I wonder what happened to.........................

Gave mum a good send off this morning, thanks to those that attended.
Journey over to the service was quite light hearted. We travelled over in a family car supplied by the funeral directors, and as it sat 6 my sister in law and my best mate Tom, travelled with us.
The conversation turned to some of the outrageous fashion me and Tom had as youngsters, and believe me, it wouldn't have been pretty, I can remember being thrown out of Oxfam for lowering the tone of the place.
There's me going on about the knitted balaclava I had when I was about 5. Brown it was, mum knitted it and it itched in all the wrong places. Heaven forbid I should have removed it though, god no.
Tom remembered some of the shirts we sported back in the day, and the size of the collars, man they where big, BIG!
He said that it could actually be the case that we where the early pioneers in un-powered flight. Seriously large collars, one slight wind change and you could be a few feet off the ground.
We reminisced about one of the fellas that lived in Sudbury who was very much an early punk rock pioneer, he had it all, glue, zips, more piercings than you could shake a stick at, and tartan trousers.
I mentioned about the fact that I quite enjoyed listening to a bit of punk rock but was a bit of a closet punk, dress sense wise, I wasn't allowed!
I became a new romantic after this time, and remembered one occasion when I came down stairs at home in what could only be described as, well, a frilly shirt, puffy sleeves, and a low neck. I thought I looked wonderful, mum obviously disagreed.
'If you think your going out dressed like that you are sadly mistaken'
The truth is I have no idea where I would have gone had I been allowed to leave the house. Round to a mates looking like a Spandau Ballet reject, I almost definately wouldn't have been allowed in.
We traded tank top tales, and I said that I have photographic proof of just how appalling mine were, I won that round. The thought of walking around with the brown home knitted balaclava, home knitted tank top and the winged collared shirt on I'm surprised I got through my youth.
The photo bellow shows the full ensemble minus the balaclava, shame! But, if you look really close you can see the faraway, terrified look in my eyes that was ingrained on my psyche, put there by the forced wearing of it in the past. Oh the trauma.

Mum 25/05/1936 11/05/2012

Mums, we've all got one, and to be truthful most people would tell you that theirs is the best, and they would be right, mine was the best as well. I say mine, I do of course mean mine and Stuart.
Bringing up two boys as a single parent from 1974 until the day we were big enough, and ugly enough to cope on our own takes some doing.
In those days being a single parent was a little more unusual than it is today, there was a bit more stigma attached to it, and a lot less state help, but mum did a brilliant job.
She loved having fun and most of the time was in a good mood, even when I would turn up where she worked asking if she had a few pence I could have for sweets, she normally managed to find a few pence in her purse, maybe that's why I did it.
She always had the worst sense of direction out of anyone I new. Our next door neighbour Joe always said that 'if you turned mum round twice in her garden she would have trouble finding home' maybe a little extreme but not that wide of the mark.
Another thing she could never do very well was ride a bike. We had some big laughs on holiday when we hired a tandem one year with the express aim of teaching mum to ride it, well, at least we tried! You see the only way to teach someone to ride a bike if it's a tandem is by letting them take the front seat at some stage, this means some other fool has to get on the back, danger money please.
Firstly I took the front seat and mum perched on the back and we preceded to wobble along. Trying to control a bike at the front when the person on the back has no balance is, what should I say, fun!
Ok, I must warn you at this point, I'm about to upload a photo of me and mum on the tandem, and to say my fashion sense was laps would be an understatement, anyway, here goes.

Sorry!

Sorry about the quality of the picture, this was in the days before digital cameras. I think you can tell that mum was worried due to the fact that she dare not put her feet down. Its like she's saying. Nope, my feet are off the ground now if they go back down they wont come up again. Her knuckles are also very white.
Also, like I say, sorry for the fashion faux-par on my part.
Mum did progress to the front seat of the tandem at some stage I have a photo to show this, unfortunately the person on the back is not a family member and I wouldn't feel good about putting their picture on the here, sorry.
I remember the time when a week before me and Sam was getting married I went out for my stag night and Sam, Mum and Stuarts wife to be had a small hen night in doors. I say small, that only means small in the fact that they never went out, not small in the amount they drank. Drink wise this was a large hen night due to the site that greeted me and Stuart upon our drunken return. I don't think I have every sobered up so quick. You can keep your coffee, the site of mum crawling around the living room floor with her teeth in a glass was enough to sober up the most drunken person ever. Mumbling and dribbling her way towards the sofa, what a site. As if that wasn't bad enough, the site that greeted us upstairs once we had but mum to bed was even worse, but that's for another day, maybe.
As I say at the top of this blog, she was a great mum who put always put us first. She worked hard but she enjoyed her play as much. She would be the life and soul of any family gathering, non stop dancing, the sort of dancing you always see on You've been framed. Really embarrassing parent dancing, the only thing stopping her standing out like a sore thumb was the fact that every other adult danced equally as badly.

