Birthday honours

We are slightly out of sorts, we are, by the concept of Sir Bruce Forsyth. Nothing against the man, please understand me, but not an easy one for my household to get its head round. We are actively outraged by the idea of Sir Tom Jones and the cold grim reality that in five or six years' time it'll be Dame Lulu.

I've long argued that it's more than time that Nicholas Parsons got a knighthood. The Small Object of Desire objected on the grounds that Peter Shilton hadn't got one for "being lovely." Even she had to admit that he couldn't have one before Gordon Banks. We agreed to disagree, eventually, over the merits or not of Sir Nobby Stiles.

John Inman and Roy Barraclough should both be made Dames of the British Empire for their services to pantomime.

As should Jeremy Paxman.

Tramlines of the mind

My dad used to work in Norbury's Printers in Old Trafford and although that, and all the other small factories that lined Elsinore Road, have been gone this past twenty years it still seems strange to see the place converted into a tram depot.

It's a changing world and I'm conscious that I'm slowing down. The first signs that the world was getting a bit fast for me came in the aftermath of the bomb in Manchester. All of a sudden, my lovely old city with the Lino a bit tatty round the edges was having facelifts and makeovers and whatnot. These days you can't move for designer doodads and footballers' danglies. 

Then they decided to turn the Pomona Docks into a small Manhatten skyline of empty offices and renamed part of Salford MediaCityUK. Where once was the U.C.P. tripeworks now there are sharp young men tweeting in CamelCase.

It wasn't all better in Th'owd days, no of course it wasn't. But I could keep up with it all.

On hearing the first fieldfares of Autumn

It's been a long week and I found myself waking up at twenty to ten. The Small Object of Desire was already awake, which was even more unusual.

"Hello you. Do you want me to make you a nice cup of tea?"

She said, snuggling up to me.

"Yes please," I replied.

"This is the bit where I usually go back to sleep, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes."

"It's good to be predictable."

An hour later, I'm fighting the urge to put the kettle on.

Stuff

Apologies for going quiet again. Some time this weekend I'll get back to that post I'd half written before my mum took bad (she's fine, thanks, but still in hospital eating grapes). Between that, work and my natural capacity for insomnia The Small Ibject Of Desire had started enquiries with her veternary friends as to the appropriate dosage of horse tranquiliser.

Always some Helm there to remind me...

A few people have been kind enough to ask about the folk left unchronicled in The Other Place. The good news is that there have been, as yet, no fatalities. Some people have, sadly, lost their jobs. Others have jumped before they are pushed. The story is dispiritingly common. The good news is that no libraries are to close in the old town, which begs more questions than is sensible or safe for me to ask here.

But for those of you who wanted, nay needed, to know, the people are much the same. God help them. Frog has his collection of disturbing children's pop-up books and there are stories that T.Aldous may have finished clearing out his garage. The Monkey's Arms is still Mecca on Friday afternoons. As is the rollmop herring counter in the horse meat shop.

And that old lady on the Milkbeck bus still drinks Old Spice.

A lapse

The Small Object of Desire has a question.

"Did I really just hear you tell that cat that he'd like sardines because they taste like pilchards by sing better?"

Might have done.

Damson days

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness came along early this year. Near all that is palatable has been picked, the rest for the wasps and last-lingering butterflies.

The swifts left a couple of weeks ago. Unlike the swallows and martins, which make a performance of gathering together on the telegraph wires shouting: "we're off now, see you next year!" the swifts disappear like the dew in the morning. One day you realise you haven't seen them for a while and the wind's a little colder than it has been. It's all a little furtive and sad.

The onset of Autumn means that playtime is over and we get back to the illusion of everyday reality. Some of the early consequences of parts of that illusion have been keeping me away from the blogosphere this past few weeks. Apologies for neglecting you all yet again. Luckily, all the awful stuff is at work. Unluckily, it has a knack of following us home.

Ah well…

Summertime Seaside Spcial

It's been the typical English August Bank Holiday Monday, so...

Amusement

My favouritest game on the penny arcades was the one where you put 50p in the slot and you get five shiny 10p pieces.

I never won the big jackpot but I always managed to break even.

Among my souvenirs

Some more post titles from the "Pending" file...

• Nose-mottling excitement
• Show them a real pas-de-bloody-deux!
• The squeak of old clogs
• Tangible benefits for stuff
• An infinity of catterpillars
• Concertinas at half mast
  
• Backlighting my youthfulness
  
• Isn't it disappointing when you stop noticing your plug-in?
  
• He wrote as a Byzantine Neoplatonist
  
• Her little fur brassiere caught on a glacier just to remember her by
  
• Educating Marmalade
  
• One dare not step back till the last pterodactyl is safely back home in it's nest
• A mardy-faced gorilla
• His punishment is to see the Dawn before the rest of the world
  
• That five minutes in the bath when the football season isn't happening
• It's barely Spring and salt and vinegar

Ah... would that it weren't, would that it weren't

Sadly missed already. R.I.P. Robert Robinson

And an affectionate tweak of the whiskers:

Entropy

Back in the Dark Ages, when I was a kid, the school nature table was arrayed with objects found, all grouped under the headings: " Alive," "Dead" and "Never Alive."

I may do the same with the contents of this fridge…

A la recherche de stuff perdu

Anyway, I found the razor. It had somehow fallen to the back of the bookcase, behind the Giles annuals.

No more Colin Firth for a week

We were watching telly the other day when The Small Object Of Desire said:

"Hasn't that Mick MacManus let himself go?"

It was Jenny Agguter.

Statesmen

Pausing to take a photograph of the Duke of Wellington, a passing drunk congratulated me on my choice of subject.