Steve walks warily down the street With the brim pulled way down low...

How was your weekend?

Mine was alright, I’ve had worse… Kept myself busy, you know, the usual, did a bit of shopping, took the dog for a walk, that kind of thing…

Nothing special… Pretty standard kind of weekend that you have when you’re halfway between paydays.

There was only one minor difference… at 9:30, on Friday 4th September 2015, My friend Rick ‘Odie’ Hoad lost his incredibly short (as far as I knew) battle with lung cancer.

You might have heard me talk about him once before, but not by name  – The incident with ‘Buskilla’ and her detachable wheels? - But he wasn’t the sort of person that you had madcap adventures with… He wasn’t a SMick, or a Jock (RIP), or a Gullible Steve (RIP); That’s not to say he wasn’t funny – He’s had me laughing to the point of tears on many occasions – In fact he told some very inventive, if ultimately crap ‘Christmas Cracker’ type jokes which invariably contained one solitary, often accidental, swear-word… Which would evoke an instant apology to the parents of any youngsters in the room – Then a wink to the kids themselves… And the laughter resumed louder than before.

He was an old-school biker, well, more of a triker really as he seemed to spend more time on three wheels than he did on two – But he was never that slightly ‘up-themselves’ biker that you see in films and TV programs, he was the biker that other bikers usually describe themselves to be… He was there for the sense of brotherhood, for the joy of riding motorcycles – for having a good time. Always in his leather jeans and wrap-around shades

He had his demons, like we all do. He’d suffer crippling bouts of depression, he’d be cantankerous, offensive, forthright… blunt didn’t quite cover it on most occasions – But you knew where you stood with him, and it was usually just at the end of the phone, or a Facebook update, where he was waiting for an opportunity to help you, or to be given an invitation to a rally or a party.  He’d be there like a shot – In any weather, under any circumstances…

He really was one of life’s good guys – And he was also a dyed in the wool, 100% full on, accept no alternatives, knob of the highest calibre.

He really was, pretty much all of the time – One of the people who have paid their respects over the weekend described him as human Marmite, I think that’s a brilliant description.

He invented his own trike riding style… And demonstrated it to me (once… Just the once) – He’d lean out, rather than in on bends, claiming that it put more weight on the outside rear wheel and therefore increased the ‘sticktion’ enabling you to corner faster… To test his theory, we went round and round the traffic island outside my local B&Q on one of his trikes faster and faster, leaning out as far as we both could (it not helping that neither of us were particularly small) up until the inside wheel lifted off the ground, the front wheel all went a bit ‘tankslappery’ and the bollards got real-close, real-fast… He also had this habit of flicking his ignition off and then back on again to cause a backfire as we passed crowds of schoolchildren/football fans/old people/police/pregnant women and nuns.

He also once drove the entire Dandy family to the wonderful seaside town of Redcar (Near the oil refinery) to pick up a puppy that Mrs Dandy had bought under false pretences... All he demanded in payment, despite being given the option of a slap-up meal at a hostelry of his choosing, was a Pick 'n' mix (and his petrol, I'm not a slave driver)

I found also over the weekend that I didn’t have a single, solitary picture of Rick to share with you all.  Which is a pity – The man was an animal… So I’ve borrowed some from the many people who’ve shared their memories over the weekend. See if you can guess which one he is in the photos.

(If anyone minds that I’ve stolen their photos, I will gladly remove them – Just drop me a mail or leave a comment – No offence taken or intended.)

No helmet, just a leather top hat?

Tigga & Rick

Being composed at a wedding...

Stolen the kids' bubble mixture

But he felt the cold, the poor lamb

My condolences go out to his wife, Tigga, His Ex-wife Fiona, and his kids, whom I never had the pleasure to meat. And to his cat, Nermal T Groovekitten (The Ginger Terrorist) who bit my thmb once.

Ride free Brother, Don’t eat all the bacon nor drink all the Jack – I’ll see you down there, but I’m afraid it won’t be for a good long while yet - if we're both lucky.

And for the record, I quite like Marmite.

Oh yeah... Whilst I remember - FUCK CANCER! - FUCK IT RIGHT IN IT'S STUPID ASS!

Are you nice? Does it hurt?

