The legend lives on

I've never at any stage in my life been regarded by anyone who knows me as "happening."

And, if something is happening, it's normally been happening for a considerable period of time before I know anything about it.

Take Chinese lanterns. When someone mentioned Chinese lanterns to me during last weekend's annual camping trip, I immediately pictured those little lights that I've seen kids in other countries carry on the end of poles during community parades.

But I was wrong.

Because Chinese lanterns (as you probably already know) are big papery devices with candles inside which, when lit, fill up with hot air and float high into the sky and often for distances of several miles whilst everybody below claps.

They've been popular in Asia (funnily enough) for many years where releasing them at ceremonies is thought to bring good luck and prosperity.

However, they're now becoming increasing common sights over here - hence them being "happening" - prompting waves of protest from grumpy farmers (have you ever met a non-grumpy farmer?)

For whilst they might look pretty, they can can cause injury or death if eaten by animals when they come back to earth.

They can also be a serious fire hazard if they land on rubbish, fields of standing crops or barns.

So, with all of this in mind, surely the obvious thing for my beloved brother-in-law Dagenham Dave to do was to buy a pack of 50 for use in our child-ridden camp site, completely surrounded by dry fields, farm animals and barns.

It's just as well he appeared to be in such firm control throughout.

A quick thought before bedtime

I'm just about to turn in but, en route, thought I'd have a quick check online at what I'd missed in the world today.

And the following headline, on the BBC website, stood out:

"Prescott Iraq intelligence doubts"

Hmmmm.

But wouldn't you reckon that the average Iraqi would regard our "esteemed" former Deputy Prime Minister as a thick b*stard too?

Just so you know

I wanted to quickly point something out for the purpose of clarity.

The picture above was posted on Facebook yesterday by my old class mate Andy Kerr, now residing in Australia.

It features the Macosquin Primary School football team in the season 1982-83.

However, whilst the goalkeeper may look like a big girl and regularly played like one, it is in fact me - who is not a girl and has never been a girl in the biological sense.

Thank you for the opportunity to clear that one up.

UPDATE: I've also been asked to make clear that team captain Mark Logan (holding the ball) - now Operations Director at Showsec, "Europe's leading event security and crowd management specialist" - is definitely wearing both pants and shorts.

I feel the need, the need for...er...no dummy

Whilst I might not necessarily be Tom Cruise's biggest fan (although he was very good on Top Gear the other night), I am prepared to concede that he does look a bit on the cool side in the famous shot above nicked from Top Gun.

However, I've been trying very hard to get across to Jamie that he simply cannot expect to look as suave as Mr C if he insists on having his mouth clamped around a dummy.

Vanessa and I have had some success in recent times in detaching him from his silicon friend (they're not made out of rubber any more - did you know that?) But, far too often for our liking, he causes a tantrum until he gets it back and, equally far too often perhaps, we relent.

But we draw the line at letting him have it at nursery because no-one else in his group does (and there's only such much shame and indignity I'm prepared to have heaped upon this family).

The drill therefore tends to be allowing him to have it until we get to the end of the driveway leading up to the nursery door, before yanking it out, letting him scream and then calm down - just in time to reach the threshold.

Until this morning, that is.

I was putting his coat on (him, not me) just as we were about to leave the house when it initially appeared that he was trying to put the dummy into my mouth. But, after a few seconds, he held his hand outstretched and handed it to me before heading for the front door.

Rather than praise him, I quietly slipped it into my pocket, hoisted him up and began the short 200-yard carry to nursery, accompanied by his singing and smiling.

So the question is, has he decided to finally give it up?

Or will be continue to be a baby Maverick, albeit an uncool one with a big dummy (even when I'm not standing beside him)?

I expect we'll have a much better idea tomorrow morning.

Please don't take me to the Tower (...of Larne)

I tend to find that most days have their amusing little moments and today was no exception - but one in particular stands out.

