Remember the helicopters leaving Phnom Penh
I do. The great whirling things on top of the US embassy; people forcing themselves into the open doors while in the distance the Khmer Rouge advanced through the dusty streets.
Andrew Collins has a "Where did it all go right?" website here.
Soundtrack - Rousing music from wguc.org - Hamilton Harty Irish Symphony: The Twelfth of July Ulster Orchestra Cond.: Bryden Thomson.
Better mood ensues so no Finnegan's Wake for you today my lad.
Reading Matter - A Little Knowledge by Michael Macrone. A wonderful little book of short chapters giving the highlights of various philosophical, Scientific and Artistic topics. I though I might know most of them except the philosophy but the whole thing is a revelation - one step up from being a cheat's guide but valuable nevertheless.
It is still very sticky here though our house is quite cool even on the hottest days. I hate being out in the sun (couldn't you just tell that?) and stickiness is just horrible. I love it when it rains (Tell that as well could you?). It has rained here for weeks just recently and waking up in the night to the sound of the water on the window is so relaxing. My daughter was quite taken with the rain sounds on a rainforest CD I bought ages ago and now she would like a tape of rain sounds to help her get to sleep. I think the weather is probably not helping at her bedtime at the moment so we will try anything. Years ago I used to make white noise sounds from my early computers in the style of the waves on Oxygene which at the time I though were quite good but now are just naff. It is funny how over the years synthesised noises lose their attraction. I still like Synthesisers (witness a recent purchase here) but real instruments are just so much better. I once argued with my aunt regarding synthesisers but I think I am now on her side unless the track is a definite synthesiser track. She also did not like Steve Reich after they had him as composer of the week on Radio 3.
Be very careful when you go to any BBC site. You may find yourself sucked in to what appears to be an endless web of connections. The news site has every story going back until 1st November 1997 - see one of the first stories here but anything touched on by the BBC is covered in their main sites and all this comes onto my screen. I know I am a techy but like the saying about snow you are never too old to appreciate the wonder of a situation. It is just amazing that so much information is free and at your fingertips - be awed and think about it every once in a while. It is almost back on your heads time but I don't feel like finishing yet. I want to write a poem but there is not time. No Random Friday either, unless this is all just r andom and has come out consistent. Will you ever know? I won't. There is a whole universe of kettles here beginning to boil but there is no heat anywhere. Maybe I will get the infinite number of monkeys to take time out from their typing to pour the tea. To be or not to banana. That is the Bonobo!
Bye for today.
Thursday, May 29, 2003
Growing up Normal
Soundtrack - The last broadcast - Doves
Not Tubular Bells 2003 as the copy protection leaves 2 second gaps between the tracks when played on my CD ROM drive. Why does it need tracks? The original had two tracks one for each side. Maybe they should release it on Video. It is not only me who is not happy. There are suggestions that you record it to mp3 using line in from normal CD player but is it worth the bother. Tarnishes the enjoyment somehow or is that just my own black mood at the moment? Having said that, the following book made me really happy.
I cried at the end of Where did it all go right? One of the reviewers on Amazon said he was waiting for the author to say something negative about someone. Why does he have to? He was not sickly sweet just honest. We all change over the years until we take on a mature outlook (well some of us do anyway - loads of ostensiby adult people seem to want to behave like they are 7) and in some people this becomes a desire to be thoroughly nice blokes ( a non gender specific word I must stress but Blokesses just does not seem right).
Sticky days. The city looks a bit blasted and washed out in the distance though of course it is the same as it was last week, last year, last century. Nothing really matters to us does it. I will still have food and a home to go to.
