Booze, news and views from a drunken opinionated fool who can't spell very well, may well repeat himself, and can't blame it on dislexia
Thursday 17 July 2008
mars pictures
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martian_skies.html
Toodle pip
Wednesday 16 July 2008
freedom!
Toodle pip
Tuesday 15 July 2008
the press
The coverage of the suicides in Bridgend must also have fueled the problem. Someone looking at the coverage and feeling depressed might be tempted to copy the behaviour and also get some fame.
The papers and TV jump on stories and run them for as long as they sell and are sexy. Remember dogs attacking babies? It will still happen but the media lose interest after a while.
Take everything with a large pinch of salt (l love salt) and remain cynical - it's the only way to be.
Toodle pip
Monday 14 July 2008
l wanna be like you in Jungle Book
Another top song - love baloo (sadly growing into being him, or is that a good thing?
ron wood - from the mail
What a guy
Ronnie Wood has walked out on his wife and four children to live with a teenage cocktail waitress he met in an escort bar.
The 61-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist has fled to his mansion in Ireland with the 18-year- old Russian blonde.
His wife of 23 years, Jo, is said to have begged Ekaterina Ivanova not to take her husband away from her. The teenager is understood to have told friends that she replied: 'I am not taking him - he is leaving.'
The other woman: Ekaterina Ivanova is said to have run away with rocker Ronnie Wood following an extra-marital affair
A representative of Wood, who has battled a drink problem for years, said the girl began seeing him three months ago when he was at a low ebb, frazzled by alcohol. They have been together ever since.
Wood - who is drinking two bottles of vodka a day - met Miss Ivanova after the London premiere of the Stones documentary, Shine A Light, on April 2 in a seedy escort bar in Soho.
Within weeks the girl from Moscow had grown so close to Wood that she accompanied him back to the home he shares with Jo and their four children in Kingston upon Thames, South-West London.
At the beginning of May, Wood invited Miss Ivanova to join him at his mansion in Clane, County Kildare.
She has been writing about the relationship on the social networking website Facebook, calling Wood her 'boyfriend' and saying she is quickly 'falling in love'.
She also claims to have become Wood's painting muse, posing for him at the Irish house.
Wood's publicist made the extraordinary move of speaking publicly about his curious relationship with the teenager yesterday.
The publicist said: 'She is a drinking partner. When you're an alcoholic and your family are all telling you to stop drinking you simply find someone else to drink with. You can see how it happens, you end up pushing away the ones you love because you don't think straight.
'He met her in a dodgy escort bar at four in the morning when he was boozed out of his mind. I heard she worked there, but doing what I don't know. It was a very dodgy scenario.
'He's fallen off the wagon big time. He's spiralling out of control and every time he returns to his drinking it's worse than before. He's not even clear-headed enough to check himself into rehab.
'He's in a very bad way. His son Tyrone has tried to speak to him briefly, but he's not even waking up until late afternoon. He's very much spiralling.
'He's on two bottles of vodka a day and he has a size 28 waist. He's not a massive man. He's an alcoholic who has worked up his tolerance to that amount. He is in contact with Jo but until he sorts out the booze problem, it's not Ronnie. Nothing can be resolved.
' Wood was absent on Thursday night when the rest of his family went to the first night of an art exhibition run by Tyrone in Mayfair.
Asked if she thought the pair were having an affair, Jo told The Sun: 'They're not boyfriend or girlfriend - not in that way.'
However Miss Ivanova has been telling friends a very different story. One said: 'She is besotted with Ronnie. Whether or not he knows it, she plans a future with him. She has told everyone Ronnie has left his wife for her and they are a full-on item.'
Locals in Clane said that Wood had barely left the house in weeks. He used to frequent a local bar, where he would join in the odd jam session on his guitar, but that closed recently because of a fire.
Wood is estimated to be worth £70million. The cocktail waitress incident is being seen as the latest symptom of an alcohol problem which has seen him in rehab many times.
The first time he emerged from the clinic, fellow Stone Keith Richards sent him a fax upon which he had scrawled: 'Rehab is for quitters.'
