My friend Aisha rang me last night in hysterics. She recounted the following tale, which I shall duly recount to you in blog form. If you want, you can recreate her recounting of the story fairly accurately by reading this out loud amongst constant girlish giggles. This is also an important director’s note in case radio 4 are thinking of turning this story into a miniplay. Once I’ve got my foot in the door at Thought for the Day HQ, there’ll be no stopping me. They might even decommission Bellowhead and get the Young’uns to record the Archers theme tune instead.

Anyway, there was a knock at Aisha’s front door. Upon answering, she was greeting by a man who seemingly had a severe speech impairment. He was making a few noises but was mainly attempting to communicate by making gestures with his hands. As Aisha is blind, these gestures didn’t enlighten her about what he was trying to say. She explained that she couldn’t see enough to interpret his gestures. He seemed perturbed by this, and for a moment he did nothing while he presumably reassessed the situation and devised a new method of communicating with her. However, after a few seconds, he resumed his noises and gestureings, only with added intensity, getting closer to her and frantically waving his hands in her face. She reciprocated by shouting louder at the man, repeating the fact that she couldn’t see him enough to work out what he was trying to communicate.

This is kind of similar to the stereotypical behaviour of an Englishman on holiday when trying to communicate with someone who speaks a different language to them.

“Do you speak English?”

“Je ne comprends pas, Desolé”.

“Dooooo, yooooooo, speeeeeeeek, iiiiiiinnnnngliiiiiiiish!!!!!!!”

I look forward to the day when Aliens come to earth to visit us, but hope they don’t land on British soil. It would be a tad embarrassing for the whole world – watching their TVs expectantly – to hear the British Prime Minister greet our new arrival by saying, “Do you speak English?”
The alien would probably respond with “Bllepy, beepy, bleep, beep bleep beep”, which of course means “I don’t understand, sorry”. The Prime Minister will then nobly step closer to the alien and shout while pointing wildly in front of its face. “Dooooo, yoooo, speeeeeek, iiiiiiingliiiiiiish!!!!!!!!!!!”
I look forward to radio 4 working with me to turn this hilarious idea into an award winning sketch on my new flagship comedy program. It would be handy for me if you could arrange a meeting about this when I’m in the building recording my Thought for the Day segment.

As expected then, this communication method did nothing to help the situation and after a few more seconds, Aisha and the man stopped their fruitless communication attempts while they considered their next move. They decided not to try the same method for a third time – getting even closer to each other’s face and shouting and pointing with even more intensity. Although if this was a sketch on Little Britain, it would of course go on like this for an entire series, with Aisha and the man having individual catchphrases that they would shout at the close of each episode’s sketch; although no one in the audience would understand the catchphrase of the man with the speech impairment, but the viewers will laugh anyway.

The next move that the man made took Aisha aback, and she was unable to compose herself in time to react. The man thrust something into her hands and then walked off. She stood there, holding the object. It was a potted plant. She stood with it for a few seconds, wondering what the heck was going on, but the man had already gone and so she couldn’t ask questions – not that she would understand his response anyway.

We postulated on what the whole thing had been about. The best theory I came up with was that it might have been an odd stunt as part of a new TV comedy show. Perhaps a comedian had decided to film himself doing something completely random to a person like knock on their door, point and shout nonsense in their faces and then hand them a potted plant before walking off. Perhaps he will return to her house the next day with a new gift. Maybe the sketch is based around a kind of anachronistic “partridge in a pair tree” motif. Each day, for the next twelve days, he will go to the same lady’s house and try to ingratiate himself with her by presenting her with random gifts. But there’s an extra layer of quirkiness to the whole comedian’s concept: his challenge is to do this without speaking; he must communicate solely with noises and gestures. Perhaps he was already aware that Aisha was blind and chose her especially, adding another layer of complexity to the comedian’s routine. Or perhaps the whole thing was a beautiful discovery which has added an inadvertent dimention to this comedian’s crazy idea. This is the kind of idea Dave Gorman might entertain, or possibly a Dave Gormanesque upstart. Perhaps one challenge is to see if this strange event will make it on to Google. Dave Gorman will be searching for words like “random potted plant incident” and “blind girl potted plant speech impaired man” in the hope of finding her interpretation of the story on her Facebook page, or maybe the story on a friend’s blog. Well hello Mr Gorman. I’m on to you. I know you’re reading this, and I know what I’m writing is being broadcast on TV, and so I might as well take this opportunity to alert you of the fact that my alien/Prime Minister comedy sketch is copyright, so don’t you even think about stealing it and pretending it’s your own!

