Friday 29 February 2008

The Crofty Family Dinner Suit Weekend


We only have one dinner suit in our family and it is owned and worn predominantly by my father. He is a denizen of Rotary dinners and a choir singer. I am not accustomed to bow tie dining so when it comes to it - like tonight- I have to borrow the suit.

We are off to a swanky awards ceremony at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, not because I am up for one, but because I nominated someone who is a finalist. All well and good - I have a new shirt and new shoes and the suit fresh back from the dry cleaners. All well and good but for one thing: the suit is also required to be in tip top condition for Sunday when it is performing Handel's Messiah in Ashton - U - Lyne.

Anyone who knows me will be considering the likelihood of my not spilling soup on the suit and concluding that it might be as well to check out the availability of 1hr-Dry Cleaners in Greater Manchester tomorrow or opt for a completely fluid-free meal

I'll let you know. In the meantime, if you are around Ashton Under Lyne on Sunday evening allow me to recommend the Oldham Choral Society performance of Handel's Messiah in the fabulous surroundings of what amounts to a United Reformed Cathedral: the Albion Church. The venue is a tribute to the times when rich Victorians were short of something to do with their money.

Come along and see the suit in all it's splendour - it will be the one that looks the cleanest!

Saturday 23 February 2008

Essential Products for an Older and Ageing Population



Occasionally we get a catalogue shoved in a magazine that comes in the post; you know the sort, it has gadgets of all types and descriptions and is usually worth a read just so you get to laugh at stuff like heated slippers or a new way of dicing vegetables. It seems that they are predominantly aimed at the ageing population, ours came in the magazine we get from the Camping and Caravanning Club.

This edition contains advertisements that lead me to suspect they are aimed rather more at caravanners of a certain age than at tough campers like us. For example there are beauties like 'Shoes so Comfortable they could be Slippers',
'Get any Matress Hygienically Clean in 30 Seconds' or what about the 'Height Adjustable Organiser Footstool' or who could resist the 'Safe and Hygienic Ear Wax Remover'. Each of these products are advertised with models who are cheerfully grey haired and look like their lives are the richer for being seen with the product.

Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I flicked over a page and, beneath a picture of a suitably mature gentleman dressed in slacks and a sweater, was 'Enhance Sexual Performance, Vigour and Vitality' and then only a couple of pages further on 'Stronger Larger Erections' with a picture of a suction powered penis enlarger - the type that Austin Powers tried to deny belonged to him - with adjacent advertisements of a hand cream to treat age spots and a shoe organiser.

If this is what getting older holds, bring it on I say! Not that I would need to resort to any of the products mentioned of course, rather that it is reassuring to think that the older person might need them as part of a vigorous and full sex life you understand. Ahem.

P.S. I fully expect about a zillion hits on this post after I've given it perfectly honest key wording.

P.P.S. If you would like to browse the on line catalogue for any of these excellent products Click Here (Confidentiality assured... but would you know if my computer had added a tracking cookie....hmmm, evil chuckle)

Wednesday 20 February 2008

How to be a Bad Birdwatcher (2)



A while ago I wrote about birdwatching and remarked how, despite enjoying it, I was resolutely bad at it. We are off work this week, so the other day we drove out to the vast muddy expanses of the Ribble Estuary to survey the massed ranks of winter waders there to enjoy the succulent treats to be probed from the Lancashire sludge.

I much prefer this stark open landscape, where the sea has retreated revealing a sticky grey mud, to the sandier more popular northern side of the Fylde coast (think Blackpool). From Lytham centre we strolled along the pebbly edge of the Ribble picking our way between piles of driftwood and other seaborne detritus; and the promise of flocks of wading birds wasn't a hollow one, as thousands upon thousands of waders spread out before us waiting to be identified.

So now you want to know what we saw don't you. Ah, well, remember the bit about being a bad birdwatcher? I am fairly good at identifying birds with which I am familiar: ask me to identify more or less any woodland bird and I can - many by song. But get me away from my comfort zone to somewhere like this where despite quantity many of the two legged long beaked things look remarkably similar and I am struggling.

For help I relied on my Collins Bird Guide that told us that the Dunlin is the benchmark of small waders in that they are the most common and that if there are huge flocks of small waders with shortish (for a wader) bills, they are probably Dunlin.

