What we got up to in California, part one: Getting there.

In June, my girlfriend's dad turned eighty. To celebrate, he decided that he'd go back to the land of his birth, America, and he invited my girlfriend and I along to take part in the celebrations. We of course said yes, and decided to go a bit earlier and celebrate our birthdays while we were over there. (My birthday is three days after my better half's, in late May, but, subsequently, because of the way the flights panned out, Heather ended up having her birthday in Birmingham, England, which she was a little miffed about.) So, the plan was that we spend a few days in San Francisco, then on to Sacramento to stay with Heather's half-sister, onto Lake Tahoe for a couple of days, a quick return to Sacramento, then on to San Jose for the big family shindig and to stay at Heather's other sister's house, then the journey back. Phew.

We were worried that we weren't actually going to get there at first, because, at the time, that Icelandic volcano was still playing havoc with British airspace. A week before we left, a colleague of mine had been to Florida and was stranded when his connecting flight in Philadelphia was grounded because of the volcanic ash. He was stuck there for nearly a week. So this was worrying us. Frankly, if this is how Iceland behaves when it plays with volcanoes, then it shouldn't be allowed to have one. Luckily that cleared in time, but we'd booked our flights with British Airways, whose cabin crews decided to strike, affecting our flight. There was a High Court ruling which said the strike was illegal (a bit dodgy, that decision, in my opinion) which meant we could fly out (albeit on a rearranged, earlier flight with limited services) but we weren't certain whether we were getting back or not. As we were staying with Heather's family out there for the most part, this didn't worry us too much, it just meant we'd have an extended holiday if the worst came to the worst.

This was my first trip to the States, my first trip anywhere outside of Europe, and therefore the longest flight I'd ever been on. After all the usual cobblers involving checking in three hours before the flight, paranoid security checks which means you have to take off your bloody shoes now (thanks, Richard Reid!) we faffed about trying to kill time by trying perfumes and aftershaves and eating a full english breakfast. (I'm sure that rule about checking in three hours early is more about getting you to spend money in the airport than it is about security and efficiency.) Although this part is the bit I hate most about flying, I didn't mind it as much this time as I was aware how bloody lucky we were to be flying at all.

