After seeing runours flying around the interwebs about the return of full sized Monster Munch, I was eager to give them a try. Whilst down the local shops, stocking up on essentials (beer and sausage rolls, mainly), I glanced over to the crisps shelf, and noticed them there. Yes, Roast Beef Monster Munch, in their distinctive old yellow packet…

Of course, the question is, would I be enough of a tight bastard to spend the asking price of 45p? Well, considering I actually have a photograph of them, in front of my monitor, I think you can safely assume that I did indeed buy them.

The bags are obviously bigger than they are now, and the packet has “Bigger Like They Used to be!*”… the asterisk points to some small text stating “as in 1977″. This clearly shows they’re not trying to corner the kids’ market with these, instead they’re going for the adult market, who grew up with them as kids, and were dismayed to find that Walkers completely destroyed their branding.

Now, I like to think I had a little part to play, after my rant on one of the UK newsgroups about the state of British crisps, and in particular Monster munch…

Someone in uk.culture.nostalgia.1980s asked “What do you miss from the 80’s that you wish were still with us?” My reply is the long-winded one below…

>>Cheese and Onion Monster Munch.

Quite honestly, in the last 12 hours, I’ve pouched at least 6 bags of these particular crisps. I love them so much.

Is it pure coincidence that I wrote that on August 3rd, and here I am, a month and a half later, chowing down on original sized Monster Munch?

Technorati Tags: branding, childhood, crisis, memories, monster munch, newsgroups, Reminiscing, roast beef, snacks, walkers

Well, I’m here, back home, still typing this blog under Linux. Strangely, I’m still using Ubuntu, and actually finding it useable. I’m sure there’ll be something that’ll stop me using it. Currently I can’t remember how to mount external directories, using smbclient, so that’s something that’s a bit of a nightmare, as I can’t mount my MP3 drive which is hosted in another machine. Thankfully, I’ve cobbled enough music together in order to be listenable.

This also means that I’ve got MP3 ability in Amarok toned down to a tee, along with MySQL configuration. I’m sure I could do both of these now with my eyes closed. OK, slight lie there, but when I see the instructions, at least I understand them, and know what I’m doing with them.

OK, onto the old jobs section. Over the last few days, I’ve been rather reminiscent about my old place of employment back in Summer 2000, mere months before I started this blog.

Andy The Iridium Fan took himself, his bike, and his new shiny camera up to the old Cerebos plant, on the outskirts of Hartlepool. Well, technically, it’s on the outskirts of Greatham, a village separated from Hartlepool by the A689 and the Sappers Corner junction. Anyway, it holds a lot of memories for me.

The year is 2000. Summer 2000, in fact. I had left college, and was still struggling to find a job. I signed up for some training bollocks, of which I don’t remember the name of. Either way, part of this stuff meant that I worked part time in certain places. One of these places was a company named Centura Foods. This place manufactured food products for places such as Sharwoods, Robertsons, Capri-Sun and many others. Actually, I can’t remember if they dealt with all of those brands in this particular factory, as I rarely stepped foot on the “shop floor” as it were.

On my first day, I remember trying to find it, and getting completely lost. I knew it was “in” Greatham, but not in the actual village, but on the outskirts.

The 36 bus carried me from Winterbootom Avenue, all the way to the centre of the village. After leaving the bus, I was totally on my own. Um. Where next?

I can’t remember if I asked for directions, but I found myself in the middle of a thin country lane, with no footpath. expecting to be killed by some passing lorry. It’s very possible I could have been.

I approached the security office, explained who I was, and whether they were expecting me. I “reported for duty” as it were, and they didn’t have a clue who I was. I had no idea whether they were expecting me….

Er, let’s snap out of this memory, and go back to the present day. The first view that greets you is the long road leading down to the factory. It’s a long way down this road. Eventually, you approach a level crossing.

This is the only train line out of Hartlepool to the south, and therefore connects you to London. Just to the left of where this picture was taken, was the old Greatham Station, which was abandoned long ago.

The next stop is the afore mentioned security hut. For a place that has been closed down for nigh on 6 years, the site appears in very good nick…

I think part of this reason is that there’s a right-of-way leading down to a farm. It seems very odd that it’s survived in this condition.

