Shovels I Have Known and Loved

It was the morning after the first barrage of heavy snow and high winds, which are the leading characters in the production of ‘How to meet your Blizzard; the sequel’. I sat drinking my coffee and gazing at the windows that were coated in thick ice and snow and unrecognizable as windows. I now know how Scott of the Antarctic must have felt. I thought that it would be a good idea to take a peak at what things looked like outside, so I heaved open the front door and was drenched by thick snow from the drift that had piled up during the night. I dusted off my sopping trousers and peered out onto what used to be my front driveway. The snow had done a really good job of obliterating it. My vehicles were almost buried and it looked doubtful that they would be moving any time soon. Snow was still falling but at least the winds had abated and the temperature was edging into double digits. It was a depressingly bleak outlook but I did have a shovel and although it might take a while it would perhaps be worth the effort to clear some of the larger drifts.

I donned my arctic coat and boots.

Super Bowl Bonanza

It’s that time of year again. January; snow; blizzards; freezing rain and ice storms. And that’s just in the south. Up north weather conditions reach arctic proportions. It’s all part and parcel of Mother natures way of letting us know who is the boss when it comes to meteorology, climatic bed wetting and global warming.

However there are compensations. At this time each year we are treated to the NFL playoffs to decide which two teams will meet in the Super dooper bowl.

The NFL is an abbreviation for American Football League and right at the outset we have a problem here. American football is a game played for the most part, with the Hands. I will repeat that; a game played with the hands; not the feet.

This does not speak very highly of the founder’s familiarity with body parts. After all, it is well within the grasp of even the most simple minded, that hands are up top and feet are down below. However, as it is with so many ‘traditions’, the faux pas was not realized and it was decided to pretend that it never happened. Hand ball became football and that was all she wrote. Get over it.

So the Super Bowl bonanza rolls around each year come hell or high water.

XLVIII as it is affectionately known among the Romans, is a game between the AFC (American Football Conference ) and the NFC (National Football Conference)

‘Conference’ is an interesting term. 

The dictionary defines it as meeting, convention, seminar, colloquium, symposium, forum, summit. ( Or perhaps in this case the spectacle of two sets of gladiators trying to tear the living crap out of each other! )

This year is a first. The event will be held in the Met Life Facility in New Jersey at an outdoor stadium. Yes OUTDOOR. I mean really! Someone needs to have extensive therapy. In all likelihood there will be ice particles the size of buffalo droppings and the playing field will resemble the trenches at Verdun. It is supremely optimistic to hope that the game will in fact be played but what the hey. On the 2nd at 6.25 EST ( TV abbreviation for electro static testosterone ), all will be revealed.

Super Saucer Bonanza: A Followup to the Super Bowl

We are all waiting with baited breath, clean underwear and appropriate team sweat shirts for Sunday’s big TV bonanza ‘The Super Duper Saucer’. The final football game of the season that will decide who will be crowned king of the cow pasture for another year.

The winning team will receive silver saucers inscribed with the pertinent statistics for them to place on their mantle shelves or the mantle shelve’s of their parents for safe keeping. The heros will be fated, baited and heavily weighted. They will be guests on religious programs, Youtube and spokespersons for the very latest in almost everything that’s worth a wank.

The dust and hullaballoo will eventually fade and by Monday morning life will get back to some semblance of normalcy. The media will add up the vast piles of cash which they have received from global sales of T.V. commercials during the extended broadcast and take the rest of the year off. All in all the advertising boys are feeling pretty chuffed with themselves.

Flying is the Safest Way to Fly

In 1970 I had been living in the States for almost two years. The five years I had spent with my partner Ruth in the wacky world of entertainment was drawing to a close. We had sung our way around Europe; we had performed on the stages of the glittering carrousel of concerts, club dates, film and T.V shows. We had recorded albums for Polydor and worked with some of the leading musicians of that period. It had been a dizzying whirlwind and on the whole an exiting and rewarding trip. But the end was in sight; we had both burnt out in the rough and tumble of ‘show biz’ and the music industry. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world; but now it was time to regroup. 

I decided to take a much needed break and planned a trip back to see the folks in the U.K.

Medical Procedures

Past three o’clock on s cold and frosty morning,

Past three o’clock good morrow masters all.

I am preparing to travel to Mass general Hospital in Boston for a couple of ‘procedures’ We won’t dwell on the nature of those tests; suffice to say it is not going to be a walk through the park. It will be akin to a medical kit inspection; make sure everything is squeaky clean and ready to engage.

Step one is to go down a rather elaborate check list of the things that I must not do prior to my visit. No food; no coffee; no alcoholic beverages of any description. My body must be as pure and clean as the driven snow. Paperwork that I must take with me; an assortment of different pills to be taken at different intervals; I.D’s of my current insurance coverage; a good book and my Ipod. A chronicle of my medical history for the past hundred years and my Family medical history from the year dot. A list of the various addresses, phone numbers and doctor’s names and phone numbers.