Bless me, City, for I have sinned

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Nigel Hurll

I apologise for the early part of this narrative but I think it’s helpful to provide some geographical background to it.

I was born in Bournemouth (when it was in Hampshire – it was shifted into Dorset in 1974) and, obviously, as such, am a ‘soft’ southerner. During my subsequent working life, I lived in Kingston-upon-Thames for most of 1974, Rochdale between 1974 and 1977, when we moved to a house in Oldham. In 1979, I was offered a job back in Bournemouth, and we moved to a small market town in the New Forest in 1981 (Ringwood) where I occupied the post before being given early retirement on medical grounds in January 2004. From April that year, I worked (from home) as a website manager for a membership association; engaged in the same work, I found myself transported to Cheshire in November 2018, where I finally retired from the website job (incidentally, the best I have ever had in my life) in July 2024 at the age of 75.

Now, football, the main point of this sorry tale. I thought I was going to be able to avoid disclosing details of a seriously embarrassing and shameful episode in my life. To be honest, I had hoped it wouldn’t surface until I was pushing up the daisies.

My other half has supported Manchester City since she was at school and is always proud to respond to the standard musical query as to her whereabouts when they were shit. As for me (and here I am mentally quivering), like every other southern moronic football fan, I began to follow the team on the red side of Manchester – a common phrase including the word ‘bandwagon’ springs to mind. I of course know now that they are not even based in Manchester, but in the area administered by Trafford Borough Council.

Looking back, I realise that a dark shadow had been lifted from my life when I came to my senses and we started to go to the Etihad Stadium after my income was enhanced with a couple of private pensions. We became club members well before the Sheikh Mansour takeover (so I can’t be accused of yet another bandwagon hop) and began to undertake the 500-mile round trip to every home match, usually staying at a Premier Inn and mostly using the excellent Metro tram service. This pattern of life became expensive (and, in view of my body’s condition, physically draining) and, as mentioned above (after a good deal of soul-searching), we moved to Cheshire, where we have attended virtually every home match since and from where I am currently confessing to the heinous sin hereinbefore mentioned.

If any of my Manchester City friends read this, I want them to know I am desperately sorry. I couldn’t help where I was born, could I?

Sorry.

Did I say I was sorry?

Well, I really am so f*cking sorry.

I’m a bit worried – I think

Posted on March 21, 2025 by Nigel Hurll

Sorry to practically repeat the heading but I think I’m a bit worried. Of what, you may ask. Well, at this precise moment, two things. Every day, I learn of the death of somebody well known (whom I admire in some way) or within my various largish groups of friends, acquaintances and/or family in various parts of the country. Quite a few of them were of a life span currently the same as (76 years) or less than mine. Does this mean it’s nearly my turn next? Or a signal that I’m an upstart in the lack of death department? Please don’t tar me with that brush – I don’t mean to be.

The other worry is the deterioration of my memory. Doctors have reassured me that this is nothing to worry about and part of the normal ageing process. I am not convinced and am often enraged when I can’t recognise the photo of John Wayne on a Pointless picture board. That’s not a particularly good example, actually, I’d always recognise John Wayne but you get the picture (even if I don’t). Memory’s a strange thing, isn’t it? You stand in the kitchen, realise that what you need at this moment is located in the garage, then enter the garage wondering what the f**k it was you needed. And this shortcoming is afflicting someone who can vividly remember lying in a pram outside his Nan’s house when he was a gorgeous little one-year-old baby!

So, should I be worried? I don’t think I’m scared of death, as long as it doesn’t hurt. I would feel extremely sorry for my family and friends in case they missed me and bitterly regret not having been able to do things my body prevented me from doing for so long. As for the memory thing, I can’t bloody remember what I was going to say about that.

I’m still a bit worried!

____________________________________

Supporting data

Those who have shuffled off this mortal coil from (and including) 20 March 2025

Eddie Jordan, 76
George Forman, 76
Andy Peebles, 76

But they’re not all on one line

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Nigel Hurll

I’ll apologise in advance (that’s not one, by the way).

A policeman and his daughter lost in an early round of “Pointless” two days running; he was so inept, it seemed as if he’d wanted to fail. Looked like a cop-out to me.

