Proposing toast

The sun is very slowly coming up over the hills outside, before the bedroom window as I write this. The cold winter air and clouds hanging over it seem to be fighting it's ascendence. Yesterday was very busy in the office with the first day of the boss' paternity leave. Felix is now off for a month after the birth of a new baby girl whose picture is now stuck up on the notice board with a handwritten 'Alexa?' over it. No one knows the name yet for sure, but apparently this was the last name mentioned by Felix as a possibility.
While Shirley Ann was having her baby on Sunday I was suffering in a much more idiotic and self inflicted manner. We were out on the town again on Saturday night and for some reason I woke up with the most horrendous hangover I've had in years. Unfortunately I was not yet drinking to the health of my boss' newborn child, if I had been it would possibly be the healthiest child EVER! Chaz is to blame for this one as he brought round a 'quality' red wine for dinner before we headed into town. Before eating Chaz insisted on 'teaching' both Ka and myself how to drink red wine properly at the table. Sipping through the teeth, letting the wine lie in the mouth for a short time, tasting and appreciating the flavours before finally swallowing... stuff that everyone knows from watching five minutes of that Jilly Goolden and all her pretentious twaddle. The way Chaz went on you'd think Ka and myself had never drank a decent bottle of wine. Even if he thought we had he must have believed we had downed it round the local swing park or something. After around ten minutes of him 'teaching' me how to appreciate wine I have to be honest, I did start to ignore him and get on with my dinner. Ka's bolognese and meatballs again but as always they're just too hard to resist! Anyway, I'm guessing it was the red wine's fault for the dreadful hangover. So you can keep your £17 bottles of wine Chaz, I'm going back to Asda for the 3 for a tenner deal. That's if I ever drink again that is... I propose a toast to my boss' newborn child, toast with a spot of marmalade and a nice cuppa.

Oooooo, aaaahhhhhh

Thus were the noises the family were making last night. Steven was in charge , entertaining us with many a blast, fizz and burst of firework spectacles. We went round to Angela and Steven's house for seven o'clock, Ka and myself arriving just ahead of Colin, Jillian, Grace and Dougie. Steven had went out and spent a fortune on fireworks which we all enjoyed, whilst slagging off his firework ignition skills, then went into the house and used up all his living room seats, drank all his hot chocolate, ate all his pizza, devoured all his biscuits and left. Poor Morgan was a bit off colour and feeling the effects of a cold and lay in her dressing gown during the hot chocolate supping whilst Colin and myself sat and howled at Tom & Jerry on the Boomerang channel. What a fantastic channel - must remember to check if I have it on my Virgin TV package. Tom & Jerry cartoons must have been on for a solid four hours last night. My favourite of all the shorts and surely the best from Hanna and Barbera. This fired up some more reminiscing as Colin and myself talked about Saturday eveings in the eighties with Tom & Jerry always on after the footie and before Rolf's Cartoon Club. Which led on the talking about Glen's Cavalcade in which Glen Michael sat behind a desk introducing shorts, mostly from the cheaper end of the animation market, alongside his dog and a talking gas lamp. I wonder who came up with the idea of a talking gas lamp?
Both Colin and Steven also confessed to being one of few people that have actually read some of this blog. So I'd better be careful of what I'm writing about them from now on certainly must not mention anything about a lack of catherine wheel expertise... damn. I just did didn't I? I wouldn't do much better myself anyway. Maybe next year Steven.

Health & safety implications

Morgan, our 5 year old niece, phoned up last night inviting us to a fireworks party in the garden of their new abode. When we asked if there was anything that we could bring she stopped and thought a little and then shouted 'Champagne!'. What a splendid life she must lead. Not only does she get fireworks on Bonfires night but she also gets champagne. Not sure that champagne is part of the traditions of Guy Fawkes night or of the health and safety implications this would raise what with catherine wheels spinning about gardens and rockets being lit. Ka had to give her a polite no (and in the background I said a polite p**s off) and it was revealed to be none other than Steven, Morgan's Dad, who had made the suggestion. He's always good at chancing his arm is Steven. My right shoulder has only now just about recovered after the strains of that flitting of his. If anyone deserves champagne it should be me for surviving that onslaught and chancing my own arm under the weight of his washing machine.
Rockets have been going off in, and around, our street for days now anyway. Every time, for the briefest of seconds, I have thought it was my neighbourhood finally descending into gun toting chaos before realising it is just the neds playing with fireworks. Unfortunately there are never many bonfires about these days, (unless you count the ones that are obviously invite only and involve wheelie bins). I used to love a good bonfire. Going round the neighbours, collecting all their old furniture and other extraneous junk and tossing it on to the pitch outside Duncanrig High school. Those disorganised bonfires were always the best once they got started. This particular fire on the pitches, which are now Duncanrig's 5-a-side football turfs, used to get quite massive. They got particularly exciting when there would be sudden explosions and bursts of gaseous flames from the depths of the bonfire after the occasional paint pot, spray can or vodka bottle had been included in the wood and junk collecting from throughout the day. You would be diving for cover when the glass shards started spinning through the flames, with only a sparkler and a balaclava as protection. The wee girl in the woolly hat with the burnt hand in the eighties ads never warned us about that! Nowadays it's all very safe and cordoned off, if your lucky enough to even attend a bonfire, never mind construct one, without the council's health and safety officials having their say. It's probably for the best. There'd be less exploding glass injuries and wheelie bin abductions that way. Maybe we'd be better off staying at home and cracking open a bottle of bubbly for poor old Guy Fawkes. Bet he didn't foresee all the trouble he'd be causing by going and getting caught!

