Symptoms

Thatcher, or as I like to call her - that evil monster Thatch - did con TWC into loading themselves with debt and stiffing local communities of affordable housing stock. Yep, I refer to that scam where many of TWC were encouraged to take-out morgages to buy Council owned houses; obviously, with these monthly outgoings TWC couldn't risk going on strike for better conditions as "their home would be at risk if they didn't keep-up the payments". You've got to had it to the evil witch ... gelding many in TWC at a stroke ... brilliant! However, what are we left with ... little affordable housing stock for youngsters. Yes, she did change attitudes ... she created me, mine, sod the rest and her heirs are still at it. However, there nothing worse than TWC thinking the sun shines out of her ar*e ... class traitors the lot.

All this is great fun ... I'm really enjoying myself.

Up the Toon

The mackem's new Director of Communications, Dr Joey Goebells, today told a press conference that their new manager Herr Paolo di Canio was not a Facist.

Photos just in from our spy operating in deep cover in the 'dark place'. Our spy is working in very difficult circumstances - it's very hard for him to blend in as all the locals have three ears and webbed hands and feet.

The first photo is of the re-modelling work currently being carried out on the stadium of plight and the second photo is of the training session this morning.

Obviously, this is not meant to suggest that the models in the picture represent any real persons but merely a humorous comment on what's happening at the 'dark side'. It's a bit like the story of a load on toxic waste (including low-grade nuclear stuff) being dumped down the Monkwearmouth pit just before the place was closed then that prefab was built over the top to seal the glowing waste below; reports of leakage have been denied by the local town council. Oh, the waste story IS true.

Here's a picture of a mackem training session:

Agh ... they're crawling out from everywhere! That's three of them so far.

Now, now, Mal, just because we've flushed you out, no need to lash-out blindly at the beloved Toon. There always is a place at the Toon's top-table for those who inhabit the stadium of plight ... under it snuffling for scraps. It's just as well that the mackems aren't playing in Euro competitions ... just imagine the headlines if they were drawn against a team in Poland for a match in September.

Of course, all this is meant as joshing between friends and not to be taken too seriously.

Phew ... thank goodness my brain isn't turning to mush and that I wasn't mistaken about this depot. I know that post-war and cold-war there were stategic depots all over the place and maybe ours was there for easy access to Blyth (port, power station, pits, etc).

During the cold-war the Peelers did exercises called Mobile Columns so they'd be ready for 'when the balloon went up'. The Mobile Columns consisted of troops under the control of the Peelers and were area or regionally based and with access to local depots for their vehicles and other tackle - I was told that our depot was one of these. These MCs had a book of regulations (called the Blue Book) so they could, under the emergency powers, deal with the civilian population; they could extract immediate punishments, including death by firing squad.

I don't know how much of this stuff is still officially secret but, if you don't hear from me again you'll know I've had the 4am knock and have been lifted. Poor old Sym - electrodes on the nuts ... ZZZZZZZZZ ... until I talk. I'll break, and give-up Mal as being a traitor (a mackem).

I don't know what's more shocking: Miliband quitting that job at the stadiumofsxxxe to go and work with that war criminal Henry Kissinger over at International Rescue (a front for the Yankies CIA) or Mal coming out of the closet. Shame on you Mal.

Shame Leni Riefenstahl is dead ... she could have had the contract to run the mackemscum TV station.

Up the Toon for ever.

I've just had a look at that senrug website ... once I'd waded through the cobwebs I checked-out their latest newsletter (Dec '12) and plans are still active. The website needs updating 'cos when you look at it nothing is recent about the Bedder's route.

"Cambois up beside wembley" - I don't know what this means.

"Mk1 polytunnels." - poo!

Maggs - not as far up as Boulmer ... I'm sure they were near Sleekburn.

I remember a Depot (War Office or Min of Defense) that overlooked the coast somewhere North of Bedders (maybe between Cambois & Cresswell ???) back in the 60s. Big site with a very high barbed-wire fence and monster green buildings - sort of giant Nissen huts. Can anybody confirm?

Obviously there's nothing on current OS maps.

Maggs wrote: "The Guardian today has an ..."

Thank goodness I'm not the only one here who reads it.

