New songs and blue songs #30

The 30 day song challenge.

Day 30 - Your favourite song at this time last year - Candy - Paolo Nutini.

I discovered this album a while back, every track is a winner, but this one is just pure class.

A tingle remarkably pleasant.

A good few months ago I was mooching on the internet and I came across a Martini recipe, I only had one of the ingredients so I mooched on. Over the past few months I have managed to get all the ingredients for the ridiculously named “Condor”. I spent a couple of days trying to find the correct recipe for it, and then on Saturday morning I stumbled upon it once more.

3oz Gin
1oz Whisky (A smoky one).
¾ oz of Apricot liqueur.
3 drops of Mole xocolatl bitters

Shake with ice and strain into a Martini glass, no garnish.



I was very nice, the only issue was the fucking awful name. Any suggestions?

New songs and blue songs #29

The 30 day song challenge.

Day 29 - A song from your childhood - Leavin' on a jet plane - Peter, Paul & Mary.

I have no idea why I remember this one, maybe my mum and dad played it, maybe it's the catchy tune. I still love singing along to it.

Dubious histories #12 - Runcorn.

The earliest known mention of dwellings around what is now Runcorn, were troglodyte caves in the late Bronze, early Iron Age. These were mentioned in the Anglo Saxon chronicles as a place where the Vikings wouldn't go. The Troglodytes were hoarders of local villagers' waste, a sort of retarded womble covered in shit. The whole place was an olfactory no go area.

The Romans named Runcorn Stercilinium, literally "a place where shit is stored". All the Roman outposts and garrisons would empty their human waste and transport it to the area that would be become Runcorn. Situated as it is on the Mersey, it would wash into the Irish Sea, but over the years a mountain of fecal detritus accumulated, earning the area its unfortunate title.

Long after the Romans left, the stench still lingered, to such an extent that the Doomsday book has no record of the place; preferring not to mention, what had become, one of the smelliest places in Europe at the time.

In Shakespeare's time Runcorn had become a place of punishment, worse than gaol, worse than the workhouse. If you found yourself on the last stagecoach to Runcorn it meant you had been caught doing something deeply unpleasant, and the punishment was to exile you to somewhere equally as deeply unpleasant. Old Bill found himself there for a six month stretch after being found in a compromising position in a neighbour's livestock pen. During his time in Runcorn he penned part of Hamlet's soliloquy, describing the air around him as "a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours".

The stigma, like a bad smell, hung around for many centuries and as the industrial revolution gathered pace, Runcorn became home to a new type of factory, the stench mill. Stench mills manufactured bad smells for other Northern towns not lucky enough to have their own factories, if you didn't have a tannery or a chemical works, Runcorn would ensure you didn't feel left out. Runcorn led the world in stench.

Little wonder then that Paul Simon wrote his seminal sixties masterpiece "this place stinks of shit" whilst sat on the platform of Runcorn railway station.

Today Runcorn is a shadow of its former self, the factories are shut, the compacted crap was used as foundations for the Jubilee bridge and the smell is only a fraction of its previous eye-watering worst. The town is now studded with dog shit and littered with Greggs bakeries, a fetid festering carcinoma on the rotting perineum of Cheshire.

Next in this award winning series, Widnes.

A drink with something in it.



There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth -
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

Ogden Nash.

That Martini was made for me at Malmaison, Manchester.

You'll have to wait til yesterday is here.

It feels very strange being back here at the moment. I was never really one of those "dear diary" type of bloggers, and I didn't use Facebook to inform others of the minutiae of my life.... Unless checking in at a restaurant counts as that? Anyway, I thought I would maybe write a catch up post, interspersed with a bit of dear diary type stuff. This might work, and then again it could be fucking tedious. Let's see.

My last meaningful stretch of blogging was March 2007, Jesus that's 6 years! A lot of stuff has happened since then, and the handful of times I came back here it was just a dust down and see what was happening. At least once I had forgotten my password and a couple of times forgot the HTML tags for links and images. How things change. I will attempt a sort of potted history of the last six years. Tracy is making beef Rendeng and I can smell wonderful aromas wafting up the stairs. This could take a while, but I have beer.

