The Sturdy Soapbox

Mr. Wong - "Theme from Mr. Wong" sung by Davy Jones

AWNtv :: Mr. Wong - "Theme from Mr. Wong" | AWNtv.

Bye Davy

 

Just call me Tailspin Tommy

Haven't stopped since last Wednesday basically, with Friday being my 55th birthday and all.  I started the day off by treating myself to some brekky at British Home Stores in town, they do 8 items for just over three quid.  Not gourmet fayre, but quite nice, but a lot of calories on one plate considering I usually have between 15 and 17 hundred a day, brekky was about eleven hundred.

Saw OBC in the afternoon for a quick drinkette and I had fish and chips afterwards, so more calories than I would care to tot up.

Saw Bob the Butcher on Saturday and he chucked a bag into my bag of meat "Birra lamb there, it's gooin black"...  When I got home I looked and it was a nice piece which I put in the freezer for a poorer day (which will probably be sooner rather than later).

Lee from up the road popped round in the afternoon to collect a portion of this curry the welder didn't eat (I think welder's pining for something, there was tons left).  

Lee showed me the results of his latest pet project, 3D photography.  He's got s little viewer which looks like one of those victorian stereo viewers or one of those View Master things, only this thing you put your i pod in and it runs through a slideshow.  He went to London and did a load of pictures, taking one from one angle and another from a slightly different one.  

I was blown away by the effect because not only was it 3D, but the clarity was incredible, yet he only used a normal compact camera then stitch them together in Photoshop.

He's also bought a little 3D camera which had been discontinued as they hadn't caught the public interest and has produced some results from that too.

My birthday cards turned up mid - afternoon on Saturday just after I had put in a complaint to Royal Mail, but I still haven't had Channie's card from NY.

It was off to my bro's on Sunday morning.  First he and Anita took me to a shop in Wolverhampton to buy me a throw (or a wrap as my brother kept calling it), to go over the blue sofa in my lounge which clashed with the brown carpet and pale green walls.  Have to say, I felt quite uneasy being in a soft fabric shop.

Then it was off to the pub, than back to his house where we met up with my sister and her hub and we had a lovely lunch of beef Wellington with a piece of beef fillet which cost £ 30 as my brother made sure everyone knew.

Unexpectedly, their daughter Rebecca turned up.  She's an officer in the RAF who's just taken up a new post in the south which is involved with military intelligence and so she couldn't tell us what she did, or else she'd have had to have killed us before returning to her post.

I stayed off alcohol after my meal, because my tolerance is pretty low these days.  I had a night a short time ago where I had about six cans and felt like shit all next day, something of a far cry from how I used to be.

Also, if I am back and forth to the toilet it sets the psycho dog off.  Do you know, after my surgery, when I stayed with them for a week, I started out downstairs and I turned over in the bed they'd set up for me and the wammel started barking.

He's a beautiful dog to look at, but a complete nut job.

Came home this morning, installed my new wrap / throw and pottered about.  Came home with some booty though.  A case of Kronenbourg 1664, a big bag of potatoes, one of Anita's home made chocolate puddings (which I liked better cold than the one I had hot yesterday), some smoked salmon, two funky painted miniature Daleks and a nice hyacinth which was a pressie from my sister.

 

 

 

 

I shall be back to counting the calories tomorrow and I have some ducks to feed.

War on Royal Mail

Well, it's boo hoo from me.  I just had an e mail from Channie in New York and she told me she sent me a card ages ago, which makes three cards I have been told were sent, one from 8 miles away last Sunday and none have turned up.

Nothing today either !  boo hoo, letter of complaint to Royal Mail on Monday.

55 and past it

Yes, 55 yesterday and feel about 85.

This is partly down to the fact I had a really hard physio workout Thursday which left me in a state where when I got home at about 10 am, I went to bed and didn't get up til 5pm.  Then I went back to bed just after 9 and slept through til 7 this morning, a lot of sleep in 24 hours.

Had OBC, Val, welder, Pat and Irene over on Wednesday night for the birthday curry feast.  Found out when OBC and Val arrived at my door looking like they'd been mugged, that the lift was out of order.  Wally and crew found this out shortly after and mugged someone themselves, to help carry the beer up the six storeys worth of stairs.  I don't know who the lad was, but he's on the 7th floor, so was coming this way anyway.

We had a really nice night and the curry went down well. Four different dishes and I hope all with different flavours.

