All tarred with the same brush

The Jaggy Clan today spent a pleasant afternoon and evening with my Sister-in-law, Nephew, Niece and my Brother. I won't bore you dear reader with the details of our afternoon's picnic and playfulness but on a couple of occasions I was stopped in my tracks by the need to be politically correct as recollections of previous horrific experiences flashed into my mind.

Regular readers will know that last week I was on holiday in the South of England and we enjoyed some fantastic weather and Majorca-esque temperatures for a few days. The place we were staying in had an outdoor pool and on Friday, Jaggy Jnr and I larked around and swam in the busy waters as Mrs Jaggy and Niece 2 lapped up some rays on the sunbeds located around the pool, just like the 40 or so other folk there.

The pool is responsibly watched by a lifeguard on a high chair, politely telling the kids to stop running/bombing/diving/ducking their pals, which was fine to an extent, but all of a sudden, PHHEEEEEEEWWWWWPPPPPPPP!!!!!! The lifeguard blew his whistle as loud as he could, which attracted attention from people all around the pool, in the pool, and from the bar terrace that overlooked the pool.

Everyone stared.

"NO PHOTOGRAPHY!" he shouted at a poor soul who had dared to bring his camera out of his pocket at the side of the pool and point it at his young kid, submerged to his neck in the water with his mother and clearly having a great time. The guy looked up and sheepishly returned to his seat and put his camera away, with everyone watching.

I had seen the guy before the lifeguard blew his whistle and thought nothing of it, he was quite innocently photographing his own kid. But the lifeguard, by blowing his whistle and attracting everyone's attention might as well have shouted "PAEDOPHILE ON THE LOOSE, GATHER UP YOUR CHILDREN!!!"

I felt sorry for the guy, even though there were signs up saying "No Photography", it conjures up the feeling that everyone who photographs kids, especially their own, is a paedo. The lifeguard was only following the rules, a little aggresively it may be argued, but to the letter none the less.

I was watching Jaggy Jnr going down a rope slide in a Lanarkshire Park a couple of years ago when I took out my phone and was about to take a picture of him being brave, when a nosey Parky limped up to me and muttered, "No cameras allowed". I felt a mixture of embarrassment and anger as I muttered back "ach fuck off, he's ma wean" but wondered what the other parents around me were thinking as I walked away with jnr.

So today, as we found ourselves walking through a busy Ayrshire country park with all the kids happily playing, and me, as proud Dad/Uncle wanting to take some photos, I deliberately wait until our kids are on their own, with no extraneous kids of strangers in the background of my shots, just in case. Just in case someone says "Don't take photos of my kids!" just because they happen to be on the same climbing frame as our kids. Just because they happen to be running past the swings our kids are on, just because we're within 100m of other kids.

Now, I don't claim to know a lot about your common or garden paedo. From what I do know, they come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, sexes, and normal walks of life, and I'm fairly certain that unless you have personal knowledge of one, you wouldn't know him/her just by looking at him/her, regardless of the stereotypical "paedo look" put across by the tabloids. In the same way that you wouldn't know a murderer, wife beater, loan shark, burglar, drug dealer or benefit cheat if they happened to stumble your way.

So why treat every man, or woman, with a camera as a paedo. Nobody used to give a shit about who was taking photos of who, it's only since the advent of the internet, digital cameras and the tabloid media scaring the shit out of weak minded parents that images of their children playing are being traded by paedos in some sweaty far eastern hell-hole that this whole "Don't dare take a picture unless you have express written permission of everyone within 50 miles" rule has cropped up.

Lets get a sense of reality here, lets not be scared to record the memories of our children having a good time, let's take those photos, let's look at their giggling wee faces with glee for years to come and lets say a loud and proud "FUCK OFF" to the namby pamby worrier's.

The Best and the Rest.

It's time for my Gadget round up for the last week. Being a technophile I couldn't go travelling without taking along some of my favourite gadgets to play with, so here are the ones that shone away from home and also the ones that let me down badly.

RAVES: My dual powered 30 litre electric coolbox. This was a great investment, we originally bought it to take camping and use as a fridge, but it was great for keeping drinks and sandwiches cool in the car or boat on a long journey as it'll run off a 12V socket as well as 240V . I also used it in the caravan as a beer fridge as the small fridges supplied are never big enough for a few days supply plus food.



