"Lawyer, Lawyer"

I've always had an interest in the law, mainly breaking it - I hold my hands up, I sent Neil Lennon a nail bomb.  It was in an email so isn't likely to cause all that much damage, although lets face it a nail bomb could only really improve Neil Lennon's appearance; they should call it a 'Neil bomb'.  When I was young I thought I would grow up to be a lawyer.  My mum supported my decision but I knew she thought it was a phase, there had been a few potential career paths offered up to this point, such as my vet phase, my song writer phase, my RAF phase, my guitar, drums and chanter phases.  It was time to ditch the vision of the drum, guitar, bagpipe playing rock and roll RAF vet, and settle down to learn the law.

I studied intensely, mainly by watching Jim Carrey's memorable performance in 'Lawyer, Lawyer' - sorry 'Liar, Liar'.  I decided to take Jim's erratic, unpredictable style and wild interpretations of the law into the classroom.  I faced one simple problem.  I had no one to defend, and, outside of court cases involving Gary Glitter or Michael Jackson, thirteen year olds aren't usually allowed in courtrooms.  So I went for the next best thing, the venue of many a miscarriage of justice, the classroom.

My mandate was simple.  I would defend my proletariat brethren against the bourgeois faculty - embodied in this case by our entirely innocent and likeable French teacher whose only crime was to try and teach a class of absolute donks how to speak, read and write in French.  I should point out that I was not responsible for Mrs Warde's breakdown.  My role as 'classroom lawyer' meant I merely defended those that were.  I'm not sure if that makes me accountable?  I'll ask Saddam Husseins's lawyer - Giovanni Di Stefano, who, by all accounts, seems like a stand up bloke...despite being arrested for major fraud last month and defending other loveable characters such as Gary Glitter, Harold Shipman and Ian Brady.

I worked on a 'no-win-no-fee' basis - which worked out well because all my clients were skint and I rarely won a case - with all costs recovered from the other side - which ironically resulted in me defending a pupil for attempting to steal from the teacher.  A typical session would go like this..

I was often removed for contempt of court.  I was a worse excuse for a defence lawyer than Tommy Sheridan.  Not that my clients complained.  Nine times out of ten by defending them I in turn got myself into far more trouble than they could have managed themselves.  Eventually a letter was sent home to my parents.

That was a difficult one to explain.  I was back to having no idea what I wanted to do when I left school - which would be sooner rather than later if I didn't give up my advocate roll in the classroom.  When you're a teenager people seem to always ask where you see yourself in ten years, where you think your talents lie, what it is you want to accomplish with your life.  When prompted you're expected to deliver a pre-prepared, eloquent answer that demonstrates just how well rounded an individual you are.  When my mother and I bumped into an old couple she knew I had such an answer prepared.

How was I supposed to know he was a retired minister?

My art teacher thought I should go to art school - 'performing arts' school.  He was one of those brilliant teachers who believed class clownism was an expression of free will, a necessary part of childhood to be nurtured and encouraged.  He was my favourite teacher - and art, as I'm sure you've guessed, was easily my poorest subject.  One time I was drawing a portrait of my mate, I asked him to adopt the pose of Rodin's 'The Thinker' and would take any deviations from this pose seriously.

After he posed like that for three consecutive art lessons I was ready to reveal my finished portrait.

He went mental!  Mr Houston was particularly bothered I'd portrayed my pal as a witch on a broomstick, he even displayed my drawing on his wall, my shit picture of a witch stayed up there for a whole year!

The only time I remember Mr Houston getting angry about anything was when he arrived late to class one day.  I had taken the opportunity to post a message on the blackboard.. 
 

Now, I'm fairly sure Mr Houston wasn't familiar with the 'I Know What You Did' movie franchise, which makes you think, what did he do the previous summer..??

School is supposed to prepare you for the world of work, but I've yet to encounter a boss who'll let me dick about to the extent Mr Houston used to, and, when I did make attempts at acting out a potential future career for myself, I was immediately reprimanded.