I wonder what will happen next. Will Dave Gorman now focus his next random event on me, or is there yet another layer of complexity to this whole thing? Well I’m ready Mr Gorman! I’m ready for you if you come to my house, make a series of noises and gestures, then hand me an antique washing mangle before walking off into the distance to do a Google search for “man in Hartlepool antique washing mangle”. Be warned though, Mr Gorman, that I am also blind, and so you’d get the same kind of reaction to your gestures that you got with my friend, which may make for a rather repetitive show, unless you’re going for that Little Britain thing. I don’t mind though. If you want to come to my house and do some recording for your new TV program then I’m well up for it. I’ve prepared a few lines to spice it up a bit. But I won’t be happy if I see my alien/Prime Minister sketch on the TV or if I hear you on Thought for the Day talking about racist women on busses!

Two women sitting on a bus: one woman said to the other woman (this isn’t a joke by the way, I don’t want to raise your hopes; this happened on the bus a few minutes ago) “You’ll never guess what I did today”. The other woman started to speak but the first woman cut across her and proceeded to tell her what she had done today, which in my book is cheating. She didn’t even get a chance to guess. Dirty tactics! So I assume she was merely using the phrase “you’ll never guess what I did today” without really thinking about it in any particular detail. Well I’m not the kind of person to let her get away with that sort of phraseological frittering, and now I’ve mentioned this woman’s lazy figure of speech in my blog; that’ll show her! Anyway, if I keep on analysing her whole conversation in as much detail as I have done so far then this blog post will be never ending (to use a lazy figure of speech, because of course it will end. If nothing else, I will die and then it will have to end. Unless I can produce offspring who will continue the blog post after I’m gone, but even then it must, at some point, come to an end. And anyway, what woman would want to enter into a relationship and reproduce with a man who’s unyielding obsessive preoccupation is to maintain a constant, never ending banal blog post. So yes, the post must end at some point. Religious fanatics may make fruitless predictions about when the post’s end will come, but they will inevitably claim that they merely miscalculated when it doesn’t actually happen at the time they’d specified. You’d have thought that before making such a bold prediction and trumpeting it in the media, he would have asked a friend to check his sums to save him all that embarrassment. O yeah, I just did some satire all over your arse – in case you were wondering what that queazy feeling was. But yes, this blog post must end at some point).

The content of the woman’s day was not particularly interesting; not when you compare it to her opening line which has resulted in over 200 words of analysis.

She was talking about a conversation she’d had with a group of girls who she’d just met that day. The anecdote took the form of: “Then one girl said” … “and another girl said …” “and then another girl said …” and so on. This went on for a while and I was beginning to lose interest in this stranger’s tale. But then she said “and then, this coloured girl said …”. Why did she feel the need to specify that this girl was “coloured”. All the other girls had just been described as “a girl”, but this woman obviously felt the need to mention that this particular girl who said this particular thing was “coloured”. The fact that she was “coloured” had no baring on what the girl had said from what I could tell. The whole conversation between these girls sounded dull. All the girls in the conversation were saying dull things, as was “this coloured girl”. It wasn’t even as if “this coloured girl” had said anything illuminating which changed the course of the conversation. She was just as dull as the rest of the girls, who I assume must have all been white, otherwise why make the distinction?

When the second woman heard the first woman say what “this coloured girl” had said, she made a noise that gave the impression that she also thought that the fact that this girl was “coloured” added another dimension to the bland story.

What does she mean by “coloured” anyway? Presumably someone who isn’t white. But why “coloured?” Surely i, as a white man, can be labeled as “coloured” just as readily as a person with a different skin colour to mine?

I remember a poem that a teacher read during a primary school assembly which made this very point:

“When I was born, I was black.
When I grew up, I was black.
When I get hot, I am black.
When I get cold, I am black.
When I am sick, I am black.
When I die, I am black.

When you were born, You were pink.
When you grew up, You were white.
When you get hot, You go red.
When you get cold, You go blue.
When you are sick, You go purple.
When you die, You go green.

AND YET YOU HAVE THE CHEEK TO CALL ME COLOURED!!!”