New Soundtrack De Materie - Louis Andriessen
twenty minute rant regarding the sale of bits of those wonderful lakes to anyone other than the people who owned them in 1929. Commander Walker lived for the sea. Out in the ocean he felt at home more than any other place including beside his wife in the cool shelter of the farm by the lake. This story starts by those lakes. She left me for the first time before she became beautiful and I fell down among the mines, broken and destroyed by the loss of it all, prepared to lose my leg or my life by stepping on one of those dark and evil things. Throw us a handful of stars and we may be happy for you. Poetry is wasted on all of us. make up your own poetry and live your life by it. We are staying alive in the 21st century. Will we see the next one either individually or as a race? Halley's commet coming around again. 1986 was the last time. Nineteen eighty four dead and gone we thought and now here it is 19 years too late. 19 years! There was a baby crying the night I stepped out with the binoculars to see that comet and now they have left school. Down with the criminals of Bristol Docks or up with the angels in the hospital. I don't care where. Of course there were more than one and all of them must be touched by that great ice ball. Born under the sign of chaos and ranting forever about what happened to them that night when the stars tried to kill them. Sell that water and we all might as well roll over and die. dE sTIJL de stijl DE STIJL. Pronounce that correctly and we credit you with an operation on the NHS. Intellect re-assignment they call it. Transplanting IQs and emotions into machines so that they may be stored for all time. Misanthropic sounds all over the shop! Where is the exclamation Mark! A linear poem is always the best - it goes on so long and if you are clever it can end where it starts, loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and in the Wake of Spike Finnegan. A portrait here, a sketch there always of artists and young ones at that. Stanley Spencer was a strange cove a bay of very unusual coping stones. That resurrection almost made me want to die so I could come back in the opera that is Cookham Churchyard; climbing out of those tombs into the green and sticky summer of post war EnGlAnD. Is that chair to sit on or is it part of the display? You could never read that book; it means nothing and the guy replaced all the exclamation marks with semi-colons, half guts and other obscure punctuation - or maybe no punctuation at all. Of course all those children don't exist those days in any circular sense for their playground has been wiped out by commercial pressures so of course this is just a
Told you I was stupid. Put that on your grave and smoke it. Broadway Boogie Woogie. They are bright; very bright like neon and Argon and cellulose burning in the fire. Drop Magnesium into the fire and burn your retinas away like a little fatman.
Soundtrack - The last broadcast - Doves
Not Tubular Bells 2003 as the copy protection leaves 2 second gaps between the tracks when played on my CD ROM drive. Why does it need tracks? The original had two tracks one for each side. Maybe they should release it on Video. It is not only me who is not happy. There are suggestions that you record it to mp3 using line in from normal CD player but is it worth the bother. Tarnishes the enjoyment somehow or is that just my own black mood at the moment? Having said that, the following book made me really happy.
I cried at the end of Where did it all go right? One of the reviewers on Amazon said he was waiting for the author to say something negative about someone. Why does he have to? He was not sickly sweet just honest. We all change over the years until we take on a mature outlook (well some of us do anyway - loads of ostensiby adult people seem to want to behave like they are 7) and in some people this becomes a desire to be thoroughly nice blokes ( a non gender specific word I must stress but Blokesses just does not seem right).
Sticky days. The city looks a bit blasted and washed out in the distance though of course it is the same as it was last week, last year, last century. Nothing really matters to us does it. I will still have food and a home to go to.
New Soundtrack De Materie - Louis Andriessen
twenty minute rant regarding the sale of bits of those wonderful lakes to anyone other than the people who owned them in 1929. Commander Walker lived for the sea. Out in the ocean he felt at home more than any other place including beside his wife in the cool shelter of the farm by the lake. This story starts by those lakes. She left me for the first time before she became beautiful and I fell down among the mines, broken and destroyed by the loss of it all, prepared to lose my leg or my life by stepping on one of those dark and evil things. Throw us a handful of stars and we may be happy for you. Poetry is wasted on all of us. make up your own poetry and live your life by it. We are staying alive in the 21st century. Will we see the next one either individually or as a race? Halley's commet coming around again. 1986 was the last time. Nineteen eighty four dead and gone we thought and now here it is 19 years too late. 19 years! There was a baby crying the night I stepped out with the binoculars to see that comet and now they have left school. Down with the criminals of Bristol Docks or up with the angels in the hospital. I don't care where. Of course there were more than one and all of them must be touched by that great ice ball. Born under the sign of chaos and ranting forever about what happened to them that night when the stars tried to kill them. Sell that water and we all might as well roll over and die. dE sTIJL de stijl DE STIJL. Pronounce that correctly and we credit you with an operation on the NHS. Intellect re-assignment they call it. Transplanting IQs and emotions into machines so that they may be stored for all time. Misanthropic sounds all over the shop! Where is the exclamation Mark! A linear poem is always the best - it goes on so long and if you are clever it can end where it starts, loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and in the Wake of Spike Finnegan. A portrait here, a sketch there always of artists and young ones at that. Stanley Spencer was a strange cove a bay of very unusual coping stones. That resurrection almost made me want to die so I could come back in the opera that is Cookham Churchyard; climbing out of those tombs into the green and sticky summer of post war EnGlAnD. Is that chair to sit on or is it part of the display? You could never read that book; it means nothing and the guy replaced all the exclamation marks with semi-colons, half guts and other obscure punctuation - or maybe no punctuation at all. Of course all those children don't exist those days in any circular sense for their playground has been wiped out by commercial pressures so of course this is just a
Told you I was stupid. Put that on your grave and smoke it. Broadway Boogie Woogie. They are bright; very bright like neon and Argon and cellulose burning in the fire. Drop Magnesium into the fire and burn your retinas away like a little fatman.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Abigail 2001
(The link above has something to do with Bees and a swollen ear)
Soundtrack - Kaleidoscope World - Swing Out Sister - Yes again and what are you going to do about it?