Wood, somewhat wounded, fired one back saying: 'Actually mate, I was in hospital.'
He had, he said at the time, been advised that he was only six months from death. He had been daily consuming two or three bottles of vodka, plenty of chilled Guinness and countless Sambucas. 'I suppose I was permanently pickled,' he said.
Richards treated it all as a bit of a joke and found it a nuisance when he lost his drinking partner. It has never been that much of an issue, however, as Wood's periods off the sauce never seem to last very long.
The trouble is that he has always been proud of his epic consumption. There has never been any publiclyadmitted shame, nor has he reached what therapists call 'rock bottom'.
Sure, his friends and drinking buddies have died - Jimi Hendrix, actor John Belushi, his first wife Krissy, comedian Peter Cook - but this has not really given him pause. Even though his wife refers to alcohol as a 'monster' with which he battles daily, he never seems to learn.
The 'affair' is being described by those who know Wood as nothing more than a by-product of his alcoholic compulsion.
'He's not run away from Jo to be with this girl,' said one. 'He's run away from Jo so that he can get ragged on vodka.'
Another associate said: 'I feel really sorry for Jo because she's taken a lot of this like a good 'un. Ronnie is not a lech, I have known him for years and I don't think he's even that interested in sex. I don't think he's had a bunk-up in ten years.
'The problem here is the drinking. He spends a lot of time in Ireland, and you know that when he's there that is what is going on.
'He can't seem to control the drink and he can't seem to control anything in his life either. It's been a series of disasters over money and managers.
'It's the sort of person Ronnie is. He always looks like the kid who didn't get an ice cream. He's kind of helpless.'
Wood believes that he was born to be a drinker. He grew up on an estate near Heathrow, and would go every night to watch his father drinking, partying and playing the piano at a local pub, the Nag's Head.
Young Ronnie would sit on the windowsill with a packet of crisps and a Coca-Cola and watch his Dad pound the keys. At closing time there would be a shout of 'All back to No 8' - the Woods' home - and the party would start in earnest, with everyone taking as much booze as they could carry. After the Woods moved out, the new owners found 1,700 empty Guinness bottles in the back garden.
When Ronnie started playing with the Jeff Beck Group, he developed a fondness for red vermouth, which took the edge off his stage fright. He was, though, fairly indiscriminate in those days, and progressed through alcohol to cocaine and heroin.
It was all part of his appetite for a good time. As he revealed in his autobiography, he had a seemingly limitless enthusiasm for narcotics.
He and Keith would stay up for 72 hours straight on cocaine while the long suffering Jo, whom he met in 1977, was never more than a dabbler. Keith chopped out a line of coke for them both in their wedding car on the way to the reception. Ronnie spent a £70,000 home improvement loan on drugs, and he and Bobby Keys would stay up all day and night freebasing.
In the 1980s, when the Stones gave up touring, Ronnie's cocaine habit became immense. He and Jo were arrested in the Caribbean with 200 grams of coke.
His dealers used to wake him up in the middle of the night so that he could take hits. He ended up losing his home, his nightclub and all his investments, and hallucinating that there were people hiding in the bushes of his house.
What Ronnie really loved was a party. Those who know him say that he will always be the last to leave, even if that means staying up all night. To this day, his supporters say that his frequent departures from the wagon are always when he has been tempted to prove his credentials as a party animal - a misplaced sense of pride which has seen Jo threaten to leave him.
'He is very easily led,' says an old pal. 'Ronnie doesn't eat, he just likes a drink. Jo and the kids get seriously fed up with it.'
This time, he seems to have started drinking partly out of boredom after the end of the last Stones tour. His daughter Leah's wedding earlier this month was, of course, an excuse to indulge very heavily.
But his family have lost patience with him when he drinks, and so he tends to go to his house in County Kildare where he can knock it back in peace.
'I come from a drinking family and I always enjoy the taste of beer,' he once said.
Several of his attempts at rehab were at Jo's insistence.