RANTS: My Acer Aspire laptop that's broken again. It had been dormant in it's case for a couple of weeks and when I went to check it before we left last week I discovered that it won't even power on. That's the third time it's broken on it's own accord. I fear it may get binned this time in favour of an Asus Eee PC.

RAVES: My Nokia N95. It took some great pictures, got me on the internet, uploaded pictures to Flickr, I blogged and twittered from it, I used the GPS to Navigate on the Norfolk Broads, it played MP3s in the car and I even made and received phone calls on it.

RANTS: The aging Toshiba laptop I had to take instead of the Acer. It's steam powered and the battery is completely fucked so I'm tied to a power socket with it. Which meant that I couldn't take advantage of the WiFi on site as our caravan was out of range and I would have had to sit at the cafe with it.

RANTS: The TOMTOM software on my Pocket PC. The software is maybe only 2 years old but I think the map data was written by the Romans. It failed to point out that the road I was navigating to was split in the middle by a River and the only bridge to the other side was a 10 mile round trip, making me run late to collect the boat. On the way home it's knowledge of the A1 and M1 is severely limited and twice took me the wrong way. The road was upgraded a matter of years ago and it has no idea. It took me off the Motorway and heading for Leeds when I should have been heading North. This too is going in the bin/Ebay.

RAVES: My cheap binoculars. I did a bit of stargazing with them on Friday night and could make out the disk shape of Venus and I spotted a satellite overflying at great speed. They were handy for reading the direction signs while out on the broads as well. And a snip at £7 from Lidls.

What's your favourite holiday gadget?

Make It So, Number 1

On Thursday morning we headed up to Ferry Marina in Horning to collect our Skipper, the boat we had hired for the day. After some brief tuition I took her out onto the River Bure. With miles and miles of rivers and lakes making up the Norfolk Broads there was no way we could go everywhere, and thankfully they had provided a map and gave advice on what the best route might be. As Captain, I made a plan to take in some of the wide main River, some of the smaller tributaries and one of the actual lakes, or Broads as they call them.


It became quickly apparent that both Mrs Jaggy and I were loving this. Once I had learned how to control the boat it became very relaxing. The Broads were a lot busier than I was expecting, very often we found ourselves bunching up with 2 or 3 other boats all going the same way and we passed boats going the opposite direction frequently. We had the coolbox with us containing our picnic and a bottle of wine for Mrs Jaggy so a plan was made to moor near a pub at Neatishead and have lunch. Loads of people had the same idea so the Staithe, or mooring was extremely busy. This called for my first reverse parking manoeuvre of the day which I pulled off more down to luck than skill, which was a relief as there were loads of folk watching.



In this picture you can see the sign pointing to where Inchy likes to park his boat.



As you can see, no place is safe from the Feds. The speed limit on the Broads varies between 3 and 6mph. Not really fast enough to send a breeze up your shorts, but it's meant to protect the banks from excessive erosion due to the wake of hundreds of speeding boats. It will also protect the wildlife, of which there is plenty variety. I'm no Bill Oddie but there were big ones, small ones and funny coloured ones, all wanting some bread thrown by the kids. Who incidentally had a great time as well.
I'm not sure if they would enjoy a whole week on a boat, as we would like to do next next year, but they had fun having a shot at steering and waving at other boaters.

All in all a fantastic day out and one to be highly recommended.

Competitive Dad

I'm not particularly good at many sports but that doesn't mean that I enjoy losing at anything, and being a father I don't like to see Jaggy Jnr losing at anything either.

I had booked a Tennis court for this afternoon for the four of us to have a game for an hour before Jaggy Jnr and Niece 2 went for an Archery lesson. I've not played tennis since I was at school and I doubt that Mrs Jaggy ever has, likewise the kids, so I wasn't expecting any
Wimbledon like rallies. So it was no surprise when Mrs Jaggy picked up a leg injury about 30 minutes in and then barely 5 mins later when it was me v the kids, Jnr smacked the ball straight into nieces eye. This called for the local First Aid guy, an ice pack, and fake blindness/sympathy for the next hour. She also decided she couldn't see well enough to do Archery later and so cancelled hers.