My daughter is now convinced that she is Royalty. The book she chose for bedtime reading yesterday was a ladybird-book-sized history of Mary Queen Of Scots and now she has discovered that my wife's surname was Stewart, she thinks she is related. Of course it is a standing joke in the family about being thousandth in line for the throne. Great merriment was also got from the fact that I was NOT related to Mary Queen of Scots. Explaining patronymics to a four year old is always a difficult thing. Well I suppose it feels nice to have Royalty in the house as long as the 'hospitalised copper' brigade don't get to know. Luckily the book didn't go into any detail of how "The fair Devil of Scotland" actually died which saved some nightmares I hope (mine probably - The description at the end of Antonia Fraser's biography of MQOS is horrific - three blows with the axe though the last one was simply a sawing motion - you are not going to be spared if I have to think about it.)
Book Review time again
Where Did It All Go Right? - Andrew Collins
This man read all the books I read, went on holiday to the same area of North Wales at the same time. There is a 50/50 chance that I walked passed him in Porthmadog. The premise of this book is that the author had a safe, happy and enjoyable childhood and though I had sad and bad things happen to me at the same time as this man was living his 'brill' life in Northampton, so much of this rings very true. Even if your life has extremes then the normal day-to-day stuff is just like in this book. Safety of Intifada indeed. How did they let him stay working at NME? He's just not dark enough. He mentions that his book is teh antithesis of Paul Morely's Book - Nothing which more closely matches my own condition though to get the full picture you should replace Paul Morely's Father with my Mother. The objects of his obsessions are male suicides and early deaths mine are of course all related to SP. But I didn't grow up like Morely - probably not clever enough - and my life is not and never will be nothing.
(The link above has something to do with Bees and a swollen ear)
Soundtrack - Kaleidoscope World - Swing Out Sister - Yes again and what are you going to do about it?
My daughter is now convinced that she is Royalty. The book she chose for bedtime reading yesterday was a ladybird-book-sized history of Mary Queen Of Scots and now she has discovered that my wife's surname was Stewart, she thinks she is related. Of course it is a standing joke in the family about being thousandth in line for the throne. Great merriment was also got from the fact that I was NOT related to Mary Queen of Scots. Explaining patronymics to a four year old is always a difficult thing. Well I suppose it feels nice to have Royalty in the house as long as the 'hospitalised copper' brigade don't get to know. Luckily the book didn't go into any detail of how "The fair Devil of Scotland" actually died which saved some nightmares I hope (mine probably - The description at the end of Antonia Fraser's biography of MQOS is horrific - three blows with the axe though the last one was simply a sawing motion - you are not going to be spared if I have to think about it.)
Book Review time again
Where Did It All Go Right? - Andrew Collins
This man read all the books I read, went on holiday to the same area of North Wales at the same time. There is a 50/50 chance that I walked passed him in Porthmadog. The premise of this book is that the author had a safe, happy and enjoyable childhood and though I had sad and bad things happen to me at the same time as this man was living his 'brill' life in Northampton, so much of this rings very true. Even if your life has extremes then the normal day-to-day stuff is just like in this book. Safety of Intifada indeed. How did they let him stay working at NME? He's just not dark enough. He mentions that his book is teh antithesis of Paul Morely's Book - Nothing which more closely matches my own condition though to get the full picture you should replace Paul Morely's Father with my Mother. The objects of his obsessions are male suicides and early deaths mine are of course all related to SP. But I didn't grow up like Morely - probably not clever enough - and my life is not and never will be nothing.
Friday, May 23, 2003
COLOURLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY
Sountrack - Heart and Soul - Joy Division
Where do you want to go today?
What were you doing when this came out? How many records do you own which were made before you were twenty or before your were ten or before you were born? I have some that were recorded before my father was born though none before my grandfather was born. Take five is five years older than I am. Robert Johnson's recordings are the same age as my dad. There is not a lot before that. Favourites, top-tens, Friday fives are all stupid lists and do not mean anything. Music is something too precious to rate into top tens. You like it or you don't. I don't like everything on the CD I am listening to but lots of it is great and some of it seminal. 31 Songs indeed! The man tries to rate everything so that your very thoughts turn into simplified lists of the black and the white; it is a sort of Newspeak of criticism. Read the bloody review; don't look at how many stars it has. A star system has 5 or 10 grades; a review has a whole spectrum of emotion and feelings; just one listen has the whole cosmos of opinion.