So, we saw loads of Dunlin. Equally easy were the flocks of Shelduck (easy to identify: they are big and colourful, shaped somewhere between a goose and a duck). Redshanks are easy - they have bright red legs (hence the name) as are Curlews and Turnstones but then when you scan the flocks and see the array of others that are clearly not the aforementioned and are obviously one of the other many possibilities suggested by the Collins Guide, I scratch my head.

After a cappuccino in the Lowther Pavilion Cafe we had one final walk out across the mud along the Lifeboat jetty. This afforded us our best view yet because the jetty stretches out to the centre of the Ribble, presumably to allow the launch of the boat at low tide. Far out on the mud we had close views of even more waders in the beautiful afternoon sun.

Usually fellow birders are helpful, knowing that one day they might need someone else's help to identify some nondescript brown bird or other. On this occasion I was rather intimidated by the only other birder: a callow but brainy looking youth with an Opticron spotting scope on a tripod (in truth I was a little covetous of his equipment); so I gave him a wide birth to resist the temptation of shoving him in the mud.

Still, it was a lovely day.

I borrowed the photo of the jetty from Bay Photographic's site on Flickr where there are many other seaside sites to see.

Saturday 16 February 2008

Better than the Church Bookstall


What do you do with the piles of books that you've read and no longer want cluttering up your shelves? We usually wait until either the church Summer Fair or Christmas Fair and then haul them down to the bookstall. A colleague recently told me about Book Crossing. This is a website where you register a books you no longer want, are given a unique reference number which you write on a label in the book with an explanatory note, then release the book into the wild.
After years of reading John LeCarre novels this appealed to the clandestine in me: I loved the idea of surreptitiously leaving a book on a park bench or on a bus seat, hoping that no one will chase after you to return it.

Once you have released a book you hope that the finder will leave a comment on the website telling you where they found it and what they thought of it, before releasing it in a similar manner themselves.

I have released two books, both were books I loved - in fact one I liked so much that I didn't want to get rid of it, it was only by good luck that, ironically, I spotted The God of Small Things on sale for thirty pence at the Oldham Parish Church Coffee Morning Bookstall the other week when I was passing after buying fish on the market.

I released a Patrick O'Brien novel on a bench overlooking Salford Quays one lunchtime, I wanted to leave it somewhere fitting and this was the nearest I could get to the sea. The other I left folded in a copy of the Metro on a tram at Trafford Bar tram station.

So far, no one has 'fessed up to retrieving these books but at least I didn't return days later to find one damp and curled on the bench and the other blowing in pieces around the tram lines!

I think this is a fabulous idea and, as the year progresses, I hope to carry out further, more imaginative, deposits.

Monday 11 February 2008

A Game for the Masses


I have mentioned before that I don't like football (soccer); but it is in my genes non the less. I am from a family of football season ticket holders; a family of amateur players - from three generations - and part time pundits; in short I am the black sheep. So I was surprised when, armed with work's new Canon EOS D400 taking a lunchtime stroll around Manchester United's home at Old Trafford, I understood what was going on.

For what was going on was in many ways a pilgrimage. The forecourt of the towering stadium was far fuller than usual (and it is usually full of tourists) but there was a notable difference. Jokes about Manchester United fans aside, there
were far more Manchester people there. As we drew closer we could see there were knots of people gathered round what have become commonplace ways of marking mass sorrow: shrines of flowers. These shrines though were accompanied by football scarves tied to barriers, more usually used to control crowds on match day, scarves more often seen denoting tribal difference but now tied side by side to mark a loss fifty years ago. People were remembering the Munich air disaster that ripped the heart out of the young team known as the Busby Babes.

At one end stood an older man who looked like he had just stepped off those Busby era terraces fifty years ago: flat cap, tab dangling smoking from his lips, gaberdine rain coat. As he silently stood and mourned I resisted the cynical voice that cried out "For goodness sake it's only a game" and I wondered, as I reflected on Premiership's attempts to take football even further from people like him, by holding UK matches overseas, I wondered whether he was
mourning the loss of football too.

