Celebration

Oh my aching head! Talk about the day after the night before. I haven't had so much to drink since the last Laughing Horse Awards ceremony. The final hour or two are a complete blur in my mind but various nightmarish images keep rising up from the cesspit of my memory. Mr Brague in nothing but a studded leather thong sliding down the hotel bannisters. Jenny and Libby standing on the bar to do a drunken medley of Cheeky Girls songs. Captain Gowans arm wrestling in the lobby with feisty Jan from California and losing! And Helen from "Helsie's Happenings" chasing me round the hotel fountain with my trousers in her hands yelling, "Come to mama ya pommy bastard!"

An ambulance was called to take Ian from "The Owl Wood" and Senor Brian el Cuttso to hospital because of their over-indulgent drinking. A grinning and sober Ian from "Shooting Parrots" played his ukelele on the staircase - old George Formby numbers which were much appreciated by starry-eyed Daphne, Elizabeth and Earl Gray who sat in awe on the carpeted steps beneath him. Steve - once of  "Occupied Country" and Arctic Fox - out briefly on parole from HMP Armley - fought in the car park with Olaf the Swedish barman and a couple of  Saudi Arabian bloggers before the outraged French hotel manager intervened.

Steve Bruce last night  - upset by acerbic comments from Cap'n Gowans

Oh my Lord - what a night! Anyway, let's backtrack to earlier in the evening when the awards were announced  - soon after the opening address was given by Hull City's manager Steve Bruce. It was all tuxedos, shimmery evening dresses and polite chortling at that point. And these were the winners...

African blogger of the year - Tom Gowans of "Hippo on the Lawn"

Welsh male blogger of the year - Earl John Gray - creative brains behind "Going Gently"

Paste me in

Wrexham blogger of the year and Welsh female blogger of the year - Jennyta from "Demob Happy Teacher"

Australia's best blogger award (Sponsored by Vegemite) - Helen from "Helsie's Happenings"

Best blogger in Aby Lincolnshire - Ian from "The Owl Wood"

Sexiest lady blogger - Libby from "D-Scribes"

Sexiest male blogger and best research blogger - Ian from "Shooting Parrots"

Top Animal Care Blogger and yet again top blogger in Sloughhouse, California - Jan from "Cosumne Gal"

Top Yorkshire blogger (female) - Elizabeth "Well this Int Gettin Ens Fed"

Top Yorkshire blogger (male), Nobel Peace Prize and United Nations Humanitarian Award - Yorkshire Pudding

Best communist theatrical agent blogger from north Leeds - Daphne "My Dad's a Communist"

Catalonia's Premier English Blogger - Brian Cutts of "Tannu Tuva"

Hamilton NZ's best blogger and Top Granddad Blogger - David from "Cimba7200"

Top Senior Blogger and once again Top American Blogger - Robert Brague "Rhymes With Plague"

Winners are entitled to copy and paste this year's designer widget into their own blogs or sidebars:-

But...drum roll. The Laughing Horse Blogger of the Year for 2012 is.....(pause for heartbeat drumming)...is none other than New Zealand-based blogger Katherine de Chevalle, creator of "The Last Visible Dog"! Hurrah! In their citation, the Awards Committee said, "Katherine's blog provides a healthy mixture of  personal topics, reflections on national and international news items and there is much exploration of wildlife issues, sometimes pausing to celebrate the creatures and the plants she sees around her. Her passion for Art recurs in the blog but her own creativity is never flaunted egotistically. The comments she leaves on other people's blogs are generally warm and encouraging with only occasional glints of her wicked sense of humour. She also makes exceedingly good muffins."  The committee chose to waive objections made by several  Brush-Tailed Possum Support Groups.

In fact, as Katherine weaved her way to the stage past cheering guests to receive her cheque from Steve Bruce, it was obvious that her fur coat was not mink after all but pure NZ brush tailed possum - approximately thirty pelts were used in its manufacture by an Otorohanga fashion house.

A stunned Katherine as the award was announced.

What a wonderful way to say goodbye to an old year and to welcome in a new one. 

Happy 2013 Everybody! Happy New Year!

Special

Who

Tension

The 2012 award widget, specially
designed by Danny Boyle - architect
of the London Olympics' opening
and closing ceremonies.

The prestigious "Laughing Horse Blog Awards" are being held this very evening at the exclusive Whitley Hall Hotel in the northern outskirts of Sheffield. For those who are unaware of "Laughing Horse" and what it represents, let us just say that it is probably the most coveted award for anyone currently working in the blogging industry.

Previous overall winners have included:

My Dad's a Communist  by Daphne (2009)

Going Gently by Earl Gray(2010)

Shooting Parrots by Ian  (2011)

But every year there are subsidiary awards which are of course also gleefully treasured.

Bloggers have been arriving in Sheffield from every corner of the world, all eager to learn if their services to blogging willl be acknowledged by the Laughing Horse Awards Committee. Notable arrivals have included the eskimo blogger known as "Pole A Bear" and the Salt Lake City blogger "Baseball Mitt" who seems much greyer since he lost the US presidential election to the Chicago-based blogger "Don't Barrack Me Suckers!" 

Perhaps it was the jetlag that did it but after downing a couple of pints of Tetley's at the hotel bar Mitt found himself in a contretemps with Captain T. Gowans from Angola ("Hippo on the Lawn"). Gowans gripped the poor old bloke round the gullet and gruffly warned him - "Don't you EVER say that about Africans you ninny!" Naturally, Mr R.Henry Brague was the peacemaker and had to physically force himself between the warring pair.