So there you go. Surely this blog post is a contender for a Thought of the Day item on radio 4’s Today program? at the very least I should get an appearance on Pause for Thought on radio 2. I’ll edit it a bit so it’s radio friendly; take out the more rambly parts and the word arse, and then once that’s done it’ll be a poignant, socially observant item, perfect for sentimental radio features like Thought for the day or Pause for Thought.

THE END!

The new summer series of the Young’uns podcast is here:

This week, we speak to Michael Hughes as he gets his feet eaten by fish; Mike shamelessly flirts with a woman cooking bacon just to get an extra rasher; we attempt an interview with a none-moving statue; are the Young’uns gay? We reveal all – possibly to each other. Plus: an escaping infirm cat, stomach noises and top tips for perverts. “But what about the folk?” (Well, if you insist.) There’s also recorded material taken from the Young’uns at Hardraw, Liverpool and Peterborough.

You can download the podcast
here
or stream it
Here
or for you flash fans out there

Subscription options will follow soon, (such as downloading and subscribing to the podcast in Itunes) to follow soon.

In the first David Eagle’s Pick and
Mix
(which you can listen and download here)
I mentioned that I would write a blog post about some of my favourite DJ’s in an attempt to hopefully introduce you to some quality audio experiences and also so that you will no who to blame for my DJing attempts. So here goes.

December 2001: A trail came on bbc radio 1 that consisted of lots of different tracks all woven into one another and over the top of each other in a 30 second mix, advertising a program to be broadcast on Christmas night by 2 Many DJ’s called Hang the DJ. At the time, I’d never heard of
2 Many DJ’s, also known as Soulwax, but I was compelled to listen because of the trail.

That Christmas had the potential to be really depressing for me; in 2001 I would have been 16, and my dad decided that this meant I was now old enough to learn that he and my mother had been lying to me all these Christmas’s and that this Santa bloke who I’d been trying my hardest to be good for all these years didn’t actually exist?! Fortunately my disillusionment with life was tempered by the 2 Many DJ’s show.

It certainly didn’t disappoint. I sat by the radio and listened to the whole thing enraptured. It was the first time I’d come across the concept of the “bootleg) as it was labelled: Mixing the vocal of one song with the instrumental of another. Nowadays it’s common practise and has spawned many a pop hit but it seemed really innovative to me back then.

I remember my girlfriend at the time ringing me up to wish me a merry Christmas. She’d bought me loads of presents–a lot more than I’d bought her–and I am ashamed to say that rather than saying “thank you, merry Christmas” and engaging in conversation, I told her I was too busy to talk because I was doing something really important. I think she felt a bit put out at the time but I’m sure that if she’s reading this blog post now, she’ll willingly forgive me the transgression considering that “really important” thing led to the concept for David Eagle’s Pick and Mix which has obviously helped make the world a better place.

I recorded the mix on a couple of c90 cassettes. I’ve uploaded that original recording for you here. The whole mix is there, apart from the few missing seconds from turning over to the next side and changing the tape. I hope those missing seconds haven’t lost us some precious moment of genius, but I don’t remember thinking so at the time.

Click here to Listen.
Click here to download.
Or you can access the flash option if you’d rather stream it from this blog so you can enjoy listening while looking at the photo of my face.

I’ll release the next David Eagle’s Pick and Mix sometime this year but the main priority will be the Young’uns Podcasts, the first of which will be here by the end of this week / beginning of next week.

I hope you enjoy the mix. Listening to it again ten years later still brings me back to that Christmas, sitting by the radio in ore, telling my girlfriend to piss off … O the memories!

I’m writing this blog post while pretending to be writing something else. I’m at a training course and I think the woman at the front doing the talking is very flattered and impressed that I am furiously typing notes about what she’s saying. She may also be quite taken aback by my furious note taking because she may be aware of the fact that what she’s saying is a load of bollix. In some respects though, I am making notes about what she’s saying because I’ve just made the observation that what she’s saying is “a load of bollix”. I’ve also made a reference to what seems to be the whole premise of her talk for the last ten minutes which is about the importance of being “110 % pacific”.

