Pretty Fly (for a white guy)...

I made a bit of a holiday error yesterday as from a promo board on the beach,  I booked myself on something named ‘Excursiones Diarias’ ??

Struggling with the lingo a bit I thought I was going on a cultural trip to see some caves and a nearby church in a minibus. 

Imagine my surprise when a cool, tattooed and tanned surfer dude wearing a baseball hat on back to front awkwardly helped me slither into a smelly wetsuit and then strapped on a pink parachute and fastened me to the back of a speedboat!

We set off briskly and I shot up into the air at breakneck speed, so I pulled on a safety toggle, as previously instructed, and shot back down, hitting the water face first. I then promptly started to get dragged along in the wake coughing and spluttering. Now twisted in the ropes, the parachute caught the wind again and I suddenly shot back up into the air, but now I was facing the wrong way with my goggles now full of salty-water I was unable to see. Just as my 20 minutes was up I heard a rip and started to plummet once again this time impacting the ocean backwards but this time it was arse first at what felt like about 95mph…

Back on the beach, with a crowd of onlookers the medic said it was lucky that it was a solo flight so no one else got hurt as he emptied my colon with a funnel into a plastic bucket.

Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, cinco, seís…

and all the girlies say I’m Pretty Fly (for a white guy)

Summer in the City...

We touched down and a thin fella with a pencil moustache stamped my passport and I was officially ‘Out of Office’. I hadn’t won on the ‘Bingo Lotto’ on the plane but I had been persuaded by the special offer of the ‘Egyptian Magic Cream’, an eco-friendly,slightly pungent holiday lotion, made I suspect, from refined camel semen, to slap on to repel insects and attract the ladies in a handy 5kg ‘travel’ tub.

Totally prepared, I was now in the market for some ‘budget’ beach house  ‘all inclusive’ luxury accommodation, close to all the amenities and in the heart of all the tourist attractions but all the shutters were up and the signs said ‘No Vacancies’? I consulted ‘MuchoGrandeHotelo.com on the intranet and five minutes later I was setting off to find my allocated room following the signs away from the beach towards the quaint sounding ‘Industrial Zona’. The lads were just putting the final touches to the foundations when I arrived.

Fred Dibnah is famous in these parts, with a statue to commemorate all the happy ‘Saga’ holidays he had here away from all the steam and chimney dust. He would come here every August on a bus from Bolton until he died in a jet skiing accident.

 Enjoy this wonderful version of Summer in the City by another favourite band ‘Eels’

Fiesta...

“Come all you rambling boys of pleasure

And ladies of easy leisure

We must say Adios until we see

Almeria once again...”

After the recent storms the weather in Lancashire was looking again rather unsettled with some heavy thundery showers forecast and the temperatures dipping down again to bloody freezing 🥶

So I decided, I’m off....

I scraped the early morning frost off the windscreen and saddled up the old Fiesta to trundle off up to the airport in search of some glorious warm sunshine.

Arriving at the security, in the standard holiday attire, I was duly instructed to take off my bright white trainers, my Sergio Tacchini tracksuit (circa.1985) and remove my industrial headphones 🎧over my alpine bobble hat. After a quick but clammy frisk I skipped nonchalantly straight through the X-ray barrier and continued on into the airport lounge of ‘Wetherspoons’ in just my leopard skin Lycra thong, smudged fake tan and sunglasses 😎.

Jeez, was I ready for a pint or two of Tenants Xtra....

This morning I felt like a winner...

I’d got through security successfully with a box of 350 Yorkshire teabags, 3lb of Cumberland sausage and a bottle of HP brown sauce so now I just needed to pickup two 1litre bottles of vodka and my favourite ‘Hai Karate’ aftershave from the Duty Free and I was in the holiday groove.

A few pints later and it was time to meander over t’Th’EeesyJet departure gate 13 where scary Brenda was not amused with my luggage allowance and insisted that I shed some weight. It took another half an hour, bent over, trying to snap off the wheels and prise off the handle from my case before I could get the bugger to fit into the prescribed baggage scales. 

Apologising to the impatient queue of priority boarders, I ended up also having to leave her with my spare pair of flippers, an inflatable deckchair and 4 loose cans of Weston’s Old Rosie vintage cider before she waved me on to the plane ✈️ 

We accelerated up the runway and entered the fog.

Finally I could relax...

...but then the fat bloke next to me took off his shoes and opened his egg butties 

🥪....Pfhwaar!

“Any drinks or snacks?”.....By now I was Hank Marvin starvin’ so I stuck the recommended ‘Plat du Jour’ aka ‘artisan’ fish and chips 🍟and a half bottle of warm ‘Liebfraumilch’ on the credit card and kicked off my boots too!