That digital outboard like that ol' Janx spirit was a turning point. Put that box of tricks through a 32 track mixer and you get ... secrets. Try to record silence and then put it into a Glorfindel Box. I walked along that lonley ridge, a pile of industrial waste as dead as the industry which had made it, and recorded the wind and the silence and the distant big bang echo of the old days of powerful machinery. The sound of that hill top is like the remains of the big bang, always there to remind you of what was and will never be again. This is of couse from un-published pages of 24 Hour Party People and Ian Curtis was a genious and Tony Wilson is exactly what it says on the poster but you read it just the same
Sountrack - Heart and Soul - Joy Division
Where do you want to go today?
What were you doing when this came out? How many records do you own which were made before you were twenty or before your were ten or before you were born? I have some that were recorded before my father was born though none before my grandfather was born. Take five is five years older than I am. Robert Johnson's recordings are the same age as my dad. There is not a lot before that. Favourites, top-tens, Friday fives are all stupid lists and do not mean anything. Music is something too precious to rate into top tens. You like it or you don't. I don't like everything on the CD I am listening to but lots of it is great and some of it seminal. 31 Songs indeed! The man tries to rate everything so that your very thoughts turn into simplified lists of the black and the white; it is a sort of Newspeak of criticism. Read the bloody review; don't look at how many stars it has. A star system has 5 or 10 grades; a review has a whole spectrum of emotion and feelings; just one listen has the whole cosmos of opinion.
That digital outboard like that ol' Janx spirit was a turning point. Put that box of tricks through a 32 track mixer and you get ... secrets. Try to record silence and then put it into a Glorfindel Box. I walked along that lonley ridge, a pile of industrial waste as dead as the industry which had made it, and recorded the wind and the silence and the distant big bang echo of the old days of powerful machinery. The sound of that hill top is like the remains of the big bang, always there to remind you of what was and will never be again. This is of couse from un-published pages of 24 Hour Party People and Ian Curtis was a genious and Tony Wilson is exactly what it says on the poster but you read it just the same
Friday, May 16, 2003
The Helsinki Dress Code
After talking about rain yesterday, it arrived in the night, heavy rattling on the windows which makes me worry about the integrity of the house.
Soundtrack - Split - Lush
Loads of photos are waiting back at home. My daughter found an old camera in a bag upstairs and came down with it the other week. I wasn't sure how long it had been there but it had film in it, the subjects of which I had no idea about so they are going to be a great surprise. I do know that there are pictures from before my daughter was born so it should be an interesting collection.
Not building a wall; making a brick.
Adobe! That is a type of brick isn't it? Or is it just a covering for a wall. Everyone here calls it Abode which makes me wonder how much some people actually read or even how much they see of the world. It amazes me that these people can even drive without running into every solid object in the city. Of course, the world is a very complex place what with all those weird particles flying about. Strange and charmed etc. Glued with Gluons and positrons. We will all die if they escape and don;t do any spell checking. I was going to hit the spell checker but he hates it when I do that so I won't. Jangly guitars and all that hey! Will Gwyneth be any good as Sylvia? I bet she doesn't write as well. Glued in Ariel maybe. What would we do if we felt like that. Don't say you have never been that sad because I know you have. We all have. It just takes one bad day and the whole lot tumbles down on you like blubber from the guts of a Blue Whale on one of those evil factory ships. Like mines they are. As bad as mines. Invented for destruction of beautiful creatures. We are good and great and we will never kill anything. Oh the ants. Well do they count, pesky things? Diana loved mines or loved to get rid of them. Simpering over that body armour was the thing she did best. In the spring of that last year, the whole field was cleared of the black-hearted things and the children could walk free from the thought that they might lose a limb to them. They were disarmed and piled up in the woodshed like the evil that they were. Woodshed - Watershed - the swamp up above Swallowdale where the children got lost in the fog and fell upon the Charcoal Burners. Is young Billy still alive? I bet he is, still wandering the hills and burning the trees for barbecues. They had an Adder in a box and were the same men as in the photo in that book my Aunt had. He used to kill an Adder and clarify the dripping for embrocation. Damn mobile phones. For use by beavers of course. Random thoughts are useless but always interesting. This is just words like the scr ap book. Cut up any magazine you want and turn it into words. Slowly the Sun dipped below the hill and the purple of the heather shone out almost as if luminous, like land-locked plankton, glowing with its own light in the late evening. The light programme was on the radio and the children sang along when they knew the songs. In the woods, the animals stirred and waited for absolute silence without knowing why. It was after the wars, a happy, undefined time though only we know now how happy or indeed how undefined it really was. So much had happened in the few years previously and now no-one knew quite what to do to fill their days. Naval and Merchant Seamen were home and the miltary depots were filled with rusting equipment waiting for the time when strange men in strange clothes would buy it up and lovingly restore it to order simply to give their boring lives some real excitement. I have a tank in the back garden though the Sergeant was mean to me and took the firing mechanism from the gun. The Machine guns too he took. It is nothing but a hunk of rusting metal now. The children love to play on it though it gets very hot inside, like a rocket going round the sun until the seams melt and all those thousands of components drift apart gently until there is a new cloud