New balls please.

Should you ever see me in the street, (and that sort of counts on you knowing who I am I suppose) what would the first thought be?

Would it be 'I say, he's reasonably tall.' or 'What a splendid beard that man has, I shall make it my life's work to become his faithful man/woman servant.' or 'What was that awful baconny smell?'

One thing it probably wouldn't be is 'That fine figure of a man there, is a natural sportsman, I should bow down before him in supplication and offer him the unfettered use of my clothing optional hot-tub.'

And that's because I'm not.  My frame is not what you'd describe as streamlined (apart from my head that is). My musculature, such as it was, has become flaccid through lack of use, and I sometimes get a bit out of breath thinking about chips.

But believe it or not, at one time, not only was I an avid sportsman who played thrice weekly, but I was captain of not one, but two top (ish) of the league sports teams at the same time.  I can virtually smell your surprise from here.

It all began around twenty-five years ago in a bar called The Old Silk Mill (As previously mentioned HERE).

I was sat there, one Saturday lunchtime, with my then girlfriend, when the landlord wandered over to the noticeboard and pinned an A4 piece of paper to it. It was the sign-up sheet for the new pool team.  Within a week or so, many names were added to this list and we went onto some limited success.  In fairness a number of the limitations we faced involved a few of the team being under the influence of certain substances that may be frowned upon in polite society.  It was a fairly regular occurrence that we would have to take nine players to a match that required seven in case someone started rocking backwards and forwards in the corner having 'shroom flashbacks and another person found themselves unable to play because the table was covered in tiny, multi-coloured horses with tusks, wearing snowshoes.

But we had some truly great players.  Our original Captain, Billy B, was a borderline psychotic, who looked like a dark haired cross between Professor Mick Aston from Timeteam and Rasputin, who would strut around the table with both his prehensile knees and eyes pointing in many different directions at once.  he mumbled to himself all the time whilst executing some truly physics defying shots and he would often turn around and laugh uncontrolably in the face of his opponent in the style of a pirate.

His sister, Louise, also played for us. It would be difficult to find two siblings that were more different in outlook (or any other email system for that matter).  Where Billy was manic, Louise was calculating.  She would look at all the balls on the table from all angles before every shot and was the closest thing to a Cyber(wo)man that I've ever seen. Fine pool player, especially where performing 'snookers' was concerned.  In fact, she only ever lost it when she made a mistake that lost her the match - Then... Well... Have you seen Bladerunner? With Harrison Ford? You know the bit where Daryl Hannah's character Pris was 'retired'? Well, that.

Louise had a female life partner (or whatever the politically correct term is this week) called Annie who was a natural pool player and a great mate who would wander around the table, taking great shot after great shot, taking multiple swigs from her pint, and bringing the generally masculinity of her opponent into question and then mercilessly barracking him until he cried.

We also had Sam, and her boyfriend Sam (Yes, it did sometimes get confusing) who we would usually try to put on in the last match, the spot usually saved for the Captains to play each other... Although it was more of a guideline than an actual rule really.  We would wait for the last player from their team to come to the table, if he was small, and seemed to be easily intimidated, Male Sam would play, and win without speaking a single word.  If he seemed to be confident, the sort of man who would have had his own cue cut from a single piece of antique wood, salvaged from the wreck of a viking longship, Female Sam would play - Not straight away of course, she would have a bit of a stretch, declare that her blouse was a bit restrictive and then look her opponent directly in the eyes whilst she slowly undid as many buttons as she needed to to let him know that she had 'forgotten' to wear a bra that day.  Then she'd win. Thinking about it, that might have technically been cheating I suppose.

Now, I'm going to stop there, because this is in danger of just turning into a list of people that I knew at the end of the 80's.  Suffice it to say that, obviously, the blindingly famous SMick was in the team, as was my other professionally Scottish friend Jock, who is, as I've mentioned before, sadly no longer with us.  Suffice it to say that it was like an outside broadcast featuring The Addams Family every time we went to a different pub to play one of our 'Away' matches.