So, we get on the plane. I'm dreading being stuck on this thing for ELEVEN HOURS. Heather, who's far more organised and on the ball about these things than I'll ever be, checked us in online previously, ensuring us seats at the front of the cattle section which gave us a couple of inches extra leg room, which, if you're over six foot tall like I am, is a godsend. The flight was fairly uneventful, except for a long period of turbulence when we were flying over Montana which made me very nervous indeed. Nervousness which evolved into sheer bloody terror when they turned all the lights and TV screens off and asked the crew to sit down and put their seatbelts on. I looked out of the window and saw nothing but mountains and jagged sharp pointy rockfaces and realised that if we plummeted, we'd be fucked. Luckily, after about half an hour, the plane stopped bouncing around like a four year old on an inflatable castle and settled down. Shortly after, so did my bowels.
As we were flying out to San Francisco, I decided to watch Bullitt on the inflight entertainment system to try and get me in the mood for Frisco. It basically told me that most of the police out there are all corrupt and I might get killed in a flaming car wreck. It's got a cool score, though. Whatever happened to Lalo Schrifrin? I also watched Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (it was a long flight) which wasn't about San Fran at all, but about Ian Dury, which made me wonder why anyone remembered Dury fondly at all, as he came across as an insufferable arsehole who used the fact that he had a gammy leg to behave like a prick. I'm sure he wasn't like that all the time, but the film made it look like it. Anyway, after eleven hours, several aborted attempts at trying to sleep, and a couple of aborted attempts at trying to eat inedible plane food, we landed in San Francisco.
Before we left for the States, I'd already done my visa waiver form online, and was slightly pissed off I had to do it all again whilst on the plane. If there's one thing I hate, it's filling in forms. (actually, you all know there's more than one thing I hate.) Especially filling out forms I'd already spent valuable time doing before. Then I had to queue up once we got off the plane to answer several of the same questions again. My lovely girlfriend, being an American, didn't have to do this, so she swans off and gets all that 'Welcome home' stuff from the staff. I got an hour's wait with people who have been stewing in their own juices for eleven hours. None of us smelled very nice. Above us all were several televisions showing the same five minute film over and over again, interrupted by a short message in Mandarin telling Chinese people how they should fill the form in. (it probably said 'Do it twice') This is because San Francisco quite famously has the largest Chinatown outside of China (and they have monsters and guys who can conduct lightning and hold their breath until they explode, as seen in that documentary Big Trouble In Little China. Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall live there, too, apparently.) The film that was on repeat was a montage of a few of the sights and people you might expect to see whilst in America, so you get the obvious ones like the Statue of Liberty, the Vegas strip and the Golden Gate bridge, mixed in with less obvious ones like blue-collar guys sawing up wood in a mill, and an old couple sitting in their rocking chairs on a porch, and many shots of the old Stars and Bars fluttering in the wind all set to rousing music. It was kinda cute the first seventeen times, then it seriously got on my tits. I was actively looking forward to next time the Chinese message came on to give us a minute's peace.
Finally, I get to show my passport to the customs guy, and have to repeat myself with every answer I gave him, because this is obviously the first time he's ever experienced the Brummie accent. (This was a taster for what was to come. Those yanks really can't understand us Brummies at all. How Ozzy Osbourne ever made it big over there is beyond me.) After he gives me a serious stare, he makes me put the fingers on my right hand onto a scanner which takes a picture of my fingerprints, then I have to do the same with my right thumb, then I repeat the procedure with my left hand. They also take a picture of my retina and, for luck, one of my actual face. You know, the most easily recognised identifying feature of my body?
So, with a sigh of relief, I get through. Even though I had nothing to worry about, little niggling fears start percolating in your mind whilst your waiting for an hour, and I was bloody glad to get it over with. I met up with Heather who had already got our bags and had been sitting there waiting for me for ages. She told me she'd just had a glaring competition with Michael Madsen. Apparently, he was on the same flight with us (although he obviously wasn't in economy with the rest of us plebs) and when Heather saw him, she kinda stared at him. Mr. Blonde didn't take kindly to this so he did a kind of sarcastic wide-eyed stare back at her.
We got into a yellow taxi and headed off to our hotel, extremely knackered. At last, we were in America.

Blog Birthday

On this day, four years ago, a slightly overweight four-eyed nerd called Mick Trimble made his first-ever blogpost. Just thought I'd tell all of you. That's two posts in the same month for once! That's almost organised. Almost.

Since I last posted, I had the news from Insomnia Publishing that they definitely want me to work for them and my contract's on its way. So I'll probably be spending most of the next few months pencilling their 100-page book. I'm excited about it, even though the logistics of getting 100 pages done is only slightly overwhelming.

As soon as I've got some decent work done, and I'm allowed to, I shall post some of my scribblings up on this very blog, so stay tuned, as they say.

Anyway, my blog is four today, Happy Birthday Secret Identity! Any cards or gifts gratefully accepted.

Roman Holiday, part one; Getting There.

It's been a while since I last posted, I know, but I've got a good excuse this time, as my girlfriend and I were in Italy for a good part of my hiatus. This was my first proper holiday in God knows how long, my girlfriend and I were going to celebrate our Birthdays in Rome (yep, our birthdays are in the same week. Weird, huh?) and I was looking forward to it immensely, but the main problem about Rome is the fact that it's abroad and you have to get on an aeroplane to get there. And you can't get there directly from Birmingham International Airport, either, you have to go to Heathrow, which is nearly a hundred miles away.

I'm not a big fan of flying. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of it; I quite like the bit when you're actually up in the sky. I love looking down at the world from above, seeing coastlines and the tops of mountains and the topside of clouds. It's just a pity I can't sit in a window seat because I'm poor and can only afford to travel economy and therefore end up with my knees around my earholes because I have the audacity to be taller than six feet. Anyway, as I said, I enjoy the actual flying. What I don't enjoy is all the rigmarole you have to go through before you can actually get on the plane. All the checking in and security checks and putting all your bottles in plastic bags and all the general fucking about really gives me a cob-on. (That's a Brummie phrase meaning 'in a bit of a mood')

When you get on a bus or a train, do they ask you to take off your belt first? No. And recent events tell us that buses and trains are just as likely to get blown up by terrorists as planes are. The stuff they won't let people take on, either; Tweezers, for example. If anyone ever mounted a successful hijack armed with just a pair of tweezers, then they deserve the fucking plane, if you ask me. (Not that I had a pair of tweezers, by the way. Anyone who knows me well enough to inspect my eyebrows can testify to the fact that I don't use them!) Don't get me wrong, I know we need security, but there's a difference between security and paranoid hysteria.

