Maybe it was inevitable. Once again the internal dissent in Syria inspires a report that government forces are still cracking down on anyone they can find worth cracking. Sometimes you have to wonder how objective news reporting actually is because after watching film of tanks rolling down deserted streetsI kind of wonder if half these actions are designed to create news rather than achieve any worthwhile objective.
Another question that comes to mind is how long the west are ging to sit on
For no apparent reason I came over all philosophical last night. The big question however was not life, the universe, & everything. Professor Brian Cox has cornered that market. Instead I had humbler questions to ask of myself. Like what is it that I look forward too?
Before anyone thinks I was getting depressed and feeling sorry for myself, that really isn't the case, so all you missionaries out there trying to make me believe I'm cursed, haunted, almost an alcoholic, or nearly a drug a
As I draw ever closer to the day when recording my new album becomes a necessity, so the desire to be ready for it drives me on. I learned to play guitar in my early twenties though I have to confess I was never particularly talented or technically proficient - just good enough to embarass specialist players at my level - especially since I was a drummer by trade. Mostly I just embarassed myself.
Nonetheless it's been twenty years since I played guitar anything like seriously, so in order to
Yesterday morning the weather was overcast, another typical dull British day and disappointing after the spell of spring sunshine we've been enjoying. By lunchtime the sun had burned off the cloud and it was a gloriously warm day. So much so I decided to go for a stroll, and headed north to Seven Fields.
Thats an area of farmland surrounded by housing developments and designated public space, although its still used as hay meadows amongst the wooded hillsides. There's an unspoiled quality to
Today is not a good day. And the subject of my woe? That's an interestng question in itself. It ought to be about my car, the Eunos Cabriolet slowly disintegrating with a little help from a vandal or two. Reason being that it's gone. Vanished. Disappeared.
I mean, did someone ctually bother to steal it? You couldn't just drive it away. But gone it most certainly has, snatched away more or less from under my nose yesterday afternoon.I only realised it was gone late into the evening. I doubt i
Human beings are creatures of habit. We soon find a comfortable routine in any enviroment, finding a way of life that suits us just fine. Why then do we worry so much about lifestyles?
Everyone likes to suggest how we ought to live. Religion has been doing that for thousands of years of course. It's no coincidence that churches and temples demand attendance and regular prayer. The government very kindly makes lots of rules to persuade us to adopt their own sanitised version of behaviour. Not
A somewhat battered and bruised Robinson Caldrail crawls slowly up the beach of Washout Island, surrounded by the detritus that shipwrecks usually leave riding the surf. Alone and castaway, this is not the first time I've been marooned on this particular island. Right now I'm too devastated by what happened at the height of the storm. Captain AD, determined to brave the foul weather aboard his unseaworthy vessel, ordered me thrown over the side to stay afloat. I wasn't suprised. I'd considered a
Yep, it snowed. I woke up to the sound of people falling over. A garage mechanic shovelling snow off the ramp to the yard made sure I got out of bed. I'm going outside. I may be gone some time.
What is going on? Swindon is alive with people. Cars crawling forward sensibly at a steady pace. People laughing, joking, gritting pavements. Youths dragging plastic sleds they got for Christmas four years ago and never thought they'd ever use. Help... Drowning in community spirit....
A ten y
As an unemployed person I have to say there are one or two disadvantages to being on the dole. One is that everyone else think you're a lazy good for nothing sponging off the state, the second is that your Claims Advisor thinks you're a lazy good for nothing sponging off the state.
She called my name out and as I stepped forward to her desk, she raised her eyebrows at my suntan. Fresh from my journey home from Newcastle a few hours earlier I looked like I'd spent the weekend on a tropical b
Industrial accidents happen. There's no denying that. I know of a guy who drove his forklift off the bay because he hadn't noticed the lorry had gone. There was a forklifter at one place I used to work who regularly smashed holes in the breezeblock wall because he reversed out without looking. There was another who broke off the sprinkler head and flooded the warehouse with brown sludgy water.
There's a chap who works in our warehouse who thankfully doesn't work for us. He fell out of the ba
The last week has been a miserable procession of rainy days. Not those romantic downpours so beloved of Tina Turner, its those claggy dull grey squalls that we British like to call weather. But now I think about it, what happened to August? We hardly had any sunshine at all, and the indian summer we sometimes get in September looks like being a washout.
Its hardly Global Warming is it? But then it occurs to me that since we get most of our weather second-hand from America, and that they get
One of the enduring qualities of the ancient Roman Empire is an instinctive need by europeans to revive the idea of a continental empire. The European Union was supposed to be a collective of nation states although clearly there are politicians who saw it as a vehicle for imperial ambition. Others saw it as no more than a convenient gravy train. I suspect the same was true two thousand years ago.
Things aren't looking too good. Those nations scrounging from the pot have been told to pull the
As I write this I'm watching the Glastonbury Festival on the box. Its amazing that a cow shed in a muddy field can be such an important event. Its been a long long time since I hit the stage at such an event - I certainly never got to play Glastonbury itself - but I remember one of our gigs on the bill of a folk festival in the west country. The stage was a lorry flatbed. No expense spared obviously.