Jaggy Jnr however was made of sterner stuff and went for archery with 2 other kids. The other 2 kids Dads and me stood watching as the tuition was given and all three were given a few arrows to fire at the target about 20 feet away. The three proud Dads offered words of encouragement and reward as the arrows were flighted, up until the point where the instructor announced a competition over 3 rounds of 3 arrows, with the highest total score being the winner.

All friendliness and words of encouragement for others kids went out the window in favour of "c'mon son" said in a jovial but serious manner directed at own kids only.

Jaggy jnr was second after the first round, despite having scored a bullseye 10 pointer. Second round, another bullseye an 8 and a four catapulted him into the lead, with the closest follower just within reach of a third round decider. Jaggy Jnr put the competition out with an impressive 3rd round score and secured victory. The other Dads consoled their kids with "well done anyway" and "it was just a friendly competition really" but deep down I know they were a hurtin'.

I was a proud Dad. I don't go along with this "You're all winners just for taking part" political correctness bollox. If we don't teach our kids to strive to win then they'll just be content with losing and nobody will ever try for anything more than mediocre.

So it's back to the bar tonight for more scooping.

Coming soon in the Jaggy holiday blog is the human hamster ball and we set sail on the Norfolk Broads for a day at the helm of "Skipper".

I've seen the future.

As you may know by now, I'm currently on holiday in the South East of Englandshire, namely Hopton-on-sea next to Great Yarmouth.


It took us 9 hours to get here as we had to take a diversion through the West Midlands to collect Jaggy Jnr from the relatives he was visiting for a couple of weeks. Niece no.2 is with us as well and I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies in that both of them are great travellers and either slept or occupied themselves with the various gadgets that they thoughtfully brought along. It was in excess of 28 degrees C at some points and the Jeep's air-con is on the blink so we had the extra noise of having all the windows down for 400 odd miles to contend with. In fact I've now found myself with a great suntan down my right arm from having it hanging out the window the entire trip.


Right now we're just back from a quick trip into Great Yarmouth to have a walk through town to scope the place out and to do some shopping. But guess what we stumbled upon while walking along the sea front. Here's the formula:


Gadget + Futuristic Technology + Racing + Jaggy = Great Fun + New found talent.

Yes, it was Segway Grand Prix and this is me having a blast. For £4 you can hire a slice of the future and take it for a spin round their small track. But first you must spend 20 minutes dressing up in more body armour than Prince William in Afghanistan. The Health and Safety brigade have obviously read them the riot act. But once you've had the briefing and a short bit of tuition you're let loose. I was told I was a natural and within a couple of minutes I was lapping Jaggy Jnr and Neice 2 round the track. I have to say, I was surprised at how nippy they are, and great fun. Jaggy Jnr and Neice 2 are now wanting one for Xmas and I have to say, me too.

Tomorrow it's Archery, so stand by for tales of errant arrows

Due South

After much debate in the Jaggy household and much studying of the long range weather forecast we've finally booked a week away. We're going to Great Yarmouth now, not Cornwall. The UK home of palmtrees and rugged coastline is going to evade me for another year. I was wanting to do the John O'Groats to Lands End thing, you know, most Northerly point to most Southerly, but guess what, I can now do the most Easterly as well as Lowestoft is right next to Great Yarmouth. I know, not quite the same. We did John O'Groats a couple of years ago, and well, it was cold, and remote, and nothing to rush back to.

Of course Great Yarmouth is in Norfolk, and you can't go to Norfolk without sampling the Norfolk Broads. A "Broad" I've now found out, is a Norfolky word for lakes. As it's a bunch of lakes all interconnected by rivers and canals that was used as the transport system for industry back in the day. So to experience this first hand and for me to earn my captains wings or hat or whatever it is they get we've hired a boat for a full day.

We've hired this one, just because it looks the fastest. When the River Police aren't looking I going to "max" it. There is a variable speed limit in force of between 3 and 6mph at most so it won't take long before I'm a criminal. Being a novice sailor you'd think I'd like to take it out from a quiet jetty into a secluded part of the broads to learn the ropes, but I'm not going to get the chance. Being in a rush and knowing nothing about the area, we've hired it from a massive boat yard on the busiest part of the River Bure, which gets 1000 boats a day passing through. That's like taking your first driving lesson in Piccadilly Circus. It's going to be a steep learning curve.

Great Yarmouth also has a pleasure beach and the usual array of Seaside Town entertainment. I hear Joe Pasquale is playing next week, so I'll be avoiding that like the fucking plague.

