Rosedale Run.

Evening Strumpets,

here's a new Charmers ditty to light up your weekend!



Till the next one learn something new,

Mark.

EXNE post 8, my favourite so far.

Back to Reality.

• by ExNE

Back to Reality.

The six weeks school holidays are now just a collection of gradually fading distant recollections reflected upon by weary parents with an enervated smile. The legend “Back to School 2012” which gaudily resplendent in its certainty has been teasing, from shop windows, each of us blessed with homemade small people since about three weeks before the kids actually broke up, is now a reality. It has recently replaced Christmas as the most vigorously anticipated event of this years Parental Calendar. If anyone at Coke is interested I have a fully storyboarded thirty second advert with “Holidays are ending, holidays are ending” being sang over a fleet of school buses taking the delightfully dour offspring back to their learned seats of education.

Schools gates are once again flowing with adults looking at each other with eyebrows raised and smiles aplenty, which is a perfect mask for “not only do I not remember what yours or your kid’s names are, I don’t really care”. Mention is made of how quick the holidays have gone, how the good weather always starts once the kids go back to school, how much the kids have changed and grown since you’ve last seen them, and apologies proffered for not being in touch over the holidays for that sleepover in the six weeks you promised their child on the last day of term, when all you wanted to do was get home and have a cold one.

The institution that is the lollipop lady is once again deposited on pavements up and down the Country. Our lollipop lady is one of the old school. Not for her the new wave of …erm…lollipop ladying [sic, shurely] whereby kids are assisted in crossing the road at prebuilt Pelican Crossings. Pressing a button and waiting until traffic is electronically directed by highway law to stop? Pah, that’s for lightweights! Our lollipop lady is the Colt Seavers of what is, let’s be honest about this, jaywalking whilst holding a long thin stick with a big circle on top. Her Matrix-like moves on a morning and afternoon, wouldn’t look out of place in a Burt Reynolds 1970`s flick. Just as Moses stood atop the Red Sea, she raises her staff of lollipop, and lo the traffic did stop, and it was good. And it came to pass that the children did cross by, each one jumping up and tapping the round “Stop Children” logo, and the enraged drivers in their catatonic redundant vehicles did secretly fume and wish that they had just mowed her down as she jumped, Yoda like, into the road.

Which brings us to reality. Mornings are no longer a casual merry go round, but instead become a scene out of “Speed” whereby anything that isn’t being done less than fifty miles an hour results in the house exploding. Teeth are being brushed whilst ties are being tied whilst slices of toast are being eaten whilst shoes and socks are being put on whilst bowls of cereal are being slurped whilst homework is being completed, despite it having been in the schoolbag for six weeks. All under the watchful eye of the almighty SpongeBob staring down from the television set in each room like Orwell’s Big Brother….except he`s yellow…..and is relatively harmless….and is a sponge…..and possibly gay…so not really at all like Big Brother (ironically, reading this back I could however be also describing Brian Dowling). Damn, I knew I should have used Mr Tumble, now there`s a judgemental bastard!

The journey into work by car/public transport/bike ride which has taken five minutes over the past month and a half is back to being the thirty minute stop-startathon we have to endure between Monday and Friday, for six to seven week periods at a time. Any travelling on a bus between the hours of eight and nine in the morning, and three and four in the afternoon is akin to being a stapled to the seat guest of honour whilst wearing a suit made out of bananas at a chimps tea party, just as amphetamine laced jelly is being served and Status Quo are cranked up to number eleven on the PA. Local shops between 12 and 1 in the afternoon bear similarities to Cambodia’s Killing Fields. Actually that may be an unfair comparison, scowling school kids with slices of London Pizza dribbling garlic sauce from their calloused paws make the Khmer Rouge look like The Polyphonic Spree.

Reality doesn’t bite, it sucks.

Right that’s your lot, I’m off to see how Thing one (Year 5, or Third Year Juniors in old money) and Thing two (Year 1, or I have literally no idea what this is in old money) got on during their first day back, because as awful and daunting as it has been for me, I’ll bet a damned if I know to a diddle eyed Joe that it was ten times worse for them, God love `em. Till the next one learn something new, like why do lollipop ladies carry a piece of chalk in their pocket? Send in any suggestions to the EXNE email address, or send me a tweet via @greatnorthstrum and the best ones as well as the correct answer will be printed in the Strum next month

Mark.

EXNE post 7.

Evening Strumpets,

As is the normality these days, here's a post I wrote about a year ago.

It was whilst I was sat in my office on Mid-summers day watching the hail fall from the sky bouncing six inches off the ground eviscerating the kindly old age pensioners through their plastic headscarves, that I thought, is this as good as it gets to be British? The middle of our Summer, a time when tradition dictates we get the Sprouts on for Christmas dinner; sat in an office with the heating on. My Mother was born in Blackpool, and they have a phrase there, “The tides not coming in, it`s coming down” which pattern matching back to many a childhood holiday walking along the Golden Mile in my Lord Anthony cagoule, the drizzle and fret making it nigh on impossible to make out the gaudy and deliberate neon signs promising untold wealth and a night`s entertainment with Les Dawson, is bang on the money for that Lancashire haven of Hen and Stag Do`s.

The group of drink driving, (alleged) racists, shooters of apprentices, and general nasty pieces of work which we choose to call the England Football Team, were about to be knocked out again of a major Tournament, without even trying. Apparently they play too much throughout the year, and need a break in the winter. Yeah, I can imagine two games of football a week, must wear you right down. I`ll remember that as I`m completing my thirteenth hour of a 27 hour “sleepover” shift

Separate to our footballing role models, the two boxing thugs who in a public press conference had been involved in an assault involving a beer bottle, and a threat that one would “fucking shoot” the other were about to be handsomely rewarded for a “grudge” boxing match, which the public lapped up like thirsty dogs licking piss from a portaloo floor.

Let`s get one thing straight. These over indulged, pampered, downright lucky (if I`m being absolutely honest), sports personalities do not earn their wages. Nurses, labourers, teachers, bin men (or whatever they`re called these days) etc, earn their wages. These loudmouth meatheads are given a lot of money. At best they make their wages.

Sorry if I’m sounding a little more grumpy this month than normal, it`s just that I`m going on holiday tomorrow (and any burglars out there, I’ll be back by the time this is published, so you`ve missed the chance of pilfering at my address). Yeah I know I can hear that dripping sound as your heart is bleeding. But here`s the thing. I have to go on an aeroplane. I don`t like that. I don`t like that one little bit. The aeroplane, to me makes no sense. You can`t lift one up with your little finger, so how can they stay up in the air. To be honest, and I try to be, I really do, the flying bit is not too bad, it`s the taking off and the landing that fills me with a dread the colour of dishwater after a squid risotto. I have to put a brave face on as the kids love it, and like Alsatian dogs in the Seventies can smell fear from a distance of sixteen feet, but inside I`m quivering like Shaking Stevens on a rollercoaster watching insidious after forgetting to take his anti-cholinergic tablets.
Occasionally I`ll order some food, and it never fails to surprise me when people complain about airline food. You`re in an aluminium tube five miles in the sky travelling at twelve Gillian, Lillian miles an hour (that`s how fast these things go, I swear, they leave numbers and head for girls names), and your complaining about your mash. I once mentioned this to a chap who was sat next to me, and he said, “yeah, but the mash is lumpy”. Not as lumpy as my farts, I thought.

That`s your lot for now, I`m off to buy a cardigan for the remaining “Summer” months.

Till the next one, learn something new,

GNS.