So, anyway, we flew from the new Terminal Five, which looks like something out of Flash Gordon, but unfortunately without a bellowing Brian Blessed. Actually, it'd be cool to have him do the Tannoy announcements. You certainly wouldn't ignore them. Typically, as this is England, our flight was delayed for an hour and a bit, but after we got on, it was all fairly plain sailing. Or Plane-flying, if you will.

Two and a half hours later, we land at Fiumicino Airport, and I knew for sure we were in Rome as the woman who checked my passport looked like a Vogue model and I was surrounded by loads of nuns.(Sounds like a dream I once had.) These nuns weren't your normal, boring, black-and-white penguin types, these ones were all in white, except for their wimples, which were navy blue. I suspect these nuns were Tottenham supporters. (if they were indeed Spurs fans, I bet their faith has been sorely tested lately!) Anyway, I get through passport control with a minimum of fuss as I'm from the EU. My girlfriend, however, with her American passport, had to queue for ages with the rest of non-EU undesirables. However, this just meant I had to go and get our luggage, which, as is usual for me, were the penultimate bags to come out onto the belt.

We were picked up by an elderly taxi driver and taken on a half-hour walk to where his car was parked. We were staying in a hotel which was on the other side of Rome, in a town called Ciampino. The taxi driver couldn't find it, and spent a lot of the journey talking and swearing to himself in Italian. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to Rome, but one of the things about the place is that everyone there drives like an absolute nutcase. The speed limit is seen as just a rough guide and stuff like traffic lights and roadsigns are just there to make the roadside look a bit more interesting. It's like Death Race 2000. (RIP David Carradine, by the way. Surely, he should've learned from Kill Bill that the palm technique was dangerous?) The village we were staying in didn't have the big roads Rome does, it just had single-lane roads and dirt tracks and roads that share space with train tracks and no pavements, so sitting in the back of a taxi with a swearing taxi driver who's lost whilst everyone else is doing their level best to collide with you was a bit worrying.
Anyway, after a while, and probably more through luck than judgment, we got to where we were staying, and it was a lovely-looking place. It was an old farmhouse which had been converted into a few apartments. We checked in, dumped our bags and went for a night-time al-fresco dinner. I normally struggle to make any kind of decision, especially when picking from a menu, but the hotel's menu helped me on this score as it only had three dishes to choose from on it. Chicken, beef, or a plate of cheeses. A vegan would be fucked, basically. Anyway, I had the beef, Heather had the chicken and afterwards we drank and looked out over the lights of Rome in the distance. It wasn't the best meal we've ever had, but it was just what we needed.

(Right. I seem to have been typing for ages, and we've only just got there! Serves me right for going off on one about air travel. There's another five days of this shit yet, so I've decided to do it in episodes. Next one soon!)

Memorabilia.

Last weekend, our good friends Jamie and Theresa travelled up from Southend-On-Sea to come and stay at our home here in The People's Republic Of The West Midlands. (If you read my blog regularly, you'll know Jamie, as he's the only one who leaves me any comments!)

It was Jamie's birthday on the Saturday (and might I say, he doesn't look bad for fifty! Only kidding, Jamie!), and after he opened his cards and presents, and still feeling the effects of the alcohol and Moroccan cuisine from the night before, Jamie and I headed out to the National Exhibition Centre for the Memorabilia show. His other half decided her time would be better spent mooching around Brum's shops, whilst my other half was at the theatre watching His Dark Materials with my eldest daughter.