I’ll probably continue this particular blog shortly. At the minute, I’m fooked, off to bed, and it seems a waste to abandon this!

Technorati Tags: cerebos, hartlepool, old jobs, photographs

I don’t suppose you read the site anymore, but I thought I’d just wish you happy 25th birthday here, just in case!

For the rest of you, hello! I’ve been on another one of my silly walks again. Yes, I’m quite aware that all I seem to be blogging about these days are these walks I often do, but to be quite honest, it’s the only thing that’s keeping my mind occupied. I’m pretty much obsessed with taking photograps at the minute. This was why I was out, at 4AM, taking photos.

I have always wanted to lay down in the middle of Easington Road. I had a thought when I was about 6, if it was possible to lay down in this particular dual carriageway and not get ran over.

The other morning, I proved it could be done.

No, I didn’t just run out of the house to take that photo, I decided that I wanted to see the sunrise again. There is no better place to view most of Hartlepool than on the Hart Bypass.

I walked through the new estate, through the land which is currently unoccupied by nothing except a footpath. There was something which caught my eye. Excuse me if I drip into “rather odd reminiscing” mode for a few moments.

Back when I was a small child, there was a weed that used to grow in the cracks of the tarmac. It was a spiny, horrible looking thing with dark yellow flowers. Now, I have always had a sense of smell which was much better than any other sense I had. I always remember this particular weed had a strong scent of pineapple, therefore it was particularly interesting to me. Chad Phillips, who you may recall, is currently on a world tour (assuming you read the comments) used to mock me for such an interest, expecially when it caused a neighbour (and ultimately my mother) to almost have a fit when the neighbour saw me smelling clover flowers which had recently been sprayed with weedkiller. Er, anyway, I digress…

Yes, anyway, those pineapple-scented weeds. They seemed to disappear at some point during my adolecense. I was growing up, and didn’t really pay attention to the disappearance of a simple weed. It was about 5 years ago, however, I had a dream about said plant, and suddenly realised, it had TOTALLY disappared.

For five years, I’d tried to locate at least a small sample of it. I remember it grew in the shittest soil known to man.

Imagine my delight when, at 4:17 that very morning, I’d located some…

At this point, I still knew nothing about it. I loaded the photo up to flickr, and within 2 days, I had an answer. Its name is… wait for it… Pineapple weed.

What’s just struck me as odd, is my lack of internet searching regarding this. I knew two things about it… it was a weed, and it smelled of pineapple. a quick google reveals everything I needed to know about it. Bah.

Er, anyway. I’ll leave the horticulture to one side, and continue my walk.

It was, as you can imagine for 4AM in the morning, very uneventful. I had my headset on, and after deleting every trace of Jive Bunny off my phone, it turned out to be a pleasant walk.

I took this photo next…

After the walk up to the Hart Bypass, I thought I’d relax for a few minutes, and a row of handily-placed hay bails made a very comfortable sofa.

The music at this point, was once again, “Angel” by The Quest Project. I’m struggling to think of a better song to watch the sun rise with.

Unfortunately, after the song finished this was pretty much the end of the sunrise. The sun drifted behind those clouds, and that was it. Of course, by this point, I was exactly half way between my current location and home, therefore I completed the journey via the rest of the Hart Bypass.

The photos kept coming, however.

This one of a nettle got me thinking… is there any purpose to this sodding plant / weed / whatever? It’s whole design is to hurt and cause discomfort. It is clearly the chav of the hedgerow.

I did film myself getting stung by said nettle. It must have been at least 10 years since I last felt the sting of a nettle. Therefore, I grabbed my camera, and filmed my hand going through said weed.

Turns out, it didn’t hurt at all, except for a mild irritation, and a very slight itch later on. Maybe years of washing up protects your hands from organic enemies. The video turned out totally uninteresting,by the way, so you’ll never get to see it.

I continued my journey home, occasionally stopping off to take photos…

I liked this image, though one of the next ones made the trip for me…

I adore pointless, meaningless, and yes, slightly mischievous graffiti, in the same way I can’t go past a statue with a traffic cone on its head without smiling. I don’t like tagging, and I don’t really like the trend of “stencil” graffiti, unless it’s really clever and well done.

