Where Boys And Dogs Run Wild...

Coming Soon...

2011-01-30T21:25:00.002Z

So this has been lying dormant for a while but the blog was set up originally for a purpose other than unrelated ramble.

That purpose is "Where Boys & Dogs Run Wild"

Planning stages all done; 500 sheets of parchment, two carrier bags full of scrawled notes written during 15 years of undercover research planted deep cover within a team of scumbags, rogues, rascals and bastards and now the story is almost written.

Where Boys & Dogs Run Wild - a book about Sunday's.

More updates coming soon...

A Full English

2010-04-07T16:06:00.000+01:00

I arrived at Daves cafe with low expectations and they were immediately lowered as I happened up on a dilapidated filthy old caravan seemingly balanced on bricks and calor gas canisters amongst long wild grass, the faded pages of porn magazines, litter and pop bottles full of lorry driver piss caught amongst it like cuckoo spit.
Inside the shack, a unique ambience was created by a strange almost subliminal combination of the desperate hissing of bacon, the intermittent crackle of the bug-zapper propped on an antique arcade machine and the badly tuned in kitchen wireless which filled the room with trebly approximations of 60's classics squeezed through grease smothered speakers.
I took a table opposite a dirty overalled man who went about a plate of breakfast with the fixed glare of concentration you would expect to see on a murderer as he goes about his nefarious work.
The table was set with red and white checked plastic tablemat, encrusted in the splatters of dinners past, and stood proudly in the middle like a group of centurions, stood a cluster of standard condiments.
A woman whose old face dripped off her bones like a flannel on a rake identified herself as the cook and introduced me to the 'executive chef and owner' a vast swaying pile of badly stacked gammon, crammed into a gravy splattered t-shirt, who sat at one of the tables scribbling circles around the nipples of a page 3 girl in the sun with a bookies pen, a limp woodbine hanging from his lip. He had greasy shoulder length dark hair which appeared to have been soaked in tanker oil. His name was Dave. Despite looking like he had recently emerged from a well I was encouraged by his vast girth - a fat chef knows his dinners.
I ordered the infamous breakfast, the reason for my visit.
'It'll be fifteen minutes cock,' said Dave.
He rolled and then smoked another roll-up for the first 8 of those before shuffling into the kitchen area, elbowing Mo aside and beginning to cook, his facial expression never changing from one of a man who has lost a fiver.
In a blur of repetitively condtioned routine he all at once threw thick bacon rashers and sausages onto the grill pan, mushrooms and butter in a frying pan, bread in the toaster, tomatoes in a pan, black pudding and then three eggs onto the plate with a hiss. The room was engulfed with the gorgeous, guilty aroma of the burning flesh of swine.
Dave moved his pots pans and implements around with the grace a puppet master, his arms moving fast in all directions, a polaroid wih a long exposure of him would appear to show a fat bearded octopede at work.
5 minutes later a shadow crept over my table and I turned to see Dave stood over me with a vast oval plate of food. He plonked it down in front of me without a word or a smile and returned to his true work, circling nipples and chain smoking.
I visually assessed my fry-up. Thick tongues of smoked bacon, char lines streaked across their curvy rose-pink surface, blackened, caramelised streaks of crispy fat down their back. Four sausages like barry whites thumbs, swollen with moisture, almost bubbling and fit to burst their porky goodness all over the plate. A choppy deep tangerine ocean of beans lapping against a beach of three crystal white eggs. Their golden yellow yolks, heaving like glorious bosoms inviting you to pop them with a dirty index finger and get messy, sucking off their creamy viscous golden delight. AT the back of the plate jagged planks of browned toast fenced the breakfast off from the outside world, this was all mine. 3 plump tomatoes like thick bloodclots undulated to the west of the plate, flanked by a dark fungal terrain of mushrooms, blobs of warm butter still sliding slowly across their intricate earthen surfaces. A crumpet, spongy with golden butter yet toasted crisp across its mezzanine phalanx of holes completed the plate towards the horizon where plate edge met table cloth. A steaming cup of sweet brown tea of industrial strength would provide much needed periods of respite for the forthcoming herculean task of actually devouring this smorgasboard of fatty magnificence

Fallen Idols #1

2010-03-29T08:15:00.002+01:00

"Don't mention that mans name to me...Just hearing his name makes my fucking skin stand on end. You can pack that in right now."

He stops making the sandwich, pulls the butter knife from the Branston and points it at me and for a second I see real fury lurking in his eyes. The knife is shaking.
He is bare chested, surprisingly muscular, the veins across his torso swollen; sinewy snakes course beneath his skin.
His trademark mop of tightly curled hair is present but no longer jet black, it is a steel industrial gray and looks wiry, coarse, like forgotten heather on a remote moor.

"I'm sorry Robert but I have to ask the question..." I say.
"You don't have to ask any fucking question lad...I said before I am not talking about that man," he shouts, his voice gruff and marinated in menace. "And if you mention his fucking name again your out of here and we're finished. Ok? Lets get that fucking straight."
"Ok." I agree meekly, like a scorned child.

My pathetic backdown is because I have become explicitly aware of how my life is suddenly in his hands, and despite the tales, I'm still surprised at his ferocious temper.
After a four hour trek into to the Welsh mountains with only a rumour, a sighting and a scribble on a beermat for directions we had finally found the dilapidated caravan he had disappeared to six years ago.
Thrilled at finding something we had previously thought was just legend, we had approached and knocked and had been reluctantly allowed to enter.
Then night had quickly set in.
Being thrown out now and forced to make our way back down the unforgiving hills in utter darkness, and not knowing who might be following, was not an option.
But what terrified me to my core was that I had brought the object of this feral hatred back into his life.
The man he warned me not to even speak of was sat opposite me.
I looked across at Tommy, posing as my sound man, his disguise brilliantly hiding his real identity for what should have been a moving and happy reveal.
We instantly both understood that my idea to bring him out here, to reunite the estranged pair had been the worst idea in the world.