My uncle dropped his hearing-aid over the side of a boat while he was on a trip to Luxor in Egypt – he went deaf on the Nile.

When Blackburn Rovers signed a player called Formica, I did wonder whether he might help them to the top of the table.

I once played golf with a bloke who used to move his ball to make his shot easier when it landed on rough or uneven ground. “Windsor Rules” he would say whilst doing it. Now I know what the term Preferred Lies means.

If I had a company in Marlow or Aylesbury that supplied wooden slatted storage frames, I’d call it Buckingham Pallets.

I said to a friend the other day that I liked that Dean Martin song The Answer To The Eel Question. What the hell is that, he asked. I’ll sing it, I said. “That’s a hard one, I feel, what’s the name of that eel? It’s a moray…”

Is ‘bee-hive’ a buzz-word?

What’s an Arab’s favourite crisp flavour? Sultan Vinegar

I went to the zoo yesterday and saw a baguette in a cage. The keeper told me it was bread in captivity.

I was given 4 Es and LSD last night…it was an awful start to a game of Scrabble

One small tiptoe for a man…

Posted on December 1, 2024 by Nigel Hurll

“This is Junction 15 of the M6, sir. Afraid it’s not possible to go any further. Hope you’ll be very happy here”

You may remember I moved home from the small market town of Ringwood, on the edge of the New Forest in Hampshire, approximately 225 miles in a generally north-westerly direction to Winsford, a small town in Cheshire.

Now, one of the distinct advantages of this location is that the length of the journey to a certain football stadium in postcode district M11 will have had a significant chunk shaved off it. We can expect to leave the house, have a leisurely 10-minute drive to Altrincham Railway Station which is also a Metrolink terminus, board a tram and, with just one change, arrive at the stadium tram stop around 35 minutes later. There are a number of other alternative methods of travel but I won’t bore you with them; better than 8 hours, though, eh? A pox on the A31, M27, M3, A34, M40, M42, and M6. I have excluded the M6 Toll from the curse – it’s rarely problematic.

If you weren’t aware, a lot of Cheshire’s industrial history revolves around the mining of salt and, if you’re currently watching ‘Great Canal Journeys’ with Timothy West and Prunella Scales on Channel 4, you would have seen them recently visit the Lion Salt Works, near Northwich, not far from where we’ll be living.

The salt industry certainly affected our conveyancing process and specialist mandatory environmental searches were required to be carried out. When we received the enormous bundle of results, I must admit we were quite worried for a while about the proximity of mineshafts – both working and derelict; at one point, I had a telephone conversation with a lady from the Cheshire Brine Subsidence Compensation Board who very helpfully emailed me some useful information, including the fact that no claims had been made since about 1861. I replied, paying her several condiments. Salt of the earth, in my opinion. Sorry, I couldn’t resist it.

During a conversation with my then Chief Executive on the salt mine issue and potential subsidence, I found his advice not to jump up and down and only move around the house and garden on tiptoe very encouraging! I shall of course follow it implicitly.

Anyway, we moved in to the new house on Tuesday 20^th November and, so far, there has been no evidence of mineshaft instability.

Unsocial Network

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Nigel Hurll

By and large, I think the internet is one of the most significant and influential innovations of the modern age. You can interface with friends and family wherever in the world they might be, via the written word or live audio/video, you can buy and sell all manner of goods and services, and it is a vast source of information on anything you care to name – even donkey porn.

A lot of the time, though, it just gets on my bloody wick.

You are – by which I mean, one is – well, at least, I am – if you’re still with me? – bombarded with emails allegedly from banks and building societies explaining that your account has been the subject of unusual activity – it would actually be unusual if I used it seeing as I don’t have an account with you – vital security checks requiring confirmation of your PIN and other account details. What can you do to put a virtual spanner in the works of these scheming bastards? It’s a great shame there isn’t an option in Outlook to “reply with 5,000 volts”; that’d make their follicles sizzle. Maybe I should reply to them all, helpfully providing my hat and willy size, inside leg measurement and full medical history, hoping they’ll eventually get fed up. Fat chance.

