Rainy night in soho (umm brisbane)

I'm sorry about the last post it was rubbish, I mean really who wants to listen to a grown man talk about the street that he grew up in over a decade. (Well no one wants to hear about it basically because at this date I haven't told anyone about this blog so really I'm talking to myself) It's raining finally which is great, people keep on telling me that it must be like Manchester but it's not really it's hard to explain the light horizontal mist that covers Manchester for 6 months of the year. For one in Manchester I had to deal with it, while today I needed to post something so I drove all the way to the post office and put it in. But I have good memories of rain such as riding through it for weeks from my house to my work in salford on various bikes in various states of disrepair. I ran into a wall near old trafford football stadium "the field of dreams" I believe if you still go to the Curry's there you can find a large gash on a brick wall that was my made by the handlebars of my bike.

Another thing is something I think billy Bragg said and i think that I'm paraphrasing. "it's amazing how a bit of rain clears the streets" This was brilliantly true or be more actuate it's amazing how 6 months of rain clears the streets, there is a massive difference between Chorlton in summer and Chorlton in winter. Don't get me wrong winter in Chorlton was great there was still the pubs and parties and as a bonus you got to walk around in the snow thinking that you were on the front of a Bob Dylan Album. But the summer was something to look forward to spring flowers in parks and on the side of the road reminded everyone that it's the 6 hour days were nearly finished (Believe me some days the sun was up from 9 to 3 and when I say sun it was something that hid behind grey slate Sky for most of that 6 months) But the summer was brilliant there was a feeling about that like life would never end you could be out in the sun from 5am to 11pm sitting in beer gardens, playing in the park, walking around the northern quarter lapping up the food and record stores and all that. I ended up walking home from my job in ardwick (a suburb that was just council estates and 19th century factories) to chorlton along the curry mile through fallowfield watching the world go by. I love going for walks through towns and citys and seeing how people interact and live. I went for a walk through Brisbane the other day and I fell in love with this town again.

Billy Connolly talks about why LA is so messed up, the fact that they have no seasons so there is no sense of things ending or ageing. So most people there see ageing as a disease and if there is a disease there is a cure. Not that there is much sense of seasons in Brisbane but I think there is enough so it is remembered.

I promise that this blog will get better let us just hope that it's sooner rather then later.

What dreams may come!

I had a really strange dream last night. It was about Mellor st, which unless you're me or one of my family you won't know that it's the street that I lived in from the ages of say 2 to about 9. This dream was quite strange because it involved a Mellor st that I only see in my dreams. I think it must be a fantasy world of childhood memories which i've somehow made into a dream street from my youth. It even includes many small rivers and ponds, old southern English cottages (the type that my grandmother had around her house on coasters and paintings.) As well as a swimming pool which you had to walk through to get from one end of the street to an other. (I think it must be a mixture of all the pools that I attended when I was younger, which are so many that it almost becomes a blend of a single one with it's identical stands and changing sheds)

I don't know why I picture Mellor st like this when I dream it gets weirder but seeing that I am awake now I've forgotten mostly all of it. In fact Mellor st was a really cool place to hang around when we were kids, my friend Shaun had a boat in his backyard that was only half build and rusting. For what I can remember it was massive I mean he only had the hull and for what I remember (come on I was 5 so it's not going to be exact) It was as big as the house. We also had the spotlight car park to play in with our bikes and skateboards and a graveyard up the rode which always put fear into me. I also have strong memories so the smell of the arnotts factory and of the workers leaving at 3 o'clock something that felt like I was living in the industrial era not 1980's Brisbane.

Anyway no more dreaming for today

Hmmm Chicken

For some reason this morning I'm thinking about Allen's Fried Chicken. The history of it is quite strange, It was opened by guy called Ray Allen who met Colonel Sanders and started the first KFC in the UK and then went on to run all the KFC's in the UK up until the 70's. Where the original KFC started buying up and opening there own stores in the UK. Then it seems that in the 90's the Allen family decided to steal (surely I can't be sued for what I write on a blog) the recipes from KFC and start there own company. I mean totally rip off, the chicken tastes exactly the same.

I've been thinking of the Allen's chicken on Oxford rd because I just remembered that I never saw a girl in there EVER, just only sad lonely single guys or a couple of guys sitting across the table from each not looking at each other or uttering a single word. (Yes, I'll put myself in the sad single guy group but I do believe I went there with some friends once so I don't think I'm about to go postal) But it does make you think is this just coincidence that I only saw men in there but then again if you walked past any other takeaway joint and looked in every day for a week and saw only men you'd think about it.

I think it's the same as how Karl Pilkington talks about how you never see an old man eating a Twix. If you think about it we've been set jobs and then if we break out of that it makes people think. But kinda this was the other way round.

At least the people in there were nicer then the people at Kansas chicken in chorlton who thought that just because they wree open to 4 in the morning the had a right to be rude to everyone who walked in. Just like what happened to my friend ramy who got in a arguement with one of the staff when he forgot to get his change after paying for something with a tenner. He came back to the guy who had only taken the order a minute ago and he denied it all then finally admitted that he didn't but it was only a fiver. (I mean if you're going to lie you may as well stick to it and not change) The guy then suggested that they look at the security tapes and it turned out it was a tenner and good won over evil on that day.

If you're lucky I might even tell you about how they lost my order one night (can you stand the tension?)