When it comes to curry, I am my own worst critic and as I was tucking in to the chicken and tomato, I thought to myself, did I make this.  I was utterly chuffed with the keema (minced lamb) and peas.  As I was cooking it, I was less pleased and I will confess now, my secret ingredient was two teaspoons of mint sauce.

Dry potato with methi leaf came out particularly well, as I altered my cooking method, which really boosted the methi flavour.

I think the postman decided not to bother climbing the stairs, as I know there were birthday cards posted to me (one last Sunday) and yet I've had nothing.

I did have some lovely personalised tweets from celebs and media journalists I follow on Twitter, I'll screen cap them and post em here tomorrow.

 

 

One thing I found amusing, was the fact the welder just put small bird sized portions on his plate, because he's aware I tell everyone he eats everyone out of house and home.  Then OBC noticed his paucity of curry and piled more on.

Because someone else insisted he tuck in, it was alright, and he found his second wind.

There was still tons left over, I tend to overcompensate when people come to eat.

Irene bought some really nice spicy meatballs which we had as starters along with the samosas I walked three miles in the wind and rain to get.

Depite enjoying making curry, I know I couldn't do it for a living.  Lots of prep and very tiring. One meal and some physio and two days later I am still suffering.  Better today than I was Thursday and Friday, but it still hurts just to move.

Old, old old that's what I am.

 

 

and a very clean donkey he is too !

Tomorrow, I will have been here a year.  Where did that time go ?

I didn't get Donkey (my brown carpet) til sometime in March, and in what comes as a shock to the likes of OBC and others, I look after donkey, giving him a good vacuuming on a regular basis and the occasional spoodle with Shake n Vac (put the freshness back)..

All carpets get dirty from being walked over and I noticed that the pile is trodden down in traffic areas, so it was time to give him a good clean (in the lounge at least).  I shall do the other rooms shortly.

Couldn't go to the expense of renting one of those rug doctor things and I noticed something on telly, which is dry, vacuums out, cleans in twenty minutes and then Chesney Hawkes comes round to look at the result.

I ticked the no visit from faded 90's recording artiste and bought a tub of Vanish Power powder, trusting pink to forget stains.

It's a far cry from 1001 cleans a big, big carpet for less than half a crown, this stuff is usually six quid a pack, but it was on special at Tesco for four fifty.

Put the sofa on end, sofa so good I thought, and then I sprinkled this stuff around, brushed it in as per the directions and then went and heated some soup up for my lunch.  Vacuuming it up is a bit of a job, as the chemical reaction created patches of congealed powder where it has found any concentrations of dirt.  The vigorous vaccuming wasn't at all good for my spine problem.  

I am delighted to report this stuff does make a noticeable improvement and it brongs up the carpet pile too.  Cue carpet joke: What do you get if you cross an elephant with an Axminster ?  A nice thick pile on your carpet.

As I explained to OBC on the phone a few minutes ago, I didn't shampoo Donkey just because he's coming round here on Wednesday night, the Welder, Pat and Irene too for curry.  An early birthday feast (my birthday).

Tomorrow, it's off to Bob the Butcher for a rare mid-week visit, for chicken and minced lamb. Then to Walsall market for fresh ginger, coriander and garlic before starting on a variety of curry dishes.

Of course it's a gargantuan task, as it's five of us and a hungry welder, been saving chicken up for weeks I have. Will be popping up to Caldmore on Wednesday for fresh samosas.  

Between now and Wednesday evening, I have my work cut out, but at least we know Donkey is spotlessly clean.

 

wear theirs a pacific need...

I know Average Jane and Paula who work in the industry of the written word, find poor grammer a bugbear, but its a grizzly fact you find it everywere.

Poor use of the apostrophe in words such as photo's pizza's and the like's.

I intend if it's still there, to photograph an abomination in Tesco down the road.  On the local community noticeboard, there's a poster which enquires have you ate your five a day ?

OK, it was done by schoolkids, the mistake can be forgiven, but not the teacher who allowed it to leave the classroom and end up on display as proof that illiteracy is alive and well and being taught in schools as we speak.

Some of my local Twitterites find poor grammar a similar experience to sitting on a drawing pin, and I was alerted to this as an example.

And in case you didn't already guess, the first paragraph is littered just for your delectation, especially one of my favourites I've seen in newsprint many a time "grizzly" for something aboniably shocking like a murder.  Grizzly is a type of bear, grisly is the word you are looking for Express and Star junior reporter.

As for texting, dn't gt me strtd m8 !

The ducks are the stars

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have been on a bit of a learning curve with both slideshow software and video editing stuff too.