She told an interviewer: 'I was at the end of my tether, thinking, "I don't know how much more of this I can take." It was every day, all night long, every night.
'Socially, everybody loved him. Ronnie was great. But when he got back home, he was horrible. I used to dread going to parties because I knew we were going to be the last to leave.'
She spoke to Jagger, who told her she had to get him clean for the Stones tour. 'Ronnie didn't agree until the day before he was due to go.
It was very emotional getting him there. It was really tough because you feel as if you're putting him into some kind of prison.' He spent almost a year clean, but in March 2004, he was admitted once again to the Priory after a night drinking with Kate Moss ended with him under the table, biting people on the ankles.
Almost exactly a year later, in March 2005, he checked into an Irish clinic after getting drunk at his wife's 50th birthday party. In 2006, after celebrating his 59th birthday party in typically riotous fashion, he checked into the Priory, in Roehampton, West London, for an intense five-day drying out session.
There were no problems on the Stones' last tour which ended this year. As usual, Jo came along and cooked him egg and beans on a portable stove in his hotel room, and made him coffees and passed him his cigarettes.
It is, of course, possible for a ageing rocker to conquer his addictions, as Eric Clapton has proved. But one of Wood's friends said yesterday: 'I don't know that Ronnie will ever straighten out.
'For him, drinking goes hand in hand with having fun, and he'd rather be dead than be boring. I remember him saying to me when he went into rehab, "The thing is, I don't want to end up being a boring b*****d like Clapton".'
Sunday 13 July 2008
footie
The good news is this has given me time to watch some old games on ESPN. Saw the European championship final from 1988 last night, Holland against the USSR with Van Basten’s volley and Ruud Gullitt playing and scoring, but it seemed and looked so old fashioned. Bring back the footie ASAP
Toodle pip
Saturday 12 July 2008
milk and honey band
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur9mMWTrBIA
Thursday 10 July 2008
bedale and true love
Toodle pip
the weather
Toodle pip
Wednesday 9 July 2008
sun is shining
Out yesterday in the pub, playing pool and taking the piss (no change there). another funeral yesterday, didn't go to it myself but there was a lot of drunken lads out that l know. Sure Joe (won't say his second name) is bisexual. l kept taking the piss out of him and getting him to sit on my lap. trying to get him to come out (so to speak) but no joy. Give it time l say. played a lot of pool again but lost some games as well as winning so didn't make much. have to go out more and practise.
Butt naked now so l had better get dressed and ready for work, got to be there for 9.30am. Should be exciting (l doubt).
Toodle pip
Sunday 6 July 2008
lovely pool
Also had a tosser in there saying he was voting for the BNP, as they are for the English and aren't racist, nothing against blacks, gays etc. Obviously l took him to task on this and it looked at one time as if he was going to get beaten up by some soldiers in there. Pity he didn't, l was all for it. People like him make the white working class look like idiots, bad for us all. l told everyone he was bisexual himself and had tried it on with me, just to wind him up and shut him up. probably why the soldiers wanted to kick him in, come to think of it. Nearly worked, better luck next time.
Toodle pip
Friday 4 July 2008
glastonbury
the Verve were superb
mgmt - the singer is great looking (bit like bon jovi) but the songs have not grown on me yet
elbow - fantastic but they need to look cooler
reverend and the makers - love them already so anything would be good
jay z - 99 problems and he aint one
the enemy - never that bothered but they have grown on me
the gossip - l know it's not about looks, but what the fuck was beth wearing
duffy - nice pants
neil diamond - great songs but he seems to have lost some charisma
laughing lennie - missed him
thats it for now - bed time
toodle pip
Thursday 3 July 2008
Elbow - One Day Like This Glastonbury '08
here's another band that would be a lot more popular if they looked like rock stars - great songs though
Wednesday 2 July 2008
playing for Manchester United
Collett is still a young man, so to get anything like 16 million pounds, with the majority of his life in front of him, must be great. Obviously l would have loved that myself, but it made me think how much l would rather play for Manchester United, for less money. Decided that l would rather have played for United, say for about £200,000 a year. Let’s face it, it’s still a lot, plus you get to travel the world and do a job you love, with lots of adulation.
