Born to be Idle

Glasgow is the "laziest city in the UK" according to the findings of a national health poll.Researchers questioned 2,049 people during May for the not-for-profit organisation, Nuffield Health. About 75% of Glaswegians who responded* admitted they failed to exercise at least three times a week. This figure was 67% for people from Birmingham and Southampton, with London just behind on 66%, Bristol on 64% and Leeds and Newcastle on 62%. The survey also suggested that some Britons were so lazy they would rather watch a television programme they do not like than get out of their chair to change channels.

From the BBC News Website

What a sad reflection on today's society. But, sadly, an accurate one. We live in an ever increasing 'instant' society. Instant meals, instant communication, instant access to information. Time was when one had a sense of achievement when scouring an encyclopedia for information on a topic which added to your educational prowess. Now you can simply type words into 'Google' and the answer is before your very eyes within seconds.

The art of letter writing seems to be a dying art too. Years ago, I used to correspond with a friend in Newcastle Upon Tyne by letter. Yes, dear reader, letter. We used to communicate regularly, not by e-mail or text but by taking the time and effort to sit down and write before taking our chances in the hope that Royal Mail would actually deliver it (which they did on occasion) And we both appreciated the effort each of us put in.

Cooking a decent, nutritious meal used to be a pleasure too. (well, apart from some of my culinary disasters although I do prepare a mean cheese sauce) Now, more and more people come home from their inevitably stress-filled day at work (who isn't stressed at work these days?) stick a frozen ready-made meal into the microwave oven and eat it slouched on the couch in front of the television watching inane commercial-riddled tosh on a wide screen. And what do they eventually do with their dirty plates? (assuming they've bothered to use plates and aren't eating direct from the package) Stick 'em in the dish washer.

The particularly alarming paragraph in the above BBC news story was regarding people not getting out of their chair to change television channels. Alarming, because I watched Scotland's footballers give a pitiful performance in Norway tonight in a World Cup qualifying tie. Well, I lasted until half-time by which time Scotland were two goals down and had a player sent off. At that I switched the television off and went and did something more interesting instead. Like watching paint dry.

However, I thought of those pour souls in Glasgow, stuck on the couch, forced to watch the whole ninety minutes - because the remote control was an agonising few feet away...

*the other 25% couldn't be bothered to answer...

Monday Monday...

...will be so good to my darling grand-daughter Hannah. She will be two years old on 10 August and so it will be round to daughter Laura's house after work to join the festivities.

Wee Hannah may be just two but she already has the majority of my family wrapped around her little finger. She only has to flash those blue eyes and they all melt before her. But not her Papa, oh no. I can see through the little mite and I let her off with nothing.

I do, honestly....

Happy Birthday darling - Papa will be round later...

A Long Life

The state pension retirement age could be increased further, the UK's pensions regulator has told the BBC. David Norgrove said rising life expectancy meant millions of people would "undoubtedly" have to wait longer in future to draw a state pension. People will not save as much for retirement as in the past, with many people "frightened" to do so, he said.

The state pension age is due to rise to 68, and Pensions Minister Angela Eagle said there were no plans to raise that.

From the BBC News Website

Sometimes I just don't know what to believe. On the one hand, we have health experts telling us that more people die of heart disease in Scotland than anywhere else in Europe. This, we are told, is mainly down to poor diet with too much fatty foods. Scots penchant for the 'chippy' and Chinese and Indian takeaways is a popular as ever despite the recession. I have to say I'm prone to these myself and I know many other people who share similar culinary tastes. There are also those ecologists who tell us the planet is on the verge of extinction as a result of me leaving my television on standby every night instead of switching it off at the mains. Violent crime is also apparently on the increase. If one was to read all of those stories consecutively, one may assume we'll all be dead by the end of next week. We're all doomed...

On the other hand we have other 'experts' tell us that life expectancy is higher than ever and that the human race is getting much older. Advances in medicine and a realisation that eating habits need to change, we need to drink less and stop smoking altogether mean people are living much longer than in years gone by. In fact, some experts believe some humans may live until they're 150 in the not so distant future. It would be childish of me at this point to mention a blogging friend of some note, Adullamite, who can't be far away from becoming the first of that ilk... In any case, given the concerns raised above does anyone want to live longer?