...a steal at €36 euros plus bank charges(termsandconditionsapply#53%APR)

I was on my way, Jose...(pronounced ‘Ho-zay’)

Today I’m going to honour you with a perfect holiday tune courtesy of Sir Shane of McGowan and his merry band of little Pogues to get your tiny toes tapping....

Things will be fine...

 

Well, th’owd lass has been put back together. Her heads back on, she’s had her bilge cleaned out with new pipes, injectors, filters, flanges and fluids and even a new starter battery thrown in for good luck. 

‘John’ll Fix it’ did a great job of fixing it for me and now I need to put the boat on Webuyanyboat.com to find out in only 30 seconds how much I can sell it for to be able to pay for all the repairs and keep him in fat cigars!

But then I saw a bright, colourful and fun advert on the telly and I had a great idea...

All I needed to do was to gamble to pay for it all!

The telly started telling me how easy it was to get an app to put all my wages into and register online for a fun Fandabbydozie Foxy bingo game to play with all my friends with almost guaranteed incredible, fantastic prizes of millions of pounds.

I had only to put the details of my 3 credit cards and my private pension access code and I got an amazing deal of £20 cash back and 3 free spins...result!

After a few hours of trying really hard to win my first promised jackpot I realised that my next 3 wages wouldn’t now even cover the minimum repayments on my debt and my boat cylinder head rebuild cost seemed minuscule to what I owed now so I thought I’d better 🛑 stop so I logged off quite disappointed ☹️.

Like a German vegetarian I feared the wurst!

But I needn’t have worried as 2 minutes later I had an email telling me I had won 3 more free spins and another £20 cash prize to have another go to see if I could re-coup my debt...wow! What luck!...I think they must have felt sorry for me!

It’s really quaint that they really care so much that they worry that my money won’t last out and went on to tell me that if I was to become addicted they could provide me with a private number to speak to a nice Irish chap called Paddy Power who would listen to my problems and hopefully write off the debt before it started to affect my wellness and stop me from throwing a strong rope over a nearby oak tree.

What a lovely respectable and moral business.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my heating gas has run out too...

So what have we learnt today?

We learnt that if your engine goes buggered it’s going to cost you a lot of Wonga to call in ‘John’llFixit’ but you are probably best to just take a deep breath and pay up as the owd tug really deserves a bit of brass spending on her every decade or so.

I think I need a holiday now!

Here is my new favourite tune from Metronomy....enjoy!

There's a storm a comin'....

 

Storm ‘George Eustless’, aptly named after the Environmental Secretariat minister, has really made a mess around here with conditions having deteriorated all week. From the endless annoyingly lashing midweek rain to the weekend warnings of an incoming stupidly named storm as gusts build to ‘very windy’ on the big grownups wind-chart with records recording that it’s worse than the very old, stiff winds first recorded back in the blowy day’s of 1764 when wind was quite strong.

The climate change is happening under our very runny noses and is also happening a bit quicker than he thought and us boater’s are feeling the brunt of it.

Waves reaching up to 4 inches were recorded breaking on the banks of the very full Lancaster canal and all towpaths have now been re-classified as ‘treacherous’ by a government sauce.

A 78 year old dog walker was seen battling the winds and struggling with the pooh bags billowing and blowing about uncontrollably, splattering startled fishermen with canine faecal matter, cold chaps who were already struggling to cast in the unseasonably high gusts due to Brexit.

As a swan blew past, The Canal and Rivers Trust immediately tweeted to close off all water-points in case the stupid people decide to ‘nip out for a top up’ and end up wedgin’ their longboats under a tiny bridge and they have also used the opportunity to warn of severe delays to hedge cutting and dredging work as volunteers get re-classified as ‘furloughed’.

As the eye of the storm moves into the North West, the CRT have also urged boater’s to ‘hunker down’ and issued warnings to us to secure windows, hatches, ropes and ‘all that crap and clutter that you keep on the roof’ to avoid flying debris that could include common items such as ‘unused’ life saving rings, massive tv aerials, plastic plant pots and bags of cat litter...

Here, on the mooring a ‘Critical incident’ was declared when an old oak tree up the top o’ the field toppled over and narrowly missed one of Farmer Jim’s best mule ewes but unfortunately took out 3 fence posts and bust his new lick bucket....a local quickly and informatively tweeted...

“ It wer’a big bastard...!”

...and then a chainsaw drowned out the rest....

BBC community news indicated that ‘significant disruption’ had occurred in the southern reaches when apparently a shed roof blew off in London village and townsfolk had to be evacuated to Germany but here in Lancashire, my shed stood firm with felt intact. 