We went to the NEC by train from the lovely, awe-inspiring New St. station, mostly because it's probably the quickest way of getting there, as it's only one stop, and the fact that parking at the NEC would cost at least eight quid. The problem with going to the NEC by train is that after you get off at Birmingham International, you think you're nearly there, but you're not. You're in a building that says it's the NEC, but it's a bloody long walk to the exhibition halls. You go up escalators, down escalators, down endless corridors, along several moving walkways until, about a week later (okay, I'm exaggerating slightly) you get to the exhibition halls. But that's not the end. The Memorabilia show was in hall 12, we were outside hall one, so we walk for another three days (I exaggerate again) until we get to our destination. If we weren't sure if it was the right place, the shitloads of blokes dressed up as stormtroopers and a couple of Jedi outside confirmed that this was indeed the Memorabilia show.

After being allowed to jump the queue because we were paying for our tickets with cash (Ten quid! Each! Bloody Nora!) we went into what was frankly a massive room stuffed to the gills with all sorts of cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a toy stall, selling lots of stuff similar to the things I had as a kid for shocking amounts of money. All of it was still boxed, and you weren't allowed to pick any of it up. I might've mentioned before that I collect models of the Batmobile (I know, it's a sickness, but they make the windowsill in my sketching room look a lot cooler) and I saw a Batmobile I'd quite like. It was from the 70s, made by the Mego company for their 7" action figures of Batman and Robin (not included) to sit in. We asked how much it was, because none of the items had prices on them. Probably because a little sticky price tag might damage the precious packaging. Anyway, the stallholder gets out a little folder that had all the prices in it, looks it up and then tells us that the batmobile would cost me £195. That was about £190 over my limit, so we thanked him and moved along.

We also saw, from the side looking in, Robert Vaughn doing a Q&A session, and he's a lot smaller than I thought he would be. Quite old, too. It's amazing, though, how he's kept his hair colour even though he's well into his seventies. More on him later.

One of the things that bugs me about this kind of event (comics conventions included), and it's only a recent phenomena, is the amount of cosplayers that turn up. I hate cosplayers. I know they're essentially harmless and they're only having a bit of fun but they do my head in. I reckon they give the rest of us nerds a bad name. People look at them and think 'what a bunch of sad bastards', and think all of us geeks are like that. There was a group of about ten teenage boys all dressed up as Doctor Who. All of them were the David Tennant Doctor, except for one who must have read the email incorrectly and turned up as William Hartnell. A fat, Asian, William Hartnell. Still, at least he was the only one who stood out. I saw all those young lads, with their brown full length coats, brown suits, Converse trainers and their hair all spiked up and I was reminded of the crowd scene from Life Of Brian; "Yes, we're ALL individual!"

There were also quite a few very young teenage girls dressed in not much, including one girl of about fifteen wearing a revealing corset, and this kind of thing brings out the dad in me. I say things like 'I bet her dad doesn't know she's wearing that' and 'there's no way any of my kids are going out looking like that!' even though I know, deep down, that if my girls did want to go out like that, there's not really that much I could do to stop them. There is such a thing as freedom of expression in this country, despite all of my objections!

Also, it's very stupid going to these things dressing up as the thing you love. If you're dressed up as Anakin Skywalker, a Star Wars memorabilia dealer knows he can charge you a bit more because he know's you're a Star Wars nut and you'll pay it. I bet all the dealers with Doctor Who stuff rubbed their hands with glee the moment they saw the ten Tennants approaching them. Only under tens and the Fathers 4 Justice and those people who are paid to walk around these conventions dressed up are allowed to wear superhero or sci-fi costumes (I might make allowances for people press-ganged into going to a fancy dress party. I'm not a big fan of those, either!) the rest of you should stop. Really. Especially the ones that make their own costume out of bits of egg boxes and Lego. Honestly, it's like Paris Fashion Week for the blind and stupid.

Rant over.

