Bucko's World

We all love to customise our cars somewhat, be it furry dice hanging from the rear view or a Garfield grinning inanely out from a rear quarter light. Some may even go as far as to add gaudy “spinners” to attract attention or even a spoiler, perhaps the most accurately named of car accessories ever. I even once saw a car which had a heart-shaped exhaust pipe, along with a sticker proclaiming “I heart Lupos” which surely would be going to far.

Of course the big boys play in a different league and once they’ve bought the biggest vehicle they can find to compensate for their tiny penises, the only real way to stand out from the crowd is to advertise yourself, your personality, and your prowess in bed by the most expensive accessory known to man, the personalised number plate. And so it was that I was crossing Cornhill the other evening when the biggest of the big, a Toyota Land Cruiser with bull bars, long distance driving lights and full running boards booms to a stop next to me and disgorges the most dislikeable, greasy scruff bag you’d ever have the displeasure to meet in a dark alley. As this odious individual pushes past me whilst bellowing into his mobile phone I take a glance at his car and notice his number plate, which leaves me standing in slack-jawed incredulity…….

Now, a plate which just has your initials on it, is probably just about acceptable but over the years I’ve seen some absolute shockers, which makes me wonder just what sort of message these people think they are sending out about themselves. I’ll leave you to decide on that, but for your delight, amusement and all-round amazement, I give you my favourite number plates of all time, along with the one that simply beggars belief:

Seen many years ago on a Lotus Esprit, I never thought this plate could be topped for sheer audacity. The additional to the boot lid of the words " The Dog's bollox" only added to the charm.....


Seen in Colchester only this week on a Mitsubishi pick-up truck that looked like it was wearing vari-focal lenses. I don't know which of the sad fuckers who exposed their every personality defect for the amusement of the genral public owns it, but just how much more of the limelight does the dickhead responsible for this need?

This simply brilliant plate was last seen gracing an old gold Opel Monza, the sort of car driven by hairy chested, medallion wearing, aviator sporting 40 something in the 80's who obviously WASN'T having a midlife crisis, but still drove around with wheel-spinning ferocity and had Demis Rousouss playing too loudly for his own good.

The real genius of this plate though was the tag line beneath, which you had to be pretty close to read: It said "Wine me, Dine me, 69 me........" Class....

Our american friends can have far more fun with this than we can. Being resticted to the variation of three letters, three numbers, one letter format for so many years meant we had to be creative and often really stretch a point to make the personalization work, but in the States you just tell 'em what you want on the plate and so long as no one else has it it's yours. This classic was mailed to me by a friend

Of course there are even more option with these, and this really brought a smile to my lips. If I had the money there are a couple of people I have in mind for this one...

With the change in number plates hear though we could possibly start to rival the yanks for great number plates. My two favourite plates are both issued out of Luton, which has the code letter "K" at the start. Don't ask me why it's "K", you'd have thought that would have been Kent but no, we got "G".....anyway, these would be great

And the plate I would most like.....

But here is where it all goes wrong for we are back to our Odious Little Man and his oversized car. Thid new system is obviously more open to abuse than you could imagine beacuse the number plate on his tank had been ammended as below, and really does say everything you need to know about the man behind the wheel...

What a see you next tuesday....

However, I do not wish to leave you on such a tasteless note, but with what is probably the greatest number plate from either side of the Atlantic, of possibly all time. We've all seen emergency service vehicles go by with lights ablaze and the legend

on the front. If they're coming up behind you you know what it is from a quick glance in your rear view and all is well. You pull over and all is well. And that is what makes

quite simply the best number plate ever, coz as the BMW 5 series it adorns zooms up behind you in a country lane, you will be astounded to find that they allowed the number in the first place, but will then have to tip your hat to the sheer unadulterated brilliance of it, for it does indeed say

“Sign, sign everywhere a sign,
Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind,
Do this, don’t do that can’t you read the sign?”

So said the Five Man Electrical Band on their “hit” record back in the far away 1970’s, which I’m sure some of you remember better than others…but it still holds true today. We seem to be so regularly confronted by pointless, nonsensical and often completely inaccurate signs that it’s hardly surprising that we’ are frequently left tearing our hair out having thought we were doing as the sign said, only to realise it had the opposite meaning…..