For the remainder of 07 and all of 08 I was working for a local training provider, and generally having a good time going on holidays and eating out. We went to Jamaica for Christmas 08, it was amazing... We watched the sun set from Rick's cafe, got a tan and discovered the "Bob Marley" a triple layered drink of red, green and gold. Wonderful. Then in 2009 things changed, work started to go off in a direction that I didn't want to follow. It all ended quite acrimoniously and I found out quite a lot about some people that I thought were my friends. Sometimes you just need a push though, and on the 10th of August 2009 we started our own training company, still going strong to this day.

2010 was one of those best and worst years. The business was flourishing and we had decided to go back to Jamaica for our wedding anniversary, but that damned Icelandic volcano scuppered our plans. We ended up going to the Dominican Republic later in May and my dad died whilst we were out there. Probably one of the worst things that you can go through made worse by being thousands of miles away. We managed to get back for the funeral after a delayed flight. The day after the funeral was my brother-in-law's wedding and I decided to have a cigar, my first ever. The rest of the year we were chasing a none paying customer through the courts, we came very close to bankruptcy but as ever, our tenacity and Tracy's impeccable attention to detail won the day and we got our cash. Cuba at Christmas, so bad I wrote a book.

I was hoping 2011 would see a turn in a more positive direction, and I wasn't disappointed. I managed to get a very nice contract with a national training provider, and I'm still working for them to this day. They seem to like me and I have made some very good friends along the way. With it came a change I had not banked on... Working away. In May City won the cup, a year and seven days after my dad died. It was a very emotional weekend, I wish he had seen it.

2012. What can I say about last year, it was amazing. We had some great holidays and City won the league with the last kick of the season. The business went from the strength to strength and in the depths of the worst recession since the 30s we seem to have had our best year for a long time. Everything was positive as we saw in the New Year in Mexico, a year that will see our 30th wedding anniversary.

Let's see what the rest of the year brings.

New songs and blue songs #28

The 30 day song challenge.

Day 28 - A song that makes you feel guilty - Sell out - Levellers

In the 1990s I worked for a small chemical company in Stalybridge, I was in my 20s, idealistic, deeply socialist and not yet made jaded or cynical by years of Political let downs and the constant battle of trying to provide for my family only to hobbled and tortured by a capitalist system I abhorred.

The Levellers were my favourite band, they were political, fighting for the underdog, but their music was, and still is, excellent. My guilt comes from agreeing with their fight, but not weighing in, not going on marches, not chaining myself to a Harrier jump jet, not getting involved. I sold out.

The thought of living in a tent in the middle of a roundabout filled me with dread, it just isn't me. The traveller life looks ace in summer, but just imagine in the middle of winter, living in what amounts to a tin can.

I made my choice happily, my family came first. You can't afford principles when people are relying on you, and I would do it again. But I still feel guilty because my political opinions are still strong, but I didn't do everything I could.

Now, now in a land not far away
There's men in prison because they say
The colour of your skin is not a question
Did you rally to their side?
No, you sat back and let them die
Don't know how you get to sleep at night

The shrine



Tracy has agreed to an upgrade to a glass cabinet. I can feel an eBay weekend coming on.

New songs and blue songs #27

The 30 day song challenge.

Day 27 - A song that you wish you could play - Feelin' bad blues - Ry Cooder 

I love blues guitar and this is just a masterclass.

Another false dawn?

I feel I should explain my absence from what was once a place I came every day, like a shed or a local pub. The strange thing is I still love writing, maybe it just got boring.

Whatever the real reason, I would find myself staring at the “new post” box and I wouldn't have a clue what to say. I’m not saying this time it will be different, there have been a few false dawns on here over the last couple of years, in fact one of my very good blog friends who died a couple of years ago has posted more in the intervening two years than I have. Sad but true.

 So, in mitigation, I think I fell in love with Facebook and then twitter, but I've decided to come back with my metaphorical tail between my legs to see if we can give it another go, rekindle the long-dead fire. That and a wider potential audience to upset with my bile and vitriol filled rants on religion, politics, moths and anything else that foolishly wanders across my field of vision.

 Let’s give it a crack, what do you say?

The unholy ones.

The time is nearly here my friends,
When warmer evenings lengthen
In sinister cocoons they bide their time,
Their foetid wings to strengthen.

They roam the land in evil hoards,
by moonlight hunt their prey.
Heed my dire warning friends,
you’re only safe by day.

I hear them planning quietly,
plotting their evil schemes.
Collecting your teeth while you slumber,
and stealing all your dreams.

 Simon Morris