The amount of stuff available here was amazing. If spare cash and spare space wasn't a problem I would've come home with shitloads of geeky stuff. Honestly, if you're a nerd like me, you would have had a field day looking at this cool stuff. There was some crappy junk as well, but it was mostly cool. Less cool, however, was the 'celebrities' charging you at least fifteen pounds for an autograph. Some of them are people the non-nerd has heard of (Stephanie Beacham, Robert Vaughn, Richard Briers-who was a bit of a weird choice, I can't really see loads of obsessed cosplaying fans turning up dressed in tweed and kilts asking him to sign their VHS copies of Monarch of The Glen, can you?) but a lot of them were 'third alien on the left' types from Star Wars and I don't think having the autograph from the guy who was 'Yak-Face' is worth fifteen quid, frankly. I'm not really sure whether these are actually who they say they are, anyway, considering that these people spent their moment of fame under shitloads of prosthetics. He could be lying and pretending he was Yak-Face, for all I know, just to get his hands on fifteen quid from a Star Wars freak who really should be old enough to know better.
Don't get me wrong, there were people there I would have liked to get autographs from. There were a few Bond alumni there, for example. There was Richard Kiel, the man mountain who played Jaws, who is absolutely fucking huge- he's probably wider across the shoulders than I am tall. It was sad to see his mobility scooter, though. I also would've liked Guy Hamilton's signature, as he directed Goldfinger, the quintessential 007 movie. (Interesting fact about Guy Hamilton: In the movie The Third Man, that famous shot where you see Harry Lime's shadow running away, that shadow actually belongs to Hamilton- who was Carol Reed's assistant director, because Orson Welles didn't bother showing up for filming that day, because he was a notorious pain in the arse and probably because the only running Welles ever did was away from the salad counter.) The thing is, if you ever happened to bump into these people in the pub, they'd probably give you an autograph for free (although it's unlikely Jaws ever drinks in Moseley, there are a few Yak-faces, though.) and that's the main reason I refuse to pay for it. The other main reason is I don't have that many spare fifteen quids at the moment! I was going to get George Lazenby to sign my picture (see last post) but he wasn't there, so stuff the lot of them.
Saying that, one of us did pay for an autograph, and it wasn't me. Jamie saw the bloke who plays PC Stamp from The Bill walk past us, and had a brainstorm. His dad is a big fan of the show, apparently, so Jamie thought it would be nice if he could get PC Stamp (don't know his real name, and I can't be arsed to Google it, either) to talk to his dad on the phone. Which he did, fair play to him, but the trouble is, he might be a well-known face on British TV, but he doesn't really have a distinctive voice like, for instance, Sean Connery, John Hurt or Michael Caine does. Jamie's dad didn't have a clue who it was that had phoned him up so the first five minutes of that phone call were really awkward. I don't know what was said on the other end, but I can imagine it was along the lines of 'Who the fuck is this?'
Anyway, when Jamie's dad realised who it was, the conversation went a bit more smoothly, but at one point, PC Stamp said to Jamie's dad something along the lines of 'Well, your son is going to buy you a nice signed photo for you' and from that moment on, Jamie felt obliged to buy a signed photo of a bloke from The Bill for fifteen pounds. He didn't really mind, it was a nice gift for his old man, after all, but I think Jamie, being a rabid Star Wars fan, would rather have spent that money on Yak-Face's autograph. I think I upset PC Stamp though, he asked if I'd got everything I'd came for, if I was enjoying it, the usual smalltalk, then for some reason, he sort of accused me of being a cosplayer. Probably on the basis that I was wearing a Silver Surfer T-shirt. Not only did he accuse me of being one of the things I hate most in the world, he suggested that I probably dress up as a superhero when I'm having sex with my girlfriend. I know he was only trying to be blokey and have a joke, but fucking hell, that's a bit much isn't it? I replied by asking him whether they let him keep his uniform (for sexual purposes) when he left The Bill.
"I haven't left, actually, but thanks for paying attention."
And that was the end of that conversation. Next to him was the German guy from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (another favourite movie of mine, but surely it's a favourite movie of everyone's.)whose face melted at the end, and I wanted to ask him about his appearance in the Ferrero Rocher 'Ambassador, you are spoiling us' advert, but I didn't have the courage so we went away and watched some wrestling instead.
Well, I say wrestling. It was a bit like wrestling. There was a ring, a referee and wrestlers, but it was all a bit, well, rubbish. For some reason, the wrestlers kept trying to get the crowd to clap along, but they didn't seem to realise that us Brummies don't really do audience participation. We have the attitude of 'I paid ten quid of my hard-earned cash to get in here, and you want me
to do your job for you? You entertain me! I don't ask you to come to my factory and polish my power press, do I?'
So there wasn't much clapping. Anyone who did clap along were either children, idiots or interlopers from beyond the Black Country. It was a bit like like wrestling used to be when I was a nipper- you know, World Of Sport and Kendo Nagasaki and Johnny Two Rivers and fat blokes with a woman's bathing costume on worn back to front, before we got slick, polished American wrestling shows imported to show us how it could be done if we could be bothered to put the effort in. To be fair, they were going for the American style of wrestling, the 'good guy' wrestlers had washboard stomachs and muscles (something the World Of Sport bunch couldn't be arsed with, they just bounced off ropes and belly-barged into someone with their beer guts) but the 'bad guy' was a bit weedy-looking and the actual bouts were unconvincing. I know wrestling is fixed, but you don't make it obvious. They were stamping on the floor when they 'punched' someone, for God's sake! I wanted one of them to slash his face with a razor, Mickey Rourke-style, that'd be cool, and it would really freak out all the five year olds watching. To be fair to them, though, they did throw themselves around with gusto, and their backs looked all red and sore, so it must hurt, and it's something I'd never do (probably because the sight of me running around in swimming trunks and bright green knee-high boots would turn the Memorabilia Show into the Projectile Vomit-Con 2009) so, my hat goes off to them. If I ever wore one. Which I don't.
At the end of the show, Jamie went up to one of the guys who organises the show and congratulated him on how good it was (Despite all my moaning above, I did have a good time. Moaning's just what I do.) and on the table in front of him was a load of large glossy prints of various people sitting next to Robert Vaughn. They apparently had a scheme where you pay to have your picture taken with the former Man from U.N.C.L.E. and you pick it up at the end, like you do when you get off a rollercoaster at Alton Towers. The weird thing was that the ex-Napoleon Solo (another intersting fact- Ian Fleming came up with that name. Also, my dad was such a big fan of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that I was nearly given the name Napoleon Trimble. I'm glad he saw sense) had exactly the same facial expression in all of them. They might as well have taken one picture of him and photoshopped him next to all of those other people.
(Actually, I read in the Birmingham Mail the other day, that the next series of Hustle is being filmed up here in Brum, and that Robert Vaughn is looking for an apartment in this very city. Hopefully I'll bump into him and get an autograph and save myself twenty quid!)
And so, after about three hours of looking at cool stuff, and after trying and failing to get our picture taken with a bloke dressed as Iron Man, Jamie and I headed on the long, long walk back to the train station with our freshly-bought junk weighing us down. I got a few books and a few more batmobiles (one of which Jamie bought for me, bless him) and we'd had a good time. I'd definitely go again. It's a good laugh.

