TFB Communications

I have checked the writings of Nostradamus to see if he predicts the end of the world with the current situation in North Korea and as yet can find no mention of, ‘flaming arrows of fire falling upon the earth from a Far East land launched by a man who bares a striking resemblance to Benny Hill.’ I could be wrong…but then again so was he. Nostradamus died in 1566 and didn’t predict that either.

And so to this weeks wonderful world of whacky stories from the press. I was fascinated to read that ‘name meshing’ is now the trend when couples get married. What is name meshing? Well, when the actor Chris O’Dowd married TV presenter Dawn Porter last year, the two of them meshed! They merged their surnames, and became the O’Porters. Only last week, a couple called Miss Griffin and Mr Pugh got spliced and are now starting out on wedded life as Mr and Mrs Puffin. Yes, honestly. According to the UK Deed Poll service, almost 800 British newly weds have already “meshed” their names together this year. It’s nothing new, in my day the hyphen was all the rage for a while and produced some stunning monikers. The North Devon family of the Pine-Coffins will always raise a smile with me as will a Major I met at Sandhurst called Charles Orpen-Smellie. You would have thought that if you have the chance to ditch Smellie as a name it would be a priority but no, it was preserved for all to see. By the way, I also met a Major Major there as well. But anyway, name
changes can be embarrassing. My friend Pippa Baron was getting married and realised at the top of the church isle she was about to become Pippa Pappin and thus would spend he rest of her life spitting on people so an emergency double barrel, Baron-Pappin, was organised, although I always thought she resounded like a World War One fighter ace.

I would have tired meshing with the enemy, the good lady wife, but Fitzfield sounds like a council run waste disposal site and Fieldfitz, a rare thrush from Russia. I would love to have seen my old school friend John Hemmersly marry Elenor Oldroyd from Radio Five Live. Mr and Mrs Hemmerroyd has a wonderful ring about it. Go on, sit there and work out with the other half what you would become. It’s pointless, ridiculous but fun and takes your mind of the troubles of life. There are some pitfalls, long standing unmarried friends of ours with surnames Stewart and Adams would become the Sadams, about as popular a name as Kim Jong-un. Mind you, if this was to catch on, I assume that the surname Tucker would die out almost overnight.

If anyone sees me pounding the streets of Plymouth, red faced, panting and wheezing, don’t be alarmed, I am training for the Plymouth Half Marathon on April 28^th.  Just to save you re reading that bit again….in capitals: I AM TRAINING FOR THE PLYMOUTH HALF MARATHON. It is all part of the BBC Inside Out series looking at getting Fitz fitter and will be shown on BBC1 in September or as part of a short memorial programme on or around April 29^th. The series started with me giving up alcohol at Christmas 2011, then with me joining a gym and taking regular exercise in early 2012. So far I have managed to loose two stone in weight since the bad old days.

My current training regime consists of running along my road and up to the first lamppost on the hill opposite. Being slightly asthmatic, I then collapse at number 12. The doctor has given me an inhaler, which has worked nicely and I am now collapsing at number 18. That’s a distance of nearly three quarters of a mile. The other 12 and a quarter miles are a work in progress at the moment.

I have called upon my old friend, Commonwealth medal winning sprinter Katherine Endacott, to assist me and she did sound a little stunned and confused in a recent phone call when I asked if she could help me train. She thought I wanted picking up from the railway station! When I explained what I was doing her first question was ‘Do you own a track suit?’ Charming! It is nice to know who your friends are. Anyway, hastily buying track suit trousers after that comment I arrived on The Hoe for a training session with her. Being a bloke, I never checked the size and slipped on the garment in hopes I would look like Mo Farah. In truth the XXL made me look more like MC Hammer. Still, as I wandered back through the town centre at little later in trackies and trainers, at least I blended in.

