The Chapman Zone Dave’s Blog

I had the ‘flu last week. I’m pretty much over it now, but I’m left with the lingering effects of the illness.

You know what the worst part of having the flu is? Not the headaches (although I hate those), not the sore throats (although I hate that too), nor is it the persistant cough (hate that too), nor the weakness (I can deal with that since I spend the time in bed anyway).

Nope the worst aspects of having the flu are (in second place) the wierd delirious dreams you get when the fever is at its height. Last week I had a dream about being in one of these house building programmes, except there seemed to be about twenty versions of the dream going on in my head all at the same time! I was scared to go back to sleep, as it was like someone was waiting in my head to assault me with this bombardment of images and sounds as soon as I closed my eyes!

And the worst symptom of all is the one that hits after the physical symptoms all subside - the depression. God I hate that! I always seem to get it after I start to feel better and it makes me feel like I’m having an ‘emotional flu’ just after getting over the physical one!

I’m glad the flu hits different people in different ways - I wouldn’t wish this feeling on anybody.

Good news is that I’m getting over it now. I woke up this morning without that feeling of utter pointlessness that I have had for the past couple of days. Plus my appetite’s coming back as well.

I do have a penchant for feeling sorry for myself when I’m unwell…..

I’m mindful of the fact that some of my Scouts read this blog, so I shall have to restrain myself from using the language that I really want to use!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Civil Service are always late in providing pay rises (well, my branch are anyway). The only upside of this is that when it does finally arrive, there is a nice little lump sum of back pay in that months pay packet, which can be used for a splurge. This year, I decided to use the back pay to partly fund my full motorbike test.

I was anticipating about £250 of back pay, and the pay slips finally arrived today (pay day tomorrow). As it turns out, the lump sum I get is £102 less than I had anticipated, and that is before tax, so I’m only getting an extra £100 or so in my pay packet this months.

I’ve got this month and next months wages to pay the £450 for the course, so I’m going to be a little bit skint for a while. If I don’t do the course now though, it will be ages before I get round to doing it.

Bloody Civil Service! They really do know how to take your workplace morale and flush it down the bog! I know that many people think that Civil Servants have an easy life, and I guess that compared to some in the private sector, we do. We have job security (well, most of us that don’t live in London do), and the pay is not all that bad really, even though I don’t have a prayer of getting a mortgage for a place of my own at the moment. Flexi time is great, as I can come in and leave pretty much whenever I want……

…..actually, I’ve kind of lost the momentum to rant……….

Whoops!

Saturday 25th February was the Fareham East District six-a-side football tournament. One of my Scouts, Matt, trained the Cubs every Sunday morning for an hour for the last six weeks, teaching them some basic skills and playing strategy. Alan (my Assistant Leader) assisted, and I went along as well. I had to go, as I was the only warranted leader, but I was happy to do it, and had good fun, even though it was totally freezing!

When the Cubs started training, they were all over the place, chasing the ball all around the pitch like a pack of hungry sharks chasing a tuna, but by the end of the six weeks they were playing in their zones, and playing some really good football. So it was with some real hope that we attended the tournament at Soccer City yesterday afternoon.

All nine Cubs showed up (always a good sign), and they were all really up for it. There were seven teams in the tournament, and all teams were to play everyone else, with the top four progressing through to the semi-finals.

We started against the biggest team in the tournament, who, as it turned out, play in a weekly league anyway, so they were a lot more practised than us, and I think they were a smidgeon too old to be in a Cub tournament. Not to say that anyone was cheating - the rules stated that they had to be under 11 years old. Thing is, I’ve got Scouts in my Troop that aren’t yet 11 years old! I think maybe they were using an old set of rules from before the age ranges for Cubs and Scouts changed, and maybe some Troops were taking slight advantage of this. Anyway, the upshot of it was that we lost the first game four nil.