I’m confused. She wants me to represent more of the pacific than the pacific itself? But not just me, she wants everyone in the room to be 10 % more pacific than the pacific itself. Has she any idea what she’s asking us
To do? Firstly, she’s completely disregarded the makeup of our human bodies. To turn flesh, blood and bone into ocean is no small feat. Secondly, if we somehow did manage to make ourselves more pacific than the pacific itself then what about the wider provocations? Such a mutation would undoubtedly cause terrible damage to our planet: earthquakes and tsunamies galore”. I doubt many of us would survive such an ordeal; not that any of the pacific people would enjoy this form of survival anyway, knowing that we’d destroyed our friends and family and billions of other people just because of one errant, maverick woman’s baffling instructions at a team leaders’ training course.

When this training course first started it seemed fairly prosaic. Firstly, we played a game where we had to associate each day of the week with a certain temperature and colour. You could try playing this game at home if you like, although you may not get the full impact of the game because we were privileged to have a properly qualified teacher – sorry, learning facilitator (they’re not teachers apparently; they don’t teach us, they just facilitate our learning. At least they’re honest about the fact that they don’t actually teach us anything.) I’m not sure exactly what the purpose of the game was meant to be, unless it literally was simply to make me aware that my colleague Phill associates Monday with a dark grey -10 degrees Celsius, as opposed to Fridays’ golden 25 degrees Celsius.

We’re making people redundant left right and centre: policemen, army staff, council workers; massive household businesses are going bust, yet in spite of all this we can still find enough money to employ none-teachers to facilitate the learning of the tenets of team leading by playing a game where we associate days of the week with temperatures and colours?!

The learning facilitator has just announced that she’s handing out feedback forms so that we can give our opinion about the training day. Maybe I should write this blog post on the form. Of course, I won’t; I’m far too nice – or coward is – to do that. Besides, she’s quite attractive in an odd sort of way and I don’t want to scupper my chances of getting with her. I’ve been making little jockey comments all through the training course in a bid to impress her, but I don’t think she’s noticed. She doesn’t seem to register them as jocular comments, treating them as if I’m saying something serious, taking the comment literally and then making a basic remark in her cooing, patronising, bored voice.

There’s something about that voice though that intrigues me. She can’t sound that bored all the time? She’s fairly young, in her early thirties. She must get excited sometimes. Maybe I can excite her. She sounds so bored that during one of my many drifting off moments I started wondering about how excited she might sound during sex. Is that odd? Of course it is, I didn’t need to ask. I wonder if she’d still sound bored or if she might perk up a bit. I could do some role-play with her. We could sit in a room (that we pretend is a classroom) as she goes through her tedious, nonsensical training garbage in her bored voice. As time goes on I seduce her with saucy quips that relate to what she’s saying in the training. At first, she treats me with indifference and keeps going with her talk, but in time her voice begins to get a bit more excited as she becomes increasingly aroused. I continue to taunt her with more saucy witticisms as she attempts to focus on the material of the training course and revert back to the bored voice. But it’s no use. She can’t help herself. She eventually gives in to temptation and … Shit! I’m writing this on her feedback form!

What the heck? I’ve just come back to the reality of the situation to hear the bored-voiced woman telling us that we must be “110 % reliable. Hang on, does that make sense? We have to be 110 % pacific and 110 % reliable? I’m now 220 % confused; we can’t be both; that’s mathematically impossible. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m on a course that’s just a bit too advanced for people like me with my primitive mathematical assertions and my inability to listen to the learning facilitator without fantasising about having sex with her.

Could this possibly be my most worrying (and perhaps most telling) blog post of them all?

If you’re still not bored of reading rants about training courses then
check out a previous post on the issue.
There isn’t any sexual content in that one so you can relax.

I was in the news agents the other day with a friend. (Not the most exciting opening sentence to a blog post but don’t be fooled, this story will be epic.) My friend needed to buy a pint of milk because he’d ran out of it and he wanted to make tea and eat serial and do other things that generally involve the need for milk (I told you it got more exciting.)
I waited for my friend in the queue at the counter as he went to get the milk. There were a few people in front of me and as we were in a bit of a rush – eager to get back to make tea and serial and do other things that generally involve the need for milk – we decided that I should wait in the queue while he quickly got the milk and then joined me in the queue with the milk. (A truly genius time saving master plan I’m sure you’ll agree. This blog is the place to come for time saving tips, although my best time saving tip for you would be that if you’re really serious about saving time then you should probably stop reading this time wasting blog.)