It is not the first time I have pushed myself into extreme exercise. On 5^th November 2000 I entered the New York marathon and came 29109^th. Actually I have just noticed that my runner number was 39616 so I did beat quite a few people, the number slip is framed in my office.
I can still remember the fight for the line between myself and a gent in a wheelchair who had pushed himself backwards for 13 miles. In the last hundred yards he was shouting encouragement to me and gave me a sprint finish. He beat me. His name was Robert Triggs and I would love to meet him again one day, a true inspiration.

My medal hangs on the side of the frame and reads 7 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds which is about 45 minutes slower than the Jumbo took to cross the Atlantic but I made it.

I hope to do Plymouth in four hours or on all fours. Katherine pointed out that four hours would be handy as they open the roads again after four hours….which is quite an incentive!

Fitz

You can support Fitz’s effort by donating to the Radio Devon Give A Gift Appeal  at http://www.justgiving.com/bbc-radio-devon-give-a-gift

Ratboy, the son and heir, has been in hospital. He has managed to snap his ACL, needed major knee surgery and thus went under the knife. I would like to say thank you to everyone who looked after him during what is now a fairly routine operation but nevertheless a worrying time for his Mum and Dad.  It was only a twelve hour stay in Derriford but we saved a fortune in food and electricity that afternoon.
At seven o’clock we had the call to come in and see him and despite pleading, the surgeon sent him home, having refused my request to have him neutered or keep in over the weekend. So, sadly the bills are creeping up again. The Xbox is slightly warmer than the wood burner, Sky Movies delivered their bill by parcel post and the local Coop are taking on extra staff to compete with the near Olympian demand for pizza and Jaffa cakes. Does anyone know if Haribo is available on prescription? Any road, on the plus side he can’t drive but what we save in petrol goes out on ketchup.

Trying to find Ratboy in Derriford was a task in itself. First to park! I enclose a photo of the car park signage saying ONE WAY. I drove past this twice, once from the left and once from the right. As there are no arrows to indicate which way was one way…and I was only going one way at the
time, technically no law was broached.

Then to reception. From a distance the welcoming doors of Derriford looked like a Turner painting mainly as you still have to walk through the fogs and mists from the first smokers of spring, with drip in one hand and fag in the other. Emerging from the ‘cloud base nicotine’ I entered reception, past the bakery and café packed with people on strict hospital diets whacking into pasties, sausage rolls and cream cakes, past the empty shop selling fresh fruit and into the main newsagents, stacked with choccy bars and sugar laced fizzy drinks. It is here that I enclose the second photo of the day, the selection of books on offer for the patient. ‘God Bless the NHS’ The Truth Behind The Current Crisis (HALF PRICE..I wonder why) may not be the best reading material if you are about to have something whipped out. But to place it right by the title ‘Kill Me If You Can’, does show a remarkable lack of marketing. I once climbed onto our local airline, when we had an airport, and sat there listening to the soothing music to calm the nervous air passenger…..they were playing the hits of Buddy Holly! Didn’t he die in a …..

Anyway, twenty minutes later and with a £2.20 parking charge, Ratboy was back in the car. Then home, with every pot hole testing the stitches and aesthetic. Thank you Derriford, at £2.20 it is one of the cheapest and most entertaining days out in Plymouth.

Fitz

I will be with you in a minute, I am just watching the England Rugby highlight on television……there we are, back with you know.

Last week it was pies, this week it’s preserves, Popes and apostraphies. If you missed last week, pies can’t be called pies unless they have a lid, a pastry top. Now, believe it or not an EU ruling says that jam can not be called jam unless it has 60% sugar in it. Anything lower and it must be
called a preserve. One woman from Manchester has taken the Eurocrats on and they have relented…..a bit. Now jam can be called jam with only 50% sugar. But you can bet that that ruling came from the same desk in the same office which says sugar is bad for you. The same office, which we pay for, which has dealt with the horse meat scandal! Maybe someone miss heard? ‘Sorry I thought you said 50% Shergar is OK!’

