Valerie

The madam opened the brothel door to see a rather dignified, well-dressed, good-looking man in his late 40s or early 50s.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I want to see Valerie,” the man replied.

“Sir, Valerie is one of our most expensive ladies. Perhaps you would prefer someone else,” said the madam.

“No. I must see Valerie,” was the man's reply.

Just then, Valerie appeared and announced to the man that she charged £5,000 a visit. Without hesitation, the man pulled out five hundred ten pound notes and gave them to Valerie, and they went upstairs. After an hour, the man calmly left.

The next night, the same man appeared again, demanding to see Valerie. Valerie explained that no one had ever come back two nights in a row – too expensive – and there were no discounts. The price was still £5,000. Again the man pulled out the money, gave it to Valerie and they went upstairs. After an hour, he left.

The following night the man was there again. Everyone was astounded that he had come for the third consecutive night, but he paid Valerie and they went upstairs. After their session, Valerie questioned the man.

“No one has ever been with me three nights in a row. Where are you from?” she asked.

The man replied, “Edinburgh.”

“Really,” she said, “I have family in Edinburgh.”

“I know,” the man said. “Your father died, and I am your sister's lawyer. She asked me to give you your £15,000 inheritance.”

The moral of the story is that three things in life are certain:

1. Death

2. Taxes

3. Being screwed by a lawyer

Happy Birthday Hannah

A very happy first birthday to my darling grand-daughter Hannah. It's hard to believe she's a year old already. If she can avoid splitting her head open and having a tin of paint poured over her, then today should be a good one!

The Weekend Ahead

Another Friday night. And another weekend. Two things stand out for me this weekend. Firstly, the football season starts again tomorrow. Hearts fans have had little to look forward to since we were knocked out the Scottish Cup by Motherwell on a cold dark January evening at Fir Park. Since then my passion for Hearts has ebbed to the extent I was, at one point, seriously considering not renewing my season ticket. But renew, I did.

The excitement which greets the start of a new football season is always welcome. With a new manager in the so far impressive Csaba Laszlo and the players seemingly having their enthusiasm rekindled, there is hope once more at Tynecastle. My main concern is that it's basically the same group of players who toiled at the end of last season. There is only one fit striker - Jamie Mole - and it's difficult to see where the goals will come from. But I'll be at Tynecastle tomorrow - and, for the first time in months, actually looking forward to the game. That said, I'll probably be moaning tomorrow about how shambolic Hearts were and how we'll be fighting relegation. But, for a few hours at least, I'm looking forward to the new season.

On Sunday it's my grand-daughter Hannah's first birthday. I can scarcely believe it's a year since the little tike came into my life. She's walking now but this may not necessarily be a good thing as, in the past fortnight, she's had three stitches inserted in a head wound after walking into a door and had a pot of paint poured over her, courtesy of big brother Jack.

So. here's to a happy Hearts fan and happy Hannah come the end of the weekend!

Grinding to a Halt

I love Edinburgh. It's a fantastic, vibrant, beautiful city and I'm proud to live here. But there is one drawback. Whenever something happens on the city by-pass, chaos ensues.

We've had two days of non-stop rain in Scotland's capital city. Now Scotland should be used to rain, even in August. In fact, particularly in August. You can stick your mortgage on the fact that when the Edinburgh Festival begins there will be heavy rain at some point during the three weeks. But the rainfall in the past forty-eight hours has obviously been too much for the city by-pass. There was flooding in parts of it this morning and at one point the road had to be closed. And, dear reader, you know what's coming next.

Traffic on the south side of the city ground to a halt. I work for an organisation which has flexi-time and I opted - foolishly as it turned out - to head for the slave galley (sorry, office) a bit later than usual. I left my house at 8.45 for the usually efficient Lothian Bus Service 3 from Mayfield. I arrived at the office just a few miles away at 11.40. Nearly three bloody hours to travel ten miles.

The knock-on effect from the partial closure of the by-pass was horrendous. There was a long, snaking queue of traffic all the way from the by-pass to Dalkeith where it just simply stopped. Nothing moved for the best part of half an hour and then eventually it inched its way along towards the south side of Edinburgh. When I got to the office, sarcastic cheers greeted my arrival. It was damn near lunch time. Two hours of my life had been given away to the nightmare of trying to travel from A to B in Scotland's capital city.

Can the city fathers do anything about it? Will they do anything about it?

Sadly, I fear not....

Should Mothers Stay at Home?

A growing number of people are concerned about the impact working mothers have on family life, according to British research. Should mothers stay home and look after the family? A study by Cambridge University in the UK has found that support of mothers having a career is beginning to decline. In 1998, 51% of women and 45.9% of men believed that family life would not suffer if a woman went to work. This number decreased to 46% of women and 42% of men in 2002.

From the BBC News website

The inference from this research appears to be that working mums are to blame for declining standards of British society. If mothers stayed at home like the dutiful wives they're meant to be, to look after the children and cook and clean for the husband then life in Britain would be idyllic. Wouldn't it?