in orbit. We go to Southsea (Starnbergersee) once a year for the air and sea-food. Sit by the Orwell and eat Whelks and Eels. Where did you get that accent? Very cut-glass isn't it. Are you a spy Guy? Cambridge 1931 and idealism brings the whole world down around you. Want a revolution and you will get sent down, urbinated possibly. Keeper of the Queens pictures and how does that give you access to military secrets? Go to jail after you confess but remember that what you desired for us has happened. There is no need to betray your country for a handful of beans. Who is your controller? In the park, where they meet to hand over the metal for the civil war that never happens, their master sits; Ukranian he is and no committed Communist as you think. Could this be code? Take every third word and it might make more sense than this drivel. The children are asleep now and have no thoughts of secrecy or spying. Commander Walker strolls the deck of The Duke of York as the sun rises over Tokyo bay. My Father in Law was there on that ship as they bent over that table one by one and signed away the peace. The War is Over. The War is Over. War is Over. War is War.
After talking about rain yesterday, it arrived in the night, heavy rattling on the windows which makes me worry about the integrity of the house.
Soundtrack - Split - Lush
Loads of photos are waiting back at home. My daughter found an old camera in a bag upstairs and came down with it the other week. I wasn't sure how long it had been there but it had film in it, the subjects of which I had no idea about so they are going to be a great surprise. I do know that there are pictures from before my daughter was born so it should be an interesting collection.
Not building a wall; making a brick.
Adobe! That is a type of brick isn't it? Or is it just a covering for a wall. Everyone here calls it Abode which makes me wonder how much some people actually read or even how much they see of the world. It amazes me that these people can even drive without running into every solid object in the city. Of course, the world is a very complex place what with all those weird particles flying about. Strange and charmed etc. Glued with Gluons and positrons. We will all die if they escape and don;t do any spell checking. I was going to hit the spell checker but he hates it when I do that so I won't. Jangly guitars and all that hey! Will Gwyneth be any good as Sylvia? I bet she doesn't write as well. Glued in Ariel maybe. What would we do if we felt like that. Don't say you have never been that sad because I know you have. We all have. It just takes one bad day and the whole lot tumbles down on you like blubber from the guts of a Blue Whale on one of those evil factory ships. Like mines they are. As bad as mines. Invented for destruction of beautiful creatures. We are good and great and we will never kill anything. Oh the ants. Well do they count, pesky things? Diana loved mines or loved to get rid of them. Simpering over that body armour was the thing she did best. In the spring of that last year, the whole field was cleared of the black-hearted things and the children could walk free from the thought that they might lose a limb to them. They were disarmed and piled up in the woodshed like the evil that they were. Woodshed - Watershed - the swamp up above Swallowdale where the children got lost in the fog and fell upon the Charcoal Burners. Is young Billy still alive? I bet he is, still wandering the hills and burning the trees for barbecues. They had an Adder in a box and were the same men as in the photo in that book my Aunt had. He used to kill an Adder and clarify the dripping for embrocation. Damn mobile phones. For use by beavers of course. Random thoughts are useless but always interesting. This is just words like the scr ap book. Cut up any magazine you want and turn it into words. Slowly the Sun dipped below the hill and the purple of the heather shone out almost as if luminous, like land-locked plankton, glowing with its own light in the late evening. The light programme was on the radio and the children sang along when they knew the songs. In the woods, the animals stirred and waited for absolute silence without knowing why. It was after the wars, a happy, undefined time though only we know now how happy or indeed how undefined it really was. So much had happened in the few years previously and now no-one knew quite what to do to fill their days. Naval and Merchant Seamen were home and the miltary depots were filled with rusting equipment waiting for the time when strange men in strange clothes would buy it up and lovingly restore it to order simply to give their boring lives some real excitement. I have a tank in the back garden though the Sergeant was mean to me and took the firing mechanism from the gun. The Machine guns too he took. It is nothing but a hunk of rusting metal now. The children love to play on it though it gets very hot inside, like a rocket going round the sun until the seams melt and all those thousands of components drift apart gently until there is a new cloud in orbit. We go to Southsea (Starnbergersee) once a year for the air and sea-food. Sit by the Orwell and eat Whelks and Eels. Where did you get that accent? Very cut-glass isn't it. Are you a spy Guy? Cambridge 1931 and idealism brings the whole world down around you. Want a revolution and you will get sent down, urbinated possibly. Keeper of the Queens pictures and how does that give you access to military secrets? Go to jail after you confess but remember that what you desired for us has happened. There is no need to betray your country for a handful of beans. Who is your controller? In the park, where they meet to hand over the metal for the civil war that never happens, their master sits; Ukranian he is and no committed Communist as you think. Could this be code? Take every third word and it might make more sense than this drivel. The children are asleep now and have no thoughts of secrecy or spying. Commander Walker strolls the deck of The Duke of York as the sun rises over Tokyo bay. My Father in Law was there on that ship as they bent over that table one by one and signed away the peace. The War is Over. The War is Over. War is Over. War is War.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
A Broken Hoboken Bell
Phrase of the day :-
Schlgachwücht Düchwannachwanna - You Galoot
Random thoughts for today's subjects have resulted in a decision to talk about :-
Thunderstorms.
