Farts and retirement

Retirement.

I’ve tried it a few times now and it hasn’t worked. When I left my school in China as a Headmaster I thought that would be it. I believed I’d done some marvellous investments which were due to come to fruition… I was wrong – still fighting that one 14 years later! After a year of gathering debt I went back to Qatar as Head of Science; then to Kazakhstan, Gran Canaria, Morocco, and Azerbaijan.

The scourge of covid hit me in Baku so decided to retire again.  I think I lasted 3 months and then went to work at a Further Education college for 6 months. I loved it. The students were apprentices on day release or adults returning part-time to Education. My favourite class was an adult GCSE Maths class – some of the students were older than me.

After the six months that was over so I ‘retired’ again. I rapidly went through the rest of my savings… and have spent the last three years teaching Maths in Oman! I had one of my senior girls leave this summer. She said, with tears in her eyes, ‘Mr Peter, you are the only person who has ever made me understand Maths!’ Which was very moving until she added, ‘but Physics still doesn’t make any sense to me!’

Now spending the summer in Sanur, Bali, I have to consider maybe properly reting again in a years’ time. After all I will be 70!

So researching ‘retirement’. Indonesia offers a retirement visa. I read today that Thailand offers a five-year visa if you have £11,200 in the bank and comprehensive medical insurance, so there is another possibility. I have also looked at going home and buying a mobile home on the edge of the Lake District, and a boat on the Norfolk Broads. Everybody tells me the cost of living is rocketing. I know that here in Bali I can get a 620ml bottle of Bintang for about £2; in the UK it would be 4 or 5 times that!

Then there are other things to consider;

Flights, insurance, a car? And just my State pension to rely on unless I can get something back on my bad investments.

Then again I can continue to tutor at an hourly rate.

I’ve written three books which are on Amazon and I have outline plans for at least 6 more – currently working on ‘Fairy Hanny and Knights in White Satin’ while I sit at my breakfast table surrounded by lush tropical vegetation.

Decisions to be made.

Perhaps I should just start writing fart jokes! I’ve been watching these guys online doing fart pranks and I find myself crying with laughter!

Long Playing records

I have no idea why sitting at various bars in Sanur, Bali, is making me recall and review so much of life. Maybe because this candle has almost burned down to the bottom, so I have to get it all on record.

Which reminds me of records! I am of the era that grew up with vinyl records – singles at 45 rpm and LP’s at 33 rpm.

The first record I ever bought under my own steam was Neanderthal Man by Hotlegs, the group that eventually morphed into 10CC. I say under my own steam because prior to that my Mum had sent me to a shop called Banners to buy here favourite singles. I remember buying her Band of Gold by Freda Payne. To me it was just a pop song, but now when I look back at the constant bickering and fights between my parents, I see it meant something else to her.

Back to records.

My first album was Sergeant Peppers by the Beatles. We had a lovely big stereogram at home and I played that album whenever I had the chance – it was rare as the TV was almost always on! I managed to get a portable record player for my 13th birthday, and that solved that issue!

My second album was Led Zeppelin 2 which cost me 45 shillings (£2.25). This was followed by Deep Purple in Rock, Mud Slide Slim (James Taylor), and Master of Reality (Black Sabbath) .

My older sister went on a big adventure the summer I turned 14. Her best friend had relatives in the Boston Area of America, so off they went for a months holiday. When she returned she brought me a copy of Sweet Baby James (Taylor again!).

So now I had six albums!

I was ready to be a DJ!!

Then Maria said that in effect all of those albums belonged to the family and she would take them to parties if she wanted!

Feck that!

I bundled them in old wallpaper and hid them in the Attic to stop her getting at them.

Which of course meant I couldn’t get at them either!

Youth and common sense rarely go hand in hand…

I was jealous of her trip to the States and vowed that one day I would go. Ten years later, in the Summer of 1981, I went to work at a summer camp in New York State. It was a place called Camp Long Lake, way out in the Boondocks – it was fantastic! I am sure that will lead to another post some time.

PS. I still have all six of them in my storeroom in Liverpool!

Eye for an Eye

St. Kevins, Kirkby, Lancashire, 1970

We were still in Lancashire then. Merseyside was created April 1974, so all my exercise books said Lancashire County Council, though some did have the school crest on the front and the famous Respice Finem.

We used to write A.M.D.G. in the top left-hand corner of every page as we were devoting our work to the greater glory of god, even though half of us were catholic atheists.

I remember so many funny St.Kevs jokes – mostly knob and plop jokes

What did one leg say to the other?

I see shorty is growing a beard!

Every Autumn we had a game which involved going into the local woods, collecting acorns, and having acorn battles.