I was getting Jamie ready for his day before starting my own when a trailer for a new kiddies show appeared on the telly.

Due to be shown on CBeebies from next Monday, its called Big City Park (you heard it here first, or maybe second if, like me, you're an enforced CBeebies fan) and features puppets and "real people" enjoying the great outdoors of Northern Ireland.

Because it's set in the fair Province, it features several characters - both fleshy and furry - who hail from there.

And during the short trailer, there was one who particularly caught my eye.

He had the look of a caveman to me, although further research has since revealed he's actually a caretaker called Ruairi. (As an aside - typically Norn Iron and in an attempt to avoid "religious imbalance," one of his co-characters is a badger called Billy).

However, when I made reference to my discovery of this new show and, more specifically, the "caveman" on Facebook this morning, I added that I thought he had a Larne accent - setting off a sharp string of derogatory comments from several individuals collectively hinting at a lack of depth in the Larne gene pool.

But it was the final comment that provided me with today's principal laugh-out-loud moment:

"just be careful..." were the menacing words of my mate Andy.

Or, to give him his full title, Councillor Andrew Wilson - Mayor of Larne.

Love it.

I'm not saying the North Sea is cold...

...but Jamie would.

The night Big John came down to earth

It was a familiar scene during the annual camping weekend; the barbecue was blazing and Big John was rustling up a storm in the "camp kitchen" whilst the rest of waited patiently to taste the results - which were excellent.

Now, I don't know if it was the fact that perhaps Big John ate too much of his own delicious fayre, or maybe it was the drink.

But, just a few hours later, the scene was not so civilised - after he fell through his chair.

And when something of that size hits the ground, clearly emergency forces must be marshaled.

Followed by a few more.

The only disappointment of the entire evening was that he didn't land on the old windbag himself, Dagenham Dave. But more on Daggers another time.

I just know it's going to rain

Of all the days in the calendar year, tomorrow is the one I dread the most; yes folks, it's time for the annual camping weekend.

I'll not rehearse the many reasons why I am galled at the prospect of tomorrow more than any other tomorrow (although feel free to remind yourself of how I felt a short 52 weeks ago).

But the simple fact is, I'm just not the camping type.

In an attempt to be positive, I did buy Jamie some new, patriotic wellies for this year's three days of torture.

Although, I fear Jamie himself may be a tad optimistic about the prospect of spotting something big and shiny in the sky on this particular "holiday."

Should we survive the ordeal, I'll be back here on Sunday to tell you all about it. That already seems like ages away.

Northern logic

I've been in my new job exactly a month today and it's very much a case of so far, so good - but very hard work. Still, that's as it should be.

One aspect of my new routine that concerned me a little beforehand was the travel arrangements. However, it's worked out very well.

It is an hour and a quarter there door-to-door and (think about it) another hour and a quarter back, meaning (for you mathematicians out there) a total of 12 and a half hours travelling per week (but particularly me, if you think about it).

However, the key thing is that, so far, the trains have tended to be on time. And I can cope with that. But it's just as well I don't have to travel to Selby.

Let me explain.

My first train of the day is the 0758 service from New Pudsey to Leeds. And, as I say, it generally arrives when it should.

But here's the bit I can't work out (and would swear loudly about, were I bound for Selby).

When the 0758 gets to Leeds, its splits in two; the front half going on to Morecambe at 0819 (stopping off at Keighley where I work), with the back half travelling to Selby at 0815 (in the same direction).

Can you see the flaw in that particular arrangement? No? OK, it's late.

Right, the front half sets off for Morecambe at 0819.

And the back half is due to set off for Selby at 0815 (IN THE SAME DIRECTION). But the back half can't obviously get past the front half, which is sitting only a few centimetres in front after being decoupled.

The result is that each and every morning, the poor Selby commuters don't get to start their journey until 0820 at best i.e. five minutes late. Every single day.