I'm rather fond of Miscrosoft's Photo Story and WIndows Live Movie Maker which was used to make the video in the previous post starring three ducks I discovered arsing around this morning.

I didn't spend a lot of time on transitions or titling, though you can get a lot more adventurous.  I readily admit, Spielberg's job  is safe for now.

Earlier in the week, I joined OBC and his Coffin Dodger crew on their Wednesday shoot and used my collected material to cobble these together using Live movie and Photo Story.

 

 

Now if Samsung would sort out their abysmal Kies software and a suitable driver for the Galaxy S2, the job of producing material like this would be so much easier.

Three ducks on the stream

These guys were quite a way from the lake where I was mobbed for my Warburtons this morning.

Been playing with Windows Live movie editor, pretty impressed so far.

 

Memories flood back

 

 

The other day, OBC asked if I could drop something off at a company not far from where I lived for a lot of my childhood, right up to 1981 when my mum died. After that, I moved to the cosmopolitan hub that is Walsall.

The place I had to visit, was a hop and a skip from where I went to work in my first job fresh out of school.  W. Wesson, a steel mill producing hot rolled, cold rolled and bright drawn mild steel.  I worked in the offices, dealing with progress chasing calls, producing tonnage reports and the likes.

I had a really good boss, Philip Holder who took an interest in the people who worked in the company.  I was sent all over the place to visit other steel makers to learn how steel is made and processed.  One of my visits was to the enormous Round Oak steelworks, which in the late seventies was closed, flattened and is now where Merry Hill retail therapy park is located.

I read about twelve months ago, that Wessons had closed having operated on that site for in excess of a hundred years, pretty sad I thought.  

As I left the place I had dropped the parcel off at, I pulled on to Bull Lane and was shocked to see the complete steelworks had been demolished and the land cleared.

Fortunately, I had the little Toyota I was using until today and so, returned in daylight to take photographs.

 

 

This is all that's left of the office block, which was a 2 storey building.

My office was the second window to the right of the doors.  The first window being the telephone exchange, a huge brown contraption where you pulled cords and plugged them into holes on the switchboard to put a call through to the relevant extension. Laura who worked the switchboard for part of the period I worked there, was always late.  She would push her coat and bag in through the reception hatch, remove the headset from the board, run outside, down the street, in through a gate by the hot mill and then enter through a door, come up the corridor to give the impression she had been here all the time, and had left her station to take a message down so someone's office.  It fooled no one, including Phil Holder who's office she would have to pass on her way back to the switchboard.

No computers back then (late 1974 I think I started). I'd passed up a job offer as a photographer's assistant in Wednesbury HIgh Street on six pounds a week, in favour of this job which paid eleven.

The tonnage reports I produced, were done by hand, using information provided by the various mills, which I recorded in a big heavy book which had thick hard plastic covers and weighed a ton itself.

 

 

The sales and planning office was open plan.  My desk was (looking at this picture) on the right, that rectangular section, I was to the left of that rectangle, sitting opposite a Northumbriam harridan named Muriel and adjacent to a wet slap named Gill.

I did enjoy this job and only left after about eighteen months to run a petrol station at twenty five pounds a week and the use of a car once I passed my test.

I visited Wessons about 1979 and the man who had replaced Philip Holder, offered me my old job back (which I didn't accept), but I was very flattered that they valued me in such a way.

Makes me really sad to see this once busy productive steel mill laid waste.  So many stories.

For example, Walter Powell who was Don the drummer from Slade's dad, worked in the hot mill.  Often when Don was away, Walter would come to work in Don's white Bentley anf then when Don took delivery of the newly launched Jaguar XJ12 around the same time as Jimmy Saville, that too would be parked across the road, the most expensive motor on the car park.

After I waited in the cold to get the autographs of Noddy Holder, Dave Hill and Jimmy Lea, Don's was the only one I didn't get following the wait outside Graham Swinnerton's house (he was the road manager and lived in the next street to us).  Walter took my album cover home and got Don to sign it.

Wessons was close enough to home for me to pop home at lunchtimes and most days as I was walking back to work, I would see Noddy driving his dad's pale green Avenger.  They were already huge stars and everyone had rock star motors except Noddy who would always give me a smile and a wave. I dunno, me and my rock star pals...

Apparently Dave Hill lives over by Wally the Welder these days, I supposed it's something he aspired to, living so close to the legend our little welder has become !

As jobs go, Wessons was a very enjoyable job and most of the people were nice to work with.  I certainly can't say that for many of my subsequent jobs, but that's a whole ruck of other stories for another day.