So much time has passed ...

Sometimes I wonder why I began this blog, because I either a) forget about it, b) get side-tracked and have no time to do it, or c) refuse to admit that I'm a lazy shit.

So what's happened to me in the last couple of months? Well, for a start, I was nearly arrested in France - along with my father-in-law - for looking at Eurostar.

L'Entente (Presque) Cordiale

I'd taken Becky and my parents-in-law over to Calais for the day for a bit of a mini booze cruise, and whilst the girls went shopping in the Cité Europe hypermarket, I took Bernard to look at the Channel Tunnel entrance as he is something of a train buff. So we're there watching the trains pass, and Bernard's taken a couple of photos when a military vehicle pulls up and two rather short, uniformed chaps with machine guns get out and ask us what we're doing and that we shouldn't be taking photos.

They then ask us if we're Afghans. Can you believe it? Me in an England rugby shirt, British car (okay it's a VW, but it's right-hand drive) and Bernard with a "Rail Monthly" magazine on the dashboard. So I apologise in French, and say we'll go. They stop us, saying "Il faut que vous attendiez les flics" or "You've got to wait for the coppers". So we wait for the police to arrive, and first thing they do is ask for our passports - which are with my wife at the shopping centre!! So we give our driving licenses, and hope for the best.

After a bit, the officer comes back and says "C'est bon; désolé de vous avoir dérangés". And that was it! He then proceeded to talk about the upcoming England-France Rugby World Cup semi-final ("Bonne chance, les British !!"), congratulated me on having such amazing French language skills, bade us farewell, and pootled off in his Renault Kangoo.

I told my colleagues all this, and now they've now dubbed me something like Mukhtar Ibrahim al-Taylor, and keep asking me to do my "You have no respect for me ... Al'lahhhhhhhhhhhhh" impression all the time. Sheeeesh (kebab).

Baby Baby & More Baby

Well it's only about 3 weeks until Becky's little passenger alights. Time seems to have flown by. Apart from general discomfort and the odd spike in blood pressure, all's gone according to plan. The nursery's done, finances sorted ready, and now it's just time for laddo to put in an appearance! We're looking at almost 9lbs in weight, which seems huge. A colleague of mine told me of a friend whose baby was so large and so surrounded by water and fluid in the womb that when the friend gave birth she lost 2.5 stone that very day. Reminds me of that Peter Kay line "She lost 14 stone in a DAYYYYYYYYY" ...

Jahn Teigen & Deirdre Rachid / Barlow - Separated at Birth?

I'm amost at the end of a great book called Spanish Steps by Tim Moore. Tim's humour never fails to impress me. The book is about Tim's travels along the world-famous Way of St James (el Camino de Santiago) across northern Spain ... with a donkey called Shinto. I haven't laughed out loud for so long at a book - theres' something about Tim's humour that really appeals to me.


I've already read French Revolutions and Do Not Pass Go, but now I want to read Tim's Nul Points book next, a look at all those acts from countries on the fringes of Eurovision notoriety who have ignominiously received nul points. One of my all-time favourites, and a legend in his own lunchtime - in fact, he adorns the cover of Moore's book - is Jahn Teigen of Norway. The YouTube video below is from his legendary performance at the Paris Palais des Congrès in 1978 ... check out his comedic, fake trip (hilarious with a very small "h"), not to mention his Deirdre Rachid (or is it Barlow again now?) glasses ...

Jahn Teigen's Official Website (in Norwegian, I'm afraid)




We went to see the midwife again yesterday, and all is fine with the baby (or "laddo" as I now call him). The midwife chirped up with "If your growth chart's correct, you'll be looking at an 8-pounder". What a skill it must be to be able to make an unborn baby sound like they're an airborne explosive device used by the Wehrmacht, discussed on endless Channel 4 documentaries by aged Cockneys pointing at the skies above the East End.

Humiliation Par Excéllence

What has happened to the England Rugby Team? I just can't understand why we've become so depressingly awful.

Why am I being so negative and not doing as any faithful fan would, such as espousing the virtues of "taking part, not winning"?

Well, on Friday evening I settled down with a few cold beers on hand to watch England v South Africa. I knew this would be a tough match, and it was being touted as England's biggest test match since last World Cup's final against the Wallabies.

Beset with injuries, no strength in depth, no battle-ready number 10, and no real peripheral vision going on, I watched as time and again the Springboks ran ring after ring after ring around us. I actually found myself cheering Bryan Habana as he came back onto the pitch to replace his blood substitution.