Over a few seasons, things changed, as they so often do. old players left and new ones joined. In fact, Billy B himself left to concentrate his chemical experimentation and because I was the only one not to say 'no' when he tried to appoint a replacement Captain, I got the job.  A couple of other major things changed too.  One was that there had, for a long time, been complaints in 'The League' about sexism and misogyny, so a separate 'Ladies' league was started (Our team was Captained by my then girlfriend) and The Silk Mill changed hands, it's new owner instantly deciding that his first order of business would be to get rid of all the dirty bikers and turn the place into one of those awful, homogeneous city centre pubs with microwaved (but still described as homecooked) food.

So we moved, to The Station Inn, mentioned in the SMick story linked above, and presented them with at first two and then three ready made teams. We stayed there for many years, in fact, if you visit there to this day, you will see many of the trophies that we won still proudly displayed.

The teams continued to change, the supremely gullible Steve, joined the team that we now had to call the 'Mixed' team because:

a) It had both male and female members
b) You weren't allowed to call it the 'Men's' team, because that would be sexist.

But all this isn't exactly getting us to where I was Captain of two sports teams is it?  The emotional rollercoaster that was my love life took an excitingly depressing downturn in 1991, where my then girlfriend, and Captain of the ladies team, found solace in the arms (amongst other things) of another, as hinted at in this post HERE - So, I did what any self respecting man would do under those circumstances:

I became the Captain of the Ladies team too.

So, Thursdays and Sundays I would go to the pub, get drunk and play pool with my friends (both male and female) and on Tuesdays I would go to the pub, get drunk and watch ten girls, between eighteen and thirty, bend over a pool table for two hours.  It took my mind right off the heartbreak situation that I'd just been through I can tell you.

And for our less gentlemanly male readers, whose minds are racing with all sorts of interesting possibilities...

Yes, two, but not at the same time.

Top of the Blog Parade

Well, time for my first (and last) Friday post for this week.

I've noticed over the past few weeks that I've been getting hits on the 'older' pages of the Blog, some of the stuff that I originally posted on Facebook last year. Gave me a warm, glowy feeling in, what I like to call, my nethers.

I like some of my older stuff to have new life breathed into it, that's why I put all the hyperlinks in the new stuff (You see, you thought I was just a needy, self referential gitbag, whose only empty joy was pretending that people thought what he wrote was worth reading? - Oh! the irony!)

So I include below, the top ten most popular posts, starting at number 10, in a Smashy and Nicey stylee, as picked by you, the readers - There are no real suprises, but if you're bored and find yourself with a few spare minutes, these are the posts that you guys think are funniest, or most interesting, or... Oh, I don't know why you like 'em. You're the ones following a bald fat bloke with questionable personal hygiene and an over-willingness to share, you're obviously all deranged.

-oOo-

In at number 10 is a little story I like to call HAVE YOU TRIED TURNING IT OFF, THEN LEAVING IT This is actually a set of three stories about my first job in IT (In 1985 believe it or not) detailing some of the wonderful, completely not mad as a badger calls people still get on IT helpdesks all over this wonderful Kingdom of ours.

Number 9 is the only work of fiction in the whole top ten. A dramatic depiction of two gods, sat in a kebab shop, on a Friday night, discussing the creation of the Duck-Billed Platypus (and Chicken Tikka) - Put your Atheism together for WAITING FOR GOD-OH!

For all you fans of mechanical mayhem, Number 8 shows us how the restoration of vintage vehicles can sometimes lead to personal injury, and a small amount of light vandalism. BUT WILL IT FLY SMICK? proves that it's really not possible to make a silk purse out of a rusty Ford Transit Van. - The only SMick story in the top ten! - What's wrong with you people?

Number 7 is the closest thing I have to required reading. You can't appreciate the Chimping Dandy as a being until you know how he was created. AS THE SUPERHERO SAID TO THE STRIPPER is a blow-by-blow account of the creation of your friendly, neighbourhood, Superhero - Before I realised I was actually a Supervillain of course.

