Grandma

I remember the night my Grandmother died. She was 87 and suffered badly from Alzheimers. Often she would believe it was 1925, and we were her brothers and sisters. It was quite distressing from time to time.

Anyway, I got a call from my Aunt, who had come home and found her dead. So, I went and waited for a bus, feeling sad, but also happy that she had been released from her torment, and that she would be reunited with my grandfather again, who'd died 17 years before. I got to her house, and let myself in with the key. They lived in a maisonette, on the upper level, the door opens onto the stairs.

Except on this occasion, it wouldn't open. Being January, and late at night, and the landing light being switched off, I couldn't see a thing. So I kept trying to open the door. Whap-whap-whap-whap. Finally, I called up. The landing light comes on, and I see a paramedic at the top of the stairs.

Can you guess who's at the bottom of the stairs? Yup. Grandmother. "Oh, mind out!" the paramedic called out, "Your Grandmother is at the bottom of the stairs."

Fucking hell, I thought, a little heads up would've been nice.

So now I have to squeeze through a tiny gap, and step over the lifeless body of Grandmother.

Why hadn't they moved her? "Well, we have to wait for the doctor to officially pronounce her dead before we can move the body."

A doctor? Fuck me, you don't need to have studied for seven years at medical school to tell that the old lady who's been lying at the bottom of the stairs for the past 5 hours is dead. What did they think she was doing, playing hide and seek? A fucking child could make that diagnosis.

Poor thing.

Falling in love and through tables.

Have you ever been in love, and lost? It's funny how certain things can trigger memories, hearing a song, a certain aroma, even the way the light shines can remind you of your former love.

A few years ago (in fact, last century), a girl started playing rugby for our ladies team. A really pretty young thing (she was 19), with dark wavy hair, green eyes and a heart-stopping smile. I'd seen her at the club, and at the pub we used to go to on a Sunday. She recognised me, and we started chatting, and soon became friends. I didn't think anything at first, she was going out with a friend of mine, who was nearer her age, but after a few months my feelings towards her changed.

To cut a long story short, I never told her how I felt, as I was scared of rejection. Not only that, but once you do that, it's hard to remain just friends.

Then, on boxing day a year or so later, we all got invited to a house party. That year my old boss had given me the usual xmas present - a litre and a half of vodka. I knew she was there in the living room, and, being in a funny mood that day, I decided to plant myself in the kitchen with my vodka and several cartons of orange juice.

A mistake.

Three hours later, and I've finished the whole bloody lot, but I felt fine. And brave. Too brave. I began to walk to the living room. A walk that slowly deteriorated into lurching, which then crumbled into bouncing off the walls. I enter the living room, the whole place had a fluid quality to it, and the water seemed choppy.

I manage to spot the girl of my dreams, raise my arm and point straight at her. At this point, the room has fallen silent, all eyes looking at me in a combination of amusement and bemusement. Then I bellow the words "K****, I LOVE YOU!"

More silence, and I'm standing there, swaying slightly.

And then I fell through a table. A table full of ashtrays, cans and bottles.

Now I don't remember much else that evening, suffice to say that I woke up near the car park to my house.

Anyway, soon after that, she went to Canada, came back, got married and had a baby boy. Without so much a as a bye your leave.

Love hurts? Well yes. So does smacking your head on a solid wood table, only £100 from your local pine retailer.

Proms and vampires

I went to the Proms last night. For those who don't know, the Proms is a series of concerts, sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), held daily at the Royal Albert Hall in London during the summer.

Last night, me, Tim, Peggy and Gordon went to see performances of Ravel and Shostakovich. Peggy was doubly excited as her favourite musician was lead violinist.

It was quite weird, we only paid 4 pounds to get in, and were in the Gallery, right at the top. There were a few chairs, but most people stood leaning against the gallery rails. Or so I thought. Halfway through Shostakovich's first movement, I looked behind me, and there were people lying on the floor, propped up against the wall, everywhere. By this time my arms were getting rubbed raw by the rail, so I took myself over to the wall, and spent the rest of the concert in a very comfortable position. On my arse!

The concert itself was wonderful, the first time I'd ever been to a classical music concert. There was a French pianist who received four or five encores, and I asked Tim why she didn't do an encore. Maybe a bit of Chas 'n Dave. "You've got more rabbit than Sainsbury's, why don't you give it a rest?"

Afterwards, we went home, it was getting late and Tim had to get the last train home. I was lucky with connections, the train to my hometown (Sidcup!) had just arrived at Charing Cross (London Terminus). Thankfully it was a quiet train, most people tend to get the later train home.

Just before the train pulled off, a very creepy, weird man got on. Shoulder length silver hair, in his fifties, with mad staring eyes. As per bloody usual, the weirdo picked me out as a target to stare at. From behind his seat 6 feet away. I couldn't work out if he thought he was invisible (If I can't see you, you can't see me!), or just planning when to rip my heart out. In the end he got off at Hither Green, and that was the end of that.

Still when I think back, he was really creepy.

Oh well, off up town again tonight, so who knows. I may get stalked again.

Cat out of the bag.

Spoke with my sister earlier, and told her that I was going to the Proms tonight. She presumed that I meant either my rugby friends or school friends. "I didn't know they were into classical music."

Well, they're not. But my holiday friends are, and it is they who I am going with. In the end, after a bit of uncomfortable questioning, I finally admitted that I was going with friends met via the internet. And do you know what? She was happy for me. Genuinely delighted. See, she's always said that I should broaden my horizons and meet new people, and now I have she's being very supportive.