Britain recently lost two of its very senior citizens. Harry Patch, the last Briton to have served in the First World War, died aged 111 while a few days earlier Britain's oldest citizen Henry Allingam took his last breath at 113. Why did those two gentlemen live so long? The reasons are unclear although I loved Mr Allingham's reply when he was asked the secret to old age. 'Cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women!' he replied. I suspect Mr Allingham died with a smile on his face!

My father died at 58 and his father died at 45. So the chances of me receiving a message from the King to celebrate by 100th birthday are slim to say the least. As a father and grandfather, naturally I wish to live as long as possible to see my family try and achieve happiness and for little Jack and Hannah to grow up to be responsible, talented and popular adults. However, Ladbrokes are giving long odds I'll reach pensionable age.

Which, thanks to those health experts, is becoming further out of reach. That said, I have an unopened bottle of whisky in the cupboard. I'm off to the shops for twenty Embassy Regal - while I'm away if any wild, wild woman fancies getting in touch...

That's What They Call Progress

The old black and white photograph on the main page of this blog is of Tynecastle Park, home of the glorious Heart of Midlothian, Edinburgh's finest football club, taken in the 1950s. For those of you who read Adullamite's excellent prose, he actually appears in this photo, third from the front with the flat cap and scarf...The photo in this post is of Hearts with the Scottish Cup in 1956. Anyone of the Hibernian persuasion who doesn't know what this is, drop me an e-mail and I'll try to explain...

Before the auld fella retaliates, those days were before my time, being a child of the 1960s. But one of the many interesting aspects of this photograph is the number of smiling faces. Times were hard in post war Britain (as Adullamite will no doubt concur) but there seemed to be more of a community spirit then and a sense of knowing life was tough but just getting on with it. Going to the football was a welcome release from the travails of everyday life and in those less complicated times if you wanted to go and watch the finest team in Scotland - as Hearts were in the 1950s - you just headed for Gorgie on the tram, handed over your pennies and you stood on the terracing to enjoy the skills of some of the finest football players this country has ever produced. Compare that to now.

Hearts will face Dinamo Zagreb in the Europa League play-off round in a couple of weeks with the second leg due to be played at Tynecastle on 24 August. Tynecastle no longer has open terraces with the option of just turning up just before kick-off. Now you have to purchase a ticket for the all-seated 'stadium' (the name Tynecastle Park has been confined to the history books) with the top prices for the game against the Croatians being a whopping £32. I may be wrong here but I suspect £32 may have got you into several years worth of games at Tynecastle less than fifty years ago. And technology is such now that the old season ticket books - where you tore off your ticket for each game from a small booklet - have been replaced with something called a smartcard. I got my small piece of plastic the other week and shall attempt to use it for the first time today when I visit the old ground to watch Hearts pre-season friendly with Sunderland. Knowing Hearts history with such 'innovations' I fully expect it not to work...

Such technology is a sign of our times. Those not going to the game today can keep up with events minute by minute through the internet, mobile phone and Twitter updates - if you asked anyone in the aforementioned black and white photograph if they were on Twitter there would be a fair chance you would be carted away by men in white coats...

Such technology isn't always put to good use. The BBC News carried a story about the release of the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs the other day. As if to demonstrate to the younger and perhaps uninitiated people of today they ran a rather grainy old clip of the train involved on its journey back in 1963. Some young techno geek thought it might be a good idea to add a sound effect to the clip and added the shriek of a steam train for authenticity. Except the train involved was diesel. Well, it must have seemed like good idea to some ignorant BBC research assistant...

I wonder how many of the crowd at Tynecastle today will be smiling in the same way their contemporaries did five decades ago? I'll hazard a guess and say not a lot. Of course, those in the 1950s were watching the likes of Dave Mackay, Willie Bauld, Alfie Conn, Jimmy Wardhaugh and Alex Young - players who brought joy to even the sternest of fans.

Today, Hearts supporters will be watching the likes of Christian Nade attempt to hit a barn door....

Men Should Weep

Back in 1990 during the World Cup Finals in Italy, Paul Gascoigne, occasional footballer, wife beater and drunk, let his emotions get the better of him during England's semi-final with West Germany and cried as the referee booked him. His reaction was based on the fact this wasn't any ordinary booking - because of his indiscipline earlier in the tournament this booking meant he would miss the World Cup Final if England were to get there - which, of course, they didn't. Nearly two decades on, Gascoigne was in tears again last weekend but this time for a more understandable reason - the death of his mentor Sir Bobby Robson, the man who was in charge of England at the time of Gascoigne's indiscretion.