Mostly it’s a language thing. In America for instance, a country separated from us by a common language, a young English couple were approached by a cop and asked why they were parked by a sign on the slip road to a freeway. The explanation was a sign saying “Do not Pass” which they though meant they were heading on to the wrong carriageway. Our “No Overtaking” sign could be just as confusing to visitors who would puzzle over the red car, black car thing – Why isn’t a warning triangle with No Overtaking written in it the better solution? Pathetic.




And how about this, again from the Yanks? No Outlet is simply a Dead End. Why not just say that? It’s moronic. I’ll hold my hands up here though. For some stupid fucking reason we use the frog term “Cul-de-sac” which has the literal translation of “Arse of a bag” – honestly, I’m not making this up. No wonder people get confused. Even though it does mean you can laugh at all those Surrey Stockbroker types when they tell you they live in one…..




And here’s one all the way from Australia. Do you know what it means? No, nor do I. Apparently it’s an unspecified caution! Marvellous! So long as that is clear then. I’m worried you spend so much time looking for what it’s warning you about that you’ll drive straight in to it.







Hand signs can have the same affect. We often circle our thumb and index finger to indicate “OK”. No worries. Unless, of course, you do it in Germany or Brazil, where it is taken to mean you calling someone an asshole. Could be nasty….






But my favourite incorrect sign was one featured at a friend’s BBQ recently. Held on a farm, we had a sign directing little boys to an area behind the Duck Shed where said little boys can relieve themselves in a manner we’ve never really needed directions to do before. Nice. And this beauty pointing the other way. You’d be worried for any Sweaties in attendance really wouldn’t you? Laddies, and a little picture of a bloke in a skirt. All you need now is for Aunty Mabel to wander off for a piss only to be confronted, in what she thought was the ladies, by a caber tossing Scotsman. "All right hen, come ta see wha a real mon has under his sporran aye?" Ah, sign, sign everywhere a sign. Shame that they're never as much fun as you think they might be.

This made me laugh quite a lot – until you consider that the Filipinos haven’t really suggested that they think he was wrong. Next time you think one of our ermine-bedecked mentalists is swaying in the wind think of this and you’ll realise they’re probably saner than you think…..

Filipino 'dwarf' judge loses case
A Philippines judge who said he consulted imaginary mystic dwarves has failed to convince the Supreme Court to allow him to keep his job.

Florentino Floro was appealing against a three-year inquiry which led to his removal due to incompetence and bias.
He told investigators three mystic dwarves - Armand, Luis and Angel - had helped him to carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers.
The court said psychic phenomena had no place in the judiciary.
The bench backed a medical finding that the judge was suffering from psychosis.

'Dwarf dalliance'

The Manila trial judge had asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the complaint and return him to the bench, after being sacked in April.
"They should not have dismissed me for what I believed," Mr Floro told reporters after filing his appeal in May.
The judge said he had made a covenant with his dwarf friends that he could write while in a trance and that he had been seen by several people in two places at the same time.
Judge Floro reportedly changed from blue court robes to black each Friday "to recharge his psychic powers".
In a letter to the court he said: "From obscurity, my name and the three mystic dwarves became immortal."

However, the Supreme Court said dalliance with dwarves would gradually erode the public's acceptance of the judiciary as the guardian of the law, if not make it an object of ridicule…..

I must admit though, to often wearing black underpants to recharge my psychic powers and occasionally thinking how great it would be to have a bunch of imaginary mystic dwarfs as mates. This would allow us to indulge in many height based adventures and a possible movie career. But then usually when I think this I’ve mixed Benilyn with too much red wine. Fortunately the only harm that’s come from it is a thumping headache followed by trying to get the sick out from the bedroom carpet the next morning; not having had someone hung for nicking a loaf of bread whilst consulting the imaginary whispering echoing around my head.

And that final paragraph!! “..dalliance with dwarves would gradually erode….” WTF?? Completely and instantly I think you’ll find. It really seems, in The Philippines at least, that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Coming to a theatre near you soon…..

Having survived a pummelling from a pensioner nurse who, having proceeded to pull me into positions a contortionist would have thought you’d skipped a page to get to, then tried to push the business end of an Echo Cardiogram scanner through my rib cage, I sit bruised and battered in front of PC, breathing as shallowly as possible to mitigate the excruciating pain from my broken ribs, determined to enjoy a free afternoon away from work with some online shopping. I have a list of CDs and DVDs in front me, and I’m determined to leave no Amazon Store untouched in my quest to order them. All with the new Frost* album blaring from my PC speakers – nice!

