'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)

Crossing the Minch Inch-by-Inch

Perhaps it’s natural for somewhere as remote as the isle of Lewis that the journey to it’s shores is an adventure in itself. I lived and worked in Stornoway on the isle of Lewis for 11 months. I met some brilliant people, laid eyes upon some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever encountered, ran over a sheep, seen a man fight a bin and lose, visited the best ‘worst’ night club ever, ate the finest black pudding known to humankind, offended half the islands free church community with jokes about Aids and Princess Di, tried to order whisky in Gaelic, got my first clubcard, lived through a hurricane, seen a goalkick taken in a head-wind blown out for a corner, and most importantly, made at least 4 friends.

When travelling to Lewis your transport choices are....

• the Ferry

or

• the Flight

(this isn't a joke this is the actual plane that takes you there)

The flight is considered by true sons and daughters of Lewis as cheating. The travel choice of the weak, frequented mainly by my flat mate and I and other ‘outsiders,’ ‘Weegies’ and ‘Edinburghers’...‘Edinburghites’...‘Edinburgalians’.... people from Edinburgh. My Afro-Celtic flatmate and I must have looked like the drug smuggling version of Turk and JD, because whenever we took the flight we were always subject to the ‘random’ bag search......





One time I was taking the flight back from Edinburgh and there was a gentleman who thought he was boarding a flight to Prague (how he made this mistake I’ll never know). A member of the airport staff retrieved him and his luggage just as we were going through the, "there’s-only-one-exit" pre-flight safety routine. I would have loved to been witness to this guys reaction if he had actually completed the journey to Stornoway.......

Another time an, erm, ‘heavier’ gentleman, was asked by the airhostess to counter-balance the plane by moving from the back to the front. I had never considered my 12 and a half stone frame could potentially save the lives of my fellow 8 passengers by merely moving seats. Not only that, while I was boarding the plane I noticed some sticky tape on the propellers (there obviously to stop the propellers flying off). I started to get that emotional, cold sweat. I was panicking. The Battle of Britain music played in my head accompanied by imagines of spluttering engines, mid air collisions, snakes on a plane, our boeing 747 ditching into the sea never to be recovered and the black box blaming my fat arsh for swapping seats. I didn’t want to fly on the god-forsaken, piece of shit excuse of an aeroplane. I wanted off.....

Why oh why did she have to wait until after we’d taken off before she asked me to move seats.....????

I decided to take the ferry next time. Surely no one will expect me to change seats to counter balance the vessel? The ferry.  The choice of real, authentic, (in-bred), island folk. I wouldn’t be nearly as nervous. The only thing that could threaten the ferry safely crossing the Minch would be a bad northeasterly or a North-Korean sub. I'd prefer my chances in either of those situations than risk plummeting to my death in a glorified washing machine

Relative to the outrageous cost of flying, (flybe could start a cross-Atlantic service for the price they charge for a flight to Stornoway) the ferry at £15 return, would appear to be a bit of a bargain. However, when you consider that half the time the ruddy thing is cancelled and the other half you’d trade places for a smooth voyage on the titanic, or an uneventful crossing on the Mary-Rose, you quickly realise your £15 hasn’t got you very far, worse than that in fact, it’s only got you to Ullapool.

The worst crossing I ever encountered was before I moved to Lewis. I was 17 and our school team was playing against the high school in Stornoway. It was a big game.  The Stornoway team had made it to the final of the Scottish Schools cup the previous year, but we still fancied our chances. We departed from Ullapool the evening before the game and arrived at, what-felt-like, some time the following week. It was awful. That night the crossing had more ups and downs than an escape podule in a Chilean mine. I spent the whole journey looking like Pete Docherty on a particularly bad come down. When not huddled in the foetal position trying to off-set the inevitable bouts of vomiting I was out puking over the side ‘feeding the seaguls’. When we got there we slept on crash mats in the school hall and played the game at silly o’clock the following morning. Circumstances had conspired against us and led to a particularly bad (I should really say typical) performance from myself in the sticks. We lost 8 or 9 nil, it could have been (was) 10 I’ve chosen not to remember.

As the defeated, sea sick travellers set about their journey home our captain couldn’t believe we played so badly, and felt the standard of the opposition didn’t warrant their place in the final......

Lewis and the town of Stornoway warrants your attention and is somewhere you should, no need, to visit. Forget improving rail services, forget dualling the A9 and forget building a new forth-road bridge, lets get started on a bridge to Stornoway. That way we can leave the ferry and the flights to the people mad enough to take them; those that are mad enough to live in Lewis in the first place...!!