Congratulations to the no doubt really important Northern Rail bloke who made that particular call; he's probably in line for a free mobile phone.

Big fat Eamonn's big fat ego

You may read over the last couple of days that the BBC has been forced to apologise to Belfast fatty and all-round media whore Eamonn Holmes for drawing attention to his sheer hugeness.

The former Good Evening Ulster stand-in presenter apparently sent a solicitors letter to BBC big wigs complaining that John Culshaw had made jokes about his weight on The Impressions Show. (Diddums).

An official BBC spokesman has since confirmed that an apology was issued, although pointing out that the humour was intended to be "affectionate."

But, get this from the BBC's own website:

A spokeswoman for Holmes said that following discussions with the BBC, the TV presenter was "happy to say that the matter has been satisfactorily resolved."

"Resolved?!" What an total and complete w*****.

Let me first declare an interest; I don't like Eamonn Holmes.

My prejudice goes back to the very early 90s when, every Friday for a period, he used to fly over from Belfast to Newcastle - where I was a student - to present a late night programme in which a room full of Geordies shouted at each other for an hour before taking the fight outside to the Bigg Market.

A friend of a friend worked for the airline that transported Holmes' massive frame every week and, according to her, he was one of the rudest men she or any of her colleagues had ever met. I've never forgotten that.

Since then, there's barely been a live programme he hasn't either presented or tried to get on to. And I've never been able to spot whatever it is he brings to the party. But that's by the by.

There's no doubt he's done well for himself, his ego and his bank balance. Sadly, his success has also led to him performing a quite remarkable feat by climbing up inside his own over-sized rectum (to almost certainly eat a massive plate of sandwiches. And cake).

The picture above with wife number two proves, I would suggest, that Big Eamonn from the Antrim Road is fat. In fact, he's enormous. Actually, he's offensively obese. I might even send him my own solicitors letter for being in my eye line.

Rather than call his lawyers, he should call a doctor.

The fat f*****. (Tee hee).

When two become one

Question: What do you get when you add one Jamie to another Jamie?

Answer: An insect-ravaged pop star from Newcastle.

I weighed our boy tonight and, to my surprise, discovered that he now tips the scales at an even three stones - exactly half the current weight of bouncer-beating songstress Cheryl Cole (according to the newspapers). In other words, two of him would make a her.

Once again proof - if ever it were needed - that, by reading this blog, you really will learn something new every day.

We might have to call it Peter

Without boring you too much with the technical details (none of which I understand in any case), there are two computers inside this one computer at the present time and I have to switch an internal lead from the new one to the old one if I want to access my old files. (Got that? No? Me neither).

However, I've just searched through some archived e-mails on my old computer to find out what night it is that Vanessa, two friends and myself are due to travel to Sheffield to see Peter Kay's Tour That Doesn't Tour Tour - On Tour. Because I forgot to write down the date when I booked the tickets many months ago.

And the answer? Sunday 28 November.

Or, to put it another way, exactly three weeks to the day that Vanessa is due to give birth.

I love Peter Kay but, between you and me, I kind of hope he isn't TOO funny on this particular evening.

That said, I might just pack some clean towels, a flask of hot water and a pair of rubber gloves - just in case.

The highlight of our sporting summer?

Alongside a dozen and a half other parents and sprogs, Vanessa and Jamie took part in this morning's Little People's Big Toddle 2010, organised by the very kind people at his nursery.

Charity was the winner, as they say, with Barnardo's the recipients of however much money everyone raised for their efforts.

But, when there's a winner, there also has to be a loser; in this case Jamie, who you can just see coming home last.

The shame of it.

Mothergate - UPDATE

I received a single text from Mother W just a short while ago.

And I quote:

"Derek haggling with foreigners.

"Would put years on you.

"We're in Poland."

I have nothing more to say.

An alternative recollection

First an update on Mothergate. I received another text this morning, she and Derek are in Riga and apparently it looks like York. That's as much as I know.

