wibbleblog

I like Sundays, mainly because I only work one in five and then I finish at twelve, so my afternoons are free for church. It’s not a real church I go to, nor do we worship questionable Gods; It’s my local Cricket Club which I’ve frequented since I was a small boy playing junior cricket in 1962.

All my friends have also frequented the club for years and are made up of, a fellow Prison Officer, some Police Officers, an accountant, a senior financial advisor and a couple of them are company managers. Despite the professional standing of the group, we’re all as mad as hatters and we get blasted every Sunday afternoon…!!!

The Gods we worship here are the patron saints of brewing, conversation, laughter; and what we English call “piss taking”, or making fun of lightly… Nobody is immune from this practice; and you have to be very careful what you say and how you say It or all of a sudden you’re “in the barrel” as I was one week when I made an innocuous comment about transvestites…  I should know better.

There’s invariably food on the go in the form of cheese & pickles & salted nuts etc, and occasionally the lad on the left, Ian Parkin, will turn up with something to heat up in the oven. This week It was beef sausage & black pudding, with baby roast potatoes & cherry tomatoes done in garlic butter, heavenly it was.   

Football rivalry plays a big part and has been known to get out of hand, we all support either Sunderland (come on…) or Newcastle United. The problem is, we Sunderland lads outnumber the Newcastle lads so we gang up on them a bit. On “Derby” day, this is where the two teams play each other in the English Premier League,  we go from being busom buddies to bitter rivals; splitting up into our two tribes to watch it on TV with the winners getting the bragging rights till the next match. No one falls out over It, and when the games over we converge on our end of the bar and we’re all good friends again…!!!

So after having had a great afternoon we gradually disperse in varying directions home, I live a ten minute walk away and invariably have a bit of a wobble on. This is fine in the winter months when It’s dark, daylight however is a bit different; you wobble past people sitting in their gardens (when it isn’t pissing down with rain) and someone will invariably pull you a couple of days later with the old ” seen you walking home on Sunday Marrsy, you looked a bit out of It ” Well It’s only once a week… Luckily I live in a large house and Susan will be in the sitting room at the front watching TV, and I’ll wobble in at the back and go straight upstairs to bed without bothering a soul and be up bright and early the next morning whether I’m at work or not.

So that’s church on Sunday, oh we celebrated Gary Sams becoming a G’dad at 45 this week, lucky him I’m still waiting for that… And we fairly took the piss out of our young Australian cricketer who works behind the bar, he’s getting better though; he’s starting to give as good as he gets. As Aussies always do…!!!

Carl Yung decreed It as:- “an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events that are causally unrelated” I’ve had my fair share of experiencing such events over the years; the most recent being yesterday. The first one was some 25 or so years ago, my good mate Malcolm Kirk and I were sitting in our local pub; in silence as good friends can do.. he suddenly piped up, “Does Alan Cotterill still live in Australia.?” I replied, “Yea, I was talking to his Brother the other week; he emigrated about 10 years ago” We sat in silence for about 5 minutes when Alan Cotterill walked into the bar on his first visit back to England in 10 years, If we hadn’t have been sitting down we would have fallen down, It was quite spooky,,,!!! Several others have occurred over the years, nothing quite in the same vein as that one; till yesterday…

 Driving to work listening to the breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, the DJ Chris Evans asked, “Can you remember Sonia who came second in the Euro-vision song contest in 1993..??” I must explain, the Euro-vision song contest is where every European country submits a cheesy song sung by a cheesy artist, and then for about four or five hours on a Saturday night the whole caboodle is broadcast on the BBC, each country then votes for their favourite song and a winner is declared. It’s been going on for over fifty years and It’s really naff, horrible and mind numbing…!!! Moving swiftly on, to my shame I could vaguely remember Sonia but not the song she sang, he then went on to ring her at home and there followed an inane conversation about a comeback she was planning etc; followed by an airing of her song called “Better the Devil You Know”.

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon at work, we received a new prisoner from one of the courts; a sad alcoholic wreck of a fella who’d never been in prison before. After putting my “new prisoner” head on he opened up a bit and told me things about his past and what drove him to drink etc, he mentioned he used to be a songwriter which prompted a somewhat sceptical “really” from me. Yea he said, “I wrote  songs for so and so etc, but my most famous one was “Better the Devil You Know” for Sonia, it came second in the 1993 Euro-vision song contest ” Whoa I thought, we could be heading into Spooksville here, so I Googled it and sure enough; this guy wrote and produced it, weird or what..!!! 