School never did prepare me that well for the world of work - which would explain why I'm still there.  I never did get around to working out a life plan, setting goals, or finding out where my talents lie.  And, like every other disillusioned individual with no clue which career path to take, I settled into a career in teaching.

I've yet to encounter any classroom lawyers in my teaching career, but if I do, I'll be sure to point them in the direction of the nearest performing arts school!

Anglo-Celtic-Spanish - But We Manage

Linguistic confusion, differences, and the crossing of wires is a common occurrence when you're Scottish and you're in a relationship with an Anglo-Spanish senorita.  Natural, I suppose, when you’re covering three very different cultures in one relationship.  However, as many of us know, the crossing of wires can often result in some wee 'jake baw' running off with your car, or your house burning down. But occasionally, a moment comes in a relationship that’s so perfect you have to thank the good lord for granting your existence at that precise moment to be witness to it.  Such a moment came in my relationship when my girlfriend phoned me recently and asked “Daniel, what’s a jobby?”

Never has the crossing of cultural wires been more perfect.   She had never heard of a jobby and was none the wiser when I explained it involved 'dropping the kids off at the pool'.   Moments such as these normally present an opportunity to expose her more gullible side - this Christmas I managed to convince her that in Scotland we like to deep fry our advent calendars.

As it turned out I was never likely to pull the wool over her eyes and convince her a jobby was anything other than, a jobby.  Her enquiry was made after watching an episode of 'Come Dine With Me' where one particular diner commented on the appearance, consistency, smell -and possibly taste - of their food as being that of a 'jobby'.  Unsurprising then that it didn't take her long to translate 'jobby' and arrive at its equivalent in English.

But without the assistance of a horrible starter my significant other would never have known what a jobby was. This got me thinking, I'd used that particular word many times in our conversations and she never once enquired about its meaning.

My mum always said she couldn't comprehend my girlfriend's ability to tolerate me.  It seems clear now.  She doesn't understand half of what I'm saying - either that or the more likely explanation that she's just not listening.

What's worse is I remember sharing with her a particularly humorous anecdote involving jobbies, and she seemed to laugh in all the right places, either through ignorance or pity.  It would be wrong of me to continue blogging without sharing my jobby anecdote, so here it is...

When I was in school I - like most people in Dingwall - had a part time job working in a call centre selling train tickets.  Customers would phone us looking to purchase train journeys and while we were on the phone we had to try and squeeze - for want of a better word - the word 'jobby' 'jobby jabber' or simply 'jabber' into the call.

a typical call would go like this..

"Good evening you're through to jabber how can I help you?".... "Can I confirm you are looking to travel on the 4th of jabber between Birmingham and Newcastle?".... "How many jobbies are jabbing?"... "Are you the named credit or debit card jabber?" ... "Please hold while I jab those jobbies for you"... "Are there any other jobbies you'd like me to jab for you this evening?"... "Thank you for jabbing with Virgin Trains".

The record was 36 jabs in one call.  You would be surprised at how few customers picked up on the jobby references, and those that did, and weren't best pleased, we would happily transfer to Customer Relations, which also doubled up as the Dingwall Chinese.

Linguistic misconceptions occur relatively frequently between my girlfriend and I - she couldn't decide if my uncle was Irish or the unfortunate victim of a recent stroke.  But at least we're speaking - close to - the same language.  It is a different story altogether when you are meeting relatives who speak a completely different language and have no comprehension of English.  So, in an attempt to break down - or marginally dent - these cultural barriers, I set myself the challenge of learning the native language of my other half.

Now my Spanish is at a very, very basic level.  This however doesn't stop my girlfriend abandoning me in public places, or leaving me high and dry in conversations with family members.