As for today, I'm not long back from a boozy and always much-anticipated annual 364 Club Lunch at Headingley Carnegie Cricket Ground in Leeds.

Thanks to "The Voice of BBC Radio Nottingham" Colin Slater (left), who has invited me along for the last five years, I had the honour once again of being in the same room as several Yorkshire cricketing greats. Our purpose: to honour the life and achievements of former Yorkshire and England legend Sir Len Hutton.

Also in our little group were Steve Green (right), former Chief Constable of the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, and all-round gentleman.

And, in the middle, (yes, it is really is him), John "John Kettley Is A Weatherman" Kettley - the weatherman.

Plus Other Bloke (second from right), whose name I never quite picked up. But here's the thing.

I talked to Other Bloke for a fair proportion of the afternoon. He was also from Nottingham, was terrific company and fascinating in some of the things he had to say.

But one line stole the show.

Now, bear in mind we were all there to worship at the Sir Len Hutton altar, "possibly the greatest cricketer of all time and certainly the finest gentleman," was the script we were expected to adhere to.

However, Other Bloke was able to provide an alternative perspective.

"I met Len Hutton once, you know," he said. And clearly I didn't, so I asked him to tell me more.

"He had finished playing in a match, I saw him walking out of the pavilion afterwards and I ran over. I was just a young boy and there were just the two of us in the car park," he explained.

"I reached him as he was putting his kit into the boot of his car and I asked him for his autograph."

"And was he nice about it?" I enquired.

"No," replied Other Bloke. "He told me to f*** off, got in his car and drove away."

Other Bloke, whoever you are, I salute you.

Forget Mad Monk - meet Mad Mother

So, what sort of day did have you have?

Mine was OK-ish. Did a day's work, made it back just in time for my latest physio appointment, Vanessa's in London so I've just got Jamie off to sleep and now it's time for baseball, beer and steak. Actually, on reflection, it'll have been quite a good day by the time I get to bed.

And then there's been my mum's day.

She was thrown out of Russia.

Accompanied by her partner Derek, she set off early on Saturday morning for a trip to the fjords, which I always understood to be in Norway. However, for some reason, according to the text she sent me on Saturday afternoon, the two of them ended up in Stockholm.

I texted back: "Are you sure you're in Stockholm?"

To which she replied: "Yes, Derek's sitting beside a big sign which says Stockholm so I think it is."

Then, yesterday, she texted me again to say she was in Russia. Do they have fjords in Russia? No doubt I'll find out when she comes back.

So we fast forward to this afternoon when my phone beeped again to herald the arrival of another text message from my mother, and this was what it said:

"They chucked us out of Russia!"

I kid you not.

I quickly felt the need to sit down before, on partially regaining my composure, demanding to know (fairly obviously):

"WHY?!!"

A couple of minutes later, my phone beeped again with her response:

"Because of your political connections!"

Now I was confused, verging on concerned.

"Tell me more..." I replied.

There was a delay of a good half hour before her next text took her off on a complete tangent.

"We were in a palace where Rasputin lived and was murdered."

(Told you). So, I tried again:

"AND?!"

Another delay, this time of about four and a half hours until a short while ago, when her last message arrived:

"Sorry, I keep losing signal. It must be the satellite."

And that's as much as I know.

Needless to say, I'll keep you informed on developments although, if you hear anything on the news, do feel free to pass it on to me.

PS I don't THINK she's a spy (but, there again, would a "good" spy tell you if they were?)

Radio silence is golden

I signed up for my first mobile phone with great reluctance.

It was the late 1990s and, in the end, I folded under peer pressure. Pretty much everyone else I hung around with in London at that time had a mobile. And it just seemed easier to buy a crap one from Carphone Warehouse to put on the pub table alongside theirs, rather than having to keep explaining why I didn't believe I needed a brick of my own.

In time, I have to concede, it did become a useful tool - particularly for work - but, deep down, I still kind of hankered after the days when people couldn't find me.