They say there are are a lot of different kinds of people in this world.  You’ve got your movers, your shakers, your couch potatoes.  Douches, heroes, thinkers, doers, readers, writers, leavers, cutters, people who like the taste of tinfoil, rappers, mappers, toe-tappers and, of course, the universally reviled hipsters.

But when it comes down to it, there are really only two types of people.

People who adopt stray cats, and people who don’t.

Now, if you know the real me, you’ll know that recently I’ve become one of the former.  Here’s a picture of her.  Her name’s Pipe.

Raggedy, isn't she?

She’s tiny, probably about a year old or so, and has been either mistreated, or been feral for quite a while as she has the attitude of a grumpy wood-chipper with a hair trigger.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

She latched onto my kids, specifically my son, on their way home from school about a month ago.  She was scrawny and pathetic, her coat moved of its own accord due to sheer volume of fleas and she didn’t really have the strength to do proper cat stuff like jumping or meowing loudly.

My daughter, because she’s a realist, told him that they wouldn’t be able keep the cat, because we had a cat and a dog already and also because ‘Mum & Dad are both heartless ogres.’ (and she’s right, I actually spend a lot of my time hiding behind boulders up on the moors with a stone hammer, feasting on the bone marrow of unsuspecting ramblers and the mountain rescue teams sent to find them.  It’s where we met, my wife and I. I looked at the sunlight bouncing off her knotted unibrow across a pile of sucked-dry corpses clothed only in that nice, brightly coloured, fabric that’s waterproof, but totally wicks your sweat away and thought ‘Dyamn Beeyatch! You fine!’)

He put down the kitten and started to cry, which seemingly set the kitten off and she panicked and allowed it to follow them home, across several dual-carriageways, over a level-crossing and through a ford, twice… I should probably note that this wasn’t their normal way home; I think she was trying to dissuade it.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

The kitten took up residence in the north formal shrubbery, between the real tennis courts and the helipad, for a day or so until we could purchase enough chemicals, pills and pastes to ensure that it didn’t pass on any dreaded lurgeys to anyone else.  And after a good couple of hours of combing, the mehsahib had dislodged, quite literally, a bin-liner full of fleas (which is now roving around the garden of its own accord, ready to chase any of us that try to escape by running away down our private beach) The worming cycle was completed, causing one unsuspecting guest to exclaim ‘Why have you fed your new cat spaghet… Oh, never mind!’ and be violently sick in my prize hydrangeas.

But not to worry, because everything’s fine now.  She’s putting weight on, OK – that’s mainly because she won’t let anyone else in the house eat, including us.  She will, and this is no word of a lie, put both her front paws on your dinner-plate and have it away with your jumbo battered-sausage before you can say, ‘You little bleeder! I’ll gut you like a fish!’

She does love ‘cuddles’ though, and will sit there and let you happily stroke her until you touch that quarter-inch square of skin that causes all four of her legs to independently swivel around and latch onto your wrist whilst she bites chunks out of the fleshy party of your thumb. (Location of this small patch of fur changes hourly, some might even say very much more often)

She’s also getting used to Morty, our occularly challenged Staffy… He can now come nearer than three feet to her before she devolves into a velociraptor and tries to tear out his eyes, which would of course, leave him much more challenged than usual.

Our other cat, Pop, can take her or leave her.  I mean, they growl, and hiss, and takes swipes at each other, but that’s pretty much standard cat behaviour isn’t it… There’s not actually been blood.

Well, there’s been blood, obviously, it’s mostly dog-blood though.  And it’s not all bad, because he now has a permanent noughts and crosses board on his muzzle that he’ll happily let you use for a biscuit.

What I’m trying to say is, erm… Well, I’m not hugely sure what I’m trying to say… If you could make something up about stray animals and being able to find enough excess affection for something that might well actually be the death of you by sitting at the top of the stairs silently in the dark, feel free to attribute it to me and imagine that it’s today’s message, OK?

We create them, we haunt ourselves.

So, here's a first, a blog post published at the weekend.  I mean, I don't do that,  I write the Blog, in my head on the way to work, copy it out between doing desperately important IT stuff during the morning and post it in my lunch break at work.

This should only be a short one though, it's more of an update than a full blog...