I heard my friend announce that he’d got the milk. This was perfect timing as we were next in the queue. This is when my blindness came into effect and thus an ordinary milk purchase got a bit unusual – teats up you might say, if you are the type of person who is sad enough to make milk based puns. I heard the shopkeeper say to the man in front of me, “So that’s one pint of milk”. “This must be Ben” I thought. I assumed he must have got the milk and joined me at the front of the queue. As I owed Ben a little bit of money, I decided that I was going to pay for the milk, so I said “I’ll pay for this” and handed the shopkeeper the money.

I then discovered that the man in front of me wasn’t Ben but a complete stranger. He made some kind of protestation in a very shocked voice. The shopkeeper, assuming that I was a friend of the man, accepted my money and handed the pint of milk to the man. The man went to protest again but his phone rang. He answers his phone and as he walked out the shop I heard him say, still sounding completely shocked, “I don’t believe it; the strangest thing has just happened to me!” His voice faded into the distance as he proceeded to tell his friend about the complete stranger who insisted on buying him his pint of milk.

There’s a very tiny chance that he’s reading this blog, but just in case he is I thought I’d provide him with an explanation of what happened. I thought you were my friend. Perhaps you should be my friend; you owe me a pint of milk mate!

What an exciting bank holiday weekend: One royal wedding and a dead Taliban leader. And a new YouTube clip of the Young’uns performing live!

For me, a great Young’uns gig isn’t really about how well we perform musically because I’m always confident that we’ll do that reasonably well; it’s more about the bits in between the songs that dictate whether I feel a gig was great or not. In fact, one of my favourite gigs we ever did was one where I had a really sore throat and was for all intents and purposes unable to sing. So we just talked. It had the potential to be a really stressful and bad performance; I’d been gigging for the last four days and was feeling really ill. We had to stop some songs halfway through because I just kept coughing really loudly while the other two fruitlessly attempted to compensate and cover my coughs. But the bits in between the songs – which was about 90 % of the gig – were amazing. We ended up telling anecdotes about things that happened to us on tour and the audience seemed to love it, laughing hysterically. Nowadays this is how are performances tend to be, only with a bit more singing than in that gig, but that potentially hideous gig was a major influence on how we now perform.

Here’s a bit in between the songs that someone kindly put on YouTube. I was hoping to be telling this story all the way through the summer run of festivals, but I think the YouTube clip’s kind of buggered that up now.
So I thought I might as well help perpetuate its buggering up powers by putting it up on my blog. So here it is; some accordion related toilet humour.

Right then, I’m off to try and write this joke that’s been brewing in my head for the last few days. It’s something to do with Bin Laden and refuse collecting but I can’t tell you at the moment until I’ve ironed out a few of the finer nuances of my amazing joke. I think you’ll be very impressed by it though.

It’s another bloody bus story! Actually the bus part of the story features fairly minimally because the bus I was on – heading back home after a long day’s work – broke down and we all had to get off it while an engineer came from somewhere miles away to try and fix the problem.
It was a half an hour wait for the next bus and the engineer would be at least half an hour before he turned up. I decided that because I was only a 15 minute walk away from my house that it would be a good idea to walk the rest of the journey. So I headed off the bus with everyone else and started walking.

I was quite glad to be getting away from my bus companions because there was a number of small, noisy children with parents who were either very apathetic or very deaf; so I wasn’t bothered about having to walk, in fact I was looking forward to it because it was a good excuse to use my Satnav
(see this post if you were unfortunate and missed my lovely satnav post).

I’d only taken a few steps when the bus driver shouted at me to stop. I turned back round. “You can’t walk” he shouted, “you’ll have to wait till the next bus”. I was a bit confused by this statement, given that, in my opinion, I’d been doing a pretty good approximation of walking before he’d stopped me; it’d been taking me from A-to-B so I assume I’D been doing it right. I explained to him – over the increasingly louder screaming children – that I only lived about fifteen minutes walk away and that I knew the way back home. The bus driver protested, saying it was too dangerous for me to walk. I reciprocated by pointing out that I’d walked the route before, I knew the way and I wanted to get home in fifteen minutes rather than 45 minutes, especially since I was getting pretty desperate for the toilet. I then cheerily thanked him for his concern and assured him that I’d be fine and started to walk off again. The bus driver shouted at me to stop. I turned my head around and shouted back that I was fine and continued to walk. one of the waiting bus passengers ran up to me and took hold of me. I tried to once again assure the bus driver and now the passenger that I would be fine but the passenger cut across me: “If you walk then I’ll call the police!” The police? I started laughing at the absurdity of all this and once again attempted to explain that I was fine and that this was starting to get a bit over-the-top. The passenger’s response to this was to take hold of me with even greater force and say in a very sympathetic tone, “look, you’re blind son”. I didn’t point out the paradox of that statement; instead I told him that I was fully aware that I was blind. Sadly, he didn’t then immediately let go of me and say, “o right, sorry, well just as long as you know; I’ll let you go on your way now then”.