I'm going to carry on blogging and posting some pictures next week as and when I get the chance, as unlike India, I'm pretty sure there will be 3G and/or WiFi Hotspots in Norfolk. If anyone knows anything about Norfolk and thinks there's something we should visit then drop me a line in the comments box.

I declare the Jaggy Clan Road Trip 2008 is all ahead full, next stop Norfolk. Ahoy me hearties.... or whatever.

Cultured Feet

Mrs Jaggy and I decided to have a day out on Saturday. I could tell you that we were keen to take in the culture of Glasgow and to appreciate the art and exhibits on display at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

But I'd be lying.

It was in fact just an excuse for a piss up.

Before we left the house I said to Mrs Jaggy, "We're going to be on our feet all day and walking quite a bit, are you absolutely sure you have appropriate shoes on, I don't want you whining later about sore feet."

This wasn't as stupid a question as you might think as there have been at least two occasions when Mrs Jaggy has been caught out by having the wrong shoes on when we've been out for the day.

Mrs Jaggy "Definately no problem, these are Birkenstocks, really comfortable, so piss off."

We got the train into Glasgow and then the underground to Partick where Kelvingrove is. This was an experience to Mrs Jaggy as she had never been on the Glasgow Underground before, whereas I was an old hand having been on it everyday in my youth. So being the man I strode up to the ticket booth with the nice lady serving.

Jaggy: "Two Adults please."

Ticket Lady: "We don't sell adults, only tickets"

I was slightly taken aback, as it's usually me who's the sarcastic git and I wasn't expecting to be caught out quite so easily, bastard. How Mrs Jaggy laughed, at my expense.

We arrived at Byres Road and set about looking for a place to have lunch, we settled on a new place called Otto. Mrs Jaggy had a Steak Ciabatta Sandwich and I had a Grilled Chicken Breast burger, washed down with a pint of John Smiths, smashing.

(In the background) "That's fucking rubbish, c'mon we're leavin', shite place anyway"

Some guy was upset that this quite trendy bar/grill didn't sell Budweiser and was dragging his Mrs out of there. That's like storming out of a restaurant because there are no baked beans on the menu.

So on we went to Kelvingrove. I've not been since I was a kid. Every school kid within an 80 mile radius of Glasgow gets taken to Kelvingrove at some point in their childhood, sometimes more than once. It has recently been closed for a couple of years for a multi-million pound refurbishment and I'd been looking forward to going for about a year. If you'd asked me 20 years ago if I'd ever be looking forward to going to a museum then I would have laughed in your face, unless it was the museum of Rock and Pornography.

I have to say it was impressive. I'm not really into art, and a lot of the upstairs part is dedicated to galleries with paintings and sculptures. Not really my thing I have to say so we walked briskly through it, although Mrs Jaggy was embarrassed and tutted when I loudly pointed out a painting of a naked woman, childish I know, but the day I stop looking and pointing at a gratuitous pair of breasts I will hopefully be in a box awaiting cremation.

The rest of the place I could enjoy, plenty of stuffed animals, industry and a big Spitfire to look at. A coffee and a cake rounded the place off nicely and we headed out to find a pub garden to spend the rest of the sunny afternoon in.

Jinty McGuinty's in Ashton Lane fitted the bill and we spent the next couple of hours lapping up the rays with several pints for me and for Mrs Jaggy the wine had given way to vodka.

The belly was rumbling so it was back on the Subway for the trip into the city centre and a bit of grub.

We stumbled into The Counting House on George Square where we ordered a couple of steaks and settled in for more booze. All of a sudden a couple of guys in kilts fire up the bagpipes and drummer started battering a big TomTom drum, brilliant. Whoops and applause followed and they kept it up for about an hour.

We then headed up to a pub called The Pot Still for a few pints. It must have the biggest selection of whiskies of any pub I've ever been in and has been in Hope Street for years. The wall behind the bar is shelved to about 12 feet high and lined with bottles and bottles of whisky, all different. The last train home leaves at an embarrassingly early 23.05 so we had to head off. The train pulled into our stop at Carfin about half an hour later and we began the slow saunter home.

Mrs Jaggy: "My feet hurt"

Jaggy: "Fuck"

Quote of the day.

Jaggy: What kind of dog was it?

Mrs Jaggy: A big brown one.