Lost and found

A sigh of relief as Santa's missing sack of toys has been found in his secret hidout. This is good news as it means one less visit to the shops....hooray!

Old news, new news, any news will do.

It's been a long time since I last entered something on the Blog. The reason being that life has been very busy on every front in the build up to Christmas. Work has been a relentless round of school lessons, assemblies, special youth nights, making films and staff conferences. The last of it is this week where I am doing assemblies every morning in the grammar school and 2 carol services at the primary school (well they actually go to the church). Tomorrow I take on the role of judge in the primary school 'D' Factor talent contest (D is for Dunbar not diabolical). It's by no means a light duty...in my hands lies the self esteem of many a wanna be pop star, High School Musical extra and actors. And then there's the parents who will take the rejection of their child personally as they desperately try to compensate for their own failings as a child through their own kids.

It's also been busy with kids Christmas activities. Andrew is in the lead for the number of selection boxes aquired from all the different groups he belongs to. Santa keeps popping up everywhere I go, and we keep buying Christmas presents on his behalf and losing them. It's been good to have visitors...Sarah & Rob Graham last weekend and mum and dad the weekend before. For Christmas itself we have only got 13 for lunch as Emma's sisters are going to other places. At some point I need to go and buy some food. Emma's boycott of ASDA means early morning visits to Somerfield. Why? because they are still stocking their meat counter as if a major new supermarket never existed up the road from them. That means nobody buys it, so the next day its all marked down. Bargains galore...large chicken 87p, cod 74p, 2 packets of breaded chicken 99p. You just have to fight through the pensioners and Polish workers to get the best stuff.

Finally we are all preparing to say our farewells to Colin, Sharon and the boys who are doing a runner to Australia in January. Aparantly they are doing it to escape the church magazine rota. Somehow there's not a sense of 'that's the last we will see of them', and Emma is already timetabling a trip out there in the next couple of years. The world has shrunk with improved travel and the tinternet!

So in case i don't make it to the computer again before now and 25th December, have a good Christmas wherever you are.

Wedding dorks

One other thing I forgot to mention about Sarah’s wedding was the rehearsal. Throughout the whole thing there was a bunch of kids on the church roof. They had obviously inherited their parents genes that were evident at the Strangeways riots of the 90’s. They must be proud of them.

It reminded me of mine and Emma’s wedding when the local youths helped decorate the church by writing mine and Emma’s names on the church lych-gate in graffiti. They also nicked my uncle Harold’s taxi sign off the top of his car. We got revenge on them by unleashing Danny Love on the bagpipes. That scared them off!

Muck!

The first of the Borders cross country races got underway yesterday with a race in the English village of Norham. This is my favourite course as it takes you through marshes, cow fields and some pretty steep banks. This year the rope had been brought back. Basically the hill is so steep and muddy that you need a rope to pull yourself up. Greta fun and I came 21st out of 111. These races are not very serious and this was proven when the local farmer joined the run in his wellie’s and overalls. The kids also did a tamer version and did better than last year. The next one is in Dunbar where I am going to try and get in the top 15. As Raven always puts it…’let the challenge begin!’

That's ADSA price!

It finally opened its doors today after months...years of planning...ASDA opened its Dunbar store. Time will tell if it will bring closure to all the charity shops on the high street of Dunbar and the other little shops, but for now it is the new kid on the block and the way some locals talk about it ou would think the second coming has just taken place. Put it into perspective...its a shop that sells cheap stuff. It will never beat Mr Ullah's of Brunage Food Store. Anyway look at the photo of this multi million pound stores promotion shot. How emabrrassing for them.

Master of Disguise

It was Halloween the other day and for most of my life as a Christian I have been told how Halloween is a doorway to the occult and all that evil stuff. I have always accepted that as fact until we moved up here. In Scotland it a big event. The kids go mad for it and trick or treating (known as 'guising') is all good humoured and no real mannace is used to get sweets off the neighbours. In fact I drew the conclusion that celebrating Halloween is as much likely to cause a kid to fall prey to the occult, as selling Christmas cards at ASDA is going to cause someone to turn to Christ. Yes of course there are loads of other dangers but the kids round here always have an adult near by in case some perv lures them into his/her lair.
For Stuart, Halloween is the highlight of the year as he gets to dress up. He found good use for his wedding jacket....Dracula! Then my morals were put firmly to the test. Should I let him go guising? It was then I realised most kids in Dunbar know who i am through my schools work. So if I was to do it I had to go in disguise myself. So off i went dressed as a mummy wearing a balding grave diggers wig and a grey cape. Even with that on and no possibility of anyone recognising me I felt such a tit. The first door was knocked and my neighbour appears staring at Stuart (also masked) and then at me. He had no idea who I was but was clearly initimidated by the scene and ran in and gave Stuart a hand full of sweets. The next house was the same...and so on. It was as near to becoming an armed robber as i will ever get...masked and armed with a dangerous child. I couldn't believe how easy it was to get a bag full of sweets...but at the same time how embarrassing it was. We reached the street where one of the local fundamentalist Christians lives...and it was there I chickened out and returned home in case she tried to exorcise me or something.