Number 6 is our first trip through the looking-glass into my childhood. AN EYE FOR AN EYE tells of my Dear Mother's constant need to fill my formative years with fear (Warning, contains mild psychological terror and scenes of a surgical nature).

Starting our journey into the top five is SECOND CONTACT CLOSING FAST, BEARING 076! Where I warn Ford Galaxy owners about a possible fault with their cars, and almost bring the M40 to a halt by explosively showering it with smouldering wreckage.

Number 4 is a love poem (well, prose really) to my favourite grocery supplier. In BOOBS, MELONS AND JUMPER LUMPS I relate another three tales about why I love ASDA (Walmart) so much - However, only one of the stories is actually about the female mammary area, just so you don't get over-excited.

A fairly new entry at Number 3 is the 'Chock full o' shocks' story of my attempt at becoming a fetish model - AND THEN I POSED, AND HE TOOK MY PICTURE A comedic, but still totally true description of the pre-show party for the Skin-Two Magazine's Rubber Ball in (I think) about 1998. And the chain of events that led to me being a household name in Germany.

The second podium place goes to BARNABY WILDE (PT. 1) A set of three cautionary tales about the trials and tribulations to be had when your motorcycle has three wheels and you're a bit gormless. There's personal injury, electrocution and dancing on ice. What more could you ask for?

But the winner, the piece de resistance, your most loved post by quite a margin, is not actually about me. It doesn't mention me, it happened before I was born. But even so, it is bloody funny. THERMODYNAMICS, IT'S THE LAW! is the story of how my Father used the corpse of a fragile, beautiful animal to condemn a young girl to an eternity of torment, reliving her horror over and over again until the end of time itself. Probably.

-oOo-

The Blog gets a lot of hits Internationally. I can identify who some of them are, I know who the German, Cypriot and Irish contingent are. I also know the identities of a large proportion of the UK and USA readers. The couple of hits from Isreal were, I firmly believe, Jason Bradbury from The Gadget Show and some from Canada, I think, were the director Kevin Smith. But many others find The Chimping Dandy through the Random Blog feature of Blogger itself, and still more find us through a Google search.

So, what would you have to type into Google to find this happy community? The top ten Google searches, where people found us and clicked through, as I believe the youngsters call it are:

10: Kipper the Stripper

9: It was a bright, cold day in april and the clock was striking thirteen

8: I shot myself 2013

7: I shoot myself dandy

6: dandy ishotmyself

5: boobs melons show in car

4: boob melons photos blogspots (I guess whoever searched for this was severely disappointed)

3: what do you call Dandy with tattoo

2: dandy boobs

1: swing away merrill

I think that this little sampling tells you all you need to know about the populace of the Internet. It's pretty much full of people looking for breasts and shooting themselves.

And they say the Internet's not like real life!

But my personal favourite, the one that mostly twists my melon, but unfortunately only got used once and hence doesn't appear in the top ten is 'Tandoori Wombat' - Not only will you find this Blog by typing this in, we're the first result!

I'm so proud.

Then SMick said that Chap was a bad word

All this Alba talk yesterday got me thinking... We've not had a 'Me and SMick' story for a while have we?

OK, it's about time that you heard the story of my first trip to Dumfries (It's a lovely place, you should go there, it's got a river running through it and everything).

-oOo-

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in the autumn of 1990, leaves were turning golden, squirrels were thinking about hibernating, and SMick and I were playing pool in the pub (The Station Inn on Midland Road in Derby, for those who are interested. Dave, the Landlord could easily be mistaken for a cantankerous Terry Wogan, and he serves half-decent Bass from the jug), sinking a few cheeky Newcastle Brown Ales.

'Ah feel like going home,' Said SMick, gazing whistfully out of the window.

'Oh, OK, we'll finish these and get off shall we... Bit early though innit?'