I'm not Stephen Hawking, I don't have a languages programme I can just plug into.  When you don't speak another language, or don't speak it well, you tend to just say yes to everything in the misguided belief that by doing so the person approaching you will just magically disappear.  This never works.  I was almost arrested for agreeing to buy cocaine off a guy standing on a street corner - again my girlfriends fault for leaving me unattended.

For Scottish people, Spanish pronunciation is surprisingly easy to pick up.  Many words in Spanish sound similar to Scottish pronunciations, there are lots of rolling r's and 'ch' sounds - like the 'ch' in 'loch'.  When I first started learning Spanish my girlfriend was particularly proud of my ability to roll my r's.  She would ask me to say my favourite r' rolling Spanish word - 'perrito caliente' - over and over again in front of family members to prove to them just how perfect my pronunciation was.  They must have thought I was mentally unstable walking the streets of Madrid constantly shouting....

If it's language that divides us then it must be love that brings us together - and if you love your languages then your sorted.  My mother always told me that my perfect woman would be one that doesn't speak English, but as it turns out, in Dingwall we were never speaking English in the first place!

Para mi novia guapisima.....te quiero mucho...!!! 

'Xmas' is Christmas for Dyslexic Kids

The minister who carried out the services and assemblies at our school was a pretty intense character, he was mad about Jesus - which is what you would expect from a minister I suppose. At the Christmas assembly he would tell us never to spell Christmas 'Xmas' as it takes the 'Christ' out of Christmas - presumably this is how Jews and Muslims spell Christmas then? Most of us - particularly the dyslexic kids - never even noticed the 'Christ' in Christmas.

So, thanks to the Minister at our primary school, I now always spell Christmas; CHRISTmas.

When reciting prayers he would stand at the front of the hall with his arms spread out like Jesus on the cross, or like Kate Winslet at the front - bow - of the Titanic. I know this because my friend and I would dare each other to open our eyes during prayers, not much of a dare I know, I don't know what we expected to happen...

The run up to Christmas was our teacher’s golden opportunity to administer pointless 'busy work'. We would spend days making countless Christmas Cards, completing Dot-to-Dots and playing endless games of 'Heads Down Thumbs Up" and 'Hide the Keys'. One year we even made an advent calendar on the last week of term - which wasn't as pointless an exercise as it may seem. All the chocolates in my calendar were usually consumed less than a week into December.

Christmas Cards were big business in primary school. And, as with everything, my brother and I would turn it into a competition...

Not receiving a card from the girl you like on Valentines Day is pretty devastating. It's even worse if you don’t get one at Christmas time, because every other kid in the class – and even the teacher - gets one. The good thing about being a jilted nine-year-old is you demand answers...

Why did so many parents 'suggest' their children didn't befriend me? Spreading rumours about scabie outbreaks is how you communicate your feelings when you're nine years old :(

I was never one for making Cards. My lack of patience meant most of my Christmas Cards just tended to be excessive amounts of glitter. Card making was laid to rest aged twelve after the realisation I had the artistic ability of a four year old. In secondary school our art class was set a homework task, we had to choose an everyday household item and return with a drawing of it. My drawing of a toaster was commended as being a "wonderful picture of a handbag" by my art teacher. Thanks Mr Houston!

Although I retired my card making skills I have, to this day, maintained the age old practice - handed down to me by my mother - of talking shite. When I first met my art obsessed girlfriend I was able to convince her I had a keen eye for, and interest in, art - and that I was a bit of an artist myself. This attempt to impress her backfired. Not only did I almost die of a boredom stroke at the National Gallery of Scotland, but now every Birthday, Christmas, and Valentines Day is celebrated with us exchanging home made cards. Last years Glitter, Snowflakes and Word-art attempt was so poor I managed to convince her the kids in my special needs class made it for me.

So here is some advice for fellow card-makers operating at my level of expertise

• Stick to simple shapes. A triangle and square will produce a simple, but aesthetically pleasing, Christmas tree...