All credit to the Cubs that they did not let their heads drop, and went on to win the next game. They played some excellent football, and Ben in particular stood out for his non-stop running in defence and midfield.

I don’t remember the exact run of results, but we ended the round robin in fourth place, and progressed to the semi-finals. Our opponents were 2nd Fareham, and even though they were the tournament leaders, we were confident of doing well, as they had only beaten us by 1 fluke goal the last time we played them.

As it turned out, they won 2-0 and knocked us out of the tournament.

To reach the semi-finals was an fantastic result for the day, considering the size of the opposition (we had a spread of ages and sizes from across the Cub Pack, whilst some of the other teams were able to field an entire team of older Cubs). The experience was soured a little by the fact that some Cubs played every game, while others were limited to a few games. One Cub only got to play for one and a half games and was justifiably upset. I should have intervened, but I really wanted to let Matt complete the job himself, and to butt in and countermand his decisions would have defeated the object of letting him manage the team. Besides, I didn’t really know it was going on until after the fact, as I was too caught up in the drama of it all!

I think that although Matt tried to spread the games around the players, he felt that there were three or four Cubs who were technically better players, and kept them on for every game, while the remaining five had to compete for the last two/three spaces. I guess that his desire to be fair to all of the Cubs was at conflict with his desire to win the tournament, and this desire to win definitely won out during the semi-finals. Some of the Cubs who did not get to play every game were playing in the Semi-final, but got substituted as soon as we went down by a goal. I think ‘panic-substitutions’ is the correct expression.

It was a shame, but I hope those Cubs who were disappointed that they didn’t get to play enough don’t stay sad for very long - every one of them made a meaningful contribution to the Pack getting as far as they did, and they should all be proud of their performance. By rights, they should not have all been there, as we were only supposed to have a squad of eight players (we took nine), so at least they all got to play in the tournament.

So, to Jake, Henry, Neil, Daniel, Steve, Ollie, Charlie, Ben and Paul - you represented 1st Fareham with honour, and we’re all proud of you.

For some bizarre reason, I got the urge to scoff about four pieces of rich bitter chocolate just before putting my head down last night, and I woke up three times in a cold sweat…….wierd.

Anyway, back to my story, and getting to the point that I originally wanted to make yesterday before I started rambling on with my life story.

Like I said, the 125 is starting to feel a little slow and unrefined, and I am filled with the desire to get on a ‘real’ bike. I hate saying that, because it sounds like I am disrespecting the 125, and I hate to do that to a vehicle in whom I trust my life on a daily basis, and compared to the countless chavs I see hurtling around on their sh*tty mopeds, my bike is definitely a ‘real bike’.

The limitations of the GN125 were brought into sharp contrast a while ago, when I went with Cornell into Portsmouth on the bikes. By this time, he had already passed his DAS and bought himself a rather nice Harley Davidson 883 Sportster. So you can imagine how I felt riding through the streets of Portsmouth, following a Harley making the noise that it makes, on my 125 which…..well……doesn’t quite sound so……..meaty…..

I have openly refused to go on any more rideouts with him until I get a bike that can hold its own in public. That in itself is impetus enough, as I really enjoyed the rideouts we took last summer/autumn.

Hey, look - I’m rambling again!

One of the things that has been stopping me from booking my DAS was money - it currently costs £450 for a 4-day course, and I ain’t got that kind of cash. Fortunately, I work as a Civil Servant, and our annual pay negotiations are regularly late (they have been every year for the five years I’ve worked here). This year it is six months late, but it has finally been agreed and is going into our next pay packets. So I will (hopefully) have an extra two hundred and fifty pounds in my account at the end of the month, and it made me decide to actually do it.

So I did.

Yesterday I booked my Motorcycle Theory Test for the 8th March, and I am currently pencilled in for my DAS course on the 8th to the 11th April, with the test on the 11th.

Yay!

…actually, it’s more like ‘Procrastination 10,237,734′, but who’s counting.