'Aye.'

So, about half an hour later, when I realised we were going in completely the wrong direction, I said,

'Dude, I thought we were going home?'

SMick turned, looked at me and said, 'I am...'

The trip North up the M6 / M74 was fairly without incident, we passed Gretna Green, Hadrian's Wall, lots of heather clad mountainsides and finally arrived at, SMick's mate, Doogie's house in Dumfries just as the sun was going down.

To be honest, I can't remember if I'd met Doogie before or not at this stage, but seeing as our first real conversation was about how many times we'd each seen Michaela Strachan's knickers, he was soon firmly filed under 'kindred spirits'. We had a couple of beers and then decided that it was time I experienced a real Sco'ish pub.

So we went to a place called The Joker on the Whitesands, this is where I nearly got killed the first time that day. As we got to the door, SMick stopped and put his hand on my chest.

'One thing, 'fore we go in.' He said, with a serious look on his face, 'You know how you're fond of using the word Chap?'

'Aye?' I said, wondering where this was going,

'Don't use it here, not a good word.'

'Ver' bad in fact,' Chipped in Doogie, 'S'a bit like calling someone a cu...'

'Aye, that's the one rule, don't call anyone Chap, goddit?', SMick released his hand and brushed some imaginary dust off my T-Shirt, I looked down, he flicked me in the face, 'Ah, seeing as yer so gullible, you can buy the first round!'

We went into the pub, which was as busy as any town-centre pub on a Saturday night, the bar was two deep, SMick and Doogie got us a table by sitting down next to some Students and leering at them until they vacated their seats and I stood at the bar for ten minutes busily not being served. I heard a shout from behind me.

'Rab!'

Which I ignored, because they were obviously trying to attract someone called Rab's attention.

'Rab! turn roond yah big bast!' I looked around and Doogie was making the come over here you big bast handsignal.

'What?' I shouted over the jukebox, 'Difficult to get served innit?'

'Aye, y'ell haveta shoot, in Sco'ish or they won' serve yah,'

'In Scottish?'

'Aye, if they find oot yer Unglish, yer deed! Yah shoot "Three paints o' eighty" and then wait for the beyor.'

So I did shoot, I mean shout, and we did get the beer, Doogie did the same, then SMick, then it was my round again. I looked at the clock and noticed it was 10:45,

'I'll get us a couple each as it's getting late, OK?' I suggested,

SMick and Doogie looked at each other, shrugged, and said 'Aye!' with broad grins.

Six pints later, when it was my round again, I noticed that it was only about an hour later and both SMick and Doogie had four pints each lined up in front of them.

'When's last orders?' I asked, congratulating myself for being able to string those few words together.

'Mostly when people stop drinking,' Replied SMick, 'You might want to slow down a bit.'

I excused myself and went to open the floodgates, as my bladder pressure was rapidly approaching a valve busting level. After I had drilled a hole in the urinal by pure pressure of urine alone, I re-entered the bar and saw a chap... Sorry, bloke... putting a pound-note into a 'Fruitey' (A fruit machine or one-armed bandit) - Now, this totally threw me for two reasons. One being that I'd not seen a pound note for ages, since England started using pound coins some years before, and the other that I had never seen anyone use a note in a gaming machine. I stood and stared, open mouthed like a gasping haddock, for a few moments before overhearing the guy playing on the machine talking to his girlfriend about a TV program they'd been watching about Polar Bears.

Now, I'm a great believer in other people's education, especially when drunk, so I decided that I would impart some knowledge to them, that I had recently read (Which I later found out was completely untrue).

'Did you know?' I expounded, sounding very, very, English indeed, 'That your actual Polar Bear, isn't a bear at all, but a kind of giant weasel?'

'Whut?' replied the large, and getting larger all the time, Scotsman.

'Polar Bear, looks like a bear, with the claws and the Arrgghh!, right? Actually a big weasel!' (I think I might have actually made whiskery movements with my finger against my face).