• Card design doesn’t get any simpler than the Christmas Present. Just colour in a square or rectangle - try and stay in the lines...

• Two Circles - one bigger than the other - placed on top of each other will produce your basic snowman shape..

Birthdays can be more challenging. Again the advice is the same, stick to simple, easy to draw - or trace - shapes.

• An oval shape will give you a pretty convincing balloon...

(A word of advice, avoid leaving your balloon blank or colouring yellow, as it may end up looking like a light bulb).

• The Christmas present design can be reproduced for birthdays simply by changing colour schemes...

• If you are three or four years into your relationship and you feel you have over-used many of these designs, the best thing to do is to go for the simple 'Happy Birthday' message, making it large enough so there is no need for any other pictures or designs.

When I was young I would try and make Christmas Day happen at Christmas three o'clock in the morning. The only difference these days are that three o'clock in the morning tends to be when I stagger in from my Christmas Eve piss up. But on the whole Christmas traditions have remained unchanged in the Downie household. Christmas morning wouldn't be Christmas morning if my mum wasn't constantly reminding us we can 'put things back' before we've even had the chance to open them. Apparently the Three Wise Men gained their status as learned men, and great gift givers, by holding onto receipts.

Another of my mums favourites is to tell us exactly how much each item cost - although the true price can be reached by taking the quoted number and halving it - and reminding us of how spoilt we are...

F***ing Live Aid. I was always made to feel guilty when opening presents. If the poor people in Africa wanted one of my presents they could have the orange that was always in my stocking - as if dressing fruit up as a gift was going to persuade me to eat more of it!

Much in the same way a smack addict on a particularly bad come down may ponder whether the previous evenings high was really worth it, after our Christmas Dinner I often find myself postulating "was that really worth it" when I am left contemplating the insurmountable number of dishes left for me to clean. The dishes are supposed to be a shared responsibility split between my brother and I. Every year however he disappears to the toilet at the opportune moment reappearing just in time to ‘dry’ – the dishes that is. This annual bowel movement is as predictable as Christmas dinner itself.

But despite my mother’s guilt trips, my brothers bowel movements, and my crippling Christmas Day hangover, I wouldn’t change any of our Christmas day traditions, the Status Quo is good for Christmas.

So before the Con-Dems attempt to cutback and cancel Christmas, let me take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas and thank you for taking the time to read the ridiculous nonesense I post on here.

And a Happy 'Xmas' to my dyslexic cousin Andy.

I'm off for a nap now!!

Soap Births can Lead to Infertility

Soaps and the bible are, in many ways, similar. They both have drawn out stories concluding in some vague message of morality dressed up with lots of car crashes - less so in the Old Testament - weddings, births, deaths, adultery, and burning bushes - hollyoaks STD storyline.

The danger comes when people start to take these things literally and they begin to impact on everyday lives. Point and case; my mum is soap religious. Most of her little nuggets of information or points of reference are either influenced by, or lifted directly from, the world of soap – see previous blog entry. This has inevitably meant that soap storylines have affected my existence to the extent I forget which memories are my own, and which are soap fabrications. A tad dramatic perhaps, melodramatic even, but more than occasionally soap stories have an affect on my own day to day existence.



The outcome of every soap storyline seems to be the same; Car crash - can't have kids, Shot - can't have kids, Fire - can't have kids, Animal Attack - can't have kids, Blood Transfusion - can't have kids, Abortion - can't have that kid or any future kids, Kidnapped - can't have kids, Stabbed - can't have kids, Heart Attack - can't have kids, Adopted - you find out you're someone else's kid because your adoptive parents were involved in one of the aforementioned.

Pro-creation is important to me, so I have recently been weighing up the pros and cons of having my man matter frozen. I have suffered years of psychological abuse at the hands of my mother, and I would hate to miss out on the opportunity to mentally damage my own children because of some freak accident like falling off a horse - this was how Libby's husband Drew died in Neighbours. I'm not certain but I'm fairly sure he lost the ability to have kids in the split second before he died.