What could I do? By this point, other passengers were joining the scene and some screaming children came over to see what was going on. I should have stood my ground which I suppose is actually exactly what I did do in a very literal sense because I didn’t move. I ended up waiting for half an hour with the screaming children and a load of very condescending passengers, who tried to take my mind off my aggravation at the situation by distracting me with a litany of questions about my blindness: “how long have you been blind?” “how much can you see?” “how did you become blind?” “how many fingers am I holding up?” “where’s your carer?” … So I was essentially held hostage and then interrogated under the torture of bladder pain.

Then to add insult to injury, an old age pensioner (not one of the young ones under 60 – an old age pensioner) turned to the waiting crowd and announced, “actually, I only live ten minutes away so I might as well walk home rather than pointlessly waiting for twenty minutes”. The crowd parted and let him through as he nonchalantly walked past me and headed off whistling in the direction that I was going in which was apparently “too dangerous”. Then another man spoke up and said that he too would rather walk than wait and again the crowd parted and let him walk in the same direction. To add further insult to injury, this man was walking with a crutch.

Fortunately I did eventually get home, although I was a bit concerned that they might not have let me get off the bus by myself and insisted I ordered a taxi to take me the 215 yards from the bus stop to my house (I really am too obsessed with the Satnav).

When I did get home I was so relieved to be finally able to go to the toilet and far too hungry to brood too much about the whole situation. I do however feel annoyed and upset that out of a bus load of passengers, not one of them seemed to think that it was completely inappropriate and ignorant to refuse me the right to walk a fifteen minute route just because it happened to involve a main road, despite my confidence and anything I said.

I’ve told this story to a few people and all of my friends think it’s a bit out-of-order, although one old woman I met on the bus afterwards who was present at the scene said “that was really nice of them to be so concerned; real community spirit”. I wanted to punch her.

I hope that you can see why I’m so appalled by what happened and you’re not thinking like that old woman and those passengers. This to me indicates the very apparent existence of the negative stereotypes about blind people that indicate why there are so many unemployed blind people.

A few days ago I was crossing a road and an old woman pulled me back. “no! you’re going the wrong way!” she shrieked in my ear. I informed her that I was not going the wrong way, but she continued to pull at me and shrieked again with more defiance “no, you don’t go that way!” I asked her what on earth she was going on about. “I’ve seen you do this journey before and you always turn right; you don’t cross this road. Come on, I’ll take you the right way!” I hope you appreciate that I do try and be as polite as I can in these situations when what I really want to do is punch these people. I explained to her that I usually go the other way because I usually go somewhere different to the place that I’m going to today, so therefore today I need to go a different way to get to the different place. There was a pause, then she said, “o, Ok”. I thought that she would now let go of me and I could be on my way but she kept hold of me and insisted that she took me across the road, then persisted to insist that she walked the whole journey with me, holding on to me and walking very slowly. Before she eventually left me she said to me in a sympathetic tone, “I understand what it’s like; my dad was just like you”. She then gave me a sweet and walked off leaving me to feel confused and a bit shit. She might have meant that I was like her dad because we are both extremely good looking, intelligent or amazingly funny, but I think it’s more likely that she meant that we were both blind, and this obviously makes us identical.

I hope you can see why this riles me so much. If this happened once in a while then it might be Ok but there’s always something every day that suggests that people think I’m incapable of functioning on anything remotely resembling a “normal” level. If you’ve read my other posts about various problems with getting work because of people’s attitudes to blindness then hopefully you can see why my aggravation compounds. However, if I don’t want people to view me purely as “blind” then I suppose I should probably stop writing about it; so here ends my rant.

In other news: The new series of the young’uns podcast is coming very soon; This means regular Young’uns podcast episodes. I’m planning on recording podcasts at all the festivals we do so that should be a really good summer run. I’ve also put down the satnav and made a start on the next Pick and Mix

Thanks for reading; I know it’s only because I’m blind! Byeeeeee!

