Well, technically it's a crime.

I've been a bit lax with the old Blogeroonie recently haven't I?  This is this week's first post and it's Thursday.

I blame celebrity Blogger Bennett McVeigh, The lovechild of the guy who played guitar for Fleetwood Mac that wasn't Peter Green, and Shirley Bassey, the Welsh brother of the decidedly American Oklahoma bomber and wearer of some spectacular hats.  He has been taking up my time by exercising his writing muscle and making me cry into my weak lemon drink... Thus making it weaker, and less lemony...

So, it's now it's pretty much just drink...

And there's the writing of the next book, about robots and pirates and airships, that's been taking up a lot of time too...  Got less than three weeks to get that written, so I'm going to make today's Blog a short one...

It starts in the past, as most of my memories do, and it involves Christmas, and motorcycles and alcohol.

-oOo-

Derby (UK), as some of you might know, was one of the hubs of the Industrial Revolution.  We had silk mills and mass produced pottery and kids dying left, right and centre of black lung.  But mostly, we had trains and train infrastructure.

There was a branch line of the Great Northern Railway in the west of the City that you can still explore, there are ghost lines and disused warehouses with rotten floors that will quite happily drop you thirty feet to the dark, rat infested cellars below...  Great place, spent a lot of time there in the mid nineties.  In fact, there're a few pictures of the place in question HERE by a chap that explored it long after these events took place.  Although, in fairness it looked exactly the same, even the toilet (The fouth picture down) was just a disused urinal, and you did your best not to miss the hole that led to... Well, into the bowels of the Earth.  Which was difficult because you had to keep your eyes closed to stop your retinas exploding from the smell.

It had everything you could ever wish for in a subterranean space, rivers of raw human waste, rats, suspiciously rusty looking water dripping from the brickwork and tree-roots coming through the ceiling.  As an extra bonus, there was no real ventilation, and as a lot of business that used 'The Arches' were connected to the motor trade, the Carbon Monoxide levels were often pretty high, as were most of the people who worked there a lot of the time.

A guy I knew, I wouldn't call him a mate really, I can't even remember his name... Might have been Trev or Terry or something like that though now I come to mention it, owned a bike breakers in one of the aforesaid arches.  He was, in the best tradition of such people, a bit 'Woooo' and a bit 'Weyyyy'

Characterised by the time that he offered me a fixer-upper 1943 Harley Davidson WL45 motorcycle for a set number of 'Goes' on my then girlfriend (To my eternal shame I did actually think about it, but she informed me that the correct answer was, in fact, 'no')

Anywho, Trev, Terry, T-Dog whatever his name was, suggested that 'The Lads' go for a Christmas Eve wander around town, starting when the pubs opened and finishing... Well, no fixed finishing time was set, as such.  We were going to start at his 'Arch' at about 10ish, have a few cans and then sally forth.  Which is what we did, except that between the 'few cans' and getting to the pub, there was a brief alcoholic interlude.

A bottle appeared, with no label on it, its contents were clear, but luminous yellowy-green... Much, I expect, like a urine sample from Dr Bruce Banner.

This wasn't it exactly... But it should have been

'I made it myself...' Said the T-Meister, which bearing in mind the analogy above, was very probably true.

I sniffed it, it was definitely vodka, but with delicate notes of halibut and primroses.  I wiped the brim on my sleeve and took a deep swig, swallowing quickly, reasoning that the less time it spent in my mouth, the better.  And it didn't taste that bad, it had the smoky aftertaste that one normally associates with french-kissing a rhinocerous, but other than that, perfectly passable.

We emptied the bottle between us and went to the pub.

It only took an hour or so for the first one of us to go blind...

My legs wandered off for a little unattended walk of their own, leaving me balanced precariously on a bench, in a beer-garden, in the snow.  Terence sat down next to me, giggling to himself, plucking imaginary butterflies from his beard.

'Dude, what was in that vodka?'

'Hmmmm? Vodka?  Skunk mate..?'

'Skunks?' I giggled to myself, wondering why it didn't have black and white stripes in that case.

'Nah-nah-nah.. Not skunks... skunk... Marry-Jew-Wana.'

I laughed uncontrollably for a while, looked at the pretty patterns in my bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, then I made my way back home, dragging myself with the only muscles that I still had control over...

My lips.


Drugs are bad kids, especially if you ingest them completely by accident.

Just say No! (No really, do, they're tremendously bad for you.)

It was like the Somme!

Well, here we all are, sat in anticipation of a 'Snow Day' - News reports warning of a massive 6" of snow being expected in 'some areas' during today.

