MOBILE PHONES

'Wait till your father gets home and hears what you've been up to'. A favourite saying years ago to instill the fear of God into you and it did, especially if it was said early enough in the day so that you had all day to worry about your dads return. Dads were used, rightly or wrongly, as a figure of discipline, someone you feared. He would normally leave for work before anyyone else was up and he wouldn't have a clue what was happening within his household until he came back through the front door again in the evening.Fast forward to the present day . The saying wait till your father gets home is no longer relevant in today's society, i can leave my house at 8 in the morning and hear my daughter having a strop,live from the comfort of my van, on my journey into work, I'm told the minute my son treads in the only piece of dog turd in the world ,not to have been picked up by the dogs owner, and walked all through my house as its actually happening ! And all thanks to the most intrusive gadget ever invented, the mobile phone ! But thank God for its invention, because thousands of Dads up and down this great land of ours now know whether its safe or not to go straight home or to the pub until the kids are safely tucked up in bed !

RUBBISH

I was trying to think of a few things that have drastically changed over the past 30 years, obviously there have been major changes of governments, political systems, etc, but i was thinking more day to day stuff like rubbish ! When i was a kid back in the 70 s, anything other than household rubbish was taken to the local landfill site or tip as it was commonly known, all you did once you was in the tip was pull up anywhere and chuck your rubbish onto the side of the road, legal fly tipping basically, where it would be collected and thrown into a large hole in the ground. Recycling isn't a new thing as many a time we used to come back from the tip with more then we took, especially if you needed a bike frame or some pram wheels for your go-cart ! Now its a day out if you go the recycling centre with a car full of different types of rubbish, there are so many different hoppers for all kinds of rubbish, and don't even think about trying to mix your clean dirt with your dirty dirt, because the friendly and oh so helpful (sarcasm) on site rubbish police will be down on you like a ton of Eco friendly manure ! Another thing that hasn't really stood the test of time are breakers yards, they're still about, but a diluted and watered down version of how they used to be.Many a Saturday afternoon was spent under the bonnet of a hillman avenger, which was balanced on top of a Morris marina, which in turn was on top of a mark 2 cortina, ratchet in one hand, hammer in the other, you couldn't hold onto anything because you needed both hands free to work, so there we were a cross between a circus balancing act and a deranged baboon. 3 cars high, up in the air trying to make a frightening jog even more frightening by trying to relieve the engine of its mountings. In todays breakers they take the parts out for you, they've got parts all cleaned up and on the shelf all ready to go, wheres the fun in that !

CONVERTING

Sitting watching the football on t.v the other night with my son, he made a comment about a player being yards offside.I asked him why he had said yards offside,instead of saying that the player was metres offside,as i thought that they were now all taught metric at school, he said that it was because his teacher always says yards offside during games at school. I wondered if its something that's us Brits exclusively do,or does any other nation have to convert measurements,weights etc,it just seems to me that we are constantly converting something , the weather comes on the t.v and the forecaster says that its going to be 27 Celsius tomorrow,27 Celsius is that hot ? what is it in Fahrenheit ? You're on holiday and something costs so many euros, dollars whatever, and straight away you're trying to convert it back into pounds, It doesn't seem to register that you're in a different country and if you want to buy it,its going to cost whatever the seller is asking for it, in his currency. Another one is feet and inches, its all supposed to be metres and centimetres now, but it isn't, its a mixture of both, whenever i go into the timber yard for work i always ask for a sheet of 8 foot by 4 foot, 6 millimetre ply !Petrol is priced in litres, but beer is still sold in pints, any application form now wants to know how tall you are in metres and how much you weigh in kilos, but you're still working in feet and inches and stones and pounds. Is it any wonder that life's so confusing, and then, just when you think that you've encountered every conversion there is, suddenly theres a new kid on the block in the form of school years, where the hell did that come from, I'm now having to convert what years at school my kids are in !

MY SON

My son is 11 and just started secondary school in september, he keeps coming home from school telling me all these different things hes learnt, knowing that i haven't got a clue what hes going on about.He can count up to 100 in both french and german, although he didn't know when i asked him what number in german zigazigargh was, it was great watching him trying to work it out, before finally admitting defeat and giving up, only to be told it wasn't a number at all,but actually the end to a spice girl song.!So the other day he came home from school and said 'did you know that during the first world war some british and german soldiers one christmas eve stopped fighting and played a game of football against each other in no mans land'He had a look of satisfaction on his face as if he had just served an ace to win wimbledon, game, set and match, so when i said yes i did know that,and did he know that Sir Paul Mc cartney had written a song about it back in the 80s called 'pipes of peace, he was Crest fallen, he walked out of the kitchen like a man who had just put everything on red, only for it to come in black, it didn't end there though, because as usual he had to have the last word, 'that football match during the first world war,i bet you dont know what the score was' !!

HALF THE FUN

Something i noticed on eBay the other day, someone was selling fast passes for the rides at Disneyland Paris and part of his sales pitch went like this, 'what is the most precious thing on earth ? answer, time, so if you spend half the amount of time you normally spent queuing for the rides at Disneyland Paris you get half the fun'!! Now i didn't do very well at school, but if you queue for half the time, shouldn't that be for double the fun, or do they stop the ride halfway round, 'get off you've had half your fun'.So using that formula, what if you knew someone who worked at the park and they could get you onto the rides without queuing at all, would that mean that you had no fun !

This is my t.v

Growing up in the 70's as i did, we had one black and white t.v in the front room . There wasn't really any confrontation about someone wanting to watch something different to anyone else because there was only 3 channels to choose from, the only confrontation we had was when my dad came home from work in the evening and if the t.v wasn't on BBC1 for the news he would just change the channel over, it didn't matter if you had been watching something for the past 2 hours and there was only 30 seconds left he would just turn it over.Obviously we would complain, but he would come out with the same old line, 'when you're older and have a house of your own and pay all the bills, then you can watch whatever you want,untill then, this is my tele and i want to watch the news' end of story.I'm now 44 years old with my own house, paying all the bills and i still cant watch what i want, only now its the kids who are dictating to me when i can watch it.Even my dad came round one sunday afternoon, walked straight into the front room, looked at the t.v , made some comment about me not watching the grand prix, asked me to change the channel over so that he could watch it, and do you know what , i did !!

PIGS WITH 3 EARS !

Driving around all day, as i do in my job,you come across some pretty unusual sights,people and signs.One of the funniest signs i've seen was on the side of a farm building advertising what was for sale in the farm shop. The bit that got me thinking was the 'pigs ear's, 3 for a pound'!Don't they normally come in pairs, what happened to the other one? or is there a secret farm somewhere that;s breeding a super pig with 3 ears .