Filed under: Scotland, books, family, life, stories | Tags: Carlisle Utd, Celtic, England manager, Glenn Hoddle, John Gorman, Northampton Town, spurs, Tampa bay Rowdies, Tottenham, Wycholm Wanderers
Hmmm.
John Gorman is my late Father’s cousin and has a reputation in football that is considerable.
As I child I was besotted with the rubbed off fame that he bestowed upon me in the playground. My most vivid memories are of him as captain of Carlisle United. Top of what is now the premiership.
Football is a fickle mistress though.
Carlisle’s early season winnng streak soon ran out and with that so did John, to Spurs, and injury.
After that Tampa Bay.
Most pros gradually fade away, but not John. Through his association with Glenn Hoddle he rose increasingly to managerial prominence, culminating in his Assistant managership of England, as a Jock.
So, I was looking forward to this reading with enthusiasm. There is however, a dreadful back story that permeates the book, the early death, through cancer, of his beloved wife Myra. This element of the book is truly tragic and it is really quite poignant.
Despite this the book is not something I could recommend to the casual reader I’m sorry to say. It’s ghost written by journalist Kevin Brennan. Sadly Kevin Brennan is to literature what Michael Winner is to film making. It’s not good.
It’s illuminating though and demonstrates ably how thin the line is between success and failure. John goes through a job or two per chapter and there are 17 of them, so it demonstrates how grim a reality football management is, especially in the lower leagues.
One for the family and the collectors only I have to say.
Filed under: Rants, business, independence, life, stories | Tags: building society, the dunfermline, The dunfermline Building society
This credit crunch seems to drive people to very strange decisions.
Clearly the Dunfermline has had an annus horribilis but the view on the non-validity of its balance sheet seems a bit kneejerk.
One argument is that it’s trashed to the tune of over a billion. The other that £50 million or so would fix it.
So. What’s the story? My view is that it was a fixable problem.
BUT.
With a government in total freefall; clueless; PR stories at farcical levels (the Home Secretary’s porno bill); global meltdown; what chance did The Dunfermline have?
What’s going on man? It’s bonkers. This looks like a very fixable problem. But instead we get the heavy hand of officialdom coming in and messing everything up.
The FSA?
I thought the A in FSA stood for Authority.
LOL.
I saw Melody Gardot live at The Voodoo Lounge early last year and was instantly a fan. Buying her debut album from the lady herself I was a touch disappointed on getting home. In truth it was no more than so so, although the title track sneaked into my best of 2008 b sides compilation.
So you could have knocked me over with a feather on hearing her second outing.
Wow.
Bugger me, this has come on in so many leaps and bounds as to put Bambi in the shade. I’ll go as far as to say that this will unquestionably, come Christmas, be in the running for my album of the year.
Smooth, smoky, sexy, coooool, loungey Jazz with a perfect voice and a mood that I haven’t heard in a long time.
OK it’s easy to make comparisons with Norah Jones, but I’d err more towards Camille. In truth she is her own thing but certainly from the torch singing Jazz classic side of the tracks.
It is a wonderful record. Get out there now and buy it. Then you too can claim to have spotted one of the next superstars in their ascendancy.
Filed under: Arts, Rants, books, politics, stories | Tags: david peace, gb 84, Scargill, Thatcher, the miners strike
You will now presumably be aware of David Peace’s rapidly growing repuation (The Damned Utd, The Red Riding Trilogy).
I am pleased (smug? Ed.) to say I’ve been ahead of the curve on all this as previous posts will testify and one of his books that hasn’t hit the big screen is the subject of my latest bibliographic indulgence.
GB 84 is an epic piece of writing. Coming in at well over 400 pages it does not set out to make life easy for the reader and it succeeds in holding that to the end.
In parts it’s quite staggeringly brilliant but mostly it’s rather turgid and verging on the contrived. David Peace is a very clever writer, the trouble is that in this book he seems to want to prove the point and actually ends up just annoying the fuck out of you.
It’s a true life act of fiction set around the 1984 miner’s strike with a cast of real life characters, Scargill – The President – and Thatcher chief of all, but is surrounded by characters that are clearly based on real life people, ‘The Jew’ for instance, is an odious spin doctor.
As an elegy to the strike, the great strike one has to say, it is quite breathtaking. It is so detailed, so harrowing that at times you have to look away – the scenes of violence involving police versus flying picket, with the dice so clearly laden in the former’s favour, take your breath away at times But it just goes on and on and. Like the strike itself I guess.
And it has more sub plots than a year’s worth of Coronation Street and in the end that’s all too much. Corruption is the key subplot, but you’ve got loyalty (scabbing), deception (infidelity), espionage, murder, brutality and love (sort of) too to deal with.
Frankly it’s all a bit of a mess, and a long winded one at that.
Could I recommend it?
Sadly, no.
Is it well written?
Well, technically, yes.
Am I glad it’s over?
Oh yes.
Has it put me off David Peace?
No way.
Apparently Charlie Nicholas once claimed that James McFadden was Scotland’s Taliban!