Harmless fun?

At the start of the third year of secondary school – they call it year 9 these days – we had been split into option groups. Being in the top set of 16, we were expected to focus on Academic subjects – for my class ‘O’ level Physics was compulsory. Fortunately for me I loved Physics and still don’t quite get the point of Biology, and Chemistry just makes horrible smells and explosions. I think Rutherford put it well when he said, ‘In Science, there is only Physics, all the rest is stamp collecting’.

I know what he means – for Biology and Chemistry you just have to know things; like don’t throw lithium in water or you will die.

As top set we were allowed one practical subject and I found myself in the ‘O’ level Art class. Which was fine.

Photo by Aibek Skakov on Pexels.com

One day I was standing in line waiting to go into the building for my Art class when someone called my name. I turned to my right and was instantly in excruciating pain. The acorn game had just gone awry – some blond headed fecker had just hit me in the eyeball.

I was taken to hospital straight away and it was discovered that the acorn had cut a small slash in my cornea.

Treatment – one week in bed, no movement.

When you’re 13 years old a bed pan just does not work.

I have vague memories of St. Pauls Eye Hospital in Liverpool. Nobody was ill, they just had fucked up eyes. Cataracts and eye removal were the main problems, and occasionally an Industrial chemical accident.

I remember the nurses on night duty being constantly harassed by these one-eyed deviants. Cyclops verses the Vestal Virgins.

One night the lads got some sort of aerosol and were chasing the nurses and spraying it up their dresses and singing,

Oh, them frozen Knickers,

Oh, them frozen Knickers!

I think it was based on one of those old Minstrel songs.

I recovered, but never did fully develop proper stereo vision. This has meant that sports like Squash and Badminton have never allowed me to reach a high level as I can never quite get the position of the projectiles right.

Thank feck for football.

Moping

19th July.

Today I am totally lacking inspiration in terms of writing. By which I mean getting to my laptop to work on the three WIPs;

Fairy Hanny and the Knights in White Satin – the fourth adventure of the crazy Fairy

St, Nedds – the life of Physics teacher Dr. BQ and his shenanigans with the motorcycle riding Sloths

Sellafield to Switzerland – reflection on 78 to 79 when I worked in Nuclear Research then went to work on a farm in Switzerland; from writing bullshit to shovelling cow shit

I’ve jotted down some notes which can become blog posts.

I wonder if I am still just mooning about Aisha? Is it because she is the only woman who gives me any attention these days?

Sod it – the Bintang is calling!!!

Blert

Today I watched a short clip on Facebook. It was scousers saying their favourite put-down words. We love the obvious ones – but I won’t use them here…

Some of my favourites include calling someone;

A Blert

A Meff

A Melt

Ya Wool

Soft lad

Arlarse

Head the Ball

A Divvy

A Bin Dipper

A Bellend

A Knobhead

And saying Your Dad works for Avon!

PS. For the uninitiated – Scouser is a term used to describe people from Liverpool, England.

Honda!

Way back in the days of my youth when I was told what it means to be a man…

I think it was in the second year of my Applied Physics B.Sc. course at the Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry. One of the lads went missing for a while. It was not unusual for people to miss lectures, especially not the 9 a.m. ones. But Russel missed a week – again not to rare. Then he was missing a second week.

We asked one of the Lecturers. All that Dr. John would say is that the young man had been admitted to hospital, but he could not disclose any more than this as none of us were relatives.

All right and proper.

And realise – the internet, smart phones and social media did not exist at the time.

When Russel returned we asked after his health, and all he would say was that he’d been ill and had to go to hospital. Of course you don’t get away with that sort of answer to a group of 20-year-old young men (and one woman). So we badgered him, refused to buy him any booze until he came clean.

Eventually he had to admit that he’d had a very large and painful abscess in his anus. He had gone to hospital to have it drained under general anaesthetic.

From then on he was known as Honda…

You know the old saying – abscess makes the farts go Honda!

Marcus Aurelius


In the development of my next volume (WIP) Fairy Hanny and the Knights in White Satin, one of the Time Travellers claims to have met Marcus Aurelius.


Which reminded me – in his famous collected work Meditations the great stoic philosopher wrote about his bum.


‘Life can be a pain in the arse. In my case it was diagnosed by my physician Septicus Anus’

Brisket and Politics

Barbarossa Restaurant, Sanur.

A great place with an unfortunate name. To me when I see the word ‘Barbarossa’ it conjures up the German invasion of Russia in June 1941. That invasion led to mass murder by German SS units as they tried to kill off all those ‘under men’ they saw as not being really human beings. Sadly, I am living through the 21st century parallel, as the people of Gaza are being systematically murdered.