First though a quick visit to First direct just to check out the cash situation. This is something I rarely do. Having been made redundant almost two years ago I’ve found that the huge cheque that was forced on me as I left those lovely people at Equitas Towers has more than alleviated any financial worries I may previously have had.

And so I’m sure you can all understand that it came as a bit of a shock to me when, approaching the second anniversary of my payout that I find myself without funds. This is a moment for consideration, rumination and cogitation. And going “Oh Fuck! I’m broke!”

In doing all of this I try to work our where all the money has gone and I must confess that the answer is quite frightening. Because dear reader, all I have left to show for my money is: an axe, a pile of bricks, and an £11,000 debt…….

Exhibit 1: The Axe

Now here is a warning to all of you who like to surf the net into the wee small hours with no regard for your health, or indeed in this case, wealth. I seem to vaguely remember a curry and beers, then red wine, and then waking up with the imprint of a keyboard on my face. “Bollocks,” I thought, “I hope I haven’t spent huge sums of cash ordering obscure Spock’s Beard and Marillion ephemera off strange people on e-bay.” Fortunately the answer to that question is “No.” Unfortunately the answer appeared the following Wednesday when my neighbour, a lovely old dear by the name of Anne, called me in and said she had a parcel for me. “You’ll have to pick it up yourself as it’s rather heavy” she said, indicating a large triangular shaped box propped up against the wall. O-kay……

My heart was in my mouth as I unwrapped it layers of cardboard. Inside, rather disappointingly I may add, was another cardboard box – why don’t they just make the first box thicker? I tore away at this one also, a sense of fear, excitement and extreme curiosity gripping me as I went. As I finally pulled the cardboard away and sighted what was inside I was struck by a wave of nausea and disbelief at what was contained inside. Lifting out the contents and examining it closely I feared for my mortgage, my sanity and, once my wife saw the credit card bill, my nackers as I held the priceless object aloft. It appeared that I had bought Brian May’s Guitar.








Brian’s “Red Special” in my very own living room





You can probably imagine my relief then when, on closer inspection, it turns out that Brian has simply been kind enough to make me my own copy his of his legendary “Red Special” guitar, and even thrown in his signature on the headstock for good measure, just in case it was mistaken for the genuine article. And a beautiful object it is too. It is stunning to play and has a range of tones to die for all whilst being less ubiquitous then you run of the mill Les Paul or Strat. Lovely. The damage from all this loveliness? £500.00
Exhibit 2: A pile of bricks





Kitchen – not easily redeemable for beer vouchers





Ok, so the pile of bricks has been very nicely arranged and has windows and everything, but the £12,500 I put towards it can hardly be got hold of at short notice can it? Even so, it must be said you can rustle up a pretty mean lasagne on it’s inside and we did manage to get 20 mates in there recently with plenty of elbow room for all………….

Exhibit 3: An £11,000 debt




Mazda RX8 – A thirsty bugger





And finally my pride and joy. My winning blue rocket ship powered by the engine from a Klingon Interceptor. Or as Jeremy Clarkson put it “an engine so smooth it doesn’t run on petrol, it runs on double cream”. I hope not. At 18 MPG it’s bad enough paying for the petrol, how much a tankful if it was M&S’s finest? Worse still, I bought the car on one of these option schemes and for a tiny deposit and a monthly payment the beautiful beast was mine. But here’s the rub. When the three years are up if I want to keep it, I have to stump up £11,000, or give it back. And guess what? Having just checked my bank account I don’t have £11,000……

So what happened to all this money? The only thing I seem to own is the guitar, and I’m buggered if I know where the rest of it went – it seems money just disappears while you’re having fun!!
And so there you go. A warning to all you with a fat redundancy cheque in your pocket and without a worry in the world. Be careful, you’ll only go and spend it!

Whilst the thought of a woman asking me to take off my shirt before proceeding to rub KY jelly into my chest is a rather exciting one, the nearest this has come to happening to me is during the wee small hours recently, in that tiny gap between sleep and wake. The woman involved was a busty blonde sort, wearing a duck-egg blue PVC nurse’s outfit, and she was attempting to smother me with her ample charms whilst covering me with a cool liquid goo of some sort…. but then of course you wake up to find it’s only your Chillow over your face and during all your writhing around you’ve succeeded in pulling the stopper out and covering yourself in its liquid gel innards…..