Well as a lot of people know, unless you live in Arkansas or Siberia, The 2012 Olympic games are taking place in London in the UK. The UK isn’t a very big place; It fits 14 times into the state of Texas in the USA so I’m told.. So on hearing that the Olympic Torch was to be carried through the town of Consett some 5 miles from where I live, I became all excited. A great historical once in a lifetime event which just begged to be photographed for posterity. I collect old photographs of my local area and do the then and now thing, modern day digital scanners and cameras make this practice an absolute doddle. The torch was due in Consett at around 4pm, so at about 3.15pm I jumped in the car and set off on the 5 mile journey armed with digital camera and I phone, about 2 miles into the journey the traffic came to a standstill.  It’s quite a rural area where I live and I expected heavier traffic than normal, due to the event, and there being only one main route from Annfield Plain to Consett; but I didn’t expect to grind to a halt. Anyway, It transpired that there had been a horrific car accident about a mile up the road and the Police were turning everyone back so I had to turn around. I know all the shortcuts on the narrow side roads and they were all clogged up so I gave up and went home. Gutted I was, however all wasn’t lost. My good friends John & Emma along with their boy Finlay made it up there and took some great pics, all isn’t lostas the torch is in Durham tomorrow being carried by former England cricket captain Paul Collingwood, who’s a local lad, so I might catch it then…

I dont actually recall how this started; but at one point It got quite out of hand with several varieties of obscure English and the odd foreign cheeses being produced on a Thursday night. Then someone turned up with a bottle of Port; nothing better than cheese and port we thought so we would take turns to provide the port. Some magnificent cheeses were consumed over the weeks, Stinking Bishop; which was soft and creamy and as the name suggests very smelly… Locally produced varieties such as Cuddy’s Cave; a mild Cheddar from the Northumberland Cheese Company, Admiral Collingwood; a very mature Cheddar, and the King of all cheese with no equal on this planet; Colston Bassett Stilton, which should be eaten bare headed on bended knee… It became a weekly event, other club regulars looked on in veiled amusement at the Ooowing and Ahring that emanated from our end of the bar as cheesy virtues were extolled, a great night was had in December last year when my daughter Kelly was over from Australia, no less than about ten varieties were on offer with all sorts of crackers and oat biscuits etc, not to mention a bottle of vintage Port, a sheer delight it was.. Sadly it’s petered out over the last few months which is a shame, It was different; slightly eccentric and all together “English”, a foolish but enjoyable exercise carried out whilst curing all the worlds Ill’s with some top notch conversation. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. We’ll have to think of something else…???   

Since the expansion of the European Union; however many years ago it was, the influx of peoples from rat race European countries into the UK has become over and above epidemic levels. I’ll explain what I mean about the “rat race” comment. I literally mean people from countries that I wouldn’t visit if someone gave me a solid gold pig for my birthday in perpetuity… For example:- Albania, Latvia, Romania to name but a few, This isn’t a racist thing; I consider racism to be white against black or Asians; not white against white,  however modern day political correctness dictates that I can no longer call a Scotsman a horrible Jock bastard or an Irishman a thick Paddy twat; neither can the aforementioned call me an English piece of shit; It’s just not the same anymore, we used to happily slag each other off then shake hands and get on with It… I’m digressing; to get back on track, being a Prison Officer in an English Prison It’s my misfortune to deal with non English speaking prisoners from the previously mentioned countries, and others. It was inevitable that the dregs from these places would end up talking to me (I’ll come back to the talking bit in a mo…) as I work in reception where we receive these creatures from the courts. A phone call from court services alerts us to the fact that a foreigner is heading our way; “Hi it’s Dave from Durham Crown Court, got two Romanians for you; neither can speak English, best of luck with them, can’t complete their paperwork; Hee Hee Hee… See ya…!!! ” Ah wow, here we go it’s time to put our shouting and made up sign language heads on… As they get off the cellular escort van outside reception the “I’m dealing with a foreigner” mode automatically kicks in, for example, “CAN YOU SPEAK ENGLISH” You know he can’t so why the fuck did you bother asking, It becomes obvious when greeted by a blank stare with his head at a 45 degree angle and his slack mouthed demeanour… However you don’t give up, you follow that with “HAVE YOU GOT ANYTHING HIDDEN ABOUT YOUR PERSON, GUNS, KNIVES OR BOTTLES OF WHISKEY ETC” before you proceed to give him a rub down search. The aforementioned demeanour tells you he’s thinking “who is this fucking thick English twat, I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about so why is he shouting at me” The process goes on throughout the whole reception procedure. Picture him in the strip searching booth, “PASS ME YOUR TRAINERS” as you gesticulate with over exaggerated arm motions down to your highly polished boots, It gets worse as you tell him to “LIFT YOUR DICK UP AND SPREAD YOUR ARSE CHEEKS” I’ll leave you to imagine the gesticulations involved with that one, and then there’s “GO IN THE SHOWER” as you put both hands above your head and flick all your fingers up and down at the same time, It’s a real hoot; you can’t help doing It, the Brit convicts laugh their socks off watching us; but as Ned Kelly said just before being hung in Old Melbourne Gaol in Australia, “such is life”…!!!

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