Oh really and the Talisman’s are causing havoc in Afghanistan I presume.
In an unremarkable first episode we learned that men can’t wash cars and women can’t help spending money. Life changing huh?
But we were all in agreement that thank fuck ET got the finger!
Filed under: Rants, humour, jokes, life, politics, work | Tags: bankers, banking, if, LLOyds TSB
So, I have an internet BUSINESS bank account with Lloyds TSB and I had a cheque for over £4,000 to pay into my account last Saturday. Rather than risk the post I went to the branch myself and popped the cheque and pay in slip through their letterbox.
Job done.
However today, Thursday, I checked my balance online. No four grand.
So I called them to query this, assuming that it hadn’t cleared yet.
Of course you can’t call your branch anymore you have to call a fucking call centre which took forever to get through to. Having eventually succeeded I was asked for my six digit security code
“What? The one on the log in page you mean? It’s a word, not a number.”
“No the security number we gave you when you opened your personal account account up.”
“What 22 years ago – the one that I’ve never used since?”
“Yes!”
“No.” I replied
“What do you mean no?”
I mean, I can’t remember that number from 22 years ago.”
“Well can we have your personal bank account number then?”
“This is my BUSINESS account. I never use my personal account and they’re in different branches anyway.”
“Yes, but they are linked on our system.”
“Well I don’t have it.”
“OK can we have your date of birth.”
I duly dispensed this and we were in!
“What’s the address of your branch? ” I was asked
I gave them it.
“There’s no branch listed there.
“Yes there is, that’s the address of my branch.”
“Well it’s not on the system.”
“OK, try this (related but wrong) address.”
“Oh yes, that’s it!”
“And is that at the address I gave you before.”
“Yes. Please hold.”
I held for another eternity and the lady came back to me eventually to tell me…
“OK, they’ve found your cheque. It fell down the back. Please use the deposit till in future.”
“I did. It’s called the letterbox!”
“Well, please use the deposit thing in future.”
Did they apologise? Did they fuck. And it’ll still take five days to clear.
ONE WEEK LATER: THE UPDATE.
It gets worse. It really does.
It’s now 9 days since I deposited the aforementioned cheque.
At this point I have to unveil my ineptitude in this sorry tale.
[It seems (and upon checking it's true) I had made out my pay-in slip to my personal bank, which is not Lloyds TSB it is, in fact, IF andI attached it to the aforementioned cheque]
However! Nine days is a long time to uncover this.
So, having called again on Monday morning to point out that the aforementioned cheque, found under the carpet or the budgie’s cage or somewhere equally inappropriate but in close proximity to the letterbox, had still not actually been paid into my accoun. So, after another tortuous log in session I eventually, and I mean like half a light year after pressing the green button on the phone, got someone to listen to my case.
Some time later the person in the call centre ascertained that I’d filled in the wrong bank’s pay in slip.
How embarrassing. What an asshole.
But. I thought, realising this was the case, presumably my branch would call me politely and ease me out of my situation. After all my name was on the pay in slip and I am one of their branch customers.
Oh no, no, no, no, no.
You are having a laugh are you not you sad deluded little humanoid.
Don’t be a silly wee billy.
How could they do that? How would they be able to join up my name and my business account? That would be too straightforward.
They did in fact phone me.
But when challenged on why they couldn’t have called me earlier, on discovering the inappropriately filled in form, having looked to find out who had so foolishly submitted a cheque for £4,000 to the wrong account they said;
“We don’t know who you are. We’re only you’re branch. We don’t know where you live. We don’t know your telephone number. You’re only card number 2231 5453 6564 7776.”
So, instead they posted the cheque to IF… to another bunch of bankers
I know this because I phoned the other bankers this afternoon to see if they had my money
(Don’t be daft. Ed)
And they confirmed that they “Hadn’t a fucking clue where it was…” And…
A) Why Lloyds TSB had sent it to them instead of me
B) When and if ever my cheque would show up
C) What the fuck they’d do with it, if and when it did
D) it was a shame
E) it wasn’t their fault (true)
F) I should probably cancel the original cheque and look like a twat in front of my creditor
OK , I screwed up a small part of this equation.
But.
Having spoken to the branch (eventually) they didn’t know who I was, weren’t bothered about the fact that they didn’t know and couldn’t be bothered finding out.
The lady in the branch said “we could have a thousand customers in your name.”
Well, yes, in the world. There might be a thousand Mark Gormans.
But not in your branch. Please. My name is not Jones, Smith or Chang.
ONE WEEK LATER: THE NEXT UPDATE
So, what would IF do when a cheque payable to my company came in to the with a pay in slip to my personal account (now they COULDN’T link the two. They have no idea what company name I trade under. The two are unrelated. I’ll tell you what they did.
They paid the cheque into my account.
The unrelated natures of the name of the payee and the payer seemed irrelevant. Maybe that’s why they are called INTELLIGENT Finance. They could just sense there was a legitimate link and decided intelligently, or maybe para intelligently that it was the RIGHT THING TO DO.
God only knows.