Oh, and the guy who plays PC Stamp's name is Graham Cole, apparently.

Three years and counting...

Well, technically, it's not until tomorrrow, but I'll probably be too busy to post anything (Villa are playing Chelsea) , so I'm doing it today.

Secret Identity is three years old. Yep, I've been doing this since 2006. It's had over 10,000 hits (since I've been counting, anyway), not bad for a blog which is basically about me moaning! I've also gotten extremely bored with the way the blog looked, so I've changed that. I'm not sure about the result, let me know what you think.

Thanks go out to everyone who reads this blog. It's great knowing that some people actually read this stuff. I hate talking to myself.

Cheers.

Ahh, There You All Are!

In the words of trailer-trash headcase Britney Spears; "Oops, I did it again!"

I've been such a busy boy lately that I've not had the time to update my blog. (I've also found out that this blog has 'followers', now. Some of them are blogs I wasn't aware of until recently. I've got readers I didn't know about!The number keeps going up and down, though. That's what happens when you very rarely update, I suppose.) I've got an art project on at the moment which is taking up an inordinate amount of my time, and that's on top of all the stuff that moving to a new house entails, and that's on top of me being very ill this week with a virus that made my joints swell up and stop my bowels from moving. Still, not going to work for three days is almost compensation for not being able to bend or poo. Or bend and poo; after all, I don't do it standing up. Not every time, anyway.

More news on my art project if and when it gets finished. If you're reading this on the other side of the pond, firstly, happy Thanksgiving, and secondly, Septic Isle is now on sale in the US., so go out and get yourself a copy. As soon as the stores re-open after the holidays, obviously.