Although, she did come out with the old cliche - "Are they weird?". "Do you think I'm weird?" came the retort. She paused (a little too long for my liking!) before answering "Of course not."

Apparently, her friend met her husband through the internet, but she finds them weird. I put her mind at rest, and she went off happy and relieved.

Odd weekend

This weekend is an odd one.

Tomorrow is my sister's birthday, so it should be a happy day for her. But it won't be, and doubt it will be for many a year. Why? Because Sunday is the anniversary of our mother's death, who died two years ago from cancer.

So, dilemma time. Do I do as my aunt did, and send a funny card as I am wont to do? Thinking about it, this is probably the best idea.

For Sunday I had planned to go out and get incredibly drunk, but now my aunt is coming down for lunch, and I foolishly offered to cook her my special chicken dinner. Then we may watch a film, or the football, or just doze. Thankfully I now have space telly back, the engineer came this morning and replaced my digibox.

I hate Sundays sometimes.

A poignant reminder

Awoke to a thunder storm rumbling around the skies this morning, at around 6am. The sky was black, the rain heavy enough to dent metal. Lay there for another hour, listening to the clouds crashing and banging into each other. Then off to work.

So there I am waiting at the traffic lights at the police station, feeling miserable, when a lorry trundles past. Nothing unusual in that, you might think. But no! It's a Cuisine de France lorry, stuffed full of baguettes, croissants and other goodies "Direct From The Boulangerie". And for a brief moment, I'm back on the balcony in Verchaix, tucking into fresh, warm croissants, gentle breeze tickling my toes and ruffling what remains of my hair. Tim and June are busy in the kitchen, Gordon is in the shower, and Blue is still in bed, dreaming of pot holing perhaps.

I'm brought back to the real world by the van behind me tooting his horn. The lights are green. Off I go!

Apropos of nothing.

I have finally got round to posting a picture of myself. Well, I say myself, if you look hard enough, and have a good enough memory, you will recognise Arthur Mullard adorning my blog page. An inspiration for all those like me that are a little larger and a little uglier than the rest of the populace.

Today is a Thursday (go on, check your calendar if you don't believe me), which means the return of Thursday man. He isn't a superhero, though he may enjoy wearing tights, I really couldn't say. In the words of the Queen song Flash "He's just a man, with a man's..." what, we're still not sure.

The thing with Thursday Man his voice seems to be set on permanently low volume, which doesn't come in handy when our desks are in each corner of an office 30 feet long by 24 feet wide, and the radio is on, the airconditioning unit is on. I have learnt that by simply smiling and nodding occasionally, Thursday Man is content and soon lapses back into silence.

He also has that annoying habit where he will just launch into conversation, without addressing anybody first, so me and my boss can never tell who he's talking to. Very disconcerting.

Oh dear, it seems this week, the first after my lovely holiday, is slowly drawing to a close. Next week will not be nice.

Sunday will be hard.

Flies!

Where do they come from? Yesterday morning I noticed more than usual sleeping in the hallway, so instructed stepfather to buy some Raid. He phoned me later to tell me he'd sprayed the house, and was off out. When I returned home, I was confronted with what can only be described as a fly's killing field. There were bodies by the front door, and on the windowsill on the living room. Hundreds of them.

The only decent thing to do was quickly hoover them up, just in case they weren't really dead, just playing mind games with me. I won, though.

Dead flies are no match for a Dyson.

This morning there were one or two, so I emptied another can of chemicals into the atmosphere. Let's see them get out of that!

Today I feel like Ming the Merciless.

Holiday!

I've just come back from a wonderful holiday in France. Who did I go with? Would it surprise you if I said people I've met through the internet? It surprised a few people I know, that's for sure. "What if they're really weird?" "What if they turn out to be psycopaths?" that sort of thing. Well, it would be unwise to go on holiday you've only virtually encountered, but as I pointed out to the detractors, we have all met before, on various occasions, and I considered them friends long before we had the idea of going on holiday together.

In total there were five of us, three boys and two girls. Against all the perceived odds, we got on like a house on fire!

We stayed in the Alps region, not far from Mont Blanc, the peak of which you could clearly see from our balcony, if the weather was right. The Alps? In summer time? Surely this is a skiing resort? Well, it is. And it's also a summer resort. There were so many activites - horse riding, paragliding, rafting, hydrospeed, kayaking, pot holing, rock climbing, and many many walks.

Between them, my friends managed to partake of nearly all these activities except the rock climbing. For my part, I did manage to go for a swim in the nearby lake. I'm not really the athletic sort, if you get my drift. Mind you, if there had been a big enough wetsuit, I would have gone for the rafting trip. But there wasn't, so I didn't.

Mont Blanc itself was mightily impressive. Four of us went there one afternoon, and took the cable car to right near the top. It was funny to see most people all wrapped up in their ski jackets, scarves, gloves and hats, for the temperature at the top was around -6 degrees celcius. I don't know what all the American students made of me, a podgy South Londoner strolling around in my t-shirt, smoking a fag, but I did receive one or two bemused looks.

And now I'm back home, missing not only being on holiday, more my friends. We had such fun in the evenings, chatting, drinking, eating fabulous food. The downside with going on holiday with people you meet through the internet is we don't all live near each other, which makes it hard to just pop over and see them.

Having said that, we have arranged to meet up on the Bank Holiday weekend for a drink, and share our photographs with each other. For my part, I'm not really a photograph taker, so my contribution will be a bit measly. I say that, I've still yet to try and work out how to get the blighters off my mobile phone!

Ah well, I'm sure we shall enjoy the next holiday together.

Toodle-oo for now.