(PS. The 'Minch' is the stretch of water that seperates Lewis from the Scottish mainland)

Halloween is Like Prawn Crackers

When I was 14 my pal and I were given money from his dad to go out and get ourselves a chippy.  Instead, we decided it would be a better idea all round if we took that money and purchased a bottle of vodka from the corner shop. The Spar in Dingwall wasn't big on ID at the time but even we, at 14, didn't consider for a second that we would actually get served. I say "we" but I actually mean "me"; being taller than my friend meant I was nominated the daunting task of trying to get the booze.

As it turned out acquiring the alcohol wasn’t all that problematic. I don't think the chap serving behind the counter had considered the "Think 21" policy, he kindda just took your word for it........

Not a great interregation I must say.  Did he expect me to crack under that pressure....???

We were in an unlikely, unprecedented situation.  We had the voddy but having made the decision to go upmarket and buy Smirnoff instead of Grants (a decision I felt would validate my credibility as an eighteen year old) we had spent our all our money. We had no money for food and, even worse, nothing to drink the vodka with. No problem though. With the £2.00 we managed to cobble together my friend could go into the shop and innocently, and legally purchase some coke or perhaps irn bru.  And of course we could always make ourselves some food, beans or dairylea on toast, this would surely suffice? But no. It was decided that the better idea would be to drink the vodka straight using two shot glasses, and to ‘fast’ for the evening.

We weren't even drunk when we made that decision. As we shotted our way through the bottle things became decidedly worse......

Since we had decided to forgo the chippy in favour of straight vodka the only thing we had eaten all day was prawn crackers left over from my mates chinese the previous evening. Those prawn crackers were eventually regurgitated in the back of my dads car (an Audi A2 which was a piece of shit anyway..) and on my bedroom carpet (a minging green thing that needed updating...) and in the driveway (which is outdoors so doesn’t count).

So how is Halloween like prawn crackers? Well, an unfortunate experience with a bottle of straight vodka has put me off prawn crackers for life, and likewise a series of terrible Halloweens has meant this 'holiday' is nothing more than a perpetual disaster.

Aside from the opportunity to cause mischief and eat sweeties until you go blind, Halloween has never been much fun.  There was the inevitable disappointment of excessive, unwanted monkey nuts, used mainly for hurling at people.  While bobbing for apples has always reminded me of how Mum tried to drown me when I was a kid. An unfortunate event she claims was down to a "particularly bad bout of post-natal depression" (12 years after she gave birth funnily enough). Furthermore most Halloweens tended to end up with us getting chased by the 'homies' (the looked-after-kids from the home, nothing to do with 'fidy cent' bloods or cribs or anything). Then of course there was that bad idea that came annually...'Mooning' the neighbours......

But the real reason I will always hate Halloween is the same reason I hate lazer tag, bowling, Easter and public swimming pools.....my Mum. Now my mum has many talents (mainly making soup) but she isn't the most artistic or creative of people, nor is she particularly bothered when it comes to humiliating her children. But to give you an idea of why I dislike Halloween here is a list of some of the costumes I was sent out in......

• WINDOW CLEANER - (a railway boilersuit with a shammy and a bucket)  
• FRANKENSTEIN - (this was a black jacket with a Frankenstein mask)
• A MEXICAN - (this consisted of a poncho and a sombrero borrowed off my uncle Johnny)
• THE KARATE KID - (I wore my taekwondo suit with a bit of paper that said 'the Karate Kid' taped (not pinned) on the back)
• TEENAGE MUTANT HERO TURTLE - (though this one was actually amazing, but only because my auntie Bunty made it. I was Donatello and my brother was Raphael)

but my personal favourite had to be....

• GOALKEEPER - (basically my goalie strip and gloves I wore every other day at training)

A goalkeeper!! You can’t eat crips or open bubblegum juice or american soda with big goalie gloves on. How could my mother do this to me?? This was just like the time she sent me to the school disco in shorts because I kept sliding on my knees and ruining my trousers. In hindsight I can see this attempt at dressing up much the same way I imagine the teachers at the school disco did......pathetic! But when you're 9 years old you still believe you're in with a shout of winning the best dressed competition.....

 

So consider this, young, proud, parents. What you do this Halloween can, in the future, have a profound effect on your children. Dress them properly, make the effort, and if not?? Consider the disappointment of the child at the Halloween disco who genuinely believes they can win the best-dressed competition dressed as a goalkeeper.

Halloween, it'll always leave a bad taste in the mouth, just like those prawn crackers.....!!