This may have been the way of things in this country fifty years ago. But life in
21st century Britain is far different. The economics of this country mean that most people simply have to work. When my gruesome twosome daughters Laura and Michaela were children, their mother had to work at the weekends in order that we could make ends meet. Which meant we seldom did things as a family and this increased the strain on our relationship. But if she hadn't gone out to work we wouldn't have been to afford the mortgage. Now, years later, daughter Laura struggles with part-time work and having to pay what are, quite frankly, outrageous nursery fees.

This is something that needs looking at. The cost of childcare in this country is ridiculous. If the government would spend less of the taxpayers money on futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more on the people who really need it - the working people of this country - then perhaps society would improve. I'm not blaming the government for bad parenting. All parents have an obligation to bring up their children as best they can. However, for some, the financial struggle of raising their offspring is a real hardship. If real financial assistance was available for families, perhaps one of the parents may consider not working full-time and spending more time with their children.

To my mind, it shouldn't just be mothers who should be seen as the ones staying at home. Fathers should have the right to do this too - the term house husband should be looked in the same light as house wife.

It seems to me the researchers at Cambridge University have too much time on their hands. I wonder if any of them have children?

Local Hero

One of the best films ever made - Local Hero - was on the Freeview channel Film Four tonight. I hadn't seen it for ages and thoroughly enjoyed watching it again.

For those who haven't seen it - and it's astonishing to think a quarter of a century has passed since it was made - Burt Lancaster plays an oil billionaire Happer who sends colleague Mac to a remote Scottish village to secure the property rights for an oil refinery they want to build. Mac teams up with Danny and starts the negotiations, the locals are keen to get their hands on the 'Silver Dollar' and can't believe their luck. However a local hermit and beach scavenger, Ben Knox, lives in a shack on the crucial beach which he also owns. Happer is more interested in the Northern Lights and Danny in a surreal girl with webbed feet, Marina. Mac is used to a Houston office with fax machines but is forced to negotiate on Bens terms.

It's great seeing the likes of Scots actors Peter Capaldi - now famous for his incessant swearing in the fabulous political comedy The Thick of It - Denis Lawson (uncle of Ewan McGregor) and Alex Norton in early roles. The sadly departed Fulton Mackay is also there as is John Gordon Sinclair, better known for Gregory's Girl (by the same director, Bill Forsyth) And an early role for a young Jonathan Watson, now the star of the football comedy Only an Excuse.

Add the emotion tugging theme music from Mark Knopfler and you have a truly fabulous film. Just the thing to cheer up a miserable Monday!

The Best Days of Your Life?

It's another sign of getting older - counting the years that have passed since you left school. It's more than thirty years for me now but I can still recall it as if it were yesterday.

I've been thinking about my school day lately as I've been in touch recently with an old school friend. Like me, Colleen remembers some of the old school trips and some of the things we used to get up to. However, her view that school days are the happiest of your life is not something I share.

I didn't particularly enjoy school. In fact I detested primary school and the nightmare that was school dinners. Truly awful, quite inedible gunge that was passed as food was, at times, quite sickening. Literally so, as the Commandant who was the teacher in charge of the school meals hut forced every child to eat what was on their plate. It was so awful, some of us used to smuggle out items of food in handkerchiefs so we could show the old battle axe our plate was empty. For nine year old children, this was quite traumatic.

Secondary school was a bit better - but then the work was harder! I fell through, what I call, the fourteen year old trapdoor. The first two years at secondary school were fine. But then, at fourteen years of age, I discovered girls. At the same time, punk rock was coming to the fore. With both these major events in my life happening, my school work never stood a chance. From 1976 to 1978 I lost interest in working at school and concentrated my efforts on other things.

I left school on 31 May 1978 with just four 'O' levels. I started work, in a furniture store, four days later. A dead end job which I hated. But I soon got another job and learned more away from school than I ever did at it. I tried to warn my two daughters about the perils of falling through the fourteen year old trapdoor. Laura ignored me and fell into the same abyss which I suspect she regrets now, even though she has two wonderful children of her own and is busy working part-time. But at just twenty-two she could have had so much more career-wise. Michaela did listen and has done well for herself. She still left school at sixteen but she has a decent job, her own car and until last year her own flat. Her ambition, I'm delighted to say, still burns brightly.

Of course, school days three decades ago were much different. We had to wear school uniform for a start. And there was corporal punishment for those who misbehaved. Six of the best from the maths teacher was one way of teaching you how to add up! And there were no computers in schools in the 1970s - certainly not the one I attended.

The best days of your life? Sadly, not for me. School taught me nothing about what to expect in the big wide world. They say what you do at school can shape the rest of your life. But, for me, women, relationships, music and football were far greater influences.

If the lovely Colleen reads this, she may know exactly what I mean....