I once met a man who played for Manchester United in the 1920s. His professional football career brought little in the way of financial reward - his cottage opposite Dobcross Band Club was earned by his factory work after leaving the game. Yet his view was that the honest slog of a lump of leather up a muddy pitch meant far more to fans then than the sanitised game that is presented now. If he were here this week I think he too would shed a tear for it seems that, if Premiership get their way what was once our national game, a game that drew all people together across the country (except me of course) will be little more than a Cirque De Soleil with balls: the sort of place you go once or twice in a lifetime to watch the expert skills of professional acrobats, rather than the sort of thing that inspires the sort of deep loyalty that brought that older man to reflect on the events of fifty years ago.

If I stroll down there in a week or so the flowers will be gone and the place will be back to normal: populated by hoards of tourists with little affiliation to the city, nor to the events that rocked my father's generation of football fans. Does it explain then, why I am more willing to stand and watch a group of local men scrabble over a ball on a Saturday afternoon at Springhead FC than I am willing to give the time of day to the football talked about at work on a Monday?

P.S. The photographs above weren't mine. The statue is Sir Matt Busby stood proudly surveying the forecourt of Old Trafford. Regular readers will guess who took them!

Thursday 7 February 2008

Word Magic


You would think that writing regularly I might used to the surprising things that words do. But every now and then they creep up and do something cool. I guess that is what makes great writers: the gift of being able to make words dance for you rather than, like me, being surprised when you come across a side show of performing syllables.

Take, for example, the other day. In the foyer of our glorious headquarters there is, in a glass topped wooden case, a book of remembrance. It is a beautifully calligraphed volume containing one page for each of the unfortunate colleagues who have died doing their job. The book is such that new leaves of parchment can be added as the time arises. It was recently missing for the addition of a new leaf and its return was commented on by my esteemed colleague as we strolled towards the escape door at the end of the day.

"Look, the Ring Binder of Remembrance is back" she said.
And word conjuring occurred.
"You can't call it that" I said,
"Why not? That's what it is."

And it is: a ring binder in a glass case. But it is so much more; it represents so much more and seems to deserve more than to be such a work-a-day thing as a ring binder. It deserves to be a book, a serious weighty tome of permanence.

How much more substantial does it sound as a book of remembrance?


Friday 1 February 2008

Hospitals Shrink Worlds

With this persisting round of hospital visiting (you will be glad to hear that the ageing relative is bucking up), I am sure that I am paying penance for the hell I must have put my own visitors through, this time last year. It is awful; but it is not TAR's fault.

"Tell us about your day" we say, instantly regretting it when he has little more to talk about than the consistency and diameter (dependant on consistency of course) of whatever comes out of his bottom or alternatively the contents of whatever goes in the other end - in great detail. That is what his day consists of, bless him.

My life seems to be going full circle - I started my working life up to my elbows in shit; at least that's how it felt at times. You have already heard how a man shat on my hand and yet that was only the tip of the iceberg. There was the first time I carried out a bowel washout - a procedure to cleanse the lower bowel prior to colonic surgery, and something that now, thanks to skeletal Gillian McKeith, is something of a leisure activity.I managed, due to my poor aim and inattentiveness, to deposit a lump of the brown stuff on my shoe. Only I didn't notice; everyone else did, but I didn't. And they all left it for some considerable time before pointing it out to me.

Or what about the time when, as a staff nurse, I sent a student of to take a stool sample. This was achieved by using a clever little sample container that has a spatula attached to the lid. You unscrew the cap, attack the turd with the spatula and screw the cap back on with the blob inside the container - simple.

I became anxious when the student nurse failed to materialise for some fifteen minutes until she came to me and asked what to do with the rest of the stool because she couldn't fit it all in the container - which she showed me, with some pride, to be brim full.

I remember thinking how apt the expression of a laboratory worker
was when we were discussing the woes of pooh one day over a cup of tea in the canteen:

"It might be shit to you lad, but it's bread and butter to me."

So, we shall continue our nightly trips to North Manchester G.H. for a while longer yet and, no doubt, engage in more meaningful conversation on what is reasonable to expect to emerge from ones rectum under a variety of conditions caused by the feeding of the hopper at the other end with NHS cuisine.

Watch this space.