I'm surprised I've made it to this stage in life with my fertility still in tact. Granted I haven't had an abortion, been stabbed, had a blood transfusion or a heart attack, but I have been involved in quite a few accidents/mishaps regarding my mangleberries. I'm not going to lower the tone of this already low-brow blog by going into these in any detail - most involve balls colliding with balls - but the bottom line is, when a man has his reproductive organs compromised IT HURTS!

If, for examples sake, you were watching a game of football and you happened to be struck in the testicles by a projectile object travelling at 70mph - in front of 2000 people - that would be a very painful experience. However despite your crippling, sickening pain, you would also have to accept that what has happened to you is – to those who witnessed it – inherently funny.

If there happened to be a crew of St John’s ambulance people who witnessed your unfortunate accident, they would almost certainly assist you and ask if you needed any medical treatment - oxygen perhaps? Would they bollocks. They’d be pointing and laughing like every other cold-hearted prick and you’d be left hunched over like Quasimodo walking into a cold head wind. You might be left to hobble home at half time, unable to cope with every painful vibration served up by the bus journey.

When you arrived home your old granny might suggest you remedate the injured area by applying some common household butter. Because apparently back in the day our fighting GI Jocks would take machine gun fire to the bollocks and shrug it off after applying some butter - that would explain why it was rationed during the war.

I am apprehensive about the effect having my reproductive material frozen will have when it comes to conceiving a child. As a teacher I can only assume that the majority of children in recent times have been conceived through the means of artificial insemination. Most pupils can’t seem to comprehend simple instructions, are uncoordinated and incapable of following simple movement patterns. Why? I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing it’s because their brains are still defrosting.

Kids are like i-pods, they come in different shapes, sizes, colours, and-most-importantly, memory capacities – also they don’t work as well once they’ve been dropped.

This seems an appropriate time to introduce my idea for a Scottish version of the i-pod; the ‘Aye-Pod’.

 

Teaching children requires unfathomable amounts of patience. I run a martial arts class and sometimes you need the patience of Abu Hamza opening a jam jar to teach them anything.

It’s ironic that the only bank to survive unscathed and actually improve its income during the collapse of the banks is.....the sperm bank. Unemployment has forced many gentlemen to donate for fiduciary gain. And lets face it you may as well be getting paid for what you’re doing during the day anyway, it’s a bit like being self-employed.

But maybe having my man stuff frozen isn’t the best course of action. Scientists, in spite of their research and development, seem to have resorted to simply freezing stuff; eggs, sperm, organs, limbs and all other manor of horrible shit in the freezers at Iceland. Just because Libby, Dan, Susan, Marco, Jane, Becky, Steve, Monica and Chandler can’t have kids, doesn’t mean that it's going to happen to me.

And besides, I don’t think there’s enough room in our freezer anyway.

The Competitive Nature of Everything

On Friday afternoons when I came home from school my mum would always insist that I did my homework as soon as I got in the door, that way I’d have the rest of the weekend to myself. She had a point. My suggestion of not doing the homework at all would achieve the same thing, however this point of view rarely prevailed. If I had to do it then I suppose it was best to get it done and out of the way. I can only assume that my parents had similar feelings towards childbirth. Have two children, 1 year and 8 months apart, watch them grow up, fly the nest, then relax and enjoy early retirement; who knows maybe one of them will be incredibly successful and fund a lavish early retirement??

Unlikely. It's £523 a week for the care-home in Dingwall - I thought I better phone early in case there’s a waiting list.