I promised to tell you what I've been up to since I've moved, but that would take ages, so here are the highlights:

We had a mini-housewarming with a lot of my glamorous other half's friends from down south. I made a twat of myself by slipping on the wet uPVC ledge on my patio door and crashing in a heap onto the very hard kitchen floor in front of everyone. My brother Marc thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I wasn't even drunk by then, either. My shin is still bruised. We'll probably have a housewarming with some of my friends from here in Brum at some point in the future, if I can find any.

The day after we moved in properly, Heather and I decided to go for a drive to get a feel for the area and find out if there's anything cool or useful nearby. We ended up in nearby Earlswood, which is near Bromsgrove and about ten minutes' drive away. We saw a garden centre and decided to have a look around. We looked at the cacky statues and gnomes and windchimes and the usual shite you get at these places, then we saw that this place also had an aquarium, so we had a look around there, too. Not because we want any pet fish, you understand. As we were walking around, I noticed that in one tank, the tiny fish inside were reacting to my movement. I waved my hand to the left, the fish all quickly swarmed to the left. I moved my hand to the right, they all swam to follow suit. Heather had moved along so I called her back to show her. She stood by me as I waved my hands all around the place quickly. The fish all went mental! The water acted as if it had suddenly boiled and the fish started leaping out of the top of the tank like some aquatic mass suicide attempt. My hands were moving rapidly again, trying to pick up all these dying little fishies and chuck them back into their tank quickly before the shop assistant saw me. I think I saved most of them. Heather had a look that said 'I can't take you anywhere, can I?' as we swiftly left the garden centre.

Heather's Mom and Dad came to stay with us, and we went to a posh restaurant as it was her mother's birthday. I even put a suit on. And a tie. It was a lovely meal,her folks enjoyed their time with us, I think. Which was good, as it was only the second time they'd met me. I had an interesting chat with a guy outside whilst having a fag, apparently he was taking photos for British Sausage Week, he was travelling around the country with famous cricket umpire Dickie Bird sampling and judging local bangers. I tried to see if Dickie Bird was in the restaurant with us, but I couldn't see anyone sitting at a table with five jumpers and three hats on. Pity.

We're more or less all moved in now. We still have a spare bedroom full of shite, though, and we don't have an aerial for our telly yet, either. We have to use a portable aerial, which isn't the best, and because it's plugged in to our freeview box, it means most of our programmes tend to be stop-start, i.e. the picture freezes for a bit or the sound comes and goes, which means the continuity announcer sounds like Norman Collier (but obviously not when he's doing his 'other joke' when he puts his jacket around his shoulders and pretends to be an unfunny chicken. By the way, is Norman Collier still alive?) but we get by. Most importantly, though, I now have a room where I can go and draw, it's got a desk, drawing board and everything. It's also got a 'gas lift' chair that doesn't stay lifted so when I'm drawing I start to sink every few minutes. Still, it's all good fun.

Also, it's very nearly Christmas! That's snuck up on us this year. I don't know where this year's gone. We finally get the house to look like a home and now we have to fuck about putting trees up. Bah Humbug! Nah, I'm looking forward to it really. I just have to act curmudgeonly to keep appearances up.To prove how much Christmas spirit I've actually got, check out the following clip:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Right. There's probably loads I've forgotten to tell you about, but I can't be arsed to type anymore, but I promise to update a bit more regularly from now on.

Buy this blog a cake!

Well, it's been two years since I started keeping a blog, with this as my very first post. It's been a very up and down two years, (mostly downs, probably, but I would say that, being both a Brummie and a pessimistic old git!) but the fact that my witless prose (213 posts and counting...)is read and enjoyed by some people is a gratifying one. Thanks to all my readers that have left comments, they've been, for the most part, amusing, supportive and complimentary, (except for those nasty ones from those menopausal celibates who moaned at me for having a go at Sir Cliff; They're entitled to their opinion, but apparently, I wasn't entitled to mine! It was only a little sly dig as well! Imagine what the response would've been if I'd actually said something really bad about the bloke. Like my opinion of his 'music'.) and thanks to those regular readers who lurk about but don't say anything. Make yourself known! Share the love!
Anyway, this blog is now two years old (well, tomorrow it is, anyway, but I'll be busy tomorrow banging my head at a gig. It's about time they put higher ceilings in at the Academy!) and like any two year old, it occasionally craps itself, but it's still full of unfulfilled potential. Any blog birthday cakes will be gratefully received.