Do you remember, Last Christmas, I recounted the story about how my wonderful daughter, the Mini-Dandy met my Mother for the first time?

My Mother with the false eye, that had done her best to scar my childhood with her ocular tomfoolery?

The one who, at the time my daughter met her, had had the audacity to have died ten years previously?

Yeah, that one.

So, those of you who've read my book, Mumblings of an Irate Pangolin, (Which some clearing house is knocking out for £6.96 now, the barstewards) will know that my Mother seems to have followed us to our new house. It's taken her a number of years, but she's resurfaced.

For those of you who haven't read it, this is what page 55 has to say:

-oOo-

And recently, some eleven years later, although we’ve moved house, my Daughter has started complaining that she can hear whispering, as if someone were talking very quietly behind her.  The only word that she can actually make out is her own name.

She’s not particularly worried, she described the smell that sometimes accompanies the whispering to me – It’s Sandalwood by Yardley, one of my dead Mother’s favourite scents.

-oOo-

So, The Mini-Dandy is, in some way, in contact with the spirit of her dead Grandmother.  It's a big universe, I don't profess to know how any of it works.  But recently, it's escalated, there are hand-prints appearing, and scratches on peoples backs.

The handle on my bedroom door has been 'tried' whist I was stood next to it, I opened the door virtually instantaneously and the landing was empty, not once, but a number of times

Oh, and footsteps... Lots of footsteps... Those of you who who know me in 'the real world' will be saying stuff like 'But what about your dog? or your cat? aren't they supposed to be sensitive to that sort of thing?'  The cat's hardly in the house nowadays, unless its asleep within four feet of one of us.  And the dog?  Well, I'm not saying that He's stupid, but I've had coughing fits that I would trust more to guard my house.

We've tried 'speaking out' to her, it's not worked so far... The footsteps and the 'trying' of door handles continues.

Which is odd, because it worked last time.

Which means that this is different in some way. 

Maybe it's not even her

The Cir-her-her-cle oooof LiIiIife!

Back in August 2004, I took a trip to that London place, you know the one, the Capital of England (And you thought that was 'E' right? LOL), that sits on the River Thames, where Kubrick filmed the battle scenes for Full Metal Jacket (The old Beckton Gasworks) and Ridley Scott filmed most of Aliens (Acton Lane Power station)

Was I visiting scenes from movie history? No, I wasn't, but in fairness it's quite difficult to wander around London and not see a location from a Richard Curtis film.  I was going to see a show, a musical, a professional terpsichorial display of the highest order. Otherwise known as 'The Lion King'.

Now I know that there are people out there who will be saying things like 'A musical? but that's how gay men spend their free time!'  Well, traditionally, perhaps they do, that and ordering multiple copies of the 'Queer as Folk' box-set from Amazon...  And, erm,a lot of casual bumming, obviously.

But, you know, in a mixed group, some of the 'West End Shows' can be really very good. I've seen a few and on the whole, if you can get a cut-price deal to go and see one, they're well worth it.

But on this occasion, we're talking about The Lion King.  There were six of us on the trip in total,  Mrs Dandy and Myself, my now-American artistic benefactor and her husband, and two more people, one male, one female, who were not at that time, nor have they ever been, before or since, involved in a relationship with each other... Just friends, OK?

As my job at the time involved moving around the country quite a lot and staying in hotels, the group trusted me to book somewhere for us all to stay.  Once I'd confirmed that everyone favoured a budget hotel, so that there would be more money left over for beer and other frivolities, I set to work, trying to find a budget hotel within walking distance of the Lyceum Theatre, in WC2, that had two double rooms and two singles.  Believe it or not, I managed it, Great looking place, All of the rooms were en-suite, Central location, easy walk to the theatre, £25 or so per room.

That should have rung alarm bells right? Yeah? - Not with me it seems.  We had a great trip down on the train, all shiny faced excitement, cans of British Rail Strongbow and talking slightly too loud,  When we arrived outside the hotel, it still looked great, it was quite a large building, that overlooked one of those nice gated private garden type things that you see sometimes on the TV.

We went inside, and frankly it was a bit dingy, the owners and staff were all natives of some unidentified Eastern European country and had raised surliness to an artform.  There was a little light confusion as to whether we'd already paid, which got everyone off on the right foot and we were all given directions to our rooms, which were spread at every possible corner of the building.  The directions involved a lot of pointing, and words like 'Go stairs two floor, turn *handsignal for left* three doors. toilet at both ends corridor'.