Dunbar Crime

Andrew had his first encounter woth Dunbar crime last week. He had left his 2 month old bike at school to go to his mates house. When he returned it was gone. We checked with the janitor at the school to see if CCTV had picked anything up...but no as it switches off at 5pm! Useful CCTV that is then? Anyway having driven around some of Dunbar's higher crime rate areas...there aren't many so it didn't take long...we decided to report it to the police. To our surprise sat behind the counter was Andrew's bike in full working order. Someone had handed it in after they found it near the railway tunnel. It's just over a month until Christmas...it was a brand new bike...these acts of honesty don't really happen do they? What was even more amusing was that the police didn't even ask me for proof of who I was. They just handed it over.

Wedding of the year

Well since my last entry our Sarah has got married to Rob. It meant a trip down to Manchester for us all. As we were about to leave for the tedious 4and half hour journey, Cath rings to say that everyone in Burnage has got the runs and throwing up. As Isabelle was going to be a bridesmaid then we didn't want her getting it too. So to avoid the plague we went to Cheshire to stay in Cath & Rich's new pad in Knutsford. It's very nice there and very posh. We did our usual tour of the charity shops and the assistants just looked at us with pity as if we were in need of their chritable help. Its very nice indeed. In the mornings I went for a run to Tatton Park..the local country estate with a magnificent lake and woodland. I went for a call of nature myself and ended up surrounded by deer...and most wrrying was the stags who were growling at me and waving their antelrs. I asn't sure if it was a mating ritual or a message to tell me to sod off. Either way I wasn't hanging around to find out.
Anyway back to the plague...Thursday night at Cath's new house Isabelle decides to get it. Somehow it reached her and she threw up all over the walls and carpet. Better out than in! By Saturday she was fine.

So the wedding day arrived....where were Isabelle's bridesmaid shoes? In Knutsford was the answer...so off I went back to the Cheshire life. It was a fine day and good to see loads of people who we haven't seen for donkeys. All my dad's siblings were there too...a first since my grandma died. Everyone looked older and fatter. I do too but not that much.

So that's the last of the weddings for a while unless Rebecca decides to get married or Emma Beddows! Whilst we were there Sharon & Colin's visas for Oz arrived so it looks like our next family get together will be to send them off unless Rob & Sarah decide to have a baby...the race is on!

Photo: My dad and his siblings. Isabelle & Sarah and us all.

John Muir the movie

Last weekend we had the presentations for the John Muir Award that I ran with a load of youngen's in the summer. I also got the award for being involved. Part of it was making a spoof film about Muir himself. Needless to say it went down well with the kids. In the USA Muir is a hero, not just some local boy as he is in Dunbar. It will be interesting to see how they take it knowing how poor their sense of humour...sorry humor is. Apparantly it was shown here to some important JM people and there was a slight wind blowing in the room as the tumbleweed rolled past! Here's the link if you want to have a look yourself.

John Muir is the Conservator

School Camp

I have recently returned from school camp in the Trossachs. A week with 145 10 and 11 year olds doing loads of outdoor activities. The school have started to trust me enough (or are desperate) to give me a couple of the looney tune kids to look after. I had 10 lads at the start of the week to look after...by the end of the week there would be 8. The first was lost on Tuesday. His contract specified that if he was threatening or violent then he would be removed and put in a cabin with a teacher on his own....the alternative was going home. I just happened to be there as he tried to punch holes out of someone who gave him the wrong kind of look, so off he went cursing me because it was my fault he was in trouble? By Wednesday we had lost another. One kid had been a bit withdrawn and mardy all week. I thought it was because he was a ginger and used to living a life on the edge of things. He was also a bit spotty for a 10 year old...but then that's because he had chicken pox! I am a youth worker not a doctor... how was I supposed to know. Off he went too. I nearly lost another kid on our early morning run. The run ends up on a slide (see picture) which is fast anyway, but in the torrential rain its lethal as one kid discovered when his head nbanged off the sides of it at high speed.

