Belmont shaken by apocalyptic-blast

3,000 Stanmore residents were evacuated from their homes on Monday evening (3 Oct) when a large blast tore through Belmont Service Centre, leaving it engulfed by flames.

The explosion, in the storage yard of the centre in Kenton Lane, Stanmore, happened shortly after 6.30pm when a gas cylinder exploded. Many residents reported hearing a "loud bang" followed by a plume of smoke, which quickly dominated the Stanmore skyline.

Shopkeeper Zafar Hansraj, whose Drycleaners is just yards away, said: "We were closing around the time it happened and we saw the black smoke and heard the explosion. It was like a small firework display."

Within minutes three fire engines and emergency teams were at the scene tackling the blaze and a 250-metre exclusion zone was set-up around the Belmont Circle area over fears that a further 25 gas cylinders believed to be stored at the site could also explode. Among the stored cylinders were around five acetylene cylinders, which can be hazardous when exposed to heat. At around 7pm, police began the huge task of knocking on doors to evacuate residents who fell within the exclusion zone.

One evacuated resident, Mr Bhaghesh Shah, from Ventnor Avenue said "Police knocked on my door to say I had to leave. We took refuge in St Anselm's Church hall in Clifton Avenue amid fears of further explosions. The community policeman told me that around 600 homes had been evacuated and that the 3,000 residents were going to community centres across the borough."

Firefighters battled hard before finally getting the blaze under control at 11.30pm. Residents were allowed to return home at this time but fire crews remained on the site overnight as a precaution.

Turan Turan, Station Manager at Northolt Fire Station said "Fortunately the explosion was contained within the storage area.  The explosion and fire caused extensive damage, but fortunately no one was injured. Crews worked incredibly hard to prevent the fire from spreading and managed to cool down the other gas cylinders and in doing so, prevented further explosions."

Despite the explosion gutting the storage yard, destroying six cars and around 100 tyres, and damaging part of the car workshop, Service Centre Manager Kieran McIlroy said he was just glad that no one was injured in the blaze.

He said: "We all finished work around 5.30pm and obviously that was an hour before it happened, so none of the staff were here.  There would have been nothing worse than people getting hurt. Things are replaceable, but people are not."

Police have confirmed investigations are underway to discover the cause of the blaze.

An alternative world? Or is it.... Invest in character

An alternative world, or is it?

2 months on from completing my journalism course and I’ve joined the dole queue stretching from Harrow job centre to Tesco Station Road; former home of the once great Wealdstone Football Club.

Trolleys filled with curry powder and popadoms, most of the current Tesco clientele would be unaware of Wealdstone’s existence, let alone the significance of the Delhi counter situated in the Elmslie End.

above: Elmslie End, Lower Mead, Wealdstone FC - now a Delhi counter

Life could have been so different.

I’ve applied for approximately 152 positions. 5 offered me interviews (albeit 2 were by phone), but no job offers.

In Facebook terms, I’ve ‘poked’ 152 randoms, banged 5 (albeit 2 were phone sex), but none wanted a relationship.

Life works on a law of averages.

Story of my life. If I was a snog, marry or avoid… Pod would be having me as a seedy snog, behind the club, at best.  Not that I’ve complained before. But eventually in life we all want a bit of direction.

The most frequent question I’ve received in my interviews so far is the “why do you want to work for us?” conundrum.  Before I answer that, I have read, in my opinion a lot of disrespectful pieces from ‘in-people’ in the Journalism world saying that they have little time to read through long winded job applications and they want people to “tweet” their application.

If the employer ‘can’t be bothered’ to read my application, I’m dreadfully sorry but, I ‘can’t be arsed’ to apply. Lazy employers. Either that or they’re illiterate. The little Gremlin in the side of their head is requesting an easy way to digest a 150-200-word cover letter and 2-page CV.

It’s contradiction as well, “cover letters are poor and lazily written”… hello!?  A twit [sic] is only 140 characters!  That just promotes lazy. And most of these are married!

And when tackling the aforementioned question, most employers expect some kind of dreamy answer about how the company is ‘going places’ and ‘expanding’… but when was being honest a bad thing?  Can I not just say ‘coz I need the money?’ 

We’re creating a world of robots. Many companies want to ship out the personalities and bring in the wallflowers.

Quite possibly the key to getting a job is imagination. I’ve read this from many employers… “Use your imagination.” Well, I’ve imagined for the past 8-fecking-weeks I’m smoking a Cuban cigar in a recliner chair overlooking the River Thames but it ain’t got me nowhere!  

Credit where its due, I haven’t sat on my arse all this time, I’ve moved to make a cuppa.

And going back on the “what’s wrong with honesty?” point.  At least with me employers know where they stand.