Money isn’t everything, but l wonder how many stars of today would rather play than have the extra money, if they had to make the choice. Wonder what Collett would rather have done. He would say he would rather have played when the tribunal was being held, but l do wonder if he would rather have the money now and do something else with his life (travel, start your his business, or laze around with drink, drugs and super models). What a choice, might change my mind about playing.
Toodle pip
tennis
Toodle pip
Tuesday 1 July 2008
The Apples in stereo - energy
love this band - they'd be a lot bigger if they looked like proper rock stars (ie women want to shag them and blokes want to be them)
sun is shining
Toodle pip
Monday 30 June 2008
euro 2008:spain-germany 0:1 torres goal
Excellent - won a £10 bet with this. Robbo knows fuck all about football
Saturday 28 June 2008
meal out
Picked up my car from the garage, been having its MOT. Good result, only needed £30 worth of welding, which has been done. £79 bill in total, great stuff.
Off to get a bike or two from Halfords now. Robbo has left his bank card, so l will have to try and crack his identification number and go on a spending spree. Can't decide what to do tonight, may go for an Indian with Dazzer and Louise, decide later on, bit early for those kind of decisions. Killing time at the moment waiting for Mandy to put on her makeup and get changed. Could be a long day ahead.
Toodle pip
Friday 27 June 2008
John Martyn - I'd Rather be the Devil
This is when he was still good looking, great song but some dodgy camera work (bloody hippies).
lazy friday afternoon (there's no need to worry)
Car is getting it's MOT, needs £30 worth of welding doing, which is being done as l type this. Picking it up in the morning, once it has been through it's re-test. Got to tax it at the end of the month as well - bloody things.
Off out for a meal tonight. Booked the table for 8.30pm, meeting up at 6pm. probably be half drunk by the time we eat. Last time we went, l had been out all day and couldn't remember much about the food (although l remember the bill - £140). good place though (The Friars Rest, by Leyburn). Also been watching some Family Guy, think l am starting to prefer it to the Simpsons. High praise indeed.
Toodle pip
Wednesday 25 June 2008
time is too short
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music
Nick Cave - Dig lazarus Dig
Coldplay (l know, l know) - Viva La Vida
Guillemots
The Feeling - Join With Us
Fleet Foxes
The Courteeners - St Jude
Vetiver
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement
The Hoosiers - The Trick To Life
Moby - Last Night
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
Nine Inch Nails - The Slip
Plus l have some old albums l have just got but not heard yet :
John Martyn - Various cds
Pink Fairies - Best of
The Incredible String band - The Hangmans Beautiful Daughter
The Beatles - Twickenham Sessions (8 cds!!)
Bob dylan - Various Bootlegs
Beach Boys - Smile (New Version)
Captain Beefheart - Safe As milk
Then there's the books l want to read, football l want to watch, podcasts l want to listen to, films and TV l want to see, pubs and places l want to go to, plus time l want to spend lounging around doing nothing. Also have to spend quality time with the other half and my mates. Nearly forgot the 27 wanks l try to fit in during the day. No wonder l hate having to go to work!!
Toodle pip
Tuesday 24 June 2008
PRN medication
Toodle pip
reading books
I have not given more details as you should read them yourselves. Don’t get me wrong, they are not the funniest books out there, but as Aswad said “Without knowledge of your past, you’re like a cabbage in this society”.
