D’ya hear yer man

There’s a poster of Wayne Rooney in Heaton’s front window. In the top right corner of the poster it says ‘Release date 03.06.11’.

Am I missing something? I didn’t even know he’d been put in prison.

Short changed

I was away with the Scouts in County Fermanagh last week which explains the absence of a column. We had a great camp at Crom which, all being well, will be featured in the ‘MAIL’ in the next few weeks.

I don’t claim to be the most fashionable man, but I must say I was taken aback when I was rounded upon for my choice of shorts at the aforementioned camp.

It would seem fashion had dictated that my attire no longer met modern society’s definition of shorts.

According to my tormentors, my shorts were too short to be simply described as shorts. My shorts were ‘short shorts’ as I was informed by the entire troop. They were even labelled hot pants by one Smart Alec.

I needed to get with the times, I was told. Not a chance - I’m a Lurgan Mail man through and through. You won’t catch me reading that pordydown rag.

I was understandably annoyed about the slander over my shorts. In what felt like the blink of an eye, long shorts had muscled in on the summer scene and stolen the rights to the title of ‘shorts’ thus forcing their predecessor to look foolish, ill-conceived and seek a more precise definition.

It’s quite traumatic when you find out that something you’ve worn for nearly ten years has suddenly stopped being fashionable. But I’m not for backing down. I will not remove my shorts. It takes a braver man to stay faithful to fashions of faraway days than it does to follow fads of the future.

Mel Gibson said it best when he made a stand for marginalised clothing during the film Braveheart...

“Would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that... for one chance... just one chance to come back here to tell our enemy that they may take our lives, but they will never take our SPEEDOS!!!”

Potty about Potter

I’m really looking forward to seeing the final Harry Potter film this week. I’ve been on tenderhooks since Part One of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Tenderhooks are a bit like tenterhooks except they’ve been cooked for longer at a lower temperature.

Anyway, I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a big Harry Potter fan. Someone once described me as an aficionado. “A fishy what?” I said, before giving him a dig in the bake.

Alright, less of the nonsense. I’ll never forget the night back in 2009 when I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in the cinema and encountered the only two people in the world not to be aware of JK Rowling’s best selling series of books.

Picture the scene - on screen, Harry, Ron and Hermione are standing in a typically scenic location at Hogwarts discussing their next move. They decide to go off on the dangerous mission to seize Lord Voldemort’s horcruxes... sounds painful. The camera pans out, the music starts, the credits roll and the bloke behind us turns to his wife.

“Told you,” he whispers. “Told you they were setting it up for another film.”

Keeping it in the family

20 years. It’s taken 20 years, but now I can finally reveal my family ties to a sporting legend.

Considering most of the old doot that goes into this column, you’ll probably not believe me when I tell you that my granddad and Darren Clarke’s granddad are cousins.

I’ve done some painstaking research to find out what that makes me.

A leading family tree expert confirmed that it makes me a glory-hunting bandwagon-jumper.

Weekly teaser

The answer to last week’s teaser was: the reason the petrol pump attendant was sacked is because he’d been sleeping on the job.

Here’s this week’s puzzle: A horse was tied to a 20-foot rope. How did it manage to eat a pile of hay eight metres away without biting through the rope?