In my last role I was vetted, and this included nosey questions delving into my love life, in my opinion, not their business – but I thought well, if they want honest, it’ll be rude not to. I hit them with every last seedy detail – and then they questioned giving me my DV?  Why?  Because I can tell them something on the house; 9 out of 10 who sat in that seat before and 9 out of 10 who will sit in that seat after, will omit something… And they’ll omit something for fear it will negate their clearance…and the 1 in 10 before, and the 1 in 10 after, are either virgins or ugly or a combination of both.

Anyway, “Loose Women” is due to start – that programme is the definition of false advertising, is it not?  In summary, people should not be fearful to show who they really are, the world is made up of colourful characters – why can’t employers embrace that? 

I’m speaking directly to the Facebook generation who have been told, “kill your ugly babies”, remove the pictures of you on a drunken night out etc… If I was an employer I’d be more concerned if people didn’t have pictures on their Facebook of them painted as a blue smurf, or of them nicking the opposite sex etc. It shows character – something that is clearly lacking amongst our spineless spoon-fed politicians.

Wake up world. Wake up employers. Invest in character!

infamous papers...

goal droughts and bath tubs - the simple equation of women in the bath!

Every good striker suffers a goal drought at some point in his career.  Take Peter Crouch for example, he went 19 games, a period spanning 4 months, without a goal for Liverpool in 2005.  The scrutiny placed under him was huge and prompted the uncomplimentary headline of ‘Crouching tiger, hidden talent.” 

In December 2005, Crouch scored.  It was a relief.  During the same year my own goal-scoring drought would end.  Every good player has one. By 2005 my enigmatic football career was all but over so metaphorically, for the purpose of this blog, the goal scoring I am referring to is something entirely different from stroking a size 5 between a set of white sticks – although I concur the feeling is the same.  

Female translation (where necessary) appears in italics from here forth.

During a goal-scoring drought the male ‘geezer’ will refuse to admit that he is not a big player touted by a big club.

During a prolonged period without sexual activity, male-folk will refuse to admit they are not an attractive proposition in demand by a fit female.

So here we go, the nitty gritty.  The geezer has gone 18 months without so much as tickling a ladies arse with a feather duster and thus begins to doubt his very existence.  This geezer is not helpless; he displays the creative flair of Lionel Messi but the finishing skills of Marcus Bent – a hopeless waste who wafted from club to club like some kind of bad smell.

He always has women on the radar; he creates opportunities yet he can’t put the chance to bed.  Literally.

From personal experience, if a girl doesn’t text back, it’s not that she isn’t interested; it is simply that she’s in the bath and no mentally sane girl would take their phone into this private and cosy environment!  Yes, every girl loves to wash her hair for prolonged periods of time and yes, every girl likes a good soak now and again; Bubbles included – not the pet monkey more commonly associated with Michael Jackson. 

girl: enjoying a long 'text-free' soak

On the basis of this theory, if she doesn’t text back for any period of time, she is in the bath – in which case, I am rather worried about one girl who has been in the bath since 2006. How long should a girl be in the bath before you find the need to declare her clinically deceased?

The bath-theory is an excellent creation.  A girl who never texts back is just more prided with preening themselves in the tub – she obviously doesn’t take her phone in with her because she doesn’t want it to get wet!  If she is in the bath for a long time (hasn’t texted you back for a week), then she is merely watching hour upon hour worth of boxsets such as Friends or House.

How many times have you heard the term ‘confidence player?’   Harry Redknapp once quipped that Darren Bent missed a chance his ‘missus’ could have finished, and the fat cats who write the Sunday Sports section were scoffing tea and scones saying that Benty (no relation to aforementioned Marcus), was simply a ‘confidence player.’

It is on that note that geezers suffering goal scoring droughts need a solid arm of consolation round them; they need to remind themselves that if she hasn’t texted back for a week, a month, a year… give her time- it’s nothing personal, she is simply washing her hair or having a bath!  

Struggles with 'the female species' - The High School Years

I understand now that what people really want to read is real-life stories.

I knew 3 things at school.  I knew I wasn’t attracted to men, therefore, I definitely wasn’t gay; I knew I was talented at football – any sports team representation and you’re exempt from bullying by default – no matter if you look like a crossbreed of a dogshit and Wayne Rooney. And finally, I knew I was not bad looking – I’ll rephrase that, “I wasn’t ugly.”

So you’re probably reading this thinking where the f*ck is this going? Well, I was always bemused by “the list.”  This aforementioned list was a seedy piece of (generally speaking) A5 paper, often scrumpled in the corners that dictated who, in the opinion of “popular girls” was “fit”.  There were sometimes several lists and on rare occasion even the butters girls did them in a vain attempt to fit in.

A social hierarchy that promoted prettiness and dissolved itself of special needs, classroom fatties and the unfortunate fore eyed species ordered the “popular girls”.  

