Thursday, February 08, 2007

A Yorkshire Yoda

“..the weather outside is frightful…”

Touching wood in advance to proclaiming the following; but despite the snow fall the train (for once) were running just fine. As a matter of fact there was less people huddled under the walkway, sheltered from the snow, awaiting the train than I had expected.

There was some new faces though, one of which I was most intrigued about. She was about 22, pretty, REALLY pretty, and juggling two Yakult drinks whilst trying to lock her brand new BMW. She met her goofy looking boyfriend in the ticket queue who looked young, stupid and unsuccessful. I couldn’t help wonder a) do people really believe in the ‘good bacteria’ vs ‘bad bacteria’? Scam and b) how the fuck did she get a new, sexy looking BMW?

This has bothered me all day.

I arrived at work today and was treated to a Spanish Inquisition by several colleagues regarding my supposed 'surprise' half days annual leave. It was assumed that I had sneaked out to attend a job interview. Alas this was not the case.
I had taken the afternoon off as I was still feeling ropey from the excesses of the Krazy House last Saturday, a surefire signal that "I'm getting too old for this shit". It was also time for my quarterly haircut, which I was surprised to see that when people were grilling me about what I had been up to, hadn't noticed that I'd had my ears lowered.

Apparently I missed a bit of a kafuffle whilst I was away tending to my locks. Debbie reliably informed me that; "the little cherubs" (A phrase used often to describe the little urchins whom roam and run the streets in their matching black tracksuits like a modern day equivalent to Noodles and Co. in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America) had thrown about six eggs on the front window/door in our little reception. Debbie, being as fastidious as anyone I've ever encountered before, had to clean them off immediately and regaled this to me in great detail. Not that this was overly unnecessary, it's just her shtick.

and it was a good job she was in yesterday too(she works part time), otherwise it would have been down to me to sort- and of course I would have done sweet f.a. about it , ;leaving the eggs to fester in the Bootle sunshine.

I suggested to her that she should have left it to the local window cleaner, dubbed affectionately as 'Mr. Happy' or 'Chuckles' due to the incredibly dour and miserable nature of the man. Every fortnight he cleans our three windows in about one and a half minutes and charges £5 and I thought he would appreciate the challenge.
This brought about a comment such as “They get good money do window cleaners” or something similar. I regaled that I was once offered a job as a window cleaner in Harrogate, but politely declined it, naively believing that I could achieve more with my talent, gusto and moxy than that of a life of a humble "visual technician". As I retorted to my colleagues; "looking at the way my career turned out, this was a terrible decision".

The guy who offered me this position was a small white haired gentleman in his very late sixties, who had become part of the set up in our pub football team, which I was a proud member of before attending University. As the team were pretty crap, a mixture of thugs, piss heads, men in their mid forties who were obviously pretty good back in their day and of course all of their mates, our manager Bob or 'Shaggy', had been introduced to this sweet old fool as he was a scout for Scarborough Town F.C. I think because he looked a little like a Yorkshire Yoda, it was assumed that he must have some great Brian Clough-like footballing brain. Sadly, he was never given a chance to prove this to us.

He was the town's window cleaner, and had been for some forty years. He was one of the last few Last of The Summer Wine type Yorkshireman living in my old town, and referred to everyone: man, woman and beast as 'Love'- and old Yorkshire salutation (or so we were led to believe). This at first put a few people's backs up, though the sight of him calling our Desperate Dan look-e-likey burly prison warden center back and his equally large brother as ‘love’ was too much.

On his first pre-season training session, we took the piss. He had the 'squad' running around the practice ground, and when he blew his whistle we would turn left, if he blew it twice we turned right, however whilst running away from him we chose to ignore him and kept running and running, and he kept blowing his whistle like a maniac until we were out of site. It never really improved from there, but he was nice enough to offer me a job working for him. naturally I politely declined, as I had a new life in the land of Liverpool to look forward to. The same applied when our 2nd team goalkeeper (who had eyes going in different directions- but a good shot stopper and brilliant when coming off his line) offered me a job in a car sales room where he worked.

His downfall as a 'sporting director' was the installation of a former class mate of mine as the first choice goal keeper. From playing with him in our school football team I knew how hopeless he was, and the soppy old bugger even gave him a trial for Scarborough, which of course he failed.

The poor bastard tried to get the team more cohesive, fitter and focused, but the players didn’t really want to know. When we were invited to an exhibition match against the mighty Harrogate Town A.F.C he gathered us all around in the dressing room to reveal his new secret weapon: Jelly Babies. He’d read that Curtly Ambrose and some of the other West Indian fast bowlers would eat them as a energy replacement between Overs. Sadly, they were all scoffed by players, substitutes, player’s friends, injured players, the manager ten minutes before the kick off.

I’m not sure, but I think he’s dead now.

MP3’s

Neil Young live at BBC 27th Feb 1971 – Old Man

Aphex Twin –Window Licker

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