A time of reflection ... One year on from the loss of a loved one

Dave Landray

2/2/60 - 31/7/12

It is the eve of the passing of my brother Dave.  A time of reflection.

I am not going to be maudlin or depressing in this post.  Alas, I wish this to be a celebration of his life.  I apologise in advance if I cause offense by this blog but I feel it is always best to reflect the fun times and not the bad!

Dave, like many people who revolve(d) in my circle has been the butt of some of my wind-ups caused by a particularly pesky Dark Passenger* that I carry around with me.  I just can't help myself sometimes - this is just who I am.  Most times it is funny, it has been known to be occassionally cruel and for that I apologise profusely that I have done this to.  I keep chipping away at a book I'm writing about my Dark Passenger* and that one day Karma is going to well and truly kick my arse!

Anyway, I shall begin:

One Sunday night myself and my lovely wife were fighting going to bed as that would mean the end of the weekend.  I was having a responsibly enjoyed glass of wine while watching Dexter* (* the asterix I should point out is a bit of a pun as the two are connected - Thank you Jeff Lindsay for that).
All of a sudden from out of nowhere my phone boings to let me know of an incoming SMS.  I giggle excitedly as it means that someone out there really likes me.  I check the phone and it is our Dave.  He is at a pub quiz and needs to know the real name of Tiger Woods.  Quick as a flash I reply with "Ramsay Tupper".

I was chortling away to myself as he replied "Thank you.  I'm going to win this".  In retrospect I should have told him it was Eldrick Tont Woods, but that pesky Dark Passenger* had made an appearance.

I left it for a couple of minutes then the angel on my left shoulder sent a shudder of panic down my spine that maybe I should come clean before he makes a fool out of himself.  I decided then to text him back saying "Don't give that answer!  Read it out loud to yourself first!".  To which after ten minutes that felt like three weeks with the sweat like frost on my brow I get a reply simply saying "TWAT!".

I was told at a later date that when he read the answer out (coincidently at exactly the same time I had sent him the warning text) the whole pub collapsed with laughter.  I did explain in my follow up text that I didn't condone the use of mobile phones at pub quizzes as I had been wrongly accused of cheating at a quiz one night for knowing 20 Beatles tracks - pffft, the quiz master obviously didn't know that I am the music god!

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Our Dave's birthday was 2nd February which to those who are into world calendars will know is Groundhog Day.  For his birthday treat he called Yorkshire Coast Radio (our local 'independent' station) and told Barry Robinson (erm, Legend ... much like Danny Wilde!) to play "I got you babe" by Sonny and Cher to celebrate the big day.  Sadly, Barry didn't play this song, he played "Lazy Sunday Afternoons" by The Faces ... This is funny on two levels, firstly our Dave was never lucky, but secondly it was announced "It's Groundhog Day and this goes out to Dave who's celebrating his birthday" to which the song started with the line "Wouldn't it be nice to get on with mi neighbours".  He told me that not only did his heart sink because he didn't play the song he requested, but the first line of the song made it sound like he hated everyone who lived around him.  He spent the next two days behind his front curtains occassionally checking to see if they were outside with a burning cross or a big bag of dog shit and a match!

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I really looked up to Dave, he was a fantastic brother, whom I miss on a daily basis and wish that for just one day he could come back and I could give him a hug and talk the codshit that we used to spout to each other.

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Let us get it right, he was not always the victim in our get togethers!  Not only was his flatulence legendary - he could physically hover above his seat when we were gathered around playing Trivial Pursuit on a night.  In fact, one night I timed a 32 second fart that towards the end sounded dangerous - even the look on Dave's face showed that even he wasn't particularly happy with the way this one was going.  Thankfully no mud was drawn!

Upon announcing to my other brother Tony that myself and Debbie were expecting a baby, Tony embraced this news as a loving family member should - he even offered me a glass of wine at 9:30 in the morning - which was a bit early, even for me!  HOWEVER, when I went to see Dave and tell him our fabulous news he just looked at me with glazed over, wide eyes and snorted saying "Ha! Financial Deprivation starts here bro!"  I suppose I expected nothing less!

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In the last couple of years of his life Dave found peace with religion.  I am not a religious person and for that I may or may not go to hell!  But I never knock people's belief system.  I envy them to be honest, they have a light at the end of the tunnel - I just have an unbiased view that something may or may not happen when I my light is extinguished from this world!

The people from the church were with him all the way at the end.  Pastor Paul from the church gave a fantastic service at the funeral.  It was quite surreal as his sermon was done on an iPad - there was no pulpit or musty smelling books in sight!

The best part of the funeral was that it was a bright colour funeral.  The family had decided that this was a celebration of life not a mourning.  I had to dust down my comedy character ties from within the dark and dim closet (they were just left of Mr Tumnus's house!).