Yes, I know I could have turned it off - and now do so regularly - but you obviously develop a habit (particularly when work's involved) of checking for messages and, therefore, never really turning yourself off fully.

I tell you all this because my current mobile phone conked out this morning and seems incapable of being resuscitated. I have since spoken to Vodafone who, sadly, are making swift arrangements to replace it. I have also shoved my SIM card into an old handset and am now fully contactable once again.

But my point is this; for almost 40 minutes when I was out and about at lunchtime and for around an hour and a quarter as I travelled home from work, no-one could get me and there was no point in me fretting about it.

Heaven.

Mums are, like, SO uncool

My reputation for paternal heroism (WHAT?!) was shown to be rightfully earned once again last night when I used up almost a quarter of an hour of my precious home alone time to click all three wheels onto Jamie's new pram.

He took it out for a test drive this afternoon and, I think, was pleased by the power which surrounded him.

More importantly, I hear some of the chicks in prams in Pudsey Park were equally impressed.

If only he could have found a way to get rid of his mother.

Phil & Ted's Pointless Adventure

With the new baby now little more than five months from splashdown, Vanessa bought a new pushchair online earlier in the week which converts into a "double."

It was delivered yesterday afternoon (that's the box pictured above) but she waited until today when the "man of the house" (i.e. me) would be around before trying to put it up.

But the trouble is I'm a poor excuse for a man about the house, particularly when it comes to screwing things together. Linked to this is my normal apology that I can't possibly screw things together on this occasion because the manufacturer forgot to put one or more parts into the box.

It was therefore no surprise that I got no further than step 2 of 26 before declaring that something was very wrong.

I was trying to put the mudguards on and, according to the instructions, they required two screws each. But not only were there no screws in the box, but there were also no brackets to screw them into. Needless to say I cried foul (and several less polite words).

But what to do? Because, deep down and based on previous experience, I reckoned that everything probably was there and I wasn't reading the instructions properly. However, after checking and re-checking said instructions several more times, I was still at a dead end.

So I saw two options. The first, and easiest, was to phone some wee girl in a call centre, blame it all on her and send a plague upon her house, herself and her family. The second, more defensive, approach would be to drive to Mothercare in Bradford, see one of our buggies already built and take pictures.

We chose the latter and, to my surprise at least, found that we were actually right and that our buggy was missing the brackets and that our mudguards were actually a different model from those in the instruction manual.

It was therefore back to base to get the wee girl on the phone and demand that she accepted some abuse.

What happened next was a surprise - but irritatingly so.

Vanessa made the call before eventually passing the handset to me to hear some techy stuff from the wee girl.

The long and short of it was that the manufacturers - "Phil & Ted's Most Excellent Buggy Company" - had changed the design of the mudguards and the way there were attached but hadn't bothered to change the instructions that came with the buggy. (A "Most Excellent Company" my ****).

Phone call over, Vanessa and I went back downstairs, attempted to attach one of the mudguards as instructed and - bingo.

We stopped at that point because, quite frankly, we were bored of the buggy by then although I might "try" to finish the job myself later when Vanessa goes out on another pregnant lady J2O binge in Leeds. But I might not.

All in all, though, not the Saturday afternoon we had planned.

But, with the house to myself (and Jamie), it's a day that can yet be rescued with the help of beer, steak and sport on TV. In fact, I'm quite confident that it will be.

Geordie ****wits

Last night, on this blog, I cast doubt on Paul Gascoigne's claim to be Pope John Paul II's best mate.

And then tonight, after being out for the evening, I arrived home to discover that Gazza has arrived at the police cordon in Northumberland claiming to be a pal of Raoul Moat who, as I write, is standing up with a gun to his napper.

Do you sense a pattern?

I'm off to bed shortly but, by the morning, there's every chance Geordie Rambo might be deed, man.

And Gazza might be safely back behind lock and key.