This memory came to me while driving to work this morning, while thinking about Swallowdale which I am just about to finish reading. We used to live in that wonderful house in the middle of Castlemorton common and of course we used to traipse across it (though I am sure we would rather have stayed in a lot of the time). In the middle of one Summer Holiday, we went out on a very threatening day with low, dark clouds and a definite feel of thunder which dutifully arrived but not until announcing itself with lightning striking one of the telegraph poles within a hundred yards of where we were walking along the track which led from the house up to hills. We got very wet in the rain which followed but sopmehow a Summer Thunderstorm is not as annoying as a winter one and getting back home to the clear negatively Ioned air and the wonderful light is quite affecting.
Clocks and Clockwatching. Not a 16th Century underpiece or little bits of broken eggshell.
Phrase of the day :-
Schlgachwücht Düchwannachwanna - You Galoot
Random thoughts for today's subjects have resulted in a decision to talk about :-
Thunderstorms.
This memory came to me while driving to work this morning, while thinking about Swallowdale which I am just about to finish reading. We used to live in that wonderful house in the middle of Castlemorton common and of course we used to traipse across it (though I am sure we would rather have stayed in a lot of the time). In the middle of one Summer Holiday, we went out on a very threatening day with low, dark clouds and a definite feel of thunder which dutifully arrived but not until announcing itself with lightning striking one of the telegraph poles within a hundred yards of where we were walking along the track which led from the house up to hills. We got very wet in the rain which followed but sopmehow a Summer Thunderstorm is not as annoying as a winter one and getting back home to the clear negatively Ioned air and the wonderful light is quite affecting.
Clocks and Clockwatching. Not a 16th Century underpiece or little bits of broken eggshell.
A Broken Hoboken Bell
Phrase of the day :-
Schlgachwücht Düchwannawanna - You Galoot
Random thoughts for today's subjects have resulted in a decision to talk about :-
Thunderstorms.
This memory came to me while driving to work this morning, while thinking about Swallowdale which I am just about to finish reading. We used to live in that wonderful house in the middle of Castlemorton common and of course we used to traipse across it (though I am sure we would rather have stayed in a lot of the time). In the middle of one Summer Holiday, we went out on a very threatening day with low, dark clouds and a definite feel of thunder which dutifully arrived but not until announcing itself with lightning striking one of the telegraph poles within a hundred yards of where we were walking along the track which led from the house up to hills. We got very wet in the rain which followed but sopmehow a Summer Thunderstorm is not as annoying as a winter one and getting back home to the clear negatively Ioned air and the wonderful light is quite affecting.
Clocks and Clockwatching. Not a 16th Century underpiece or little bits of broken eggshell.
Phrase of the day :-
Schlgachwücht Düchwannawanna - You Galoot
Random thoughts for today's subjects have resulted in a decision to talk about :-
Thunderstorms.
This memory came to me while driving to work this morning, while thinking about Swallowdale which I am just about to finish reading. We used to live in that wonderful house in the middle of Castlemorton common and of course we used to traipse across it (though I am sure we would rather have stayed in a lot of the time). In the middle of one Summer Holiday, we went out on a very threatening day with low, dark clouds and a definite feel of thunder which dutifully arrived but not until announcing itself with lightning striking one of the telegraph poles within a hundred yards of where we were walking along the track which led from the house up to hills. We got very wet in the rain which followed but sopmehow a Summer Thunderstorm is not as annoying as a winter one and getting back home to the clear negatively Ioned air and the wonderful light is quite affecting.