Schools are closed, motorways are empty, people are panic-buying bread, beer and lubricant in case they get snowed in. I know that I for one will be spending the day staring out of the window watching students at the University over the road falling comically on their self-important backsides.

While we're on the subject of self important backsides...

A long-time friend of mine once shared my Blog on Twitter/Facebook with the words...

'Do you ever feel like you're a massive walking disaster*? Well spare a through for The Chimping Dandy, who really is.'

And in a way, he's right - I do have a fair collection of stories that involve gross physical harm taking place on or about my person. Many involve motorcycles, some, such as today's, involve a lack of care or attention, fewer still involve paint, but they're all true and up to a point, educational - I do idiotic stuff to myself so that you don't have to.

P.S. Sorry there wasn't a Blog yesterday, I was in London, trying not to get mown down by Janet Street-Porter

-oOo-

I'm a bit of a rambler, in most senses of the word, obviously, you all know that I could quite happily drive an echidna to suicide with my opinionated diatribe about the true meaning of Ridley Scott's Bladerunner, but in this case I'm talking about wandering about, in the Great British countryside, with a packed lunch and a flask of weak lemon drink. It doesn't take much to convince me that I need fresh air and I am more than happy to drag my progeny with me (Mrs Dandy never requires much convincing, of anything really, she what we used to refer to, in the Olden Days as 'a game old bird').

This particular day we had decided that it would be a great idea to walk the three or so miles to a nice country pub, have a spot of lunch, maybe sample the steeped fruit of the hop and get the charabanc home. So far, so; start of the Enid Blyton book entitled 'Five get drunk and upset some cows'. As has been recounted previously, we used to live a lark's belch from the 'Cundry' so I loaded the Micro-Dandy into his papoose, hefted him onto my back, gathered the clan and we set off.

We'd just left civilisation and started trudging across farmland when the terrain got a bit lumpy, then it became bumpy, and after a while we had to invent a new word, so we chose 'Rabbity', as in -

'I say Muriel, look at all the bally holes in this meadow,'

'Yes Tarquin, it's distinctly Rabbity'

So, we wandered on, through hedges and ditches, honouring the country code at every turn, right up until the point where I put my foot down a rabbit hole. I started to fall backwards, but realised that I had a small person, effectively in my rucksack, so I turned right to try and land on my side. Well, I say I turned, most of me turned, about 97% I think.

My right foot took the unilateral decision to stay pointing in the same direction. It didn't 'really' hurt when I hit the ground - I mean, it hurt, don't get me wrong, and there was definately a wet *crunch* as it happened, but it was more of an 'Oww! you Bugger' than a 'Quick! call the Air Ambulance'. With some assistance, the papoose was removed and the Micro-Dandy checked for ouchies and boo-boos, of which there were, luckily, none.

We continued the walk, at a slightly reduced pace, and finally made our way back to civilisation. The discomfort in my ankle was increasing slowly (I was wearing proper, supportive, walking boots though, which helped) and decided that maybe, it would be for the best, if we cut the walk short and just went home.

Walking home (as it was a Sunday and the buses were once every nine hours) did my minor injury no real favours and I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the sofa feeling a mixture of nausea and self-pity. Every moan was answered with:

'If it hurts so much, go to the hospital.' Louder and louder, with more and more exasperation behind it every time.

I finally thought that the only thing that could take my mind off the pain away would be a catering pack of Cadburys' Minstrels. Obviously, I was much too weak to make it the three yards to the kitchen, so Mrs Dandy was dispatched on the provender run. She gave me (threw) the chocolates with more force than was strictly neccessary, and I ate them, one after another until the oversize bag was empty.

Eventually, it was time for bed, and Mrs Dandy went to the door, opened it, turned on the stairs light and said,

'Are you coming?'

'I don't think I can get up,'

After a series of exasperated sighs, she came back and helped me up - I was really quite uncomfortable at this point, and she helped me up the stairs. About halfway up, I fell to my knees, suddenly feeling dizzy.

'Come on,' Said Mrs Dandy, 'You're nearly there.'

And she was right, in a way - With a noise that has since been likened to a herring giving birth to a rhinocerous, I threw up the entire packet of Minstrels, my breakfast, and a selection of things that, to this day, I don't remember eating. This all managed to just miss my Dear Wife, but did mean we had to redecorate the stairs. Her reaction to this was priceless, she said;

'Oh my God. I'm so sorry - I didn't think you were really in pain, I thought you were putting it on!'

I leave you with a picture of the offending injury, the day after, when the swelling had gone down somewhat.

And will say that Monday's blog will be about the time I trod on a penguin (there may be photos again).

　

　
 *For some reason, whenever I re-read that, I usually replace the W, A and L with F, U and C...