As we shared a desperate look, a bang made us jump.
I looked back to kitchen.
He had stabbed the knife into a huge piece of raw meat. He brought it slowly up to his mouth.
His eyes met mine.
Slowly his tongue emerged and he began to lick the lump of blood red meat, almost sensually.

All the rumours, legend and tap-room tales down in the village were true.

My TV programme was over.

This had become a battle to leave this caravan and escape the mountain with our lives. "

- Excerpt from the book 'Finding Bobby Ball'

Barbara Ripple's Mislaid Staff

2010-03-19T08:07:00.005Z

When I asked her, she said she'd "Forgotten it."

I mean, how? How is that possible?

Didn't she think she was travelling a bit light when she left the house that morning?

Ok, at a push, I can imagine how you could forget a 6 ft fluorescent stick if you were, say, a welder who just happened to be a 6 ft fluorescent stick enthusiast who had loads of them...but you absolutely cannot forget a 6 ft fluorescent stick when it defines your job, when it's the salient part of your being.

That's like the Yorkshire Ripper forgetting to rip.
Just getting home after dropping the prostitute off and scratching his head thinking 'I'm sure I was meant to do something back there....'
Then getting home and seeing a post-it note on the fridge saying 'Murder some whores', kicking himself.

Without that lollipop she is just a lady and what authority does she have to stand in the road and stop traffic?

So, yes...I ran her over, Your Honour.

Wrong Numbers

2010-03-16T23:57:00.006Z

I do like to try and help out wrong numbers.

I answered the phone last night and it was someone asking for a takeaway and you know me, I'll help anyone, but I'll be honest...it was a bit of a bind.

Having to traipse to the Spar for ghee at that hour...

And I'd never even heard of 'Rogan Josh'...had to look him up on the internet.

They were lucky I happened to have some lamb in...I don't usually.

Its expensive, lamb.

I bought it in for a special occasion, should one ever occur.

Oh well, it's gone now...

Gunna just ignore it next time.

Industrial Strength Cider Saved My Life....

2010-03-16T18:27:00.000Z

First of all, I'm not proud of this but the story must be told...if the following tale saves one life then it was worth it...

...Twas the first weekend of February 2008 and the day of the Chesterfield CAMRA beer festival. An annual event at which a rich assortment of genuine real ale enthusiasts, spectacularly bearded oddballs, scarlet cheeked drunkards with stunt-livers, and a select envoy from our football team gather in Chesterfields legendary Winding Wheel venue to drink booze until something bleeds.

Literally.

In previous years the beer festival had been entirely responsible for a broken ankle sustained whilst tumbling down three flights of stairs in The Barracuda like a dropped fridge and for me being run over non-spectacularly in the worlds slowest ever hit and run incident. Which I promptly forgot had ever happened until I looked in the mirror the next morning and saw a raggedly peeled bollock looking back at me.

So it was with no little apprehension on my part that Tim 'Superfly' Stafford, Chris 'Chewbacca' Hoskin, Steve 'Beartrap' Barker and myself attended the 2008 boozefest.

After sampling a wide selection of ales, we soon found ourselves slumped at the Cider & Perries stand drinking a locally produced cider like prohibition was but hours away.

The thing about this particular cider, as we were informed by one of its makers, is that it is stronger than it says on the handwritten label. Which is very fucking strong. This cider seems to rape you of your sobriety with the velocity of an unannounced right cross from an angry Riddick Bowe.

Anyway...after the beer festival we wandered into the daylight and staggered into a cocktail bar (Chandlers) which wasn't serving food and I went and did this...

DO NOT TRY THAT AT HOME - HERES WHY...

The daffodil was not bad tasting, a bit like celery, but within an hour the daft drunken grin was erased from my face.

I began to feel peeky as soon we got to the next alehouse (which will remain nameless as they'll never serve me again.)
In seconds I had deteriorated and quickly sealed myself in a toilet cubicle where I began violently projectile vomiting great arching swathes of sick. My stomach felt like a carrier bag full of scissors and soon, to add to my indignity I began projectile shitting a torrent of red hot diarrhoea at speeds no currently available toilet bowl could hold.
On top of this I was sweating profusely and hallucinating like I'd had the wrong type of mushrooms on the Wetherspoons Farmhouse Breakfast which was now sliding down the cubicle walls.
An hour or so after I had left the lads and ran to the toilet one of them came to find me in the booth which now appeared to have been interior designed by Bobby Sands. I was about three stone lighter and pleading for an ambulance.

I was helpfully taken right past the hospital and dropped at home where a couple of hours of restorative sleep in the bath later, I came round.

Later, I found out from my chemistry studying pal that daffodils contain a dangerous alkaloid toxin and that the vast quantity of acidic cider sloshing about in my gut probably had a neutralising effect on the poison and eased my symptoms, however it was easily the most pain I have ever known in my entire life, and I have had some accidents in my time.

Ray Mears eats any old thing with an arsehole or a stamen and remains in fine fettle...I eat a flower which grows on every street in Britain and I basically turn inside out.

So there you go...if you only take one thing from this blog let it be this....

Only eat daffodils when preceded with a daft amount of barely legal scrumpy.

Peace be with you.

Bass Check 1-2...

2010-03-15T19:42:00.001Z