I’m writing this blog post from a really hot bus – that’s “hot” as in the temperature not “hot” as in sexually alluring, I’m not particularly attracted to busses; well, apart from the 93 from Middlesbrough to Scarborough, but then who wouldn’t be? As regular readers will know-ever the optimist-I tend to write my blog entries from busses on the way to and from work, which gives me plenty of writing time since I spend 4 hours a day on them. Although I haven’t blogged for a while, I have still been doing a lot of bus travel. The reason for my lack of bus based blogging is to do with a newly acquired gadget that I’ve been using addictively. It’s a satnav. It may seem a little strange that I should be using a Satnav at all given that I am blind and can’t drive, never mind the fact that I use it on a bus, but this particular satnav is especially designed for blind people. Rather than the satnav voice just telling you to turn left or right like the boring satnavs you bland sighted people use, blind satnavs are much more exciting; not only do they give directions but they announce all the street names and the types of buildings you pass. On a practical level, the satnav has in all honesty revolutionised my life. I can now travel to new places all by myself without needing to know the route or continuously ask people for directions. It also means that I don’t have to ask people to tell me when we get to the bus stop I want to get off at, and any technological device that reduces the need to talk to pesky people is obviously very worthwhile. To try and put the amazingness of the satnav into perspective: I visited my friend Ben recently in York. By the help of the satnav I located Newcastle train station, then got off the train in York and walked a 20 minute walk in a completely unfamiliar area to be successfully guided to Ben’s house. I can even record my own landmarks such as bus stops so that I know exactly how to get to places that aren’t on the standard map installed on the satnav.

So it does have immense practical value. However, I must confess that I have been using it needlessly to the point of it being an addiction. When I’m being driven to places by a friend or in a taxi, I will turn on the satnav and listen intently to the names of the streets. During this quality time with the satnav I tend not to join in with conversation around me and ignore what people are saying to me. I seem to find street names more interesting than the nonsense my friends go on about. I suppose it’s the thrill of the whole thing-the adventure: Will we turn left on Bernard street or right on to Albert Street? I can feel my heart rate increase as we get closer to the turn, as the anticipation builds. I’m sure you all know the feeling. Just writing about it makes me feel excited! It’s not just the street names that I get though (although this would be enough excitement for anyone) I also get the speed, distance travelled, distance from my various landmarks (such as my pre-programmed bus stops) and of course the all important altitude.

But my addiction doesn’t stop there. I see no reason why I should stop addictively using my satnav just because of a small factor like the fact that I’m not actually travelling. The makers of the satnav have created their product with the crazed addict in mind. I can sit in the comfort of my own home while stationary, without the need for GPS coverage and replay the routes that I have previously travelled using the virtual mode. So I can be sitting in my home in Hartlepool and relive the rollercoaster of a journey that was the trip from my house to the venue that I did a gig at in Peterborough a fortnight ago: Every twist and every turn, every rise and drop in altitude, the increases and decreases in speed is mine to relive now and forever, over and over again. When I have children, instead of bedtime stories, we can go on virtual adventures together, reliving journey’s taken in year’s gone by: “This is your mother walking down the isle at 2.7 miles per hour at an altitude of 50 feet. She walks the 18 yard walk then makes an 172 degrees turn to face me”.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. I’m not merely limited to reliving the epic voyages taken in my past; I can also explore new routes that I’ve never taken before without having to actually bother leaving the house. I can programme in any destination and any starting point, which means I could travel from Buckingham Palace to the Blackpool tower without having to leave my house. Genius!

I must apologise for anyone who has travelled with me over the last couple of weeks for not listening to anything they’ve been saying and interrupting their attempts to converse with me with a cavalcade of stats about our speed, distance altitude, the names of the streets and the distance we are at any given time from any given bus stop in the area. It’s come as a bit of a shock to me, but not everyone seems to share my enthusiasm for these comprehensive commentaries-the continuously updating unexpurgated minutiae of the journey.

Perhaps I should mention the name of the Satnav and then this will constitute a professionally written review of the product. The company might even use this blog post as part of their literature. I see know reason why not.
It’s the Trekker Breeze from Humanware.

Unfortunately, the satnav addiction has not only affected my ability to blog but also my work on the next David Eagle’s Pick and Mix which I have yet to start.