Now, being sharp witted, I picked up on this and said 'Aha! Excuse me, my good man, but the booking form clearly states that the rooms are en-suite!' and I waved the printout from the Internet under his bushy moustache.  He inhaled, and the paper disappeared into his nasal cavity, losing me all of my documentary evidence in one fell swoop, then he replied, 'Room have shower in, toilet at end of corridor.'

So we made a plan to unpack, then go for a beer and some lunch, said our goodbyes and went to our rooms.  We went up two flights of stairs, turned left, went down three doors and pushed.  The room was... Small, yes, that's a kind word... Small. There was a (barely) double bed and a long-dead potplant.  Most of the room was taken up by a hardboard box that stretched from floor to ceiling, that was covered in the same 'Early Mental Hospital' style wallpaper as the rest of the room and had a concertina door on it.  My curiosity finally got the better of me and I opened the door.  It was, of course, the much vaunted en-suite shower.  To say that it was a bit of a lash-up would be to despoil the good name of lash-up showers such as the ones that Colonel John Blashford-Snell made out of three bits of bamboo and a sloth, whilst trying to transport a Grand Piano up the Congo some four years previously (look it up).

It was whilst I was examining a particularly unusual piece of fungus, emanating from the shower drain (hole in the carpeting inside the box) that I decided that a quick trip to the conveniences was in order.  I left the room, made for the end of the corridor and gingerly pushed open a door with many panes of frosted glass in it (and one perfectly clear pane at face height, when you were sat down.) The toilet could not have been more Victorian if it had a hairy German bloke, wearing a T-Shirt that said 'I [heart] Saxe-Coburg and Gotha' and an unfeasibly large pierced penis, sat on it.  I attended to my urgent business and pulled the chain (as it had a high-level cistern, like back in the day) and nothing happened other than a faint gurgling.  I pulled a few more times, in the style of Ned Beatty trying to start an outboard motor, but finally gave up and went back to the room.

It was then that I noticed that the doors didn't have numbers on.  You know that scene in every single film set in a hotel? The one that sort of zooms in then back out again down the corridor full of doors?  Well, let me tell you, that actually happens.  I went from door to door, listening carefully to see if I could heard the sound of Mrs Dandy silently complaining about the room.  But I could not, so I chose a door at random and opened it.

It was then that I noticed the urine-soaked corpse of a tramp.

No, seriously.

He was a tramp, he stank of urine, and he was dead... Probably - If he wasn't, then he was sleeping so deeply that his chest wasn't moving at all.  Now, I've seen enough horror films to know that if you go down, alone, to the reception of a hotel run by unidentified Eastern European types to say that you've just discovered a dead body, then you often find yourself being served to your friends for breakfast the next day.  So I backed out of the room, apologised (OK, so he was dead and couldn't technically hear me, but that didn't mean that I shouldn't be polite) and closed the door.

We all met up again in the lounge, had a long pub lunch, told everyone the story of the toilet and the tramp, then went back to the hotel to get ready for the evening.

The next few hours or so passed by quickly and will remain undescribed to spare the blushes of my dear wife.  Suffice it to say that there was no bar, or indeed mini-bar, so we had to resort to the old fashioned way of passing the time with only a bed and a dead plant for company, and it was only due to one of our party knocking on the door and asking if we were ready that reminded us of the time (and it seems that answering 'give me about thirty seconds and I will be' will earn you a slap from your wife)

We went to the theatre, had a great time, then came back to the hotel and had a few drinks in one of the rooms that had a working balcony until the early hours of the morning.

Breakfast was an interesting affair, the advertised Full English Breakfast turned out to be a single sausage and a piece of bacon each, calls for beans and/or tomatoes and toast fell on deaf and slightly frightening ears and in true tabloid style, we made our excuses and left.

The trip to the railway station was fairly uneventful, apart from not being able to find the tickets, going back to the hotel to look for them and then finding them in one of the ladies handbags and having to run to get the train.  And we put the whole sorry business behind us.

Until just over nine months later... The MicroDandy was born...