'Y'tekkin the pish?' The guy continued to grow, which I thought was physically impossible.

'No, really, I thought you might find it interesting!'

'D'ya think ahm Styoopit?' He was about eight feet tall now, and showing no signs of stopping growing.

'Well, I don't know if... URK!' Luckily, my exclamation wasn't from him tearing off my arms like a bad tempered Wookie, it was from SMick and Doogie grabbing my the shoulders and propelling me towards the door.

'Sorry! He's dronk!' Doogie yelled over his shoulder as they used my face to open the door.

'Are you actively trying to get yourself killed?' Asked Smick

'I didn't call him Chap, you said that that was the one rule!'

'OK, two rules, Don't call anyone Chap, don't try to educate anybody, right?'

'Fair enough... What're doing now.'

'We're going to go somewhere else and carry on drinking. You're going to sit quietly and give us money to buy drinks when it's your round.'

So, we went to a nightclub, whose name I can't remember, but I do remember it was up some stairs. And the bouncers were all huge, apart from one.

'NO TRAINERS!' Shouted one of the large bouncers from the top of the stairs.

'Whut?' Shouted Doogie,

'Him, wearing trainers, NO TRAINERS!'

I looked down and discovered that I was the 'Him'

'Don' s'ppose yah brought any boots with yah?' Asked Doogie,

'I didn't know we were coming, I didn't bring anything at all.'

We walked back to Doogie's house and he gave me a pair of his work-boots. Now, I am six feet tall, with size 10 feet, Doogie is, well, I mean, he's over five feet, definately, with size 8 feet, on a good day. So, it was safe to say that my toes were in the main bit of the boots, but the rest of my feet were sort of where the laces were. I was walking like a drunken velociraptor.

Then I ripped my trousers, I honestly can't remember how, but it was a decent rip, from right knee, to groin and back down to left knee. Luckily, I hadn't yet adopted the 'All commando, all the time' fashion statement that I currently live by. I wish I could remember how I'd done it, it would probably have made a good story.

We walked back to the club, and I waddled up the stairs, which was being guarded by the smaller of the bouncers, who smelled like a trainee to me.

'Yer nay comin' in here dressed like that!' He shouted

'Sorry?' I replied, genuinely confused.

'Yer jeans, yah cannae com in here like that!'

'Look, pal, (I have since learned that 'pal' is something you shouldn't say either, it's not as bad as 'chap', but still a no-no) your mate said no trainers, so I went home and changed into these boots, now you're saying that I can't come in because I've got ripped jeans?'

'Aye, it's indecent!'

'I've got pants on!' I showed him my Spiderman y-fronts, 'Look, pants!'

'Naw, go haem, get some new jeans, then come back.'

'Look Chap!', SMick and Doogie both took a step back at this point, 'I've just driven two hundred miles because he said (I waved in SMick and Doogie's general direction) this was a good place to go for a beer. So I'm going in!)

'Naw, yah not!' The bouncer proceeded to roll up his sleeves and started down the stairs.

At this moment, another, more experienced bouncer came out of the doors at the top of the stairs and shouted, 'Whit's all tha bloody noise, Ah ken hear you lot over tha music!'

The situation was explained to him, he turned to SMick and said, 'Is he gonna be any trouble?'

'Nope, we've only brought him 'cos he buys the beer.'

'Aye, right, yah can come in, he sits in a quiet corner, doesnae cause any trouble, OK?'

And so we did, and that would have been the end of this particular tale, had we not bumped into some other old friends of SMick's, from the local Motorcycle Club (possibly The Fugitives, but I'm not 100% sure) and things got messy... Very... Very... Messy...

Maybe an hour later, I noticed a very pretty young lady standing at the bar, occasionally looking at me, I watched her for a while and thought it was odd that she was on her own. I stood up and SMick looked at me quizzically. This was the second time that I nearly got killed.

'I'm going to talk to the girlie at the bar.'