Filed under: Arts, Youtube, advertising, humour, jokes, life, motors, videos | Tags: cog, cream eggs, honda cog tribute
Please, please watch this . It rocks!
You should check this guy out. He’s John Seven and he rocks. He cites one of my all time favourites, snailbooty, as an inspiration and you can see why.
Originally uploaded by brancusi7.
wow. Just found another photographer with a relatively similiar style to my favourite, snailbooty. have a look at his work.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertising in lonon, bmb, operation overlord, sinead oconnor, sionead, skinhead, trevor beattie
I realise my posting, for now, is a time squeezed challenge so I hope I can, on the whole, only present quality.
What I’d like to share with you for now was the event I staged with Trevor Beattie (Sir Trevor in my post event opinion. He did it and donated his fee to Operation Overlord.)
He talked about how to do great advertising without spending lots of money on it.
Of course he was able to show umpteen examples of this. But the best pure idea he demonstrated was this.
As it coincidentally happens I agree, one of the great pop videos of all time. And I agreewith a minor point he made. She could have shed the boots.
Budget?
Fuck all.
As he said on the night. Be proud to be cheap (but only if you do it well.)
Filed under: Rants, politics, sports, stories | Tags: ECU, enfgland win world cup, England women cricket tem, English cricket, english women win world cup, Enland
England’s ladies won the World Cup of Ladies Cricket this afternoon in Australia. Five Live, to their credit, did report the fact and were interviewing the captain but had to break away for a vital, League One, full time scoreline from Cheltenham versus Oldham.
What a load of old patronising cack. A national team wins a WORLD CUP but a lower league football score that can wait 30 seconds trumps the winning interview?
Come on.
It got worse.
The next question was to confirm the fact that the team was returning home by economy class.
The poor English ladies representative tried to make light of it explaining that when the blazer-wearing assholes (my words, not hers) at the ECU heard about the win they tried to upgrade “some of them” but the team as a whole wanted to travel together.
This is utter fucking bollocks because England were favourites to win the world cup and duly delivered. Why was it a surprise?
Is it merely a mark of disrespect/patronisation by both Five Live and The ECU?
I think so.
Filed under: Arts
I think this is by Cornelia Parker who’s 30 Pieces of Silver was one of the few things I liked at Tate Modern last summer. Anyway it’s showing at The Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh which is a brilliant new exhibition space.
Click on the photo for a better quality image.
Filed under: Arts, Scotland, family, humour, life, politics, stories, theatre
Sam Shepard’s big story although written in the seventies about America in the fifties is a tale for our times. It’s set in America somewhere near the Mexican border mid desert and once again the set is magnificent – a cross section of a house plonked in the aforementioned desert.
It’s a long show and it is full of bleak and black comedy, centring on the breakdown of a dysfunctional American family. Dad, a drunk ex airman, is rarely at home and always in fixes which leads to an accumulation of debt that he solves by ’selling’ the house to a local thug. But his plans are scuppered because mum too has ’sold’ the house to a lawyer ‘friend’ and speculator. She plans to use the proceeds to visit Europe with her son and daughter to take in a bit of culture.
Clearly both aint gonna be happy with the actions of the other.
The central metaphor, hunger, and an empty fridge to illustrate it, shows how the pursuit of money is often fruitless. It certainly resonates in these times where the banks’ fridges lie empty.
Just as with the recent Miller production (The man who had all the luck) the cast hold their American characterisation to perfection and to a person they create a world that is wholly believable and tragic. It is yet another excellent show from Mark Thomson and deserves big audiences and a great deal of respect.
Filed under: humour, jokes, life, motors, stories | Tags: lemon squeezy, passing driving test, scott
She crashed my car in November last year but she passed her test today at the first time of asking.
I put it down to her brilliant driving instructor, Scott, at Lemon squeezy. And her mother.
However, I want to take some of the credit.
I had her running chicanes at the car park at the Forth Road Bridge as an infant driver and I’m sure that baptism of fire made all the rest a doddle.
It’s terrible what he did. Absolutely awful. And look at what it’s done to his eyesight.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Is this the album that will break this excellent band properly?
I hope they ‘do an elbow’ with it .
In between times enjoy their fabulous new song and video.
Filed under: advertising, life, stories, work | Tags: church, credit crunch, prayer, try praying
I saw this outside a church in Edinburgh last week.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Before
After
Happy 50th Birthday Alan.
John Cooper Clarke observes a truism in life. And a reason not to buy ex-hire cars.
I know I’ve been a bit harsh on the beardy hippy gits with their nauseating critical adulation. But I’ll give them something.
This, their latest single, is great. But they came across as total geek nerds on the Culture Show last night. Frankly I had to look away. Thankfully I was on my own or I’d have died of embarrassment.
They are notable by ther absence in the video are they not?
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve had a bit of “ooh you’re no bloggin’ that much big boy.” recently.
And a lot of it is put down to the fact that I’m not exactly underemployed.
And I’m not. My golf stinks, consequently.
But if any of you think my bloggin’ is dead. Forget it.
I aim to entertain.