Bathed in afternoon light, sitting in the alcove of the bar's bay window, several lady bloggers exchanged knitting patterns and cake recipes while simultaneously humming lullabies and darning their menfolk's holey socks. Multitasking as usual. But then brash Californian rancher Janice Blawat spoilt it all by passing round graphic roadkill pictures - squashed skunks, possums and endangered raccoons. Yet even she was trumped when New Zealander Katherine de Shovel arrived with a frightened brush tailed possum that had been squeezed into a plastic carry basket meant for cats or small dogs. She said its name was Art and when Helen from "Helsie's Happenings" and theatrical impressario Daphne Franks realised it was still alive, they screamed like hysterical schoolgirls. 

Elizabeth was on a bar stool sipping pina coladas while simultaneously admiring the cocktail shaking skills of Olaf the hotel's buff Swedish bartender. Then who should arrive but Colonel I. Hutson from "The Owl Wood". He shuffled up to Elizabeth with a military glint in his eye and ordered a small egg nog.

Impoverished Economically challenged bloggers have had to bunk up in the basement rooms of Whitley Hall Hotel. These are very basic airless rooms normally used by chambermaids and porters. Jenny from Wrexham (currently dressed in a silver body stocking) is with Shooting Parrots and Libby from "D-Scribes" is in with the lascivious and aforementioned Captain Gowans. Brian Cutts (currently dressed in a Spanish matador's outfit) and The Arctic Fox-Pimpernel are literally on bunkbeds. Meanwhile upstairs, the Regal Room with its Jacobean four poster bed is occupied by Earl John Gray and his professorial consort Sir Christopher Brainbox O.M.G.., author of  "A Brief History of The Trelawnyd Flower Show" in five volumes.

So the guests and nominees are gathered. In a few hours the results for 2012 will be known...

Altogether

Dad behind the wheel. Mum in the front passenger seat. The kids in the back. "Are we nearly there yet?" Driving over to Hull between Xmas and New Year. It reminded me of all those other half-remembered drives. To France. To Italy. To the shops. To see Mum in the old folks' home. To cottage holidays in Shropshire. To London. To Las Vegas from L.A...

Will there ever be another day like today? Ian is twenty eight and Frances is twenty four. They're not at home any any more - just for Christmas. And we're going  to see Hull City at the K.C. Stadium against Yorkshire rivals - Leeds United. Murky spray on the motorway. We're later than we wanted to be. We park up on Great Thornton Street and march swiftly to our "theatre of dreams". 

The players are already out. Leeds in their virginal white strips and City in their black and amber - unhappily sponsored by despicable "Cash Converters". We take control of the game, We spurn chance after chance. Leeds look statuesque  We are Hull. "Take my hand, take my whole life too! For I can't help falling in love with you!" We are so much on top that our goalkeeper's left to visit the barbershop but incredibly, amazingly at half-time it's still 0-0.

Second half you wonder. Is it going to be one of those games where the best team doesn't win? But after fifty three minutes and finally, finally, Corry Evans sweeps the leather ball past Paddy Kenny's outstretched arms into the net. "Who are ya? Who are ya?" we chant at Leeds's army of travelling supporters. And four minutes later Meyler rises to a well-directed corner and like a cannonball heads the plastic-coated sphere  into the bulging net. Effectively, it's all over there and then. We have suppressed the mighty Leeds - doing the double over them for the first time in my life. As beautiful as a dew-sparkled cobweb on a summer's dawn.

Tea and Xmas cake at Tony and Fiona's mansion in Swanland before the 80 mph motorway run back to Sheffield. M62 to M18 to M1. My little family. The people I love the most. Contented that we gave Leeds a real footballing lesson. Maybe never to be repeated. Up The Tigers!

Pi

Yesterday afternoon, Shirley, Frances and I went to see the 3D version of "Life of Pi" directed by Ang Lee and starring Suraj Sharma as "Pi" Patel. Shirley had read the novel  by Yann Martel  some time ago but Frances and I didn't know quite what to expect.

The middle hour of the film has "Pi" out at sea in the company of a Bengal tiger called, rather bizarrely,  Richard Parker. This hour was quite sublime - both visually and in terms of the surreal experience it created. The 3D effects did not enslave the director's intentions, as arguably happened with "Avatar", but instead served or enhanced the cinematographic fantasy. Some of it was quite stunning and I found myself lost in the spectacle.

Did Pi dream it all? Was it truth or illusion? In the end it doesn't really matter. There was something vaguely spiritual about it all but if there was a religious message it certainly wasn't shoved roughly down your throat. At times there's a lightness, a deliberate silliness about "Life of Pi" and it is very likely the best film I have seen this year. It was breaking boundaries and Shirley said it truly did justice to a novel she had very much enjoyed. All three of us walked out of the cinema feeling we had just watched something rather special and uplifting.

Doodle

I came across this old doodle the other day. It reminded me of past times - when I was a member of my old school's Senior Leadership Team. It was created - if that is the right word - on June 29th 2009 at yet another SLT meeting, less than a month before I was to take my leave of a place that had eaten up twenty two years of my life. Towards the end, I felt quite distant from those meetings in which the players made moves as if in some educational X Factor competition though the atmosphere was usually and rather oddly reverential. Missionary zeal and all that. 

Doodling is something I have almost always done. Like walking in the countryside, it can help some of us to focus and organise thoughts. Not everyone's brain is scientifically bullet-pointed into neat checklists and action plans. I'm very glad I took early retirement when I did, leaving those interminable meetings behind and the endless spreadsheets, the observation programmes, glossy government ring binders, the targets and all the other stuff that got in the way of the simple business of teaching kids. It's taken a while but three and a half years down the line I feel I have cleared away most of that psychological debris.

On the whole, the football supporters in my old doodle look rather glum don't you think? Hopefully Hull City fans won't look that way after the Leeds United game on Saturday! We'll be grinning from ear to ear, won't we?...And it's a little hard to believe that a week today I'll be high above the clouds, flying back to Thailand.