You lying get!

Inspired by a thread on the Word magazine website about things you believed as a child, I thought I'd compose a list of stuff that I believed as child because I was told it was true by other people, usually my mother or eldest sister.

• Celery leaves are poisonous and are not to be consumed under any circumstances. I never questioned why celery was sold with the leaves still attached if that was the case. And something in the back of my mind told me to not to eat celery leaves until I saw Nigella put them into a pot roast chicken last week. Mind you, perhaps that's Nigella trying to get rid of us and create her own super race of North London-dwelling gastronomes. My sister tried to pull the same trick with the last bit of tea or coffee in a mug but I never bought that one. What do you take me for? She still leaves the last bit of tea or coffee in a mug, which didn't sit right with me when I bought her an expensive coffee last week and she left a quarter of it.
• That Brian Clough lived in a big white house set on a hillside near the train line between Newark and Nottingham. My mother used to tell me this when we went on shopping trips to Nottingham. It wasn't until I was in my twenties and after Mr Clough had been found sleeping in a ditch 'near his home in Derby' (the same home he'd lived in for years) that I realised she lied. When I questioned her about it she said that it "broke the journey up to point out landmarks, even if they weren't real."
• That drinking pop directly from a can caused your tongue to get trapped in the hole and they'd have to cut your tongue off. I never thought that if this did happen (and to date I've never heard of it happening), then they'd just cut the can off.
• Swallowing chewing gum or bubble gum makes it wrap around your intestines and slowly kill you. I think what she was trying to say here is that she hated gum and didn't want me to have it.
• That the clown who used to roll the credits on at the end of Camberwick Green was actually my dad. I never questioned why Dad went to work, completely altered his appearance and dressed as a clown. This was given more weight when I once watched Camberwick Green with some cousins and, at the end, they pointed to the screen and shouted "There's Uncle Roy!" So someone else was telling them that Dad worked for Gordon Murray productions on a part-time basis.
• The Daddies Sauce bottle used to feature a neck band with a photo of a generic smiling dad that used to say underneath it "My favourite!" I was led to believe that was our Uncle Phil, as were most of the cousins in my large extended maternal family.

It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win

Yay! I finally figured out how to do all the stuff on Blogger I could do before but then couldn't do...if you see what I mean. I'm not very computer literate I'm afraid. Thanks to all you kind folks who offered suggestions as to the cause of my problems. All I had to do was click Blogger's new thing-a-me-jig. Hurrah!

Anyway, where were we? Aah yes, turning forty. I'll be celebrating my fortieth birthday in less than six months' time, and I'm dreading it already. I can never understand these people who want to celebrate their fortieths. I hate the fact I'm getting older. I suppose if I had kid I'd treat it differently. But how can you have kids when your a big kid yourself? My greatest dilemma in life is to try and choose between Sugar Puffs and Ricicles. See? I even eat kiddies's cereals. I suppose I should be eating Shredded Wheat, but they're so chuffing boring.
And when does it become unacceptable to wear t-shirts with the names of bands on? I'm writing this in a khaki Metallica t-shirt with the band logo on the front and the legend 'Death Magnetic' on the back. Is this type of garment the preserve of the fourteen year-old and not the forty year-old? Likewise, when do you stop wearing Converse sneakers? It's a bloody minefield. I mean, I want to stay 'down wi' kids' but by the same token I don't want to look like Tommy Saxondale (though I wouldn't mind a bit of his hair).

Staying on the subject of having kids, I'm reading Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern at the minute. It's based on this Justin's Twitter feed, the title's pretty self explanatory. If I was a dad (some chance!) I hope I'd be like Halpern Snr. He doesn't suffer fools gladly and treats his kids like adults. I don't mean like those awful liberal parents who nip down to the shop to buy their kids fags and believe they've got as much to learn from their kids as they have from them. He's the sort of dad who tells it like it is. No bullshit. What particularly struck a chord with me was when Justin took him a Lego model as a child and his dad told him it was crap. You see even as a kid I could never understand parents who put their kids' artwork up on the wall and tell them how great it was. It really used to annoy me on Blue Peter when they'd get the viewers to design the Christmas stamps. The winner of the first class letter stamp would always be a red splodge with a white splodge on top which was supposed to represent Father Christmas. On the display behind the presenters they'd display the other entrants and you wanted them to pick the really detailed thing done by some art A level students. Can you imagine these Christmas cards being delivered from abroad and the kind of message it sent out about Britain? I always wanted to shout at Simon Groom or Lesley Judd to go back and rethink what they think should have won. I always remember some party on a park in London (don't ask me which one, London parks after Hyde, Regent's and St James's all blur into one for me. You go there looking for two things, to get stabbed or jerked off) when I was about eight or nine in honour of the Queen or something. This must have been quite an important party because it was broadcast live during the school holidays. This party boasted the world's longest poster - painted by bloody kids of course - and at the very end of this poster was The Queen. Her Maj was duly escorted to her part of the poster where a youth worker had let the kids paint Our Lovely Queen Gawd Bless Yer Ma'am black. I seem to remember finding this absolutely hysterical and going to find Mum to show her. She turned around and walked straight out as soon as she saw it was Geoffrey off of Rainbow who was guiding The Queen around because she hated both him and everything to do with Rainbow.
Anyway, just thought I'd tell you that...

Right I'm off on my hols for massive chunks of the next month so there'll be no more posting, Faceberk, Twatter or whatever. I need a break from all this intertwat madness every once in awhile. I'm going to do what 70s rock stars used to do and get my head together in the country. In fact I'll be a bit like Yes when they recorded Tales From Topographic Oceans; they couldn't decide whether to record in the country or the city so they bought in straw bales and stuffed sheep to the recording studio in London. So I'll be going to both the country and the city. Best off both worlds, eh? Whichever, I'm jumping on a freedom moped out of this town.
I'll leave you with something nice and summery and one of only two songs I like by Springsteen, who doesn't like to see the girls in their summer clothes? Pip pip, have a good summer and I'll see you around. You'll have to click here to see it as Broooce doesn't want no Limey, Chevvy-hatin', blue-collar-anthem-deridin' dude embedding it.