And so to Mid Devon, where their apostrophes are causing problems! The apostrophe is being banned from street names by the council to avoid
potential confusion. Names and signs will have to be changed. Maybe you have got your priorities a little confused? In the land of a thousand potholes, you are worried about Baker’s View or Bakers View, a place name in Newton Abbot. Is there an apostrophe in the word pothole? There is in this sentence ‘The unattended potholes have just knackered my car’s suspension.’ If this were adopted by the people of Plymouth would you really want to see money spent on changing Derry’s Cross to Derrys Cross or even Derry Cross or Cross of Derry? Do you want to see money spent on changing Derry’s Cross, now there’s a question!

Speaking of crosses or cross’s …… to Rome. The last time I heard that many people say who….was at a Who concert! I was transfixed as The Vatican gave us a new kid on the block in the shape of the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Obviously the bread contract will be looked at now and
‘give us our daily corned beef’ will be slipped into the Lord’s Prayer but what else will change? The enemy, the good lady wife, did ask why it took over an hour to get His Holiness out onto the balcony after the white smoke but as I pointed out, it does take sometime to get a 76 year old up four flights of stairs in a building five times the size of Debenhams , into a ball gown, learn a speech in several languages and struggle past an irate German yelling….I’ll be back!’ This man is the same age as Bobby Charleton, Jack Nicolson and Shirley Bassey! None of them have performed in front of a 750,000 live crowd at the drop of a hat. The world is speculating where he will visit first. Might I suggest Ikea…those Vatican curtains are so 1980’s.

Right, I’m off to see my dentist in St Judes or is it St Jude’s.

Fitz

I admit it, my hearing is going. While sat in the BBC canteen, I head the voice on the radio say that the next Eurovision Great British song entry would be sung by Tommy Tynan. Tommy Tynan? Imagine my disappointment when I found out the presenter has said Bonnie Tyler. I think Tommy would have a great chance. I once had to phone Bonnie Tyler for an interview and dropped myself right in it. An Arthur Mullard sound-a-like answered the phone. When I addressed the voice as ‘sir’ only to discover that I was speaking to Bonnie directly, I hastily said ‘Hang on I will put you through to Mr FitzGerald.’ Doh!

So, Plymouth has a new advertising slogan, Ocean City, catchy and to the point! I can’t help thinking that Ocean City sounds like an ‘all you can eat’ Chinese restaurant, but I hope it works. I have a bad record with ‘all you can eat’ Chinese restaurants as there is one in Plymouth who watched me ladle fragrant rice and beef with oyster sauce onto a plate. Then I added spring rolls and chicken balls, garlic spare ribs and promptly smothered the lot in sweet and sour sauce. Mmmmmm. After some frantic chewing I discovered that the chicken balls were in fact banana fritters!

Ocean City could be the slogan seen by hundreds of thousands when we win city of culture status. In case you missed it, the English contenders for the 2017 title are Chester, East Kent, Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea, Hull….yes Hull, Leicester, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Southampton to name but a few. So have we got a chance? Let’s start with Chester and compare famous people born in they city. Sporting talent. They’ve got Michael Owen and we have Michael Evans, no contest…one up to us. Hunks! They have Daniel Craig and we have Wayne Sleep!

OK, how about Hull? Arr Hull, so good they named it once. I have never been to Hull and I wish that status to remain the same for the rest of my life.

Let’s size up Hastings. My family lived in that area in the fifties and took me for a visit in 1972. As my father said at the time, the tide went out in 1954 and had never come back in again. It’s not exactly a racy, throbbing centre of nightlife. There were eighteen of us stood on the seafront that day and I think I was the only one who had my own hips.

Leicester, great for dead monarchs and car parks plus brilliant for curry! The city gave us Peter Shilton and then we gave him back but not before I ran into him at Bigbury one afternoon. I wandered into a pub and there was sat a very famous footballer. I knew the face but the name just wouldn’t come.

‘Trevor,’ I said.

‘Peter,’ he corrected.

I wasn’t going to let this go and added defiantly ‘Francis?’ I drove home the mistake….why?

‘Shilton.’ Was his one word answer and the conversation ended there.

Support the 2017 bid and if the team want a slightly deaf diplomat with no sense of taste, I’m your man.

Fitz