Such was my disappointment that I actually turned over at half-time to watch some vacuous BBC comedy, as my constant grimacing was giving me face ache.

But the worst is yet to come. If - and it's a big if - we get second place in our Pool, then we get the almighty task of meeting Australia in the quarter finals. Safe to say that our velocitous exit will be precipitated by Australia's bloodthirsty need for revenge.

But we shouldn't all look on this gloomily - even though Australia will beat us, and it's not a case of if but of by how many points - we can all safely look back on November '03 and know that we beat them when it mattered most, on their turf, in front of their home crowd. Despite all of their back-stabbing, smear campaigns, verbal and xenophobic attacks on England that tournament, we still lifted the Webb-Ellis trophy.

We all get our "15 minutes of fame". Our time's now up.

Back In The Saddle Again ... And 3 Names You Should Never Choose As A Parent ...

It's been quite a while now since I last wrote in this blog - two months, in fact. Thing is, I don't even know where the time has gone! Back at the end of May I extrapolated about there being less than 200 days before I was to become a dad ... now it's only 100 days! And that - by my calculation - means that I have 14.28 weeks left before my son is born.

That's right, I said son, as we're expecting a boy!! We went for the second ultrasound scan back on August 6th at th'ospickle in Lichfield, and thankfully all was okay with the baby. The nurse doing the ultrasound (what is their job title?!) was checking the heart for ages - got me worried - but she said it's procedure and all was fine.

Then she asked if we wanted to know what it was - well I did, but Becky didn't. Trouble is, she'd be able to tell immediately from my reaction what it was. So we agreed and the nurse said "I'm 98% sure it's a boy". 98%?! What's all that about? Why the 2%? We were later told it's because there are many mistakes made with declaring - one woman was told 3 times that she was having a boy, then out popped a girl. So I'm happy, but not out of the woods yet!

The nurse asked if we'd chosen a name yet - well if it's a boy (note I'm still saying "if") it's going to be called Harry after my paternal grandfather, who died of tuberculosis at 32 years old, a week before my dad's 1st birthday. There's no other name we want. My mother-in-law's not keen on the name ... but she keeps referring to him as "Hal" or "Arry Boy" (when she first said this last one, I thought she'd said Haribo after the German confectioner!!). I like Hal, as he's one of my fave Shakespeare characters from Henry IV:Part One. The nurse also told us about other names that she has been told be prospective (chav) parents, who already have kids - these are REAL names for kids in the same families ...

• Girls
• Chanelle,
• Chantelle, and
  
• Charelle.

• Boys
• Wayne,
• Dwayne, and
  
• Shane.

• And I remember two Pakistani brothers I was at school with were called ...
• Wajid (aka. Waj), and
• Sajid (aka. Saj).
  

So now we're into the final stretch of the pregnancy, and we have no more time off work before the big day arrives (earmarked for December 16th). I'm getting very excited now - the nursery's all but done, we've been out and bought all the necessary bits and pieces, we've filled out all of the maternity and paternity forms, etc. All we really need to do now is wait for Haribo to put in an appearance - preferrably on the date specified!

Vive La Frangleterre!

I was reminded this morning whilst listening to French radio on the Internet of a very amusing anecdote told to me by a former colleague back in 2000, to do with the many pleasures brought about by linguistic faux pas, semantics or general mispronunciations.

He was telling me that whilst working for a consulting practice in the 1990s, a couple of particularly senior French directors had paid their site in Manchester a visit to talk about the company's new strategy and what lay in it for employees.

All available staff gathered in the conference room, and my colleague told me how the French visitors really looked the part, mid-50s, olive-skinned, very suave and debonair, all hair dye, sharp suits and questionale eau de cologne. Everyone was a little in awe ... then they started to talk.

At first, it was evident that they had a very competent grip of the English language, very educated, a slightly American twang due probably to their years of dealing with the United States. Then one of them stated "If you want to 'ave ze very big success in zis companies, you will 'ave to fuck us". Deathly silence. My colleague said this French guy was a little taken aback, turning to his counterpart for support, HE then stated "Yessss, you will 'ave to fuck us very 'ard".

It was at that point my colleague piped up "I think you mean FOcus, not FUCK us".

I rest my case.

Blood Tests, Nurses from Hell & Monty Python!