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When someone from your own family dies it is heartbreaking.  When you lose a sibling that is harder as it makes you realise that you aren't immortal.  If anything has come from the passing of our Dave is to live life to the best of your abilities and finance.  I have thrown myself into my family, friends, work, and my fundraising.  I can rest my head on a night and know that I'm on the right side of the line even though I have my Dark Passenger* to contend with!

I miss you with all my heart Dave and tomorrow I shall be belting out to some Steeleye Span with the amp set to 11!  Love ya bro xx

****As a comical postscript to this, as I was proof reading this, "Spirit in the Sky" by Dr and the Medics came on!  This was played at his wake - which I thought was disrespectful until I found out it was a CD from his 'favourites' folder on his iTunes collection - Fantastic ... Love it Dave****

Caveat Emptor - Those pesky marketing guys are after your cash AGAIN!

Grrrr!  Marketing people need to be strung up by their curly bits!!

There I was on Tuesday just whiling away the gentle warmth of the afternoon when along comes the advert for "Eddie Stobart's Trucking Anthems".  They struggled with "The Perfect Gift For ..." bit because there doesn't seem to be any Hallmark moments around at the moment - July is a quiet time for the card manufacturers ... However, they could have used the 'end of school' thing and said "The Perfect Gift for Your Teacher" or something trite like that!

The track listing is EXACTLY the same as "Top Gear Anthems".  ZZ Top, Status Quo, Thin Lizzy et al.  Grrr!  PEOPLE - DON'T BE FOOLED.  LOOK AT YOUR iTUNES LIBRARY AND SEE THAT YOU ALREADY HAVE THESE SONGS MULTIPLE TIMES!!!!

Then, as I settled down with my small glass of port to enjoy The One Show's "Best of British" I find that the schedule had been hijacked by the birth of our new king (congrats to Kate and Will - please don't think I'm lining myself up for treason here, please sir!).

Every channel was doing the 'rolling' news thing stood outside doors saying things like "We don't know anything yet".  Sigh!  I'm paying a lot of money for this.  I resorted to putting UK GOLD on to watch the birth of Prince Harry (sic).

So now we all stand there with bated breath waiting for the tsunami of royal baby crap to roll onto the shelves of Shell garages everywhere.  I think they should reuse all of those collector's plates left over from the Royal Wedding two years ago.  At the end of the day, it's worked for Eddie Stobart/Top Gear (The StoGear Complex as it shall now be known).

After all, as my final point, we do have to recycle - but there has to be a fine line that MUST NOT be crossed.  I fear that this line is about to be kicked to death by the suits in offices all around Soho!  Sigh!

Hooray hooray it's a British holiday pt.1

So I have had the amazing opportunity to enjoy a couple of holidays this last four weeks.  Before you start speaking behind your hands saying that "I'm one of those that are always jetting away to foreign climes for crazy hedonistic weeks in the sun" I will clarify my stance on this.  We are an ordinary working family who are always being chased by those with the red letters begging us to pay for things that we can barely afford - these include electric, gas and roof over head etc ...

I will level with you.  The terrible weather last year was our fault!  I apologise profusely for that.  We bought a trailer tent off the monster-in-law last year and the following day was the start of the 18 months of winter we suffered.  I am not proud of that, but I'm an honest person and feel that this should be the time I confess to this major error in our gulf stream.  Were I to hang my head any further in shame then I would alas suffer from irreparable spinal injuries!

However, this year I feel that the planets may have aligned in our favour.  The horrendous weather finally broke and went from 'too cold' to 'too hot' very quickly.  Thus giving us chance to get the 'Arkansas Chuggabug' out of the garage and finally enjoy the beautiful British country.

Cambridgeshire

Our first venture was down to the idyllic St. Neots in the amazing Cambridgeshire. The campsite there was absolutely perfect.  I can recommend this site to everyone.  We looked out of our awning to the beautiful Great Ouse river.  There were swans with their cygnets and ducks with their ducklings.  What greater way could you wish to wake up to?

 Now the town of St. Neots is a strange but beautiful place.  It has a fantastic setting with a pub on the river, an awesome town square setting and not forgetting an amazing radio station, Black Cat Radio http://www.blackcatradio.biz - the helm of the ship being the legend that is Gary Lee.  We had the honour of meeting him and having a couple of responsibly enjoyed drinks whilst discussing the future of community radio with him.  Please visit their website and give your support to get the FM licence that they deserve.

While we were there we enjoyed some fantastic sights.  The Duxford Air Field is one of the greatest days out we have had.We spent the whole day there and didn't see the whole museum - that was mainly because our feet could not take any more.  This was just the ticket for a holiday.  Did you know they have the Memphis Belle and the Concorde there?  That was worth the money in itself.

However, with every silver lining there is always a dark cloud.  We had saved up all year to visit the Tower of London.  We were doing little wees all over the place to see this exhibit.  What an absolute waste of time that was.