Like an old pensioner that prioritises fags, I have been left without power, as my gas bottle ran out, but on the flip side I have acquired 2 trampolines, 6 umbrellas and half a tent..

Amber warning to be updated at 21:00 

Ratcliffe Wharf will remain closed until April 2022

Todays track from the wonderfully talented Richard Hawley, finishing off a live set in Leeds and finishing my blog too....enjoy!

Old Man...

 Todays technical blog is about engines so if any girls are listening you might want to turn over as its probably going to get a little too complicated for you to comprehend the ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ of it all....

The ‘head’ is back on now but while attempting this complicated surgery he severed a main artery and diesel started to piss out uncontrollably so unfortunately, under current NHS post -Covid rules, the operation had to be cut short. This ultimately means that another slot will have to be booked to finish the job off, thus allowing the head doctor to legally demand that I pay even more money 💰 than intended to pay in first place!

By the end of all this he will, however, have completely pimped my ride and I’m sure I will fully appreciate the level of comfort and reliability that a newly refurbished BMC1500 diesel performance engine offers.

The head has been completely lobotomised and skimmed with “seven thouw” shaved off, new injectors fitted and valve guides guided. With new heater plugs and filters fitted and a sump full of clean lubricant it will soon be time to ‘fire her up’ once again.

But this comes with a warning..⚠️

This is that when the turbo kicks in and we are at ‘top dead centre’, my induction stroke will now return to create a massive load of frightfully powerful compression up past my ‘ring’ so there is a good chance it will ‘blow the arse’ out of my bottom-end and il be piston-broke once again..

At that point I will  hear the immortal words of the late great Fred Dibnah laughing, with a fag hanging from the corner of his mouth, saying “Did yer like that!!??”

Oh the joys of boating...

Iv always liked messing about with engines, ever since I learned of all the comedic words associated with this practice. I remember as a lad, flicking through what should have been boring Haynes manuals but coming across a whole world of unusually bizarre words with such gems like ‘dipstick’, shaft, con-rods, big-ends, horn and fluids. Not to mention the one that always provoked uncontrollable laughter that was ‘blowing a seal’...

...it still creates a smile even at age 56, today!

I uncovered an alternative universe of incredible words with interesting connotations that involved practices like  ‘bleeding’, damping, pumping and lubricating’. Then throw in the odd job that involves ‘sucking on a pipe’, ‘oiling a worn shaft’ or ‘greasing a rubber’ then my childhood lesson from my dear old perpetually oily-faced grandad was complete.

Thanks to him, I learnt what it meant if my brakes were ‘spongy’ or my ‘flange’ was worn out and I knew what to do if my ‘oil was creamy’ or if one of my ‘plugs wer’oiled up’ and I was only running on ‘3 pots’...

When he diagnosed my problem once as “shit in the carburettor” I remember thinking to myself ‘how often do I need to do that?’....This pupil had a lot to learn back then!

 

The song today has been chosen from‘Harvest’ as Neil Young’s album is 50 years old this month being released in 1972 so Iv chosen a relevant track from it for my dear old dead Grandad...

 

Where’s your head at....?

 

It’s not all about performance...but i do have an expectation that things will work, especially when you have spent so much time and money and investment on them so when they don’t it’s very, very annoying.

But today, I  still find myself waiting and waiting to watch the machine spring back into life and start to purr again. The anticipation of this happening is driving me mad and I’m still not sure whether or when I will witness such an event?....dark days indeed and powerless despair down here on the cut!

It’s bad enough to have witnessed the breakdown first hand in such a harsh environment but then to have to wait such a long time so see if someone can fix it is frustrating to say the least.

Are you not supposed to be the ‘man who knows’ when it comes to getting things to work?...I’m beginning to lose confidence in your abilities especially when you are supposed to have all the tools to hand and the best workshop in town.

Yes, I understand that there are lots of moving parts that all have to be synchronised in order for the whole thing to work properly and if just one fails then you are not going to get very far, I get this, but I didn’t realise it was going to take soooo bloody long to find a solution!

Hopefully, by the weekend all the faults will be rectified, batteries charged up and the propulsive power will be restored to give an injection of hope.

Well that’s what you have promised so let’s just see, eh?

I really don’t want to hear any more excuses of what you should and shouldn’t have done or how bad the faults were....so c’mon Eddie, just fix the bloody thing and get it working properly again....Otherwise I’m going have to start to support Scottish 🏉rugby...Yes, it’s got THAT serious....

Remember what Basement Jaxx said, “we can evolve, evolve without you...”

Oh, by the way....my cylinder head should be back this weekend from the head doctor so that’s quite exciting too...

The road to the 6Nations and the blog continues...