A quick bit of research followed. Frederick Barbarossa was King of Germany in the 12th Century. He eventually became the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190. He was known as a Warrior King, famed for uniting Germany, though he seems to have spent half his adult life fighting against Popes in Italy. It’s funny thet the Holy Roman Emperor was excommunicated. His efforts helped to expand the Empire. It seems that almost a thousand years later that same sort of religious expansionism persists.

And Barbarossa just means Red Beard in Italian, so I’m guessing he was a ginger.

This current restaurant has two parts. There is a closed part where it appears families go to eat. Then there is the open part where I am seated, which has a sort of bench area open to the roadside so we can enjoy the traffic noise and fumes. At the start I was here alone, eating beef brisket. Then in came a couple who had an entire room to choose from but decided to sit at bench area as close to me as possible. WTF! Why decide to sit right on top of the only other person in the room?

The guy keeps trying to catch my eye as a way of getting into a conversation because he can see me writing in my journal. He’s a loudmouth who I have christened as King Cnut.

The beef brisket makes me think of Howard Wolowitz in the Big Bang Theory as it seemed to be a running joke when he mentioned his mother and beef brisket. I wondered if it was a Jewish thing and Google worked again.

Beef Brisket is an Eastern European Ashkenazi dish, where cheeap cuts of beef are braised on low heat for a long time in order to soften the meat. Apparently it’s best if cooked with carrots and onions and sweet tomatoes.

The beer here is called Summer Pale ale and it is the best flavour on the island so far. I could almost see myself in a beer garden in the English countryside, if it wasn’t for the incessant noise of the motorbikes and scooters. To make things even better it’s cheaper than a pint in England, even though it is more than double the price of a large Bintang.

Thinking of the local beer… I can imagine Spike Milligan singing,

Bintang! Bintang! Bintang! Bintang! Bintang idle I poh!

Good old Spike – one of my childhood heroes. When asked why he called his TV series Q1, Q2, Q3 etc he said he was looking forward to getting to Q8!

Spike always identified as Irish even though he was born in India while his father was serving there. On his gravestone it says in Gaelic

Duirt me go raibh me breoite

Which roughly translates as I told you I was ill.

The Tapha, slight return.

I wandered up the back roads and into what could be central Sanur. Lots of resto/bars filled with Europeans and Aussies. I found a good supermarket which also has an ATM outside – 20 minutes’ walk from my hotel. I followed the road down to the beach, past the Holiday Inn and the Intercontinental; the kind of places you stay when you want a sanitised holiday. When I look at the pools and seating areas outside those sort of places I often think the guests could be anywhere in the world where the sun shines all day; Benidorm, Hawaii, Santorini, probably all look the same when you stay at those places!

Anyway I walked past Tapha because I’d already eaten at a Greek restaurant (which could have been anywhere!). On my google map I had noticed a bar a bit further along the beach so I went to explore. It is called Pier Eight Bali – turns out is part of the Intercontinental. I ordered a beer, which of course cost double what the local bars charge. I sat and listened to a guy playing bland pop on his acoustic guitar.

Two beers and the bland pop was enough for me.

I headed back along the beach. When I reached Tapha I realised the band was a Beatles cover, so I took a table and sat down to listen.

Kid Cock was there again.

This time there was a new lady fussing amongst the tables. The usual staff wear black T-shirts and black jeans, but this lady, maybe a Maître D’, wore a really nice red dress. The only downside was she had an arse the size of a small kingdom!

Sitting here, July 2026, listening to the music of a group that split up 56 years ago is just incredible. Every song seemed to be recognised by all the audience, many of whom were not even alive 56 years ago!

I chatted with the lads during the interval.

‘Yes I grew up in the 60’s so that is the music of my youth. No I never went to the original Cavern club, that was mostly rubble by the time I started visiting clubs in the 70’s. But Matthew street is still there, with a new Cavern, The Grapes, Flanagan’s Apple, and Cavern walks…’

The Beatles, Almaty, Kazakhstan

They started their second set with If I fell, which is one of my favourites. They moved on from early Beatles until we got to Don’t let me down and I could only think of Aisha. Then a surreal moment – as the band played a group of a dozen cyclists rode across the front of them.

My mind shot back to Edge Hill College 1980 when we organised the Bootleg Beatles to play at the college. 46 years ago – I wonder if they exist now?

Nostalgia is all in the past!

For some reason there are still lots of Abba tribute acts – which reminds me of the wonderful Will Farrel movie Eurovision.

More beers, more dealings with beach salesmen selling gewgaws and bangles. Time for bed.