We spent £62.50 (after the voluntary donation which we didn't know about) to get in.  We walked through the door needing a wee wee and could only find four urinals in the whole site and then when we relieved ourselves went to get food straight after at 12:30 to find that the food was sold out.  We had to share a hot dog and a flapjack between three of us.  Not impressed.

When we didn't think it could get much worse we then moved onto the exhibitions ... Why did we bother?  There was a TWO HOUR queue for the Crown Jewels and the only exhibit we could actually get into was the White Tower which was overcrowded and all we saw was the back of peoples heads as we walked around.  After just an hour and a half we decided to cut our losses and leave the Tower.  (Bear in mind we had spent £62.50 (with voluntary donation that we didn't know about) to get in).  That meant that the colossal misfire had cost us £41.67 per hour which in my mind was NOT value for money, I was understandably in a bit of a bad mood!

That aside London was still pretty crap!  We had to suffer the rude and ignorant people jostling us on the street.  Don't get me started about the price of the food ... For a main course in Leicester Square we managed to feed the family with £6 change in Epping.  Grr!

Another highlight of the week was visiting the beautiful city of Cambridge.  This was an education in itself.  The map we bought at the park and ride told us not to expect "students cycling everywhere - we are not that kind of place" ... erm yes you are!  But that was just amusing.  The highlights of our visit were many.

1) Students cycling everywhere.
2) People punting.  This was fantastic on every level.  There were the professional punters that took people on the guided tours - these guys were legends.  There were the people who thought that punting came naturally to them only to fall into the River Cam with people taking pictures. Finally there were the odd punting sticks (apologies for incorrect terminology) sticking out of the river ... We had a thought that these people were thrown into a maelstrom of chaos that was the Willy Wonka tunnel that the river keeps on flowing ....
3) The guy that was busking with only a saw and a bolt (that is not a joke).  Britain's Got Talent is missing out there.  We walked past him chuckling, only realising after that there is an opportunity to make him an internet sensation (making sure he was paid of course!).
4) Kings College: This deserves a pause ....

We went there under duress from my lovely wife.  She told me that she wanted to visit the chapel there.
 Those who know me know that there is a shudder goes down my spine when I visit anything religious.  I get the feeling that the anti-christ may be in my veins!
We walked through what I can only describe as the most exquisite chapel I have ever seen.  It was very serene apart from the organist just playing every note on the scale.  We were loving the beautiful stained glass and the whole history while listening to A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H and associated #'s.  As we walked into the exhibit showing the history of the War of the Roses I made a quip to my son about organist hitting the "Brown Note".  This was the death knoll of the serenity of the whole chapel.  We started giggling like school kids and came close to being booted out for giggling like children.  You have to understand that when myself and my son get a daft idea in our heads we chuckle like Muttley.  Needless to say that this was not condoned by not only the visitors of the chapel but the brethren that were there to answer our questions and bask in the beauty of the tranquility of the chapel.  My wife was obviously unimpressed by our behaviour and we were suitably chastised  when we left the hallowed building for our childlike behaviour!

Finally for this part of my rant I would like to share a part of my life that much akin to Groundhog Day.

I am an incredibly approachable guy.  I will chew the fat with anyone.  If people have prejudiced views I will listen to their comments but will never respond.  However, I came close to lamping one guy on the campsite on our final night of being in this beautiful area of our green and pleasant land.

This chap was walking his dog past our tent as did many others during our stay.  I went to give his dog a fuss and broke into the conversation about the fact that we had been feeding the duck and cygnets (from earlier if you've really been reading it all) bread.  Well, that was just the start of his lectures.  I learned from this guy (over a half an hour period) that:

1) Bread (unless toasted) can kill birds
2) He lost his wife two years ago and his dog is his only company
3) Driving any faster than 50 miles an hour is just plain stupid - any more than that is uneconomical.
4) He walks a lot ... I won't bore you with the details but he did to me!  I think I know the whole of the Peak District now *Sigh*
5) Women shouldn't drive
6) The Polish should be fired out of cannons and we should build a wall around our isle and bare our private parts to the French's aunts.
7) His daughter (very interestingly) had been invited to Milan for a fashion show and he was dog sitting.
8) If you need to wee when you are talking to him you must wait at least another 20 minutes until he feels that he has no more words to come out of his gob.

I walked back to our tent a broken man.  My wife and son were literally crying tears into the kettle because of the fact that I'm too nice to tell these people to F**k Off.  I could have completed three levels of Candy Crush Saga in the time he bent my ear!

Anyway.  I do have a follow up to this "most excellent adventure" but I'm a bit tired now and so will continue this rant tomorrow.  The following story will involve a bit of positivity and a lovely story about raising funds for charity.

Until then, I bid you adieu xx