I read recently about one of those studies that are carried out for no particular reason which stated that 25 per cent of men admitting to crying once a month and letting the floodgates open. I would hazard a guess and say that none of the men interviewed for this research were Scots. Because in the male-dominated Scottish culture it simply goes against the grain for a man to show his emotions. Crying is for babies, women and wimps.

We all suffer heartache and tragedy at some point in our lives. It seems to be a Scots trait that men don't show how much they suffer. Twelve years ago when my father died suddenly and unexpectedly at just 58 years of age, I was an emotional wreck. But in the highly charged weeks that followed, I chewed on my lower lip and kept the tears at bay - at least in public. Alone and in the still of the middle of the night my tears flowed but I was damn sure I wasn't going to let anyone, not even my wife, be aware of this. Why this was the case I don't know.

Three months ago tears flowed aplenty when my daughter Michaela helped to bury her fiance after his even more unexpected death at the age of 21. But the majority of men at the funeral and at the graveside kept themselves in check. My heart broke as I watched my daughter suffer but, again, I fought off the tears.

Yet we live in an age where public displays of emotion are far more commonplace that used to be the case. The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 - just six months after my father's passing - brought an outpouring of grief in this country that was unprecedented and certainly startled the Royal family. It now seems the norm whenever someone dies in an accident or is the victim of a fatal attack that flowers, teddy bears, football scarves and shirts are laid at the scene as a tribute. I don't remember this happening at all when I was growing up. Grief was a very private thing, something kept within one's one mind.

But it seems that many Scotsmen, certainly including me, are out of step with modern society. It would appear maintaining a stiff upper lip and being the strong, silent type is no longer viewed heroically. Rather, such behaviour is regarded as being an unfeeling, heartless person, a cold potato. The accepted view nowadays is that men are allowed to sob, admired, even, for doing so, when it is something important.

This time next week may well see Scots finally succumb and join the ranks of 'modern men' and wear our hearts on our collective sleeves. For if Scotland's footballers lose their World Cup qualifying tie in Norway, I suspect we'll all be in tears...

Ode to a Runaway Haggis

A haggis recipe was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish in Scotland, a historian has claimed. Historian Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called The English Hus-Wife. The title would pre-date Robert Burns' poem To A Haggis, which brought fame to the delicacy, by at least 171 years. But former world champion haggis maker Robert Patrick insisted: "Nobody's going to believe it."

From the BBC News Website.

Too right, Mr Patrick. Would an Englishman be able to pen these words?

ODE TO A RUNAWAY HAGGIS

Ye slippery, sliddery hunk o’ mait,
Ye’ve gan an’ slippet aff ma plait,
Ye’ve made me look sae bloody blate in front o’ a’
Weel wid I like tae spread yir guts a’ o’er that wa

The piper there, a sturdy chiel
Wis blawin’ loud an’ strong an’ weel,
Ye made HIM look a bloody feel, ye senseless ba’’
Ye micht hae picked a better time for yir doonfa’.

Ye graceless, shapeless, loathesome lump,
Ye made me look a proper chump,
Intil the bucket you I’ll dump, I’ll nae forgie,
I’ll tramp ye ‘til the flair runs wi’ yir bree,

I’ll spread yir entrails far an’ wide,
There’s nae place for ye tae hide,
Nae mair frae aff the plait ye’ll glide, ye nasty scunner,
A thing like you’ll nae mak o’ me a nine day wunner.

Jeez, the spellchecker on my computer's just packed in...

Guess There's No Use in Hangin' Round...

Guess there's no use in hangin' 'round
Guess I'll get dressed and do the town
I'll find a crowded avenue
Though it will be empty without you

I can't get used to losing you
No matter what I try to do
Gonna spend my whole life through
Loving you

Called up some girl I used to know
After I heard her say, "Hello"
Couldn't think of anything to say
Since you're gone it happens every day

I can't get used to losing you
No matter what I try to do
Gonna spend my whole life through
Loving you

I'll find somebody, wait and see
Who am I kidding, only me
Cuz no one else could take your place
Guess that I am just a hopeless case

I can't get used to losing you
No matter what I try to do
Gonna spend my whole life through
Loving you


A video of The Beat's excellent cover version is to the right of this blog.