I have often considered walking away from Farcebook because of the relentless, intrusive and overbearing way it subjects you to an irritating barrage of invitations to take part in inane quizzes the results of which are then published to an audience of your friends who are apparently agog with eager anticipation to learn what sort of television set you are (I bet I’m a wide screen) or which member of the cast of ‘Friends’ you would most like to (a) take out to dinner, (b) shag, or (c) punch hard in the face.

I really don’t want to know that someone has just found a three-legged brown sheep wandering (limping, surely? I am a pedant, after all) around the farm – I’m a tolerant sort of person and, if they want to play that game, leave them alone to do so, without a commentary best suited to a weak plot line in The Archers. The farmer’s wife going missing and a dismembered body discovered in a grain silo would be infinitely more interesting but I still remain unconvinced that I’d want to know about it.

It seems a lifetime ago that Farcebook hoodwinked me into signing up and, just prior to taking the plunge, I didn’t fully understand how it worked but some friends persuaded me – to join, that is, not that I definitely didn’t know how it worked. Now, of course, I’m being held prisoner in its cyber basement after years of digital servitude from which it seems impossible to escape.

At least I can catch up with what my children and grandchildren are doing – so it’s not all bad.

Ringing the changes

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Nigel Hurll

I had a front doorbell once that stopped working and it was a good three or four weeks before I got round to rectifying the situation. I bought a new battery for the bell-push, having got the digital meter out and established the presence of insufficient voltage in the current one – see what I did there?

It still didn’t work.

One day, during our perambulations, we happened upon a Robert Dyas (I can never go past that damn shop) and I spotted a wireless doorbell on offer for 15 GBP instead of 30. You could even record and play your own messages or download music to the chime unit. I did toy with the idea of recording a shouted message along the lines of “open the f***ing door, someone!” but thought that might upset the Salvation Army if they ever called, so I opted for the default Big Ben chime, in my opinion somewhat pompously referred to in the manual as the Westminster. This was the least offensive of the 8 pre-loaded tones available included among which was the Lambada and the Mexican Hat Dance. I didn’t really want people dancing on my front doorstep.

Well, the bell-push already had a lovely CR2032 button battery installed but I had to nip round to the Co-op to get a couple of LR14s (aka UM2 or C) for the chime unit. Before I did that, however, I was in the kitchen fiddling with the new bell-push. When I pressed it, the old doorbell rang.

Bugger.

Take one tablet at night – and duck

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Nigel Hurll

When we moved to Cheshire, I had to register with a new medical practice and I was asked to attend recently for a diabetic review (I have Type 2). The nurse was pleased with the way I was progressing to the extent that she reduced the dosage of one of my medications.

I remember when I was first prescribed diabetic medication to add to all the others I was taking; at that time, blood sugar – slightly up; cholesterol – slightly up; kidney function – very good indeed, actually; liver function – quite acceptable (ahem); blood pressure – slightly up; weight – one at a time on the scale, please.

My old medical centre (particularly the Sister who runs the Diabetes Clinic) is most assiduous in the care of patients with the condition and I have nothing but the highest praise for everyone there (I know nearly all of them by name and they of course know and love me). After all, one of the practice nurses used to handle my bare feet, sloshing blue gel all over them and pushing a pen-like instrument around that amplifies the sound of the pulses; sadly, it drowned out the classical music being piped into the treatment room but all was OK and, although not 100% kicking, I am apparently alive. And I was able to put my socks back on all by myself.

One of the new medications was called Simvastatin – another tablet – and the label stuck on the box contains the dosage instruction: “Take ONE at night, avoid grapefruit.” Having never been attacked by anyone wielding that particular fruit, I am now on constant alert after taking one of the tablets in case some conscientious objector to statins chucks one at me.

D’you reckon I’m being over-cautious?

Medical History

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Nigel Hurll

medical-bag This is a hitherto unreported reminiscence of my progress through the long and winding corridors of the unbelievably marvellous British NHS in 2011.

