Another day in the hood

Back in July, I detailed an action-packed day in the Brixton 'hood. Scroll down to the first July entry. Last Sunday I had another eventful day which shared some of the homely niceness, but added a lot more gritty street realism. This time I:

1. Baked a cake. Apple and plum this time, following the same basic recipe as the blueberry and pear one from the summer. Tasty apples from the Bingley garden.



2. Witnessed a fight in Tesco. This was brilliant! I had only just entered and was choosing some bananas (must have a bit of green, no brown) when there were shouts from the entrance a few metres away. A big guy was shouting 'Don't slap me!' and was trying to hit a woman. She was screaming about something and trying to hit him back. Her son (I guess) was screaming 'HE HIT MY MUM! YOU F*CKER!' and trying to hit the first guy. The first guy then chinned him. Lots of shoppers were gathering to watch and the security guards piled in to try and stop it. They initially seemed to have done the trick and wrestled the three protagonists apart. Then the boy realised that he was surrounded by weaponry, grabbed a few pot plants from the aisle and started chucking them at the first guy. It all flared up again - lots of shouts, screams and swearing. In the chaos that followed someone actually threw a child's pushchair across the store. A child started crying (I don't think they were in the pushchair at the time). I stood gawping, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. The son was pushed outside and continued to yell about what he was going to do to the first guy. It all calmed down, 3 police cars, 1 police van and 1 ambulance rolled up, and shoppers eventually got back to their shopping. I went home and excitedly told CP all about it. Superb.

Sadly, a photo will not follow.

3. submitted a legal action against a shockingly incompetent / downright crooked* internet-based mobile phone company. I won't name them here, I'll wait until I have won my claim before I do that. I signed up for one of those too-good-to-be-true free phone contracts earlier in the year: send your bills in and if you adhere to our ludicrously strict small print we send your money back. Well the company in question haven't given me the money back, despite me adhering to their ludicrously strict small print, and have repeatedly bullshat me with excuses / lies* about problems with their computers, claim backlogs and bank complications. I realised that my polite, increasingly firm emails/phone calls were just being ignored and it was time to get legal on their ass. Smell my writ you mothers!

(* delete as applicable, but it's the latter)


Then I had a nice sit and a cup of tea.

"joke"

CP was very ill last week, totally wiped out by some evil virus. So poorly in fact, that our booked and paid for jaunt to Bruges had to be abandoned. She could barely move for much of the week, and felt nauseous when she did. I was genuinely quite worried at one point and called the GP to arrange a home visit. CP hadn't eaten or drunk anything for several days yet still felt sick for most of the time. I came home from work after the GP had visited and asked how things had gone. CP then began talking quite animatedly, but instead of answering my question she started muttering things like, "They're all the same you know...they control the world...always after money, looking out for themselves...weird customs...". I was baffled - what was going on? I picked up the bottle of pills by her side and it became clear - the pharmacist had given her a dose of anti-semitics by mistake. Well, you know what doctors' handwriting is like.


Thankfully, she's made a full recovery.

Hey, Blues Baby B!

Occasional Tombolablog cruiser Christophe turned 28 last Friday and I only realised today. Oops. If you're reading, here's a gift. And for everyone else, here's a gift that keeps on giving. It's probably worth fast forwarding through the first 30secs though.



This popped up on my ipod earlier and brought a big grin to my face. A timeless classic.

Cheap thrills...

This prompted a Beavis & Butthead style 'heheheheh' chortle when I spotted it on Brick Lane earlier today. You'll probably need to click on the picture to be able to make out all of the intelligent additions to the poster.

























[Tombolablog's lawyers would like to point out that Tombolablog in no way endorses the claims made in the above photograph. Legal ed.]

Hey, old St Pauls! ...when the grass is jewelled...

For several weeks I'd been searching for an opportunity to engineer an entry about a popular and memorable Primary School hymn. So imagine my delight upon reading this story on the BBC website last night, it also being the main story on the evening news.

If you're not sure what I'm getting at, here's the key quote:

"An MoD spokesman added: 'As a precautionary measure air-to-air refuelling has been suspended for all Nimrod aircraft, until the results of a full investigation have been considered.' "

Wonderful. I think it's accurate to say that the air was punched when I spotted that. All of those regular discussions about the song and its apparent glaring flaw can now be binned then. That third line is not there purely because nothing else rhymes with 'jewelled'. Jet planes DO meet in the air to be refuelled, and they DO do it in autumn. Well, they did until they started breaking.

So those lyrics in full. Get out your 'Come and Praise' and turn to hymn number 4 (Emily can probably correct me on that). All together now....

Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled,
And the silk in a chestnut shell,
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled,
All these things I love so well.

So I mustn't forget
No, I mustn't forget
To say a great big thank you
No, I mustn't forget.

Clouds that look like familiar faces
And winter's moon with frosted rings
Smell of bacon as I fasten up my laces
And the milkman sings.

Whipped-up spray that is rainbow-scattered
And a swallow curving in the sky
Shoes so comfy though they're worn out and they're battered
And the taste of apple pie.

Scent of gardens when the rain's been falling
And a minnow darting down a stream
Picked-up engine that's been stuttering and stalling
And a win for my home team*.


*This is the version that you will have had in your hymn book, but 'a win for Man City' is the more popular line that can be heard in assemblies throughout the land.

I was going to stop there but now other school hymn memories have been stirred. Similar to the altered City line in 'Autumn Days', 'When a knight won his spurs' (Come & Praise, no. 82 [if '82' is correct then that's an impressive yet weird thing to have retained]) would be reworded thus:

'When City won Spurs,
and the score was ten-nil.
David White got six,
and Stevie Redmond got four'

[All I can remember of the original version is that the first line was 'When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old'].

The other one that I remember well is about how there is loads of stuff in this world, and it's all due to one thing:

'There are hundreds of sparrows, thousands, millions,
They're two a penny, far too many, there must be.
There are hundreds of sparrows, thousands, millions,
But God knows everyone and God knows me.'

The other verses followed this pattern, with other things substituted for sparrows. 'Planets' is the only other one that I can remember. If it was written now then perhaps 'TV channels', or 'types of Special K' would feature. I'm not sure where this blog is going anymore to be honest. I meant to go to bed ages ago.

My final school hymn memory is also probably a good illustration of an element of my personality. In particular, the tendency to be awkard purely for my own amusement. At St. Paul's we'd occasionally have classes where we'd do some singing practice (probably a teacher had to do something else so a few classes got lumped together in the Hall). We'd cover the usuals, and then Mr. Hubbold (who played the piano) would ask for requests from the hymn book. Up would go the hands and without fail this would mean an airing of 'Autumn Days' (we never tired of singing about those jet planes!) or maybe 'All things bright and beautiful'. At some point in these classes, however, I twigged that it would be more interesting to pick one from the book that we NEVER sang. Not because I was interested in hearing a new hymn, nor that I liked the words and wanted to sing them. No, I knew that if I picked an obscure one then nobody would know how it went and that would result in an awkward, stunted farce. Even better, if I was really lucky I might pick one that Mr Hubbold couldn't even play, which would be brilliant. I'm pretty sure that if I was asked to pick a hymn on one occasion, my eagerly outstretched hand was ignored every time after that. I have a vague recollection that I did try the trick a couple of times and Mr Hubbold just said no. So we sang Autumn Days again.