Cheers.

Birthday Boy.

It's been a while since my last post, but I've been busy doing real life stuff. It's my thirty-third birthday today, so I've been celebrating that since the weekend. I had an extra special celebration today-I went to work and had a really shitty day! Still I had most of a nice bottle of cava (my erstwhile ex had the rest) when I got in, and opened the presents my kids got me. Where they got the money for two CDs and the God Of War 2 PlayStation game is beyond me. Bless 'em! Also thanks to the lads who came out with me on Saturday, and although it was a fairly uneventful evening, it means a lot to me that they came along. Thanks to Andy and Denise for my MySpace birthday greetings, it's so 21st century! Also, thanks to my dad, who for once, remembered it was my birthday today and ACTUALLY PHONED ME! (He was pissed...) Thanks, also for those people reading this who got me a gift; they're all gratefully received.
Here's to another thirty-three years!!

Morris day. (but not the Time.)

It's been over a week since my last post, but I've been busy working, drawing, shouting and drinking. I've nearly finished page three of Septic Isle, which has a panel on it that shows the blown up bus from the 7/7 attacks. Most of last week was spent drawing an exploding mosque, which is all fairly heavy, and doing research (ie. finding pictures on Google images I can copy!) was kinda harrowing, with the internet not being afraid to show you the bits (of people) that the telly leaves out of its reports of these atrocities.
Also, I had to draw the MI5 building, which is a really difficult thing to draw. It looks like it was made out of Lego and it has about twenty-eight thousand windows. I couldn't find the bit of the building where Pierce Brosnan launches armoured speedboats from in any of my research. I'm beginning to think that those Bond movies are made-up stories! Still, it's done now and it looks good, but all this intricate stuff is slowing me down a bit. It seems strange though that the Secret Service decided to put itself in a very famous, immediately recognisable building.

Totally unrelated, yesterday I went to the City Centre (or 'town' if you're Brummie) to get a birthday gift for my old friend Pete, who was 33 this week. Walking along New Street, I heard a distinct jingling behind me. I was thinking that it might be Santa, on his sleigh, and his schedule was all confused, or maybe it was a band of medieval lepers, or it might even be a game of blind football. I was wrong on all counts. It was a troupe of Morris dancers. Town was full of them. There were Morris dancers in the Bullring (all one word, these days) they were in Victoria Square, there were hundreds of them on New Street, all different colours and shapes. There were Morris dancers dressed up in yellow, black and red strips, being cheered on by a gang of pissed up Watford supporters (who were up in Brum for the semi-final at Villa Park) because they were wearing their team's colours. There were the traditional looking ones with the straw hats on, and there appeared to be a troupe of blacked-up Morris dancers, which I don't think you should be able to do these days, tradition or not. What the black people who saw them thought I can't imagine. What I was wondering is why April 14th? Isn't May Day the official time to put this shit on? Why the middle of Birmingham? Was it a countryside alliance demo?
I think they should bring back full-contact Morris Dancing. Either that or ban it altogether, like smoking. If I can't smoke then they shouldn't be able to pollute my atmosphere with that shite.

Birthday of a blog.

Ahh, there you are.
This blog is one year old today. If only I knew then what I know now. Which is fuck all.
Here is my first post, if you're interested in how all this started.
I kind of started this blog as somewhere to post my artwork, and hopefully get some paid work, but we all know how that panned out. Never mind. You'll have to make do with my opinions then, I'm afraid.
Thanks to everyone that's left a comment, good and bad, and those secretive sods who lurk around, but still take an interest in whatever shit I'm moaning about that day. Thanks also to those people who leave me comments about penis enlargers and erection pills. They're very useful, they've changed my life and if I ever meet the fucker who told you about my 'problem', I'm going to rip their eyes out and poke my brand-new enlarged penis in their eye socket.
(My male pride wants me to tell you that there isn't really a 'problem' with my 'downstairs', I was joking. Honest.)
Oh well, I'm off now to bake my blog a cake, and stick a candle in it. I won't ask it to make a wish, as that would be silly.