A “lucky man” was first and foremost on a list; doubly lucky if he appeared on more than one list, and trebly lucky if he often appeared in the top 2 or 3 names.  In all my years at school, ‘to the best of my knowledge’ I was not on these lists full stop.  And I used to think, why the f*ck not?  I’m clearly the fittest as I regularly win the school cross country.  Then in year 9, I was reliably informed by my mate that ‘fit’ was a term of good looking and not a term of aerobic endurance.  I found it pretty insulting that I didn’t even make the occasional list compiled by the butters ‘birds’ – the meaningless pond life that only ever attracted the fat and ugly.

By 15, I started to sh*t myself.  I was still good at football, I still wasn’t gay, and I still wasn’t ugly.  There were by now occasional rumblings that one or two girls at school had some kind of vague interest, but seemingly no girl was actually going anywhere near a mile of me.  I find peer pressure to be incredible.  No one ever pressured me into drugs, I was surrounded by a positive bunch of people as a kid and where I could steered clear of the feckless wastes determined to spend more days watching Trisha Goddard and repeats of Supermarket Sweep than time in the classroom. These wastes had my respect though, they would push in the canteen cue but grant me some kind of VIP pass to push through with them simply because I was a prominent member of the school football team. Whilst the waste kids didn’t pressure me into drugs, my more normal, perhaps ‘inbetweener-esque’ mates would often ask me about my exploits with the female species.  Rather than be brutally honest and answer f*ck all (it seemed like I was the only one who had done f*ck all), I would lie; and as a kid, this was some kind of concern.  I’d imagine a similar kind of concern to being told you need an injection up your japs eye.  The point is, its amazing how when you’re a kid at school, you have sex about 20 times, before you actually have sex!  “Have you had sex yet Kev?” It was a common question that prompted the most serious bout of Pinocchio-ism ever known to man. 

Supermarket Sweep - entertaining the wasters

A mate once offered me a choice of a naked Britney Spears or a football. I chose a football.  I also liked watching WWF, not to be mistaken for the world wildlife fund! Fortunately, not long after school my urge to watch muscle bound half naked scantily clad men cavorting round a wrestling ring wore off pretty quick and so did my instincts to pick football over Britney!

School finished for me in the summer of 2002. I had by then of course ‘’had sex” without actually having sex, in fact, I was that bad, I hadn’t even pulled!  I would question myself daily but always put it down to ‘more interested in football’ than anything else.  Finally, on 20 April 2003, I grew a pair. It was a seedy nightspot known to man folk as ‘Destiny’, a 3,000 capacity nightclub in Watford that did U18 events.  Shocking that, at 16 yrs 8 months and a solitary day, I was approaching the twilight of my U18 years but that ‘first kiss’ had thus far eluded me. By the morning of 21 April that stat was consigned to history, a lad was born three kisses after the night before!!  


Within the coming weeks I was to win players’ player of the season at Wealdstone Youth, offsetting my promotion to ‘captain’ for the coming year and obtain a girlfriend – within a month of my first kiss, I could tick everything off and respond to mates without being nervous!  My nose was no longer an offensive weapon. 

The first

It's 21.47 on 19 April 2011.

Days ago I signed up for Twitter, all seemed rather E.T to me but I am about to pursue an NCTJ in Journalism and curiosity kills the cat; my curious nature obviously getting the better of me.

I've been curious ever since I smashed an egg on my sofa as a 2 year old in a vain attempt to make scrambled egg. My culinary skills now stretch as far as a ham sandwich, or a cordon bleu beans on toast, for the lucky ones who stay til the morning ;-)

I often wonder what odds bookies would give on a seagull shatting on the bald patch of Ross Kemp then I remember I have better things to do, like ensuring my Jalfrezzi is eaten before the up coming sell by date. I'm passionate about food. I'm 186cm, and hovering round 14 stone - I'm not a fat bastard though, I'm in fairly good nick 'coz' I'm also passionate about gym. All of these ingredients make me a LAD.

Part of my aim on twitter is to boost my profile and create a social-network celebrity. Why should this be Kev Williams? Why the F*CK not!? Money makes the world go round but the old cliche and adage applies - certainly in Kev Williams' world, it doesn't buy happiness.

So why am I here? Signed up a while ago, I decided for my journalistic nature it was probably wise to come back and give it a go. I gingerly took up the challenge of the egg and spoon race in the beavers as a 7 year old and prevailed with a winners certificate - budget obv didn't stretch to a medal - so I'm on here to try and set the world alight... lets be honest, who is actually interested in reading about Stephen Fry's back door alumini!?

Follow me here for the story of 10-week NCTJ diploma - sounds dull? Studying normally is I suppose, but I will offer an amusing take on the days events and current affair news stories.