I always used to put stuff off, if I was even the slightest bit apprehensive about doing it. Wait long enough and the opportunity passes you by. This was how I was able to spend many years of my life pretending not to hate myself for bottling out of doing so many things.

Oh, good God. Maybe I ought to start a new category called ‘Therapy’.

Nope, instead I have created one for ‘Motorbiking’, and it does relate to all that cobblers at the top of this post…kinda.

I always liked motorbikes when I was a kid. I used to watch it on TV all the time, back when the late great Barry Sheen vied with Kenny Roberts for the World Title. Two of my older brothers used to own motorbikes, and I always thought they were very cool.

Of course, I was far too young to even begin to ride back then (there was no access to kids motorbiking that I knew of), and as I grew up I pushed that dream aside as my attention drifted to other things. When I was old enough to ride legally, I was already a major league layabout, unemployed and with no means to even get a cheap moped. It became one of those things that I told myself I would do “one day” (there were quite a lot of things in that particular list by then).

A couple of years ago, something happened in my life that gave me a serious kick up the arse. I won’t go into what that thing was, but I received a major wake up call, a reminder that life is short and that it should be experienced, not viewed casually from the sidelines. So I started to re-evaluate my life and resloved to start doing some of the things that I always wanted to do.

While I was on Summer Camp with the Scouts in 2004, a friend and co-leader, John, let me have a go on his Suzuki GS500 around the field we were camping in. I wobbled all over the place, and never got it out of second gear (it was not a smooth field), but something sparked in my mind, and I remembered how much I wanted to ride as kid. You know how much more exciting things used to seem to you as a kid, when you’re not allowed to do them, that seem to lose that edge when you get to do them as an adult? Well, for a brief few seconds I got that rush of adrenalin, that feeling of being a kid again. It was from that particular moment that I knew I had to get myself on a motorbike.

I didn’t do too much about it for a while. I guess the procrastination was still quite deeply ingrained in me. Fortunately, Cornell was getting into bikes in a proper way (i.e. he took his CBT) sometime mid-2005 (I forget exactly when), and began to harass me to do the same once he discovered that I wanted to ride. His main motivation was that he wanted someone to ride with other than his mate Rich, who owned an R6 (mightily, nay, scarily fast - I think C felt a little inadequate).

He told me good things about Paragon Bike Training in Gosport, where he took his CBT, so I booked up a day in my week off after Summer Camp 2005 to have a go.

I think all the sneaky/naughty goes I used to have on friends bikes paid off, as I took to the bike quite quickly (Gary, my instructor was full of praise anyway). Within three days of passing the CBT, I had gone to the bank to extend my loan and went to Bike Business in Fratton and found myself a bike. Its a black ‘03′ plate imported Suzuki GN125, and I have been very pleased with it so far. I’ll take some pictures of it soon and post them.

As many people (experienced bikers) told me , I would soon tire of the limitations of the 125 and want a bigger bike, and sure enough, I was quite quickly frustrated with the lack of power and response allowed me by the engine size. Not that I’m a speed freak or anything, far from it. It’s just that, while a 125 can handle itself in most traffic situations (not on the motorway, obviously, since I’m still on ‘L’ plates), but it struggles to reach 60, and certainly doesn’t like staying there for any length of time. I once squeezed 70mph out of it, on a slight downhill gradient with a tailwind, but over a certain rev speed, it gets a bit shaky, and the vibrations go right through you. I’d love to go out on some looooong rides, and even take a holiday on a bike, and a 125 is not going to make that possible.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my bike (it is my first bike after all) - it always always starts, even through the cold bits of this winter, and has never given me a moments trouble. I’ve only fallen off it once, and that was at about 2mph, so I didn’t really hurt myself (not counting my pride), so it will be a bit of a wrench to sell it, but it’s time to move on….

(to be continued tomorrow - I want to go to bed)

Bravo to that bastion of journalistic integrity, The News Of The World.

