the past 12 months.

And yet they have hiked it up considerably.

And it makes me laugh how, on the letter, it says I can ‘relax’ because they will take the payment from my bank account automatically.

Like fuck, will they!

When the time comes to renew in a couple of weeks, I shall  compare some meercats and will undoubtably secure a better deal with another company.

I will then phone my existing insurer to cancel my policy with them and the conversation will go like this, as it always does:

“I’d like to cancel my policy, please.”

“Sorry to hear that. Can I ask why?”

“Yes. I’ve just received my renewal premium and you have increased it by 75%… for no reason.”

“Unfortunately the cost of insurance is rising throughout the whole sector.  But, let’s see if I can get it any better for you.”

There will be a minute of silence whilst he taps away at his computer and then “OK, I think this is better. How does a hundred and sixty pounds sound?”

“That does sound much better.”

“Cool. I’ll just make the changes so you are only charged the new premi...”

“No. I want to cancel, please.”

“Oh. Is this price not acceptable to you?”

“Yes. But I have already gone with someone else. Maybe if you’d offered me that price in the first place, I wouldn’t have looked elsewhere.”

“What if I throw in free legal assistance?”

“No.”

Insurance companies will always do whatever they can to avoid paying out in the event of a claim, so I’m not going to give them any more than I have to.

And, with the abundance of Price Comparison websites available to us nowadays, taking your custom elsewhere to get a better deal has never been easier.