We had to go to the Winshill Medical Centre again today for the next set of blood tests, this time testing for Down's Syndrome and spina bifida. The midwife told us that the last set of tests we had three weeks ago, when the first scans were done, were absolutely fine and nothing to worry about. So today Becky had to go through the whole episode again of having blood taken ...

The fear I think really started when she had a routine blood test done a few years ago at Burton's Queen's Medical Centre. The particular junior nurse tending to Becky was unnecessarily stupid (is there a necessary level of stupidity?), and taking the blood took three failed attempts to get a hit, then on the fourth go she literally whacked the needle in and proceeded to gossip with her colleagues in the room. Becky was quite poorly afterwards, breaking out in a very cold sweat, coupled with dizziness and nausea the whole day. Only one way to describe that nurse, it starts with dick and ends with head.

When I got home there was a letter from South Staffordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) to tell us that the next scans will be on Monday, August 6th. At this scan we should be able to learn whether we're expecting a boy or a girl. It's going to be a boy, of course, I just know it is. Sans doute, as they say in the Dordogne.

So everything is - touch wood - going according to plan, and nothing currently to worry about. That's such a relief for us both. we'll just have to wait now for that next set of scans.

They're still saying December 16th for the baby's arrival ... my maternal grandfather's birthday. But I've been warned that the baby will be a Sagittarius, and so prone to tempers (see post immediately below, Becky's brother is a Sagittarius).

Personally I think that putting any credence in astrology is tantamount to talking bollocks. Your honour, I rest my case.

Monty Python's "Meaning Of Life"

And now for something (not) completely different ... I hope it won't be like this in December!

Mountain Bike Killer ...

I found something out about my brother-in-law on Saturday that really made me laugh. He's apparently got a bit of a temper on him, and being a 6-foot-odd London fireman you'd probably not mess with him, but it's the resolute way he seems to go about things that I find great.

My father-in-law told us about an incident a few months ago, when he was at my brother-in-law's house in Sidcup, building a new garden wall. Some teenage hoodlums (who'd been causing a nuisance for a long time to all of the local residents) came past on their mountain bikes, one of them holding a water-filled balloon that he promptly threw at my father-in-law, hitting him full on. He was soaked. My brother-in-law came running out of his house and after the teenagers, jumping into his car as he passed it. My father-in-law told me that he drove back a few minutes later, with one of the teenagers' mountain bikes in his car.

This is the good bit ...

He promptly borrowed a diamond-bladed cutter from a willing neighbour to saw through the bike ... apparently he cut it into little pieces (in full view, in the road) before dumping it back where he'd grabbed it off the teenager.

He's had no comeback in months, and the ne'er-do-wells haven't reappeared.

Why can't we all be so good at fighting back?

Tweel & Segway

I often find myself amazed by what people dream up as the next big thing. I remember when the Segway PT was first being touted by its inventor Dean Kamen, and I'd read about his giving it the codeword "Ginger" ... looking at the first pictures I ever saw of one, I was astounded at its brilliance - that was until I saw one shooting up and down a boulevard in Paris, not far from the Shakespeare & Co bookshop. People were ooh-ing and ahh-ing at it, but I quickly realised that it looked like a stupid and dangerous invention, almost as loopy as the Sinclair C5.

But today I saw an invention on another blog that really got me thinking. It's called the Tweel, the name apparently being a portmanteau of tyre and wheel. It's basically an experimental tyre developed by Michelin that doesn't use air so can't either burst or become flat. Apparently, though, it's very noisy over 50mph, so it's got to be developed further I guess. I've often worried about having a tyre burst on me on the motorway, so I'll have to keep my eye on this one.

From Machine Translation to Stanley Unwin via China ...

I wanted to see what my language would look like if I translated it in a program from English to Japanese, then back again ... below is the result, using this very same sentence!

(I also tried Traditional Chinese, which when read sounds disturbingly similar to Stanley Unwin).

[Japanese]
I to see tried, when it translated that of the program from Japanese from English, had decided in those where my language is visible, for the second time very next back section ... The result using this, is the same sentence!

[Traditional Chinese]
I decided attempts and will look any my language will look resembles, if I have translated it at a program from English to Traditional Chinese, then behind again ... Following result, uses this extremely similar sentence!

Only Fools & Horses / The Wine Bar Tumble

Probably the best comedy tumble ever performed ... God bless you, David Jason!