Clocks and Clockwatching. Not a 16th Century underpiece or little bits of broken eggshell.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Not Deep Joy (or Unwinese)
There will one day be a computer to translate English into Unwinese but until then do NOT just add 'bold' onto the end of every third word.
There is definitely no Deep Joy around here at the moment. I hate Excel VBA and consider it an insult to be ordered to work on other people's Damn-awful code. Brain the size of a planet and all that or is that Brain the size of a plant? I am in one of those is this all worth it phases when everything about feels kind of papery and depressing like in this poem by Sylvia Plath though I am not sure her mind was in the same state as mine before you go rushing off to find my IP address and call the emergency services. The bit about the "Papery Feeling" is the main thing. Once when I was about six or seven, I got really ill and the whole world seemed so distant through all the congestion in my head. Walking was like floating and the house seemed full of cotton wool. Funniliy enough, after a while, it wasn't uncomfortable; just strange. Come to think of it, the whole world seems like that in a more abstract way. Is it just that as you become more aware of things in the world other than your own immediate surroundings, you notice the difference between your own sphere of experience and that which you see at a distance? It is more than just sadness or nervousness though I am both sad and nervous at the moment. I am getting to the point where I just want to curl up and hide but of course I can't. The screen is actually beginning to seem distant just because I talked about that particular feeling a few minutes ago.
Right! Something good instead of all this depression. I downloaded "The Railway Children" to the Palm. Of course I have seen the film and I think I saw the TV version (in which Jenny Agutter also starred when she was of an age more suited to playing Bobbie) but I have never read the book and I have to say it was brilliant with even a few touches of self-reference. Of course I raced though it and was at the end during lunch one day. As i knew the ending I was anticipating the arrival of the Children's father out of the steam at the railway station but "My Daddy, my Daddy" is a killer line and sure to have you bawling like the end of "Brief Encounter" (or the last few pages of this biography of Laurie Lee). I am afraid I am retreating into well-loved children's books at the moment. I am near the end of "Swallowdale" at the moment though infortunately not in this binding. One day I will get a full set of Arthur Ransome hardbacks with these covers. There is a wonderful bookshop in Southport which has a whole floor of kids books and they have a full set of the Swallows and Amazons stories in these wonderful covers. (I also got the last copy of "Britains Wonderful Airforce there" and I hold out much hope of them getting "A Child's History of the World". Of course all of this is a desire for a world which never existed.
Go here for more information.
Swallows and Amazons Forever.
There will one day be a computer to translate English into Unwinese but until then do NOT just add 'bold' onto the end of every third word.
There is definitely no Deep Joy around here at the moment. I hate Excel VBA and consider it an insult to be ordered to work on other people's Damn-awful code. Brain the size of a planet and all that or is that Brain the size of a plant? I am in one of those is this all worth it phases when everything about feels kind of papery and depressing like in this poem by Sylvia Plath though I am not sure her mind was in the same state as mine before you go rushing off to find my IP address and call the emergency services. The bit about the "Papery Feeling" is the main thing. Once when I was about six or seven, I got really ill and the whole world seemed so distant through all the congestion in my head. Walking was like floating and the house seemed full of cotton wool. Funniliy enough, after a while, it wasn't uncomfortable; just strange. Come to think of it, the whole world seems like that in a more abstract way. Is it just that as you become more aware of things in the world other than your own immediate surroundings, you notice the difference between your own sphere of experience and that which you see at a distance? It is more than just sadness or nervousness though I am both sad and nervous at the moment. I am getting to the point where I just want to curl up and hide but of course I can't. The screen is actually beginning to seem distant just because I talked about that particular feeling a few minutes ago.
Right! Something good instead of all this depression. I downloaded "The Railway Children" to the Palm. Of course I have seen the film and I think I saw the TV version (in which Jenny Agutter also starred when she was of an age more suited to playing Bobbie) but I have never read the book and I have to say it was brilliant with even a few touches of self-reference. Of course I raced though it and was at the end during lunch one day. As i knew the ending I was anticipating the arrival of the Children's father out of the steam at the railway station but "My Daddy, my Daddy" is a killer line and sure to have you bawling like the end of "Brief Encounter" (or the last few pages of this biography of Laurie Lee). I am afraid I am retreating into well-loved children's books at the moment. I am near the end of "Swallowdale" at the moment though infortunately not in this binding. One day I will get a full set of Arthur Ransome hardbacks with these covers. There is a wonderful bookshop in Southport which has a whole floor of kids books and they have a full set of the Swallows and Amazons stories in these wonderful covers. (I also got the last copy of "Britains Wonderful Airforce there" and I hold out much hope of them getting "A Child's History of the World". Of course all of this is a desire for a world which never existed.
