To the gurning copper at the Raoul Moat standoff

Hello, yes you, the gurning copper with the taser.



Look I know you get a bit upset with people taking pictures, especially pictures of coppers, but might I give you a spot of health and safety advice. If you are going to turn your head, grimace and berate a member of the public for having the temerity to photograph you in the course of your duties it would be a really good idea if YOU TOOK YOUR FUCKING FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER OF YOUR SODDING WEAPON!

Thanks for listening.

Grumpy.

PS: Apparently former footballer and celebrity wife-beater and pisshead Paul "Gazzer" Gascoigne turned up in Rothbury last night, pissed as a newt, wanting to take his old mate "Moatie" some chicken, a warm coat and a can a lager then sit down with him and do some fishing. A local radio station managed to get an interview with him which is hilarious... go have a listen: http://ht.ly/29y6m

Enough with the world cup already

Look I know there's a footy match on round at Nelson Mandela's old gaff at the moment but does every single fucking product I use have to jump on the sodding bandwagon? I mean my cornflakes at breakfast have "A feast of football" splattered all over the packaging with some bollocks about winning a shin-pad if I send in three packet tops. If I want a few pringles to nibble on when flicking through the TV channels to find something not soccer related I now have to open a packet of "Pringoooooals" and there's world-cup themed sandwiches in the staff canteen.

Honestly I am expecting to sit down on the loo only to see Wayne Fucking Rooney's gurning fizzog leering at me as it's been printed on the bog roll.

And what's got everyone's knickers in a bunch? Well everyone who gives a shit about watching the spectacle of a bunch of overpaid tossers kicking a ball about anyway. That would be the "vuvuzela" which is the Xhosa word for "wank-trumpet" apparently. I can see how folk might be a tad irritated by said "instrument" as quite by accident I caught the last 10 minutes of Rooney and his friends being held to a one-all draw by a nation to whom footy ranks around the same level of interest as competitive scrabble or morris dancing. It took a minute to work out what was wrong with the sound as all I could hear was a swarm of angry bees doing a simultaneous B-flat fart, ah - that would be your knuckle-dragging football fan embracing the "cultural diversity of the Rainbow Nation" and honking his plastic wank-trumpet. I found I wanted to ram the bloody things flare end first up their collective arses within about 90 seconds so what the hell it must be like listening to it for 90 minutes I hate to think.

And can you imagine being in the stadium itself? I read the noise level of these things is 113dB which, to give you an idea, is the peak sound pressure of my 16" chainsaw when it's at full chat. I fully expect our wandering fans to come back from SA and walk straight into the nearest hospital to get treated for deafness.

Maybe they could pick up some retro-viral drugs to handle the HIV they picked up off the local good-time girls whilst "On tour".

Guess I didn't need to get interested in football after all

From a blog post back last year.

It would appear that the town where I was fledged1 appears to have won some sort of football competition and, apparently, gets to play with the big boys next year before presumably crashing ignominiously back into the Coca-Cola-Everest-Double-Glazing Conference League...

And today we read...

Burnley's train wreck of a season reached its inevitable conclusion today when they were condemned to relegation by a second-half drubbing from Liverpool, who kept alive their hopes of Champions League qualification by scoring four without needing to play particularly well.

So its back to being sponsored by a meat-pie making company for Burnley FC but I am wondering with my new found skills at footie prognostication I could get a job as some sort of pundit for the up-coming bore-fest of soccer that's happening in South Africa shortly. I suppose I would have to be able to say "Well basically Alan, football's a game of two halves and En-Ger-Lund have to give it 110% out there today" without wanting to set fire to a goalkeeper first.

Do I have to get interested in football now?

It would appear that the town where I was fledged¹ appears to have won some sort of football competition and, apparently, gets to play with the big boys next year before presumably crashing ignominiously back into the Coca-Cola-Everest-Double-Glazing Conference League where I assume they have been since I upped sticks and buggered off to somewhere where I could (a) get an education and (b) a job. So congratulations I suppose to Burnley footy club but please don't for a microsecond think that anything on this earth could induce me to stand on the terraces (do they still have those) of Turf Moor again or, to be honest, express any interest in your success or failure at kicking a pigs' bladder around.

Look it's like this. I really could not give a flying fuck about football. The game bores me rigid. I was utterly crap at it at school and always ended up just arseing about in "defence" which meant you got to stand at the back and only had to run about when the other lot ran towards you as far as I could tell. On the rare occasions when some misguided sense of loyalty to my mates in the band I was in lead me to actually attend a match at the aforementioned Turf Moor I never really understood what was going on, didn't know the words to the songs and usually had gone to the bogs or in search of a Bovril when anyone actually scored a goal. So I'm not going to be going out and buying a claret and blue scarf and actually learning the names of the overpaid dicks who actually do the ball kicking stuff if that's OK with you.

Speaking of refreshments I happened to notice that the club sponsor was Hollands Pies who may be the makers of the finest steak puddings on the planet but I doubt lack the financial wherewithal to fund a premier league side.

Mind you finance being what it is you're lucky to have a sponsor and next year we might see you sponsored by the man who sells the pies at the ground.

Mine's a meat and potato, thanks. I'll pass on the Bovril.










¹ Do dragons fledge, not having any feathers and all that?