Woolly thoughts

The family and I were all up to five in the morning on Friday dancing, drinking, playing table football, and wearing balaclavas. Yes, balaclavas! After dinner Kenny pulled a box of his old stuff down from upstairs that had been collected by Lynsey Ann as she had moved into his old room. This box contained all sorts of strange memorabelia from his younger days including drawings, hand written stories and comics, old teddy bears and embarrassing headgear. In among a pile of old baseball caps were the two matching sets of balaclavas and gloves that Mum had knitted for Kenny and myself when we were young. For a time, in the Scottish winter months, Kenneth and myself trooped to school in home made woolen brown balaclavas. Only one pair of the gloves had survived the years and the string of wool that joined the two gloves was long gone but it didn't stop us trying them on for size. I always used to think those joined mittens were revolutionary. My Mum's own invention, sitting at home, knitting furiously coming up with all these weird and wonderful designs. Of course I learned later that quite a few youngsters had them and probably just didn't let on. The line of cord leaving one mitten going up your arm around your back and down your other arm holding the other mitten to the other hand just in case you got confused with the whole 'how to work a pair of gloves' idea. The balaclavas no longer fitted either. Does anyone still wear balaclavas? I mean anyone that's not exploring the Arctic, driving a Formula One car or robbing banks or generally causing some form of terror? The brown balaclava itself was enough to induce terror in anyone. Poor Mum, she just wanted to keep us warm. Now that I've written this I'll probably get a new one now for Christmas!

Moos and monkey nuts

Trying to talk Mum and Dad into starting up a blog for their Grand World Tour of Austrailia. They're off to Oz on Monday for a month to travel through the cities, beaches, deserts, tropics and barbies meeting various distant relatives along the way. They've even been invited to a Wedding while they are over there.
Not sure if they're keen on the whole blog thing although Mum is talking about keeping a journal in a small notebook I apparently bought for her many moons ago. Mum came across the book the other day finding a small message on the inside cover, written by myself. Turns out the notebook is a nice little hardback number with illustrations littered throughout it's mostly blank pages depicting scenes from, none other than, The Wizard of Oz. Let's just hope they don't get hit with any tornados while they're over there. Or meet any Witches, flying monkeys or pumpkin headed men. (I've never met most of the austrailian relatives before so who knows).
Talking of pumpkin heads, it's halloween this weekend and Ka's nursery are having a party today, three days early. No doubt there'll be loads of monkey nuts and apples flying about.
Halloween was always bad for monkey nuts. Who came up with the idea of monkey nuts at Halloween? Who wanted monkey nuts for telling folk your best jokes? You knew you had to walk a little further afield on your trick or treating if all you were getting for your trouble was flamin' monkey nuts. Sometimes you'd get really lucky on you way round the houses and start getting actual money for your jokes, usually from folk that were either unprepared or just rich and generous. Nowadays, if you were to give money out to the kids you'd probably get reported for suspicious behaviour.
Anyway, today Ka is dressed as a cow with a pink skirt and a ginger fringe. This was the only costume that came to hand for her nursery party. Her brother, Colin McG, wore this cow costume, one of two, at his drama group's panto last year and on Saturday Ka and Jillian borrowed the costumes for a trip to Motherwell. As you may or may not be aware, a bunch of cows stoating around Motherwell on a Saturday is nothing too unusual but on this occasion the cows were panto versions of the actual animal, large and furry with the afore mentioned ginger fringes. It was an animal themed Singing Kettle show which Grace took them along to with Morgan. The lengths these girls go to to entertain Morgan is quite extraordinary. I dropped them off outside the theatre, driving off speedily as they pulled on the furry black and white cow costumes and posed for Grace's camera alongside Morgan, who was a Giraffe. As if this wasn't confusing, or embarassing, enough for Morgan, she was then pulled up on stage during the show to be a penguin.
Saturday is Halloween and will hopefully be the same as last year with no visitors and no rubbish jokes told by seven year olds from under rubbish costumes as they stand muddying up your hall carpet. We live in a flat so we can easily shut and lock the close door to stop any of the kids into our block. This is assuming, of course, that not all the kids are down the swing park boozing or mugging each other. We've only had trick or treaters at our door once and I don't think they've ever come back. They couldn't have liked their monkey nuts.