There are disadvantages in starting a family early in life - from the perspective of the child that is - you see as the child it could be years before you're able to get your hands on the fruit of your parents labour-a-nice-wee-inheritance-package. And with this generation the first expected to die earlier than their parents, it might never happen :-(

If my mother could have foreseen the untold misery my brother and I would cause her, with our constant fighting and demand for attention, she surely would have thought twice about a second child. She took a risk my mother; she gambled for a girl. She had conceived a devil child and witnessed through my brother how much of a f**king nightmare boys could be. She wanted a wee girl, and I know this because for the past 23 years she’s never forgiven me for being a boy (even if I am as camp as a tent).

The truth is - like Prince Harry - I am adopted. The woman I though of, and many of you know as, my mother, is not my biological mother. I don’t know my real mum’s name, she is known to me simply as, ‘the woman in the caravan’.

Many years ago my ‘mother’ was taking a leisurely stroll through a caravan park when she - still had the use of her legs - stumbled upon me as an infant sleeping underneath a caravan. I was made to sleep with the dogs because there was no room inside on account of my 12 brothers and sisters. My real mum hated me, and my real dad had just been laid off from his job as a janitor, so my mum, pained by compassion, offered to buy me and free me from my terrible existance.

This gypsy nativity story that has been told to me since the age of, well since I can remember.........

I believed in Santa, and that robins were his messengers, that Santa could get into our house despite the fact we lived in a bungalow and didn't have a chimney, that he could carry all those presents in a sleigh with flying reindeer - even the year when our main present was a pool table - I believed everything about Santa - I believed in the tooth fairy, I was convinced WWF wrestling was real, I believed my brother when he told me the Loch Ness monster ate the Easter Bunny, and my dad every April Fool’s day when he said Eoin Jess signed for Rangers, so why wouldn't I believe my mum when she threatened to send me to a horrible woman and an unemployed janitor who lived in a caravan park.....??

It’s not easy tracking down your biological parents when they are travelling folk. Like native Americans following the buffalo herds; my family has tended to migrate with the janitor work.

*A little side-note is needed here, for liable purposes. It is not the intention of this blog entry to offend anyone in the travelling community. Many of my brother’s girlfriends were gypsies.*

With my (step) brother and I being so close in age there was always a lot of fighting, arguing and competitiveness. So much so we would compile and update lists of activities that we could beat, or were better than, the other person at. It was important these lists were agreed on and evenly balanced. A sub-list would then be compiled of activities where we considered each other to be of equal ability; it was in these activities we would compete to decide who was the best.

The following is a list of activities where I am better/can beat my brother at:

• Taekwondo (a Korean martial art/excuse for my brother and I to beat the shit out of each other)
• Sprinting
• Jumping
• Spelling
• Cooking
• Tennis
• Long Distance Running

The following is a list of activities my brother is better/can beat me at:

• Football
• Badminton
• Bench-Press
• Throwing
• Maths
• Darts
• Parking

The following is a sub-list of activities we consider ourselves to be evenly matched:

• Golf
• Pool/Snooker
• Swimming

These lists often threw up points of contention, for example, anyone who has witnessed my brother playing football would question how it is possible for anyone to play as badly. This unfortunately is a sad reflection of my own footballing prowess - I'm not very good.

Competitiveness tended to reach a head during Wimbledon when my brother and I would dust off our rackets - purchased by mum from a car boot sale and used through the rest of the year to pelt stones with – head onto the street and have a game of tennis. Matches rarely lasted more than a minute......

With the benefit of hindsight it was probably inevitable that playing tennis on the street with no net and using drains as court markings was always going to cause controversy. However in truth it didn’t matter what activity we were playing, the outcome was usually the same.........

My brother and I are most likely a good example of why there is something wrong with a little competition. However at this stage of your lives I am sure most of you have realised life is just one-big-competition.  I’m just not sure who’s list it’s on.


PS. Eoin Jess was an Aberdeen player who played for the club back when they were still decent - he then had a second spell when they were shite - he was worshiped by the Downie children. His signing for Rangers would have meant a level of unpopularity on a Nick Clegg level.

PPS. My mother - despite my best attempts - still has the use of her legs (except when she's pished)