Of course, it doesn't need to be a fully functioning station - it could just be a 'halt' (a bit like a request bus stop). Are the 'old' platforms still in situ? Where I now live just about all the stations are like this and the network is thriving - you buy the ticket on the train from the conductor.

I remember that stone wall too. At one section it enclosed a grazing field (probably where streetview shows Tower Close) and the wall was about 5' tall. The field ran across to the back of Patterson's yard where they used to park their removal lorries - access to the yard was from Front St. Again, I've looked at streetview and the only opening looks to be through an arch lower down Front St than I remember (I had a recollection it was right next to the Vicarage). The field always had a few cows and a couple of horses in it and I'm sure they belonged to the Pattersons. We used to 'nick' across the field as a shortcut to get to the yard ... I knew the son but can't recall his given name as he, like most of our mates, were known by nicknames - his was Patterninny. He'd be 60ish now and I think he may have joined the Peelers.

Tales of the Bog Blaster

I can't remember ever coming across a locked store cupboard or stockroom at Westridge; needless to say these were rigorously examined by Sym.

I loved Science with Mr Hogg – now, this was in the days before the dreadful 'elf & safety Taliban spoilt all our fun with their rules about safety specs, safety screens, gelded chemistry sets, teacher only practical experiments, high viz jackets, no naked flames, and ..... this list is endless. Hoggsie used to show us how to make explosives by mixing various stuff then setting it off in the lab ... brilliant stuff. Anyway, he once showed us how volatile sodium could be when a drop of water landed on a piece, bursting into flames and giving off a cloud of gas. This intelligence was just too valuable to go unused. I snuck into his stockroom one lunchtime (the classrooms were never locked either!!) and nicked a pair of tweezers and an oil-filled jar containing some sodium blocks. These blocks were about the size of a ¼â€ cube.

The plan was to booby-trap the bogs just before breaktime the following day. Easy with the boys toilets ... using the tweezers I placed a sodium block above and balanced on each of the chrome dome urinal grids. This position kept the sodium clear of the piss puddles lying in the bottom of the urinal channel. However, and all the blokes reading this will know, the irresistable temptation is to aim the stream of pee at the hole in the top of the chrome grid – this is what I was counting on. Imagine the scene at breaktime, dozens of lads barging into the bogs, getting their todgers out and letting forth into the channel and wetting the sodium. Flames, clouds of white gas ... what a hoot.

The plan for the girls bogs OBVIOUSLY was different. Sodium blocks were very carefully positioned inside the bogs pans near the front on that gently sloping bit. The action happened when the girls dropped their drawers, squatted down and did the biz splashing the sodium. Yep, flames, clouds of white gas ... what a hoot.

No pink wobbly bits were harmed during the action but the screams from the girls' bogs was unforgettable. I was never caught.

HPW - I bet they've still got a file on you.

My parents bought me a cheepo acoustic guitar when I was 11 and I started going for lessons with Geordie Peel (he lived in Dene View East ... I've previously posted about lessons with him); I probably went for six years. As I'd joined a band ( group in those days) for my 14^th birthday pressie my folks took me to a guitar shop in the Toon ... it was on the old New Bridge Street, just past the Oxford Ballroom – I'm sure it was Jeavons 'other' shop. They bought me a cherry red Futurama III (just like HPW's), a green Shaftesbury 515 combo amp, a microphone and a stand. The guitar I PX'ed for a Fender 12 string acoustic just before I went down to London as a student in '69; the PX was done in a 'swap shop' in Blyth – it was located near the police station and footy ground. The amp came down to London with me and was 'lashed-up' to an old Dansette record player which I used to blast out the Halls of Residence ... what a hoot that was – it was really loud!

With my first pay cheque in '74 I PX'ed the 12 string for a 6 string National Resonator (one of those all metal guitars - the sort used by the old Blues guys and which I still have) ... this deal was done in London's Denmark Street (Tin Pan Alley). What a place this was – almost every shop was a musical instrument shop, upstairs shops selling sheet music, cellars were music clubs of every description. Later, when I was a bit more flushed with cash I got an ebony Gibson Les Paul and a Hi-Watt 100watt amp stack; the Les Paul I still have but the Hi-Watt went, then an Orange but now I just have a Marshall Combo amp. I can't remember where the old Shaftesbury amp ended-up.