It was a cold and dark november evening when we went on. You could almost see the frost for
Swindon to Newcastle is about six hours by train. Time to settle into the seat, relax, let the train take the strain. I watched the towns and countryside roll by. It was all going too well. The stop at Sheffield Station was a long one. The minutes ticked by and there was no sign of movement. Platform staff who usually shepherded the trains away were curiously absent. Please don't tell me another strike is in progress... Then the tannoy bleeped into life to make a passenger announcement.
"If
Our recent spell of sunny weather seems to be coming to an end. Showery old Swindon is a little damper today, here and there, usually when I step outside the house. I have to say that today has not been a special day in any sense whatsoever. For the pidgeons on the balcony outside the library, I guess it must seem a bit different. I've just watched two of them having sex in plain view from my vantage point at the computer.
The victorians used to believe that mankind was the crowning glory of
Looking out the window this morning I see a vista of clear blue sky. After yesterdays squalls and blustery winds it's a welcome change. Years ago, on a day like this, I would phone the flying club and ask if there was an available aeroplane. There is? Brilliant, I'll be there in an hour.
There wasn't much to it. I arrive, park up, and pop by the control tower to check for weather information. Oh yes. You never take british weather for granted. It's suprised me more than once. Also there was
I can't tell how how pleasant a day it is right now. Bright sunshine and a cool breeze. Even the mood is relaxed as I go about my business among the throngs of people feeling exactly the same way as I do. Okay, I avoided the marching band, but hey, each to their own.
The museum has been unusually busy too. Paying customers? Whatever next? Asking that question was my mistake. For those who've ever watched the comedy series My Name Is Earl, Karma is alive and well outside of California too.
No-one could accuse me of not being prepared. With the risk of heavy showers predicted by our faithful prophets of the television weather report, I was not taking chances. Okay, I wasn't in hiking mode, dressed in outdoors survival gear, but in clothing I know from experience is able to cope quite well with the minor downpour or two. So military surplus it is then.
All day long I was going here and there, seeing to my daily business, and to my utter disgust the dark clouds came and went with
Many years ago I went off one weekend to visit a kit car show. It meant a long journey there and back the same day but I was young, enthusiastic, and totally nuts about cars, or indeed most things that moved courtesy of an internal combustion engine.
Needless to say the main hall was packed full of all sorts of DIY cars. Fun cars, serious cars, wierd cars, and a few that turned out to be infamous money pits. I wandered among replicas of ferrari's and lamborghini's that seemed almost as expe
Its the turn of the french to hold the presidency of the EU right now. What are they suggesting? They want each member state to stump up 10,000 men, plus tanks, planes, and ships, for a european defence force. This is interesting because a european defence force was part of the Treaty of Lisbon, which the french people didn't want, nor did the dutch, and neither - somewhat more pointedly - did the irish. But it seems we're going to get a Treaty of Lisbon even if we didn't want one at all - Which
We don't own the Shed we work in. No, we rent it, at a stupid price, from NF the site manager. NF wants us out of the Shed so he could squeeze us in with all our pallets in the Hangar, and rent the Shed to someone else at an even stupider price. Which sort of backfired a little because we're shortly to move down the road to rent warehouse space from a professional company at a stupider price still.
Now I turn up for work one morning. I have to walk through the Hangar to reach the yard, but f
Time to take Ol' Reliable down from his perch on the kitchen surface. As microwaves go it was a simple beast. Put your food in, select a cooking time... Three minutes?... Yes, let's try three minutes. If I see steam building up I know it's time to cut the power early. How simple is that? No complicated programming or indeed any intrinsic knowledge of cooking required. Just hot food, on demand.
There can be no sentimentality in the cutthroat competition of consumer electronics. Ol' Reliable h
The doorbell rang last night. Wow, thats a forgotten pleasure. Most people announce their presence by shouting in the street. So I drop my dry sandwich and rush downstairs in a fit of uncool eagerness.
A hopeful adolescent stood in the hallway, looking a bit uncertain at my raffish squalor.
"Is that your Mazda out back?" He asked. Oh no... Don't tell me it's been vandalised again....
Yes it is, I responded.
"You thinking of selling it?" He enquired nervously. I stared for a sec
This morning was wet. Not heavy rain, but that persistent drizzle that dampens everything. Quite a change from the cloudless sky I saw last night. Most of us star gaze once in a while, and that's exactly what I did from the back window of my home. Sadly, the atmospheric conditions and the glow of street lighting meant you could only see the brighter stars. The night sky is sometimes so much more vivid in the countryside. But there was the Big Dipper, probably the only constellation I recognise.
"EEEEERGH!"
Believe me, at three in the morning, that high pitched screach is enough to scare the living daylights out of you. Yes, it's the urban foxes again, lurking in the darkness to hunt smaller nocturnal animals lurking in the darkness, or the bonus of edible rubbish we humans have discarded, or as I've come to believe, just to wander around and annoy people with high pitched screaching.
This time the fox was very close to the backs of the houses where I live. That's unusual. Norma