There were lots of challenges like how to avoid Isabelle who was also there. I didn't want to be in her way and stand accused of being her embarrassing dad. Although to be fair if she had seen me on the flying fox or the cat walk she would have been justified. Here is a picture of me on the flying fox looking ridiculous. I also did the cat walk which is basically a beam accross two Scotch Pines about 30ft in the air. I decided that it might be fun to take a picture from up there...but as I stood looking down my legs were like Shakin Stevens performing This Ole House. Isabelle did the pole climb which introduces them to one use of a pole...they save the dancing stuff until they are grown up. It's simple...you climb a pole and jump off and try and hit a big red thing. Talking of poles...the centre was run by them and I take my hat off to their effciency at meal times. Every 3 hours we were given a cooked meal. The kids get hearty portions, but if you are anything over the 4ft 2" then chef thinks your'e an adult and gives you twice as much. By the end of the week I was feeling very lardy indeed. Still all the kids had a good time.

Cross Country?

Saturday was the start of the cross country season. It was a glorious day and a short race to warm us up for the mud, ice, thorns, crap and sludge that lies ahead of us this winter. 4 x 4km relay in Dunfermline. Dunfermline is like Dunbar in that it is rapidly expanding with new houses made by the same firms. Duloch Park was the venue for the race. 12 months ago when Duloch Park was chosen as the venue for the race, Duloch Park was just that....open fields, marshland, etc. Today Duloch park is a new estate and as indistinct as the next one. Duloch Park is now Duloch Muir...5 bedroom luxury houses with a field next to them.
The race itself was quite exciting as you have to get into a pen in the order of your team mates are going to run. Then as your previous runner returns the marshal lets you go and the adrenelin gets you running like mad. It was a tough long and winding road (dirt path) and I lost 4 places to beanpole athletes who flew past me. Eventually we came 28th out of 54 as a team, and I did my 4km in a slow 15:45. I think a bit of work is needed there then seen as the winner did it in 12: 20!

Of mice and men

They're back! Lying in bed at 3.30 am and straight above me I could hear the pitter patter of little feet, scratch scratch and other strange noises. It's the mice. Around about this time last year they graced us with their presence until I terminated what must have been the daddy of them all. I sent Emma off to the hardware shop for some more traps and she returned with an arsenal of devices designed to catch the vermin. None were humane traps and basically consist of the mouse breaking its neck whilst having its last meal. Peanut butter is apparantly their favourite last meal so I tried its on 3 of the 5 traps, and Kit Kat (no pun intended) on the other. The bets were on and by 4pm in the afternoon the kit kat was a clear winner with its first head. However within the next 2 hours SunPat took out 3 more. All has been quiet since and I am worried that I have eliminated Dunbar's population of wood mice. Time will tell, but meanwhile I am enjoying scratch free nights.

Those moles are a pest

Well one week after visiting the docs to have my huge mole frozen...it has fallen off. Somewhere on the floor of my car is a chocolate raisin sized blob, lurking under a seat waiting to jump on its next victim. After several years of my mole getting bigger and bigger on my neck, I decided to give it the chop as it was begining to seap and get so big that looked like tht bloke of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

So there it goes...my first attempt at cosmetic surgery. That itself was quite interesting. Liquid nitrogen on a swab...it gives a little sizzle and stings...but painless enough really. My collar size has now been reduced by 2 inches and I can now consider waring bling!

Ouch!