I previously mentioned in another post that I also went for piano lessons for years and did the exams; the theory exams were in the Toon, above a piano showroom at the top of Northumberland Street but I can't remember what it was called ... help with this info anyone??? To keep me practising piano when I went done to London my folks got me a 'silent' practise keyboard in Jeavons in Percy Street ... I've still got this.

Needless to say, all that my stiff, wizened old fingers are good for these days is strumming a few chords on the guitar and a bit of vamping on the piano ... it's so bad that even my dog goes and hides.

To a country boy like me London back then was a mesmerizing place with lots of 'quarters'. Denmark St for music, off Charing Cross Road for books, Tottenham Court Road for hi-fi, not to mention High St Kensington and Camden High St for us hippies. The place I was fascinated most with was Lisle St in Soho (no, not for that reason!!!) but it was the quarter for government surplus, every shop was packed with stuff – ex-military gear, electro-mechanical stuff, electronics, optical gear (eg. bomb-aiming sights), aircraft hydraulics, the list just went on and on and on. The stock changed all the time as it was a period of massive technological change and all government ministries were updating and getting rid of stuff. I bought an ex-Lancaster bomber wireless set, a huge reel of copper wire for an antenna, porcelain bobbins, and was into ham radio for a time – I could pick folks up from all over the world. Sadly, all the government surplus dried-up and in the late 70s the shops shut and the character of the place went really down-market with sex-dens and clip-joints taking over. It's now part of China Town.

HPW wrote: "... how the hell did you think them up?"

I was a naughty little boy.

I'm at an age now, a bit like Michael Corleone in Godfather II, sitting in my chair reviewing my life - minding past escapades and thinking of old friends. I'm surprised at how vivid my recall is ... it bodes well for the old grey matter not shrivelling away.

And so ... "The Great Grand Piano Scandal".

It was a drudge always being marched into morning assembly expecting the same old God bothering tosh. Us kids stacked-up from front to back, boys on the left, girls on the right, with the beaks on guard at the outside edge. In he'd march with his team in tow to mount the stage, with a scowl to check all was well he'd signal us all to sit down at ease and those tubular chairs with their canvass slings, clattered back to take the strain. When he'd move forward to the lecturn spot and command us all to sing then his wife at the piano crashed down the keys ... THUD, THUD, THUD.

One morning before school started I pinched a roll of Izal* bog paper from the boys' netty, then crept into the assembly hall via the stage doors (back corridor near the workshops and changing rooms). The piano was always parked on stage ready for Mrs Hemmings to bash-out the tunes. I lifted the lid, depressed the sustain pedal (to lift the hammers off the strings) and slipped in a double layers of bog paper into the space between hammers and strings. Closing the piano lid I then made my escape. The effect of this was to completely muffle the piano's action rendering it silent ... I knew about how pianos worked because I went for piano lessons. I'd noticed that Mrs Hemmings always had a exuberant playing style and she usually led-in with a rather flash, and extended introduction to the hymns ... a perfect target for a jolly jape. I was never caught.

*Izal bog paper - hard shiny stuff ... non-absorbant and could easily produce 'paper cuts'. Amazingly, it's still available!

Perhaps next time - "Tales from School Camp".

Buried in the news on Buggerit Day was a report that Barclays had, yet again bunged whopper bonuses. Some guy called Rich Ricci trousered a brown envelope for 17 million. Photos showed him as being a well-scrubbed tubby bloke, a bit like Cameroonie, with a smirking snear on his face ... the image just seemed to fit somehow!

Here it is:

Aroond the bend they rattled by

Aroond the bend they rattled by

Screeching an' a hollerin' as the wheels spun round

Screeching an' a hollerin' as the wheels spun round

Pottsie took his grip to the steering ties

And the hiyellas gigin' as they slowed on by.

No, I haven't written it yet.

The Supabogie Blues by Blind Lemon Symptoms (sung to the tune of Pearl Harbour Blues by Doctor Clayton and His Buddy)

The hiyellas screamin' as they'd rumbled and a tumbled

The hiyellas screamin' as they'd rumbled and a tumbled

Pottsie's four-wheeled bogie rollin' doon the bank

As the lads aboard ain't comin' back

Oh Lord, they ain't comin' back

No Lord, they ain't never comin' back.