'Aye, one sec...' He turned to one of the guys from the MCC and said a few words, there was laughter and he said, 'OK, fine, off you go!'

I went over, bought her a drink and got talking, she commented that she liked my trousers and my pants and my accent, I told her that I thought that was strange as most of the locals seemed to hate the English. At this moment, the young bouncer came into the room, looked at me, went very, very, red and started towards us. I looked at him and raised a single eyebrow, he paled, turned around and walked back out.

'Alright!' I thought to myself, 'Result!' And carried on chatting up the pretty lady.

A few drinks later, the same thing happened again, only he got a little closer before I raised my eyebrow and she noticed him too.

'Ah... Shite...' She said,

'Everything OK?' I asked,

'Aye, that's my boyfriend.'

'Oh... Cock!' I held up my hands and backed away, found my seat and sat down, I probably mouthed the words 'Sorry' a few times too.

SMick, Doogie, and all the other lads were crying with laughter, literally crying.

'It's not funny!' I said, 'I could have gotten the crap beaten out of me then, you should have told me!'

'That's exactly why it was funny, plus the fact that when you thought that you were being all James Bond, all these guys stood up behind you and raised their eyebrows and wagged their fingers at her boyfriend too.'

A good start to a great weekend, which ended up with me loosing my job, and nearly getting killed a couple more times. But I'll save that story for another day I think.

But will it fly SMick?

Firstly can I congratulate my Daughter on starting her own Blog - Gods bless it and all who sail in it. Hopefully it will give you a somewhat skewed teenagers eye view of the Dandy Universe.

Important word of caution, whilst I am usually a good natured, happy go lucky kinda guy with an infinite amount of patience and startlingly good cheekbones, any sniff of abuse or unwarranted* unkindness towards her and I will, most definately, reach down the perpetrator's epiglottis and show them things that would normally only be available via x-ray.

-oOo-

Right, onto the job in hand.

We've all heard stories about people who've found wonderful things in the most unlikely of places. Antiques Roadshow is full of people who have found original Picasso sketches in their Aunt Mabel's loft or there are those despicable people who find an original, fully working, 1920's Brough Superior in a neighbour's garage which they buy for a fiver as 'It was our Derek's and he never used it, even when he was still alive'.

So, imagine my excitement, when everyone's favourite Chilli cook and professional Scotsman, my good friend SMick, arrived at my front door with news of a 'vehicle' that he'd found out about, just lying in the mud in a farmer's field just around the corner. It was, quite literally, just around the corner, as in those days you could spit the distance from my house to the wonderful British countryside - You had to check no-one was in the way of course, things like that didn't go down well with the residents' association, but a well-hawked loogey would land on grass, or in a tree, or on a sheep.

So, dutifully, I clamboured into his Peugeot and drove the 100 yards to the farm. I walked around to the outbuildings, through knee deep mud, in my white Status Quo style white hi-tops (It was around this time that I changed my footwear of choice to second-hand army boots) and said to SMick.

'OK, where is it?'

'There,' pointed SMick, proudly

'Where, is it behind that scabby P.O.S. Mk1 Transit Luton?'

The slow grin that swept across SMick's face told me all I really needed to know.

'You've got to be.. erm... flipping joking, I'll be in the car...' I said, and started to squidge away as fast as I could.

He convinced me that it would be a good idea, a nice little project, something to do during the day when the pubs were shut. And if we couldn't get it going, then the box on the back was aluminium (Not Al-OO-min-um) and we could weigh it in and get some money out of it.

I honestly cannot remember how we got it out of the field, I think I blocked it from my memory the same way that victims of alien abduction do, I'm fairly sure it involved lots of sheets of wood, many, many bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale and an almost Olympic quantity of swearing.

Eventually, it found itself on my drive. It didn't actually look all that bad with a large proportion of the mud washed off. It also turned out to have a V6 engine which was a bonus, which on it's own started a selection of trike/go-kart fantasies. After the battery was left on charge for about six weeks, the engine would succesfully turn over but not 'catch', dutifully we did what any men confronted with a failing engine would do, we stood staring at the engine and scratched our heads.