Toodle pip
Monday 23 June 2008
magical memories
George Best going round the Benfica keeper in the 1968 final
George Best scoring six against Northamton
Gordon Banks' save from Pele
Denis Law's backheel for City against United
Cruyff's turn
The Coventry donkey flick up free kick
Montgomery double save against Leeds in the cup final
Van Basten's volley
Gascoigne scoring against Scotland and getting the drink squirted at him
Manchester United winning the European Cup in injury time in 1999
Arsenal winning at Liverpool 2-0 in the last game of the season to beat them to the League
Keegans "l would love it" rant
Beckham scoring from the half way line and "you'll win nothing with kids" from Hanson
Cantana and his kung fu kick
Maradona against England
5-1 for England against Germany
Manchester United coming back from 3-0 to win 5-3 at Spurs
Manchester United coming back from 2-0 to beat Juventus in 1999
Manchest United winning at Newcastle 1-0 with Cantona and Schmeichel outstanding
Manchester United 3-0 against Barcelona in 1984
Giggs agianst Arsenal in the Cup semi final and running around with his shirt off
Scholes volley direct from a corner
Charlie George lying on the floor after scoring in the Cup final
Ricky Villa's dribble and goal in the Cup final
Gascoigne going crazy in the Cup final and then getting injured
l could go on a lot more as football has provided so much enjoyment to me over the years, always something to look foreward to (unless it's watching England). The most recent and unbelievably fantastic memory being........
Go on, guess it.......
John Terry slipping and crying like a baby
Oh what joy!
Toodle pip
Saturday 21 June 2008
Turkey v Croatia highlights
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/euro_2008/7466929.stm
Friday 20 June 2008
extra time football
What a finish to the game. Extra time, last minute, then Croatia score and think they are through with a 1-0 win. Then in injury time in the extra time (ie about a minute later), Turkey hoof it upfield and score a cracker. the game then goes to penalties, which Turkey win. Cue scenes of great joy and despair. Turkey are sneaking along like Greece did, but with loads more excitement and rip roaring endings. Coming back from 2-0 down in the last game seemed unreal but this was mad.
Football is fucking brilliant, like music, it has the ability to transport you to a different place instantly, whether it be a place of great joy or despair. Both have the ability to make me cry like a baby, big soft git that l am.
Glad England aren't there to fuck it up more, the tournament has been excellent recently, and l have been able to enjoy it without all the hype and bullshit that goes with the England team. Then there's the ex professional commentators who are out there anyway with the BBC, easy to pick on but they are crap. Then there's the fans. The England ones would only fuck up that atmosphere as well. Give me Manchester United anyday.
Hope Turkey beat the Germans as l like Turkey (although l also like Germany, just not as much). Would like Holland to win it, but Italy might well come good and spoil it by winning again.
Anyway, soon be the start of the new English season, will be watching Manchester United v Liverpool in New York, bit of a treat for the girls going with us as l don't think they know yet! SUPRISE! if they are reading this. Till next time..
Toodle pip
BASTARD WORK
Have been off work since the 10th May, which is a good result really, can’t really say l haven’t had long enough off and l have also been to Amsterdam in that time, but that’s not the point.
Although the work is piss easy, l would still much rather be off. Can’t stand it when people are off for a while and complain they are bored. Get a life, read something, watch films, go to the pub, listen to music or stay in stroking the pet (so to speak).
It’s like when lottery winners say they are going to stay in the same job and house, “may get a new car though”. Idiots all of them.
Travel, do things, make the most of life. If you still want to work for the fun of it, have your own business and enjoy it for the sake of everyone sane. Everyone who has not won but would like the opportunities it presented. Bitter bastards like me who are now BACK AT WORK!!
Will post this tomorrow when l am back home (sweet, sweet home, missing you already).
Just finished watching the Germany v Portugal match, and have nothing to do now, which is why l can type this, but still complain about having to attend my piss easy job. Snag is l am not allowed internet access at work for personal use, so have to save posts and do them the next day.
Will definitely be putting more posts up now (keep saying that, but this time it’s true), as l am now back to being a working drone (or is that wrong, is a drone a worker already? I think so, but can’t be bothered looking it up). Either way, l have been welcomed back to the machine. BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD!!!!!!!!!