Go here for more information.
Swallows and Amazons Forever.
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Before and After
I may have written about the book "Britain's Wonderful Airforce" at some point. My father was given a copy during the war which I think was signed by a fighter pilot. Being small boys, my brother and I got hold of the book and over the course of years we wrecked it, took pages out to trace and general abused it. Two Christmasses ago, I found a copy on the Internet and bought it to try and relieve myself of some of the guilt. My dad, who is not effusive about much was impressed enough for the gift to have a notable affect on his demeanour compared to normal socks/ties/birding books which he gets at Christmas. Anyway, I found another copy a few days ago and the pictures above are by way of expressing the distress that we caused to the original.
I may have written about the book "Britain's Wonderful Airforce" at some point. My father was given a copy during the war which I think was signed by a fighter pilot. Being small boys, my brother and I got hold of the book and over the course of years we wrecked it, took pages out to trace and general abused it. Two Christmasses ago, I found a copy on the Internet and bought it to try and relieve myself of some of the guilt. My dad, who is not effusive about much was impressed enough for the gift to have a notable affect on his demeanour compared to normal socks/ties/birding books which he gets at Christmas. Anyway, I found another copy a few days ago and the pictures above are by way of expressing the distress that we caused to the original.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
I am a butterfly
(From http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/butter.htm)
In the spectrum of things I am the G in ROYGBIV so don't expect any extremism but I could not let today go by without reference. Maybe yesterday's comment on arms manufacturers would have been better left until today. Soundtrack is Handel/Bach/Vivaldi etc for calming influences. I get as angry as anyone about all this rubbish but I don't go out and smash up shops because of it. The real solution is the revelation of this absurdity to the wider world. I have begun to realise that the people in control are amongst the most stupid of us and it is because of their pushiness and readiness to stand on other people's toes, that they get where there are. (Slight nod to Reggie Perrin there or is it a Nod AND a wink to El Lissitsky?). This really begins to annoy after a while. Yes - I am going to say that the world could be a much better place. I say it over and over again and of course nothing gets better does it but I am a butterfly. I will stamp my foot until the city rises into the sky and the dirt and filth is cleaned away. If anyone is listening all your superiors are stupid. Question them at every turn. Criticise Confucious and Mao. Criticise Akhenaton and kierkegaard. Scatter your superior knowledge around anyone who will listen, for you are the most intelligent person you know. Deconstruct every advert and see the insipid creep of the stupidity around you. The education system could so easily be a plot to keep people uneducated - or at the very least to only know things which keep them cowed, a sort of newlearning like newspeak but across all areas of knowledge. No-one is encouraged to think for themselves or to investigate outside their own little world. I would like to know everything and it just annoys me that I can't. I am a blank face in a blank world or that is how we all should be in this education system. Digitise the world and rule the world. Break everything down to uncomplicated things and re-define the world that way. It is not that easy. The world is complex and unknowable.
Stamp your feet and scream. Someone will listen before you die.
(From http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/butter.htm)
In the spectrum of things I am the G in ROYGBIV so don't expect any extremism but I could not let today go by without reference. Maybe yesterday's comment on arms manufacturers would have been better left until today. Soundtrack is Handel/Bach/Vivaldi etc for calming influences. I get as angry as anyone about all this rubbish but I don't go out and smash up shops because of it. The real solution is the revelation of this absurdity to the wider world. I have begun to realise that the people in control are amongst the most stupid of us and it is because of their pushiness and readiness to stand on other people's toes, that they get where there are. (Slight nod to Reggie Perrin there or is it a Nod AND a wink to El Lissitsky?). This really begins to annoy after a while. Yes - I am going to say that the world could be a much better place. I say it over and over again and of course nothing gets better does it but I am a butterfly. I will stamp my foot until the city rises into the sky and the dirt and filth is cleaned away. If anyone is listening all your superiors are stupid. Question them at every turn. Criticise Confucious and Mao. Criticise Akhenaton and kierkegaard. Scatter your superior knowledge around anyone who will listen, for you are the most intelligent person you know. Deconstruct every advert and see the insipid creep of the stupidity around you. The education system could so easily be a plot to keep people uneducated - or at the very least to only know things which keep them cowed, a sort of newlearning like newspeak but across all areas of knowledge. No-one is encouraged to think for themselves or to investigate outside their own little world. I would like to know everything and it just annoys me that I can't. I am a blank face in a blank world or that is how we all should be in this education system. Digitise the world and rule the world. Break everything down to uncomplicated things and re-define the world that way. It is not that easy. The world is complex and unknowable.
Stamp your feet and scream. Someone will listen before you die.