Go girl!

It's slightly embarrassing being present as a teenager at these events, when, in my eyes, the only person there with any fashion sense was me, photo poof below.


Putting on the style

There you go, white trouser, shoes and socks, along with the pink shirt, always a good look. I think the word your looking for is tasteful.
There probably numerous other tales of mums behaviour that I could tell but this post would go on for ages, so I leave it at this.
I will just finish it off by saying, Mum, we will miss you, it was great.

Dogging

I must relay this tale that was told on Danny Bakers radio 5 live Saturday show.
I make no claims to this tale what so ever, I heard it on the show and felt it needed telling to my friends on here. I hope you find it as funny as I found it.
Danny Baker does a talk show where people phone in on subjects he puts out at the start of the show, this week 2 of the subjects where on funny stories involving either dogs or cats.
This women phoned up with the tail of her dog Micky, and how he used to escape from their house, via lifting the sash window with his nose and getting out.
They used to dress Micky and cat up, jumpers, knickers and such like.
Micky was a mongrel, not a pedigree, she said he looked like a Border Collie, and so did most of the other dogs in the area. You see, Micky was a bit of a gigolo, a ladies dog if you will.
Well on this one occasion Micky had got out and away he went.
Later in the day there was a knock at the door and it was Micky's owners next door neighbour, informing Micky's owner that Micky was round the corner servicing her dog.
How do you know it's our Micky? says his owner, most of the dogs in the area look like our Micky.
Well, came the reply from the neighbour, he had a hat on.


That's it, that's the story that I found so funny, and still do actually.
 I think the thing that makes it so funny is that its a very visual tale, where you can picture it any way you want to.
It makes it very personal visualising a story in your own way. You see, in my image of Micky with his hat, on I have him with the hat just tipped at a slightly jaunty angle, looking sideways at the neighbour and almost winking. Just going about, what to him was everyday business.
So, if you didn't find it overly funny, firstly I'm sorry to waste your time, but secondly maybe you didn't visualise it, try going back over it with your own scene.



Art by Skippy

It's for yor own good son.

This is me, at one of my early birthday parties in London.
Lets have a quick look at the photo, well its quite apparent that i was partial to jelly and crisps, and still am to this day, just as different dishes. I have to say, those cakes didn't appear to be going down terribly well, not the case now a days I fear.
There are 3 candles on the cake, which would indicate a 3rd birthday, and I'll have to go with that as there is nothing else to say if that's my age at the time or not, I cant judge ages very well.
One thing I do vaguely remember is the boy in the foreground, who's head you can see, blew out my candles, horrible git that he was.
What shocked me about this photo when i found it again was the Corgi toy present I had received.
It was a 007 James Bond Aston Martin Corgi number 261, with ejector seat and bullet proof rear shield. There is another car in the picture but alas I cant see what it is; and there in lies the problem, what in gods name happens to all this stuff we grew up with.
It gets broken you fool!
I know it gets broken, but toys that get broken you can usually remember throwing away, its traumatic, but others, well they just seem to vanish.
If this car had been broken I would remember that, I'm sure of it, and if it had been lost there would have been tears.
I know blokes that have kept all their toys, well maybe not all, but certainly a lot, in their original boxes as well, Barry ;-)
I was never like that, I played my stuff to death, that's probably what happened to my stuff, it died. I would just think that you would be able to remember what happened to your old toys. I can remember specific things from my childhood but not where possessions went, they just seem to vanish.
Ive had a look at this car on the web today and man alive did I regret that.
There's an inner box on eBay, with bids, on £35, just the box inner.
There's a box outer on there currently on £30.
There's a complete toy and box, buy it now £325, I nearly fell of my chair. £360 seems to be about the going rate, why oh why did I study this photo so much!
I urge all of you who read this, buy your children toys by all meas, indeed let them hold them for a moment, study there form, touch them, then snatch them back, put them in their box, and store them away. Your child will love you eventually, after about 16 years. You may have to go through some bad times with tantrums for a few days after each toy is snatched back, but they will appreciate it over time.
Ok, so at some stage you may also have to deal with Social Services due to the miss treatment of your children but it will be worth it. Think of the money you are amassing, its like an endowment policy just without the fun for the child.
16 years on when little Johny is 20, and you sell all his toys on eBay and make a small fortune, hand him the cheque, then sit back and watch him spunk it away, the little sod!