And then fantasy becomes reality, and as we all know it never works out quite how you imagined it………

I may already have mentioned how I believe that at 40 your body starts to give up on you. So it was with no surprise that, way back in February my heart decided that it had had enough of its boring boom-boom boom-boom lifestyle and instead decided it preferred to now play the intro to We Will Rock You. It was rather disconcerting I can tell you, and it seemed its favourite time to do this was just as you laid down to sleep. So off to the Docs I went……

Can you believe my surprise when she told me I had to detox for two weeks as she thought I had caffeine poisoning??? Apparently six cups of rosie-lee a day is far too much, added to the fact the I had been celebrating my 40th for 3 months by that point, and she said it was time to stop. So two weeks off coffee (ok), fizzy drinks (pah!) tea (er, what really???) and alcohol (noooooo……) were on the cards. Plus an ECG and blood sample down the hospital..

Two weeks went past and I’m back at the Docs. Blood pressure fine, bad cholesterol a bit high, good cholesterol very good etc etc. But the ECG shows an “incomplete electrical pathway” in my right upper ventricle. No, I don’t know what it means either. Upshot is I require a 24 hour ECG trace and that means a visit to the hospital, four-six weeks to get an appointment. Brilliant, I could be dead in that time, I mean, I’ve got an incomplete pathway fer chrissakes!!

Four to six weeks actually became 4 months and the truth about this is is that it’s deliberate. Face it, if anything’s seriously wrong with a patient, they would have pegged it by then, and if not, there is obviously going to be nothing seriously wrong with them and the NHS have saved a bundle on needless tests. It’s a win-win situation for them. Handfuls of lovely readies to be stashed with all the money they’ve saved not cleaning the wards anymore. Brilliant

So eventually get a letter from them suggesting I go in for the trace was amazing – it means I’m still ok!

Strangely when I pitch up at the hospital, to be given a lovely cup of full caffeine tea served by the even more lovely Doris, I’m shown in to see a consultant. He reads the letter from my doctor, listens to my heart through his liquid-nitrogen cooled stethoscope, and declares “There’s nothing wrong with you.” That’s it. 4 months of waiting for 30 seconds of some bloke’s time to tell me I’m fine. The money they’ve saved themselves must be bulging out from under the mattresses of every patient, if any are allowed in, by this time……He does suggest I come in for an Echo Cardiogram, and the 24 hour trace if necessary, and then I’m on my way. I’m not sure what happened to my incomplete electrical pathway, obviously someone has decided to finish it since my last appointment.

And so my date with destiny arrives via a phone call. Would I be available for an appointment for an ECG at short notice? Of course. Tomorrow night at five o’clock? Eh? No way, during work tome or not at all thank you very much!

So I’m lead into a room where a nurse is standing with her back to me and the fateful words are spoken “Take off your shirt and lie on the bed please.” Wa-hey! I do as instructed and can see she has a tube of something cool and clear in her hands, this seems like it’s going to be fun. And then it all goes wrong. The angel in white turns round and makes her way towards me, lube-in-hand, disposable gloves at the ready to give me a good old massaging. My pulse quickens and the thought crosses my mind that perhaps getting a stiffy could inadvertently affect my reading and self-control is required. Think – all the stations on the circle line in order? Name the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett in order, including graphic novels? All the league football grounds in order, from premiership down? All this turns out to be pointless worrying as the nurse finally come in to view, and my heart sinks. Please all meet Nurse Molly Malone, 65 if she’s a day, with a face containing more lines than an Ordenance Survey map of the Brecon Beacons, possibly the oldest woman to touch me since my Grandmother caught hold of my arm on my wedding day 14 years ago. As I said, things never work out quite how you imagine.

Had a brilliant night out at the Butler’s Wharf Chophouse with a mate and our other halves in celebration of his oh-no four-oh. The champagne, wine, port and all flowed freely, and, along with some top tucker really set the mood for a good old reminisce to our school days, parties you know. A particular comment though got us back on to a favourite topic of discussion we have after too many beers and when our missus’ are discussing shoes and bags like they will solve all of the world’s problems…….