Eventually, I returned home after the 5-mile walk, only to find that Sam had “marked his territory” up the bloody sofa. Not his fault, however, as Senta has been in heat..

Technorati Tags: flickr, foal, hartlepool, horse, nettle, photograph, road, signpost, sunderland, sunrise, walk

All this talk about bikes, and today, I began to scan some photos which I found in the cupboard. Imagine my surprise when I found this…

Look in the background. Ignore the fact I’m wearing a hilarious wig made of grass. Ignore my nash glasses. Ignore my missing front teeth. Oh, okay, you don’t have to ignore then. Either way, I’ve noticed that there is a bike in the background, complete with stabilisers! How very odd. I doubt I’ll have had this out of the back garden.

Technorati Tags: bike, child, glasses, kid, me, past, Reminiscing

Ahh, this takes me back. It’s funny that Chad (aka Randy Lahey in the recent comments) mentioned my very first bike, which was amusingly titled the Bangermobile. Therefore, I shall reminisce a little about said bike.

Actually, if you want to split hairs, The Bangermobile was NOT my first bike, though it was the first one I actually used. Many years ago, my parents bought me a white BMX bike (not the one I mentioned in the previous post) out of the paper. The only problem is, it was huge, and I was tiny. Therefore, I never, ever rode it. It just gathered dust and cobwebs in the washhouse for about 2 years. I hoped I’d grow into it, but I was about 6 at the time, and I’d need to have waited until I was 14 before I’d have been able to get on it without someone’s assistance.

I was frustrated, I knew I had a bike. I wish I was big enough to have taken it out. Eventually, I got bored of waiting, and lost interest. I was about 8 at the time. Suddenly, unknown to me the bike disappeared entirely. The story, as far as I know it, is that my Uncle Jimmy took it to the bike shop up King Oswy, and swapped it for a bike which was more my size. The result was a plain purple coloured pushbike with racing handles on it, shown below…

Over time, I found the racing handles a little hard to use, therefore they were replaced with standard handlebars which looked like they may have came from one of those little trolleys old people pull behind them. I didn’t mind. The bangermobile was mine, and no matter how much the other kids in the photo mocked me, I didn’t care, I could finally join in with their races, etc. That is, as long as they didn’t go beyond the end of the square. For the record, Chad is the lad at the back with his thumbs in the air.

I loved that bike. I could finally join in when everyone else got their bikes, building ramps in the square and jumping over certain objects, though I seem to remember falling off more times than enough.

I have no idea what stopped me from using the Bangermobile, possibly a puncture, possibly the fact you used to be able to turn the handlebars without the wheels turning, possibly a horrific fall which I’ve subconciously blocked from my mind and now cannot remember.

Either way, if bikes were dragons, the Bangermobile would be called Puff. Purple things and rusted rings made way for other toys. The bangermobile slowly slunk into its cave, located behind my dad’s shed. Well, it wasn’t a cave, I just said that so it fitted in with the song. In fact, it was (and still is) a completely useless piece of the back garden, which has always been covered in weeds.

Some time later (at least a couple of years), the Bangermobile was discovered by me and whatever friends I was with at the time. We decided it would be great to see it back from the dead, and attempted to repair it. Unfortunately, these attempts proved to be fruitless, when after repairing the tyres about 5 times, getting them pumped up at the Shell garage, only for the air to escape 5 seconds later, it was decided that the life of the Bangermobile was at an end. I’m not sure what happened to it after that. I was too old to care. We probably smashed it up.

It’s not all bad news. Remember those handlebars I didn’t like? The ones in the above picture? Well, they’re still with us. They now act as a handrail in our (mainly disused for 10 years) downstairs toilet…

I went out on my new bike again, just for something to do while the sun was shining. Imagine my delight when the front reflector fell off and went hurtling down the road to the side of me. I’m going to replace them with lights at some point anyway, so that’s not a problem, but why did it have to make me look like a cock in the first place, having to stop and pick it up? Someone was walking past at the time, I bet she had a good giggle. Sob.

Technorati Tags: bangermobile, bike, chad, childhood