This evening I decided to download the Nokia Software Updater program that allows home users to update the firmware on their Nokia mobiles without the pain of taking them to a Service Center.

My Nokia N80 requires an upgrade as its been very erratic ( which has been reported by many users )

Well, I downloaded the updated firmware, and now my mobile is dead. Having scanned many forums including Nokia’s support forums, this has happened to many nokia phones across the globe.

Cheers Nokia. Im having to endure cold turkey until Monday as the nearest Service Center doesnt do weekends..

Hate it. Bank balance depreciation should be celebrated once every 15 years.

Agree?

Ive had a few emails recently regarding The Novel I may never finish with a few readers asking if there were/will be new chapters. Well I had a look through an old diskette and found this unfinished Chapter 2:

Please note, the language is rather… fruity:

TWO – Scotland’s Armpit

Somehow my one off performance with The Vinyl’s ended up as a regular thing for me and soon I was playing gigs every week around Glasgow’s bars and clubs. I wanted to play wherever there was a plug socket and a few ears that would listen to our cover versions. We always had a great response with our audiences and we seemed to play better with every passing week even though the group underwent around five personnel changes within a month. The original members: Russell and Jackie O’Toole decided enough was enough after playing covers of other people’s music for three years non stop so they formed their own folk band ‘ The O’Tooles’. With the many changes, Clifford Blythe and I were the recognised face of The Vinyl’s.

However, I was starting to get tired of the songs and I wanted to do something original but Clifford Blythe was always a shitehawk. He never wanted to do anything that was new and original. He seemed content playing Beatles covers for life and hopefully getting a shag at the end of the evening. This was not my idea of the life worth living concept so after a difficult band meeting I left The Vinyl Covers in search of something new.

The trouble was, The Dole Office found out about my ‘undeclared earnings’ and threw me off the dole as a punishment. I was in serious shit now because I didn’t want to work in an office or anywhere to be truthful. I have a healthy respect for workers. They get up in the morning, go to work, come home, have dinner, brush their teeth, have sex or get intimate on their own and sleep until the new day dawns. The robotic way of life was not for me. Call it arrogance or what you will, but I would have been useless in the workplace and I would have perhaps dreamt up ways on how to get the heave ho.

Music made my heart sing (no pun intended) Fuck working. That’s was not for Renwick Shaw.

Without money the path to fame and fortune is full of the landmines of life and brick walls that appear without warning. The major brick wall was my beloved father who nicknamed me ‘Rene the fairy’ after I told him that music was the thing I wanted to do. He believed in the robotic way of life; Get a job, meet a woman, marry then fuck her in the missionary position until your tap runs dry taking break in-between pregnancies. Eat ready made TV dinners from the microwave, raise the children until they leave home and then wait on them getting their own back when they return middle aged to put you into a retirement home. That seemed to be Michael Shaw’s ideal life and he wanted the fruits of his loins to follow the same path. I was close to telling him to fuck off many times but he would have thrown me out.

I was nearly twenty two, I had no job, I had no intention of working, I am useless, I can play guitar, and I like listening to indie music and electronica. What do I do now? The answer to this latest brick wall came from an unlikely source: my father. When I look back now at the conversation at the dinner table with him that changed my life its easy to blame him for making me exposed to Stepchurch and THEM

Getting up in the morning was something I did not enjoy. Yes I was lazy but my father was always up at dawn and was never in the best of moods. A coach driver for more than twenty five years with the Corporation he was starting to suffer from the medical condition called coach drivers clutch. This condition was similar to arthritis in that it affected the joints of a driver’s clutch foot leaving the person in a lot of discomfort and pain, especially in morning.

Michael Shaw was a crabby man and he has always been that way as far as I can remember. He came from a strict Catholic background and was an only child. Due to his religious extremist of a mother, Michael didn’t like anyone who was not of his religion or social background. His own father died when he was young so all he knew came from the extremist views of his mother. Some have said that he is ‘just old fashioned.’ No he isn’t old fashioned, just a bigoted old bastard.

I don’t know what Mother saw in him, and to be honest I don’t care. They never act the happily married couple. It is a strange set up as she lives her own life and only makes him his tea, cleans and irons after him. They hardly speak at all..

© Stephen Sherry

Dear readers. Apologies for lack of blog insights. Things have been hectic and there have been some personal turmoil which is too tedious to go into here.. Lets move swiftly on.

Im thinking of creating a new catagory called ‘ Observations ‘ Artist Stuart Murray is a well versed observationalist, and the success in his art has some quite incredibly funny and sad art muse. Reading his books has made me even more aware of Glasgow/human/non human characters.

Tonight’s observation comes from the social magic that is cast on the 41 bus. The other evening, a small boy annoyed me. Well he annoyed everyone as did his hag of a mother. Yes, strong lexical choices but she stank of cider and smelled of long term benefit fraud. The kid was mouthy from the beginning to the end of my journey. He must have had a Bon Jovi Greatest Hits in his record arsenal at home because he sang out loud a few choice cuts of their work. Word perfect too.

I dont like Bon Jovi, this kid added to the sound pollution. His mother was speaking to someone she knew whilst her kid was performing karaoke. She was loud too, effing and blinding - even mentioning how she was in court the other day for answering to a charge of in her words ‘ bootin her 17 year old neighbour in the fanny ‘

Fair enough. One comes to expect this in Glasgow. But the kid got sick of Bon Jovi and started singing - much to his mother’s amusement:

bum, tit, tit, bum, bum. Play the hairy banjo

Ive never heard that one until he sang it. Some friends have accused me of being socially retarded due to the lack of knowledge.

He got louder and louder, and louder… His mother intervened with ‘ i’ll fuckin kick yer shithole. Now shut yer mooth ‘

( For non Glaswegians. She asked him to kindly refrain from singing too loud )

The bold kid told his mother that he ‘ will punch her in the tit ‘ when he gets home.

There is always an old pensioner that intervenes in these kind of situations. Giving them a lesson in good manners.. She too was told to go away ( but that was said in Glaswegian dialect with double venom) Pensioners are annoying in those situations. AS if the world was without colourful metaphors in the days of Black and White TV and Rationing. It was there back then and they know it.

Rudeness though was more refined and classy. I always remember the story that my mother told me when I was 19 during a candid conversation about sex and other things one shouldnt ask a mother. Mum was visiting a friend of hers about 35 years ago. This friend was a good age back then. Well mannered, lynchpin of morality in front of her friends this lady was.

Anyway. Mum needed the loo and her friend told her in all seriousnessthat ‘ Before you go in, I need to empty the bath as my James has just came out of the toilet and I want to say goodbye to the Grandchildren I could have had…. ‘

I wonder if the pensioner who accosted the rude boy and his mother remembered that comment from 35 years ago..

My good friend moved to Glasgow this year and he has a knack of finding things that are useful on the dear green place’s streets. Not too long after he settled in he found a lovely couch on the street. While others would walk on by, he carried it home, cleaned it up and now its sitting right at home in his room.

However last night I was with him and what he found this time made me wonder if he is the second coming with someone above leaving him gifts on the steet. My good friend found a box (unopened ) that contained about 20 packets of Ginger Cake of the highest quality. It was lying on the kerb, awaiting the binmen. I would have walked past, but of course my friend took the box home!

On further examination they just went past their sell by date. We had a slice with our tea/beer and it was great. I was however indulged to try and eat a full one. I am slim and this would have been an easy task during my fat Elvis period. I ate it myself and it amazed my friends.

Today, my insides are in pain and I feel pregnant. I am gingered out. The things I do for laughs..