Every day after school I take Stuart to the park to let off a bit of steam. On Monday he was joining a gang of other 6 year olds in jumping off the 8ft high climbing frame. Things were going ok until a ruffian gave him a push and he landed on his arm. The wail and the white/grey/green face were a good enough to convince me something was wrong. When we managed to get his jumper off the mishapen arm/elbow pointed to a break or dislocation so off we went ot he Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh. It really is called Sick Kids...and it refers to illness rather than some sort of cruel sense of humour that they might have....that would be Little Shits Hospital. On entry I was impressed by the efficiency of it all. Before you could say 'x-ray', they had him all needled up and ready, and off he went to be x-rayed which revealed a broken arm just above the elbow...and it had dislodged so was sticking out. Within an hour he was on the orthopedic ward and then in surgery having wires put into his arm and out again before 11pm. This also meant having to spend a night in the hospital and guess what...I got to stay too. It wasn't the best nights sleep I have ever had....a z bed in the middle of a ward full of sick kids crying all night, nurses walking past, beepers going off, shift changes, doctors running in and out, porters banging trolleys and generally everything but quiet. The enxt day Stuart got to choose his 'stookie' (plaster). Gone are the days of chalky scrim plasters being slapped on....now you get to choose your own colour from day glow pink, yellow, purple, blue or camouflage. Needless to say he went for the cammy option. This was too good to be true. The next thing is a play worker turns up...is there anything you would like to do? Playstation or X-Box, DVD's, craft, toys, painting,...the list went on. We opted for Garfield2, the box set of Simpsons, Pirates of the Carribean and then inbetween some model aircraft building and some glass painting. Going to hospital is like going to a them park. Lunch...that'l get em I thought thinking back to my 3 months in kids hospital with a broken leg and a diet of stodge, soggy greens and liver. I was wrong...pizza, curry and chips, fish fingers...custard, juice. This place was too good to be true.
Stuart got home and now his brother and sister are trying to find ways of breaking their arms so they can enjoy the luxury that it brings. I am just going to nick his chocolates!

Pictures:
Stuarts Arms broken and Stuart's new cammy stookie.

Missed Camp Moments No3

Ah well camp is over for another year and it sounds like it all went very well. I am glad it did because I would have been disappointed to see a good thing fade away and regret givign it up. There's one camp moment I don't really miss, and that is packing up the camp into a small garage on the field.
It's the last day and you want to be nice to people but they have been up until the early hours trying to get a snog, breaking into the castle, having some booze and other minor rebellious acts. So they are dead to the world and can't be arsed, I want to pack up and go home quickly and inevitably the clash of these two opposing forces leads to some abusive language and accidental whacking of people's heads with lengths of drain pipes and goal posts. Then there is that moment when you lock the cookhouse for the last time...turn around and find a brush or a set of hockey sticks still lying on the field. Your heart sinks, but they have to be moved. One year I remember it was a bucket full of slops from breakfast. I left it and I happened to be in the area 3 months later and emptied the bucket full of maggots then.
So fareweel for another year...or even forever.

I am in the news today

Today I appeared on the news twice. Well not me exactly, but people with my name.

1. Richard Taylor father of Damilola Taylor the 10 year old murdered in London several years ago. He was commenting on the problem of gun crime and how this nations young men are getting caught up in it. The tragic outcome as we know is more deaths like Rhys Jones.

2. The other is a memorial to Richard Taylor skate boarding legend who snuffed a while back.

Missed Camp Moments No2

My birthday. Apart from one year when for some reason the school holidays finished really early, I have for the last 20+ years always celebrated my birthday at camp. So Saturday was a strange experience waking up in a bed, in a house and not having to worry about what lay in the marquee. If I am honest I hate birthdays. I hate the unwanted attention they bring, I can never really think of anything I need and so what, I am a year older than last year. It is something we can't control and what are we celebrating?...not being dead?
That said I can remember some of my birthdays at camp. My 18th was spent in the Castle in Caernarfon. The castle pub that is. How times of changed...the leader of camp Steve Mathews bought me my first legal pint in there. I remember the journey back to Criccieth being a struggle after spending several hours in the pub. My 21st was a much more tame event. I spent it visiting the Bunny Farm in Llanstumnwy the resting place of David Lloyd George. (just as an aside he was actually born in Manchester but the Welsh think he is one of their own). The most embarrassing brithday had to be the one hung from the marquee with climbing ropes, along with a table to eat my breakfast on. The pull on my 'town halls' made it all a bit uncomfortable and looked even worse. For many years I shared my birthday with Rich Church. Big and Little Rich's birthdays. He must be in his 20's now. I wonder how he is doing?

Missed Camp moments No1

The camp bonfire (last night). Wet feet from walking accross the long dew soaked grass, the mating rituals of campers trying their hardest to get a snog, the strange sensation of a roasting hot front but a freezing cold back.

Trefor's lost something

Has anyone seen Trefor's wart. He had it on his eye lid the other day looking like a chocolate raisin....but now its gone and just a little scab is left to show for it. I am going to have a look in the cocoa pops to see if its fallen in there.

Dunbar the place to be

Just in case i ever doubted being in Dunbar is a good thing, a recent survey has proven it to be a fact. The East lothian Courier picked up on this last week.