This is David Eagle, travelling at a speed of 32 miles per hour at an altitude of 72 ft, signing off. O no! I can’t stop myself! Help!

In 2010, The Young’uns’ Sean Cooney committed a terrible act that we really can’t talk about. His sentence was to organise a folk event as part of Hartlepool’s tall ships festival alongside Hartlepool borough Council with oodles of red tape and risk assessment forms. Sean took this great responsibility like a man and did Hartlepool and the folk community proud, hosting an incredible event with an amazing list of performers. This Young’uns Podcast aims to capture the joys of the festival through recorded performances, interviews and various random happenings that took place over the festival.

There’s music from Polish Shanty group
Brasy,
world folk from
Sheelanagig,
Mrs Trevor’s Deep Freeze Secrets,
the Askew Sisters,
Paul martin and Ian Mckoen. Plus there’s world-class kazoo playing from a children’s marching band; find out what folk musicians get up to late at night; we expose the folk group that have launched an attack on the blind; Michael Hughes dices with the law; The Young’uns get involved in some interesting collaborations, and of course there’s the obligatory smattering of puns. I could go on, but what’s the point when you can find out for yourself.

Click here to listen.
Click Here to Download.

Remember, you can catch up with the previous 102 podcasts
here
how about listening to all 103 of them in one sitting, perhaps for charity?

Thanks to everyone who came to see
The Young’uns
in Peterborough; we had a very enjoyable night. Thanks also to Toby wood who wrote this review of the gig, which is a completely accurate and well-considered critique of the proceedings:

“I would love to be a fly on the windscreen of the car transporting to a gig the three chaps who comprise The Young ‘Uns. (I should emphasise that I would hope that my fly incarnation would ideally be on the inside, not the outside!). The reason for this somewhat odd entreaty is that I could spend a few hours listening to Sean Cooney, David Eagle and Michael Hughes practising as they speed along.
The Young ‘Uns are in essence an a cappella group, hence the ease of being able to practise in the car with a fly for company. Just as well the trio don’t play harp, double bass and grand piano!
Along with friends and a healthy audience I was fortunate enough to see Cooney, Eagle and Hughes at Baston Folk Club on a Friday night, as opposed to the club’s customary Thursday. Oh the thrill of a change of night – we do know how to enjoy ourselves! I write ‘fortunate’ because, according to details on their website, The Young ‘Uns only seem to perform live two or three times a month, possibly due to the fact that they all have ‘proper’ jobs as community artist, producer and teacher. Indeed should Mr Hughes (as I presume his teacher name to be) ever get fed up of the teaching life he could easily get a job as a doppelganger for Marcus Brigstocke, so physically reminiscent is he of the comedian. Sean’s own website is so full of educational and cultural activity that no wonder The Young ‘Uns don’t gig that much. Want a Tall Ships Folk Festival organising? Then Sean’s yer man! And as for David – well just type his name into YouTube and you’ll find a wealth of humorous clips and quips as well as lengthy ‘Pick and Mix’ sessions. In short individual talent abounds.
The group performed mostly traditional shanties and homages to Hartlepool but all in a way that had a modern touch. Indeed a James Taylor song made a brief appearance alongside my own personal favourite, Sean’s ‘Jenny Waits For Me’, a poignant tale of men at sea.
I took a while to try to work out why the trio actually worked and then it clicked. Individually they appear so diverse, singular and individual yet as a threesome they blend seamlessly together, each appreciating the other’s strengths without becoming competitive or domineering (a sort of folkie Crosby, Stills and Nash). This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that they can spend two or three minutes in a comedic, laugh out loud introduction and then suddenly swoop into a song that requires concentration and even a little gravitas. They simultaneously revere the material and recognise that pleasing an audience is paramount.
The Young ‘Uns are one of those acts that’s best seen live. Their quirky and enthusiastic mix of seriousness and laughter is infectious.
Just one gripe! I’m just not keen on the name ‘The Young ‘Uns’. What will happen when they hit fifty (assuming they are still playing together)? Will they become ‘The Middle-aged ‘Uns’ or ‘The Receding and Increasingly Podgy ‘Uns’. Perhaps they ought to cross that bridge when they get to it.”

Yes, very accurate and well-considered.

So what will the next project be? I’m planning on starting work on the next Pick and Mix in the next few days so perhaps it will be that, though I imagine there’ll be two or three long rambling blogs written from busses in the meantime.