Where's Me Glasses?

By Paul Frost

Once “the face of Tyne Tees Television”, Paul Frost is now an old git.
Of course this hasn’t always been the case. He’s been a teenage git, a young married git and a middle aged git. In chronological order he has been a farmhand, supermarket shelf stacker (sauces and pickles), shop assistant, debt collector, barman, doorman, student, newspaper journalist and columnist, BBC radio and TV presenter, ITN reporter, after dinner speaker, pilot, corporate film producer and director.
This is his first and probably last attempt at getting anything published. He’d rather have a lie down.
Where’s Me Glasses? is a humourous and rambling tome from a grumpy old git who still has the ability to laugh at life and all around him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sixth Element Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908299314

Book preview

WHERE’S ME GLASSES?

A squint from middle-age

by

Paul Frost

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SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by Sixth Element

Arthur Robinson House

13-14 The Green

Billingham TS23 1EU

Tel: [phone]

www.6e.net

© Paul Frost 2012

ePub ISBN 978-1-908299-31-4

Kindle ISBN 978-1-908299-32-1

Paul Frost asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Preface

Chapter One - Let's All Sound Aussie

Chapter Two - The Fairer Sex

Chapter Three - GALMI

Chapter Four - The Teesside Haccent... yer-no-worramean... like

Chapter Five - The Pub

Chapter Six - New Technology

Chapter Seven - Holidays At Home

Chapter Eight - Holidays Abroad

Chapter Nine - Hobbies and Stuff Like That

Chapter Ten - The Media... God Help Us!

Chapter Eleven - No Longer Lord And Master

Chapter Twelve - Turning Old... Illness and Temper

Chapter Thirteen - A Clean Breast

Chapter Fourteen - Football

Chapter Fifteen - Come On, We Are British

Chapter Sixteen - Damned Old Age

An extract from Paul Frost’s next Old Git novel ‘No Need to Shout’

Once the face of Tyne Tees Television, Paul Frost is now an old git. Of course, this hasn’t always been the case. He’s been a teenage git, a young married git and a middle aged git. In chronological order he has been a farmhand, supermarket shelf stacker (sauces and pickles), shop assistant, debt collector, barman, doorman, student, newspaper journalist and columnist, BBC radio and TV presenter, ITN reporter, after-dinner speaker, pilot, corporate film producer and director. This is his first and probably last attempt at getting anything published. He’d rather have a lie down.

PREFACE

I had no idea I was going to write a book until about five minutes ago. That’s when I sat at my desk at home and asked Bruno, the snoring Labrador, Where’s me glasses?

That’s when I realised I’d turned one of life’s corners, from Adventure Avenue into Downhill Drive. I’ve not only started doing all those irritating little things that my father used to do – the things that drove me crackers – but I’ve realised I’m doing them which makes it even worse.

Work today should be creating a corporate video script for an ambitious blonde lass. She wants to start up a beauty parlour called Hollywood Lashes in the Rodeo Drive of the UK, namely Linthorpe Road in Middlesbrough. Need I say more?

So it can wait. I’ve said, Bugger it, and started typing these very words on the laptop. As I approach the age of sixty, I feel as though I’ve earned the right to look back at what life throws at every one of us.

If you’re a teenager, put this book down now. It’s not for you. There are no pictures of tits and I think all rappers should be shot. Surely you don’t want to read anything from an old git like me.

If you’re in your twenties or thirties, fear not, all this stuff will eventually come your way. Forty something readers will already recognise the early signs. Half centurions are living it and those who are sixty odd know I still have a lot to learn.

And ladies… this should all ring some bells! Oh what bells! Bet you keep looking at your better half saying, This is you, this is… it’s you!

But let’s go back to, Where’s me glasses? Why should three little words inspire several thousand?

Well, I was going to say I’ve been wearing glasses for nine years. But that’s not true. I’ve needed glasses for nine years. I can’t read a bloody thing without them. I can’t see what’s on the laptop screen without gurning for England. I certainly can’t find the delete OR CAPS LOCK BUTTon. Found them.

So why, since the turn of the century, have I never had an eye test? It’s one of those things I’ll get round to next week I suppose. The ‘bins’ parked on my nose-end were once the property of my wife – The Cherished One – and she bought them from Tesco. Superglue has held in the lens for at least eighteen months.

Why do I never take them with me… anywhere? Probably because wearing them in public means I’ve given in to the ageing process. However, this means I can’t read restaurant menus and have to sit there like a geriatric while they’re read out to me after everyone else has made their choice. You like fish… he likes fish… he has to watch his diet… he’ll have fish.

The mobile phone is a no-go area. If I get a text message in the street, someone has to read it to me. The shame. But Big Issue sellers have little else to do. Let them earn their two quid.

Still, I wander around as though I expect the gift of normal sight to miraculously return. A flash of light, a puff of smoke (can we still say puff?) and twenty twenty vision is back… ah what joy. I can order the restaurant belly pork, all by myself.

And you’ll notice I talk to dogs. Not just any dog but a Labrador, which is also indicative of my condition and my age.

Not a Rotty, a Pitbull or a Mastiff, much loved by the tattooed, shaven-headed, gold dripping fuckwits now appearing at your local magistrates’ court but a cuddly, inoffensive Labrador. A canine Teddy Bear. And he’s asleep which just compounds my apparent idiocy. Yes, I talk to sleeping dogs. The male men-o’-paws.

So while I have the last few remnants of a memory left and the ability to laugh at life and put it down in some form of rambling tome, let’s get cracking.

Where’s Me Glasses? A squint from middle-age.

Enjoy the large print.

CHAPTER ONE

LET'S ALL SOUND AUSSIE

An English waiter spoke to me the other day as though I was either plain daft or back in primary school. And it’s not the first time it’s happened… more and more people are adopting what I can best describe as ‘a certain tone!’

I reckon they’ve secretly gone as far as forming a new organisation called Those Who Assume Tonal Superiority – let’s call them TWATS for short.

The trend started several years ago when some people began overnight to use what seemed to be a weird accent bordering on Australian. At the time I blamed Jason Donovan and Kylie.

But on closer inspection, it turned out not to be an accent but a rising, questioning inflection at the end of a sentence.

I’m sure you’ll have been a victim. The TWAT looks perfectly normal but delivers simple information as though it’s extremely complicated, in fact so complicated that it’s probably beyond your comprehension. It’s rather like talking to children – B U T F A R M O R E P A T R O N I S I N G.

For example: "Hi, my name’s Rupert and I work in