As part of my continued health care, I was invited to have a CAT scan at Salisbury District Hospital (my second home for various periods during 2010). The notification had been sent to me several weeks earlier and informed me that I needed to present myself one hour before the appointed time so I could be given a contrast drink to improve the pictures produced by the scan. I was familiar with this as I had had one in the previous year. It involves sitting around for up to an hour, sipping a milky substance, being bored out of your skull and trying to concentrate on your book, invariably with little success!

I duly turned up just after 10am, reported to reception and sat in the waiting room. I was so bored, I became enthralled by an episode of Property Ladder. Yes, that bored. At 10.45am, the receptionist smiled and said “You were a bit early, weren’t you?” I explained that my letter had instructed me to arrive an hour early for the drink. “Oh,” she replied and strode off purposefully, returning a few minutes later saying that my letter had been sent just before they stopped requiring patients to arrive an hour early and have the drink! Oh well, the up side of this was that I went to the treatment area fifteen minutes early!

The CT scan experts among you will know that the initial step is to insert a canular into a convenient vein in order that a dye can be injected during the scan. If you are at all familiar with my veins, you will be only too aware that ‘convenient’ is not a description readily applicable to them: they are either extremely shy or just plain bloody rude, because they simply don’t turn up to these events and no amount of violent skin-slapping encourages an appearance. The nurse gave up after one attempt and took me in to the scan room, saying she had called for a doctor to do the dirty work.

The six subsequent failures to effect an incursion (three in each arm) showed – statistically at least – that the nurse was significantly less crap at this than the doctor. Anyway, the end result was that the whole shebang had to be rescheduled and I left the hospital self-consciously sporting seven bits of transparent sticky plaster and more cotton wool balls than three teddy bears.

The new appointment was fixed for a week ahead but, in between times, I had a phone call to say that the scanner had broken down and could I turn up two days later than originally planned? So I did and, after three attempts, one was in vein. Ha! See what I did there? After all this hoohah, I saw the oncologist who told me that the scan had revealed a small (2cm) growth in my right lung which is almost certainly cancerous but also almost certainly removable.

I then had to have a PET scan at Southampton which will have given the medics pictures in glorious Technicolor and 3D to indicate whether the little bugger is the result of a spread or completely new, and help them decide the best way to deal with it. This time, I had to be injected with a radioactive liquid; I was wishing the medical staff luck in advance with the veins. I wondered if I’d glow in the dark, which would at least allow me to read in bed without a torch.

So, CAT scan, PET scan, presumably a LAB test would follow. See what I did there?

“CROSS TRAINRY C**TS” – A Play in One Act

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Nigel Hurll

Dramatis Personae

A rocket scientist and his wife – Erucae scientiae et uxor eius
A man of powerful voice – Stentor irritatum
A small oriental lady – Muliercula chinki
A raucous group of sport followers – Ebrius imitatores de Villa Astona
Several other travellers who appear to have lost their capacity to reason – Multis amisisse videntur facultas cogitandi
Our hero – Heros nostrum
Narrator – Narrator

Scene: Coach D – 11.27 Cross Country Trains service from Manchester Piccadilly to Bournemouth

Narrator: Our hero is in the aisle seat of the pair of seats 17 and 18, which numbers are clearly marked on the grab-handle of the left-hand seat of the two, facing forward. Both seat numbers are also shown on the electronic reservation indicator screen below the edge of the luggage rack centrally located immediately above the seats.

A man and his wife, who have joined the train at the same station as our hero, enter the coach and start to walk up and down, peering at various seats, muttering numbers under their breath.

Man: I don’t understand this odd numbering system, it’s very confusing.

Our hero: So the numbering system is odd, is it? Being that it starts at 1 and the further you venture along the carriage, it increases in ones, finishing at the maximum number of seats accommodated in the carriage? These mysteriously calculated seat numbers are clearly marked on the grab-handle of the left-hand seat of each pair of seats (viewed from behind). Both seat numbers are also shown on the electronic reservation indicator screen below the edge of the luggage rack centrally located immediately above the seats. It’s not fucking rocket science!

Man: Ah! So it’s not rocket science, then?! That is clearly why I don’t comprehend the system, for, you see, I am a rocket scientist!

Our hero: Well, what are the chances of that?

Narrator: Our hero realised his mistake too late for he was then forced to spend the next 25 minutes listening to the man pontificating on the laws of probability.