Drugs and flamingos

Woke up rather disturbed this morning thinking I was in Libya and Ka and been jailed for drug running. Another crazy dream but one that seemed all very real. We had been holidaying in Libya, walking down a busy street in a busy town when suddenly a bunch of black uniformed police officers started chasing us. We looked one way and they were pushing people aside to get to us. We looked another and more officers were marching down the street, eyes glaring. They swiftly arrested us and as we objected one of the officers ripped Ka's bag from her shoulder and, after a little rummaging, pulled a large wad of notes, tied by an elastic band, from her bag swiftly followed by a small bag of suspicious looking white powder. Ka argued she'd never seen the items before (as they all do) and we were pushed off to the nearest Libyan police station. After being held for a short time I was released (for some reason) but Ka was detained due to the fact the items had been in her possession. I was fairly distressed by all these goings on, as you can imagine, and argued with the officers ferociously as I was shoved back out on to the streets. Ka had been fitted up and as I set off into the warm, dusty streets to get help, she sat in prison, in fear and isolation. This is where she remains as the dream ended shortly afterwards and I woke up flailing around in bed as I tried to shoulder my way by some market tradespeople.
I used to keep a dream diary. During my time in Art School I used to entertain folk with stories of the dream from the night before. Some of them even used to inspire drawings or stories! I've always had pretty epic dreams of all shapes and sizes. I still remember a nightmare I had when I was around eight or nine about giant flamingos surrounding our house in the black of night like some tropical version of Hitchcock's 'The Birds'. My family and I were sitting cowering in the living room, turning all the lights off as the small beady eyes over their large beaks peered in through the windows at me from the black outside. Remembering dreams for longer than an hour, however, is usually a bit of a struggle for me. I'll wake up thinking, "That was great, I'd better remember it and write it down". But, after my Bran Flakes, the images and stories will disperse and fade into the clouds of my mind. The next thing I know I'll be sitting in the office wondering what the hell that had all been about. Someone once bought me a cheap dream diary which didn't even touch the surface of some of the stuff that goes on in my head during the night. The stuff that goes on in my head during the day is bad enough but during the night it's just damned crazy.

Crates full of fairytales

I'm ever so slightly achey today after the torture that was Ka's sister's house move at the weekend. Angela, her partner, Steven, and our niece, Morgan, were moving from Bellshill to Bothwell involving many a trip in the hired white van on Saturday and more than a few journeys with my own car filled to the roof with 'stuff'. 'Stuff' is actually quite an accurate description as it seemed to me there was a suspicious amount of 'stuff' kept especially for those infamous, mythical times when things might come in handy. Not only that but Dougie and myself had to deal with possibly the messiest garden shed I'd ever seen in my life. A garden shed which held pick axes, crowbars, thousands of coloured plastic balls, thousands of nails, spanners, skipping ropes, spades, hoes and at least five spirit levels. That was before we tackled the garden with it's collection of inflatable animals and balls of all shapes and sizes.
The presence of the spades along with the pick axes, drills, mallets and other nasty looking tools inside the nail floored shed made me suspect that Steven was perhaps slightly more than the innocent family man that he makes himself out to be. I was almost expecting to be knocked unconscious at some point and wake up strapped up in some horrible mechanism, surrounded by spirit levels, sawing my own hand off and chatting with a freaky looking puppet on a tricycle.
Don't get me wrong I'm a bit of a hoarder myself, at least, according to Ka anyway. I've still got hundreds of Empire, SFX and Q magazines lying around in large piles, some at home, some boxed up in Mum and Dads but I'll keep them. Boxes of issues soon to be stored away up in Mum and Dad's loft turning their attic into a smaller version of the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse. Just in case. You never know. Someone someday may ask me who played the supporting actor role in suchandsuch a film and I'll be able to spring up, go to my Empire collection and pull out the relevant issue, flick through the dusty pages and find the details after scouring through a large feature of that particular month. Either that or I'll just google it. In that case hanging on to the issues seems rather pointless. Better not let on to Ka... I don't think Steven had any mag collections though he certainly had some hefty books. As did Morgan who has at least two crates full of fairytales along with her many castles, dollshouses and plastic cars. Later in the day, at the new abode, whilst busily unpacking from the rear of the van, I almost dropped a box with fright as, squeaking out of the shadows inside the van trundled a tricycle.