By uncovering the footage of British Troops abusing Iraqi teenagers, they have done a great service, both to the peace process in Iraq, and to Western-Islam relations.

[Sarcasm Mode Off]

How long are these complete tossers going to be allowed to generate the kind of crap. In my naivete, I thought that newspapers existed to inform and educate the population on current events, both local and global. What do we get on the front page these days? Stories about Big Brother (I’ll get started on that one day), or about which celebrities shagged each other that week. When they do eventually (and I’m not just referring to News Of The World now, but to all Red Top/Tabloid newspapers) print something that is of the remotest importance, they skew it beyond all recognition so that it becomes a sensational frenzy of hyperbole and inaccuracy. And why do they print such lies and exagerrations?

To sell more newspapers……and make more money.

Honesty and integrity do not stand a chance against the bottom line these days, I’m afraid.

Going back to this recent footage of troops abusing Iraqi teenagers, and leaving aside the possibility that it might be completely fake (it wouldn’t be the first time), two things come to my mind:

Firstly, has anyone stopped to consider why these troops were doing what they did? Granted, the average British Squaddie is not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, but maybe they were justified in doling out a good sh*t-kicking? I know that there are many times when I felt like dishing out similar punishment to some of the local chavs, and I am not in a war zone - god knows what these men did to provoke the Troops into that action. Maybe they were caught trying to stick a bomb under a squad vehicle, or some similar wholesome activity. What are the odds of it being completely unprovoked?.

Secondly, if the News of The World had any care at all about the peace process in Iraq, they would have presented a copy of the video to the Ministry of Defence first, and then given them the opportunity to take action against those responsible. If action was not forthcoming, then they could have published the footage. What possible good were they trying to acheive by plastering it all over the media? What did they think the end result would be, and to do it now, when tensions are already high because of these Danish cartoons….are they actually trying to incite a new wave of terrorist activity?

I don’t advocate suppression of the media (especially with this government), but I wonder how far these papers are going to go before they are brought to heel - they are doing serious damage to society, spreading fear, paranoia and hate, not just between different ethnicities, but between neighbours. And as long as money remains their overriding concern, they are not going to stop.

When I rule the world, I intend to build a huge rocketship, with the capacity to seat many hundreds of people. The destination of this ship will be the centre of the Sun (there will be no heat shields), and the first seats are reserved for newspaper journalists…

….and before any of you shoot yourselves, no this is not a rant, it is a ‘funny’…..well, I think it is anyway………hey, I didn’t write it!

SOCIALISM:
You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:
You have 2 cows. The Government takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM:
You have 2 cows. The Government takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM:
You have 2 cows. The Government takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 cows. The Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

AMERICAN CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

FRENCH CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

JAPANESE CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called ‘Cowkimon’ and market them world-wide.

GERMAN CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

BRITISH CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. Both are mad.

ITALIAN CORPORATISM:
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

INDIAN CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You worship them till they drop dead.

RUSSIAN CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

SWISS CORPORATISM:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

CHINESE CORPORATISM:
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

If I keep going the way I am, this site will have been a serious waste of money…….oh hang on………..well, a minor waste of money at any rate (£60 per year, if I remember correctly).

I managed the grand total of 2 posts in the entire of January….. I think I might make a ‘new month’ (as opposed to a new years) resolution, to beat last months total, and I think I might try to keep that going till I get into the habit of regularly posting (about one post every other day will satisfy me that I am using this site enough…well, the blog anyway, I have more plans for the site).

I think one way I am certain to increase my input on this blog is to introduce a new Category. I shall call this category ‘Rants’, and use it to vent my spleen on any issue that is bugging me. By that I mean issues of politics, religion, other road users and life in general. Those that know me well have probably just read this and gone “Oh god, NOOOOOOO!!!”, as the prospect of Dave ‘going off on one’ has filled them with dread and the overwhelming desire to gouge their own eyes out, just to spare themselves the ordeal of reading one…..