Anyway, as we’re chowing away a couple and their daughter come and sit at the next table to us. And I’m struck by how the daughter, all stick thin arms and legs and long hair looks the spitting image of how my mate’s ten year old will look in a couple of year’s time. This girl is stunning. She’s in that fascinating stage between being a little girl and a woman, right down to the blue eye shadow and red lipstick that it seems most girls start with when they first begin putting the stuff on. I jokingly mention to my mate as he look at her “oi, you old perv, that’s exactly what your daughter will look like in a couple of years” “Tell me about it, but she’ not there yet!” We laugh heartily at what, let’s face it, is rather dodgy territory for discussion, particularly as we’re both probably thinking what we’d like to do with this girl. “We should be disgusted with ourselves” I say. “You’re right,” say my mate, “but the thing is, when we were at school, the first time we ever noticed girls were a different species was when they looked like that and that sticks with for life as your basis for what a shaggable bird is” There may well be truth in this. I mention that I think this young lady next to us is probably younger than the girls we first started to lust after and want to snog at school, but how can I be sure? I’m a forty year old looking at someone anywhere between 12 to16, not a 14 year old doing it. How can we relate who we are and what we feel now against what we felt then? Plenty of people have tried recently. By joining Friends Reunited and doing naughty things with the 30 something year old version of the 14 year old they sweated bullets over all those years ago, having caught a flash of their knickers in the playground; finally requiting what probably should have remained unrequited; but it’s not the same. So as our wives continue to discuss make up and diets we hatch our plan and do what all good blokes should do. We invent a time machine.

“see,” my mate says “what you need is to be able to have a couple of weeks where you can go back and have a second go at all those moments in you life where you really, really wish you’d said something different, not done something, agreed to help when you didn’t”. “Yeah, I agree. What moment would you visit first?” “Well….” he says and then it becomes obvious that where you could choose to use the Time Machine to witness Jesus dying on the cross, use it to see Dinosaurs roaming the earth, use it to see if that third English goal really did cross the line, we would, in fact use it in attempt to try and shag all those women we, for some reason or other, felt we had missed out on all those years ago. Brilliant. The greatest invention known to man and we’d use it to fuck women from our past. Of course our discussions don’t start quite so bluntly. It’s how great would it be to go back to school in the summer of 1982 again? Wouldn’t it be great is we could just go back to working at such and such an office? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to spend a day on that holiday again? But of course there is a caveat. We have to go back knowing what we know now. We don’t want to go back and be a 14 year old again, we want to go back as a 40 year old coz, let’s be honest, that’s the only way it would be fun. We want to go back, it turns out, coz at each of these places there was a girl, and knowing what we know now, we want to say something different, do something different, even act somehow different based on what we know now, in the hope that this will lead that moment, that day, perhaps our lives somewhere it didn’t go – usually into bed with a girl. Let me give you and example. Portugal 1982 – Praire de Rocha. I meet a girl and we get on great. One day we go up to my room and we’re in the lift. I check when we get to my room, that little bruv is out and the connecting door was locked. Kerry jumps on to the bed. I tell her I’m going to have a shower and joke that she can come and scrub my back if she wants. She doesn’t come and do it. End of story. Except, we kept in touch, and once we got back she told me, over the phone as we lived miles apart, that whilst we has been in the lift going up to my room, she has wanted to grab hold of me and shag my brains out. I have been kicking myself ever since, particularly as she then said she didn’t think I fancied her, which was mental. Obviously, this is a time machine moment. Whizz back to the lift, take control and grab hold of her on the way up, Bob’s your uncle. Missed shag no more. You pop back to the future, lust satiated, no harm done. Ah, and that’s always the point isn’t it? Caveat number two. You go back and do these things, but you don’t want the to change the here and now. Or more specifically, change now for the worse. Let me explain. I go back in the time machine, we shag, fall madly in love and live happily ever after raising rugrats and living a life of luxury and fast cars – ok. Or perhaps, this 15 year old girl gets pregnant, keeps the baby, you end up in a council flat with her with no qualifications, no job, spend your life pumping gas and wish, at your fortieth do that if you had a time machine you’d go back to that moment in the lift and most definitely NOT lean across and kiss the girl and then everything would turn out perfect in the end…….

So perhaps the time machine isn’t the best idea. Here we are, me and my mate, both married, both doing alright, drinking £40 champers and £30 port whilst taking in the best view in London. Yeah, we might have a better wife, a better life if we’d had our time machine and could go back and change those moments, but, as I sit here crying with laughter as we relive moments from our youth, moments from our holidays, moments from our shared pasts that yeah, the time machine would be a great laugh, but the really important thing is that you really don’t want it to change the now, and so really what is the point?