Our hero: Well, that is extraordinarily riveting stuff, I’m sure, and I’m obliged for your lucid, if lengthy, explanation. However, I haven’t any more time to waste on your good self because there will be a lot more c**ts on this train in respect of whom it will be necessary to record varying levels of exasperating fuckwittery for posterity.

Narrator: As if to demonstrate the veracity of our hero’s assertions, a diminutive oriental lady makes her way along the carriage, muttering nervously, myopically scrutinising the seats and the seated. This in itself may not appear particularly extraordinary except for the fact that she repeats the action five more times over the course of the ensuing half-an-hour.

Throughout this journey, our hero witnesses several instances – extraordinarily common in his extensive experience of rail travel – where passengers are occupying seats reserved for others and, one of the reservee’s attempts to claim their seat, finding it occupied, agrees, after consultation with the trespasser, to sit elsewhere. Our hero is justifiably aggrieved by this and is buggered if he would go and sit elsewhere, particularly when, in one case, it is a little old lady who tells a perfectly able young man to stay where he is while she struggles along the aisles to try and find another seat. Our hero is tempted to explain to the young man the extent of his eponymity in terms of the title of this play, but concludes that, however justified, it is likely to prove pointless since, at this stage, literary devices and words of more than one syllable are likely to be beyond the grasp of the little turd. Also, having been confronted and rigorously criticised for his repulsive selfishness, he might have punched our hero in the face.

Several seats away from our hero, a man with an extremely loud voice was holding a conversation with every passenger in the carriage, well, not intentionally, of course, he was only talking to (actually, at) the man in the adjoining seat, and his proficiency in enabling his monotonous and self-centred dissertation to be audible to the driver of the train about three carriages away without the use of a megaphone would have been an admirable trait had he not been another of the c**ts in the title.

This journey, like many others endured by our hero, was disappointingly typical, with manifestations of the worst kinds of human behaviour, such as that exhibited by a nauseating mob of Aston Villa (it needn’t have been Aston Villa, it just was) supporters who spent the entire time that they were contaminating the train in the vestibule area between Coaches D and E (and spilling into D) loudly singing (in the loosest possible sense of the word) puerile songs containing more than a liberal smattering of base epithets, mostly four letters in length. Oh, and also blocking all the toilets with empty beer cans.

To confirm the veracity of the Dramatis Personae above, several other travellers who appear to have lost their capacity to reason mainly warranted that description by totally failing to get to grips with the ludicrously simple seat numbering and reservation system, which befuddled the rocket scientist described earlier, and, clearly, the diminutive Chinese lady. The behaviour of this group was admittedly more a minor irritant as opposed to the obnoxious disruptive knobheadery of the football supporters.

Our hero was seriously considering dashing off an e-mail to Cross Trainry to suggest that the Company carry a stock of sleep-inducing medication, which the guard could either: (i) supply to heroes of the journey so they can become blessedly oblivious to the constant c*ntishness of travellers like the football yobs, or, preferably, (ii) administer forcibly to the latter, so that heroes and their decent fellow passengers can enjoy the scenery without having to endure their existence – albeit for a short period compared to the average human life span. Frankly, though, in our hero’s view, their presence on the planet amounted to little more than oxygen thievery.

It has to be said that whilst our hero could never be considered a naturally vindictive person, he is not a particularly patient one. This is by no means a failing on his part.

Cheese Roll

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Nigel Hurll

bread-rolls I would like to congratulate the person who prepared the small cheese roll I bought in W H Smith at Manchester Piccadilly Station recently. They somehow managed to balance a standard cheese slice on one of its edges (or possibly gripped it in a vice) and slice it in half downwards. Then they put about 1mg of butter margarine in their mouth, swilled it around and licked one half of the inside of the roll very, very quickly. Then, after carefully but expertly shaping and positioning the cheese so that none of it showed from the outside (so you couldn’t see how little there was), they stuck a price ticket on it (£3.99) which made me laugh, until I had to fork out the equivalent sum because (a) I was hungry and (b) I have to be careful what I stuff my dodgy insides with these days when I’m due to embark on a longish journey.