Toodle pip
Sunday 15 June 2008
new york bars
milan
Wednesday 11 June 2008
amsterdam
Me pissing like a king in the street
Back in the Coronation
Here's some photos from the Amsterdam trip. usual thing, flew out from Teeside (now Durham Tees Valley, although everyone still calls it Teeside Airport) with Mandy, Robbo and Kerry to Schiphol airport, about 20 minutes from Amsterdam. Flight only takes about one hour so it's great. taxi to our hotel (Rembrant) on Herengracht then had to leave our bags while our room (one large one between us all - ooh er!) was made ready. Went to Gauchos for a meal, lots of meat and pints of Jack Daniels and Coke. Therefore, we had spent loads before we even booked into the hotel. Came back to get changed then out again to the red light district, where we stayed all night. Up to no good, as you can imagine, but a lot better than we have been in the past. The girls went back to the hotel early, so me and Robbo stayed out for a chat, drink, and filth patrol. Take away on the way back to the hotel,bed, then woken up in the middle of the night with the window slamming shut. made everyone wake up pretty damn quick, as everyone (apart from me obviously), thought that someone had been shot, it was that loud.
Same kind of thing the next day, drink, filth and food. Bought a painting from the market, Mandy showing her love for it in the above pictures. Taxi to the Airport in the evening, where our flight was delayed, so we had more drink in the waiting area (see me taunting Robbo above).
Taxi back to Robbo and Kerry's for the night, then, as usual, finished the trip off in the Coronation in Acklam, before heading home.
DVD's got through customs, everyone is still in one piece, so a success all round. Next trip is probably New York in September. Can't wait.
Toodle pip
Saturday 7 June 2008
funeral
My mums brother Ray came up from Liverpool with his wife Ann and two of their kids, Tony and Gary. great to see them, plus Ann's sister Marie and husband Roy. had some games of pool with them later on, must admit, they are good players, just not as good at doubles as me and Robbo.
Travelled with Ray in the car behind the hearse and was glad he held it together, as l would have been blubbing if he had started. Otherwise, l felt as l thought l would, detached from it all. Red hot in the church, sweating like the filthy pig l am, but cooled down once l acclimatised to it.
Had a short Methodist funeral, then a quick reading at the graveside. not many people turned up, but it was a lot more than we thought would be there originally, as she did not have many friends, mainly because she was not very nice with people, probably where l got it from.
Got some cheap and cheerful (not the right word obviously) funeral directors from Bedale who did a sound job. mind you, we haven't got the bill yet. Got to sort out mums insurance, pay them, then that's it - back to normality.
Went to Amsterdam between the death and the funeral, report and photos later.
Toodle pip
Wednesday 28 May 2008
working class and proud of it
Bit pissed at the moment and rambling, so l will head off, as l have a BBQ to go to in 15minutes - in a privately owned house as well. Class traitor l am. Toodle pip
Monday 26 May 2008
mum has died
Strange to see her take her last breath, and be such an empty shell afterwards. Still had her eyes and mouth open, which was freaking out my brother and sister, so l closed her eyes. They didn’t want me to attempt closing her mouth in case l broke her jaw or something.
Although everyone was upset, we all agreed that she should have died earlier, with medical assistance if need be. She was saying she wanted it all to be over the last time she was able to speak. We did ask if extra morphine could be given but they could not do so to the extent we wanted.
Got to sort out her bungalow and possessions now, plus arrange her funeral. Fun Fun Fun as the Beach boys would say.
My brother came up from Leeds a few days ago and now wishes he had stayed there, as he cannot get the image of mum dying like that, he wishes he had just remembered her when she was still alive and at least able to talk a bit. Will probably remember her alive more as time passes, although he will not forget the final day, at the moment it is too fresh in his mind. He went back to Leeds this afternoon, taking our sisters two kids with him to have a break for a few days. He was upset last night and stayed at my house, rat catching and chatting (yes, we still have bastard rats).
I felt sorry for everyone as they were crying and upset, but to tell the truth, l felt nothing but a fascination at witnessing her die. Still not been upset about it, maybe l will later, but l doubt it. Am pissed off l don’t feel anything, as l should do, but that is due to my upbringing, therefore not my fault (l say anyway).
Her last words to me were to ask if l enjoyed the football on Wednesday night. At least she realised how important that was to me ( l know, l am a callous bastard ).
Can soon start to write about other stuff on the blog, let’s face it, this has taken over recently.
Toodle pip