'I think the carb needs priming,' SMick suggested, sagely.

'Right you are, how do we do that?' I replied - I wasn't then the mechanical whiz that I'm still not now.

'Well, we just take the air filter off, put something flammable down the carbs and see if it will start then.'

'Flammable?' I asked, nervously, not quite liking where this was going, 'Like what?'

'Like... petrol!'

'Like petrol, or actually petrol?'

'Actually petrol, we've got petrol, and it's what you'd expect to find in the carb anyway, should be fine.'

I bowed to his greater knowledge and we poured, what turned out to be significantly too much, petrol into the top of the carburetor and turned the engine over.

Now, I've never seen a real giant lightsaber, but I can imagine it looking something like what came out of the top of the carb - a nine foot high column of flame and noise which existed just long enough to drive my eardrums into my rectum and blow my eyebrows over to the other side of the road - It's a good job, in hindsight that we'd taken the bonnet off else it would have bounced off it and cut a neat porthole in the garage door.

'I think we might scrap it,' Said Smick, batting at his still smouldering sweatshirt.

'What?' I shoulted as I was still mostly deaf and over the other side of the road looking for my left eyebrow.

Over the next few weeks we set about stripping down the van to its component parts. Many interesting and fun times were had during the project.

Do you remember when I talked about our friend 'Gullible' Steve? The gentleman who ate of the baby-carrot and rottweiler chilli? Well, a couple of incidents involved him:

1) He was stumbling about in the back of the van, seeing if there was anything of any worth amongst the rotting hay and mud. When there was a cry, a protracted coughing fit, a torrent of expletives directed at myself, SMick, life in general and birds in particular. I turned to SMick, who was sat next to me in a deck-chair and said,

'Didn't think to tell him about the nest full of rotten blackbird eggs we found yesterday then?'

'Nope,' replied SMick, taking another gulp of his beer. 'But I did put it right near the side door so we wouldnea forget to throw it in the bin.'

2) The roof of the Luton box was made of fibreglass, which is not as weigh-innable as aluminium sheet, so we asked Steve to have a go at taking it off. We assumed (Which taught me that you should never assume) that he would get a ladder, and maybe a saw and cut the roof off. But no, he clamboured up onto the roof with an axe and a hammer.

'Is that a good idea?' I asked SMick, knowing full well that it wasn't

'Idea? No... Opportunity to laugh? Yes.' He replied, reaching down into the crate for another beer.

It took him a good fifteen minutes to fall the eight feet or so into the back of the van as he smashed the roof our from under himself. Thinking about it now, we really should have thrown that blackbird nest in the bin.

I didn't remain completely unscathed through the project, I had countless fibreglass splinters pulled out of my arms with pliers, cuts, bruises and boo-boos of various kinds.

And I understand that SMick still bears the scar of his particular mishap. We had got to the stage of trying to flatten the aluminium enough to get it in the back of the car and take it to the scrapyard and SMick was belting away with a lump hammer at a piece of metal that he was stood on.

Well, he missed... And hit his shin... He went completely silent, looked at the group of grubby schoolchildren that were hanging around watching us, looked at me, said, very quietly,

'Excuse me.'

And went inside the house.

The flow of profanity lasted a good half an hour and featured words that I didn't think could be used in that particular context. It left seven local dogs paralysed down one side and a further three pregnant. He'll show you the scar now if you ask him nicely, it's quite impressive.

I'll never forget that summer - And neither will the person whose drive we dumped the burning remains of the van on.

Anywho, I've been informed that my Daughter has mentioned about the time I shot myself, maybe I'll tell you about that on Monday. Have a good weekend, and if you see me around, feel free to buy me a pint - I think I deserve it, I've had a hard life!


*There are times when my Daughter's Blog will warrant abuse, feel free to fill your boots in situations such as these.