Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts

Sunday 10 March 2024

Pies

 



This is only the third post of 2024. Just back from holiday in Alnwick, my weight has gone up by 0.7Kg which is not too bad after a holiday.

This morning I nicked myself shaving and have gone through three plasters, there was a lot of llood.

I have finished "Pies and Prejudice" by Stuart Maconie and am now picking up "The Pie At Night" which covers a similar area slightly differently. I suppose the title caught my attention because of finally finishing "Supernatural".

I have also started "Carol" by Patricia Highsmith, a recommendation from my work LGBT+ bookclub, so I will have two on the go, and that is not a bad thing.

He is also an excellent writer and DJ and worth checking out in print or on the BBC. 


I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer and this is her Instagram

Friday 5 January 2024

Three Graces

 


This is the first post of 2024

"Pies and Prejudice" by Stuart Maconie is excellent moving slowly north and reaching Liverpool and the Three Graces (they wanted four but the final one was rejected, if you want to know why read the book)

So eighty pages in I will probably be finished in less than six months.

He is also an excellent writer and DJ and worth checking out in print or on the BBC. 


If you want to buy a book of my poetry there is one on the link below.


I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "Heart As Big As Liverpool" by Pete Wylie .

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Sunday 31 December 2023

Scally, Scally Pride Of Our Alley

 



This is the final blog post of 2023


"Pies and Prejudice" by Stuart Maconie is an excellent read and I have reached chapter three, whose title I have chosen for this post. The writing, for me, is excellent and I can't skim-read it for fear of missing something. I must admit that Douglas Adams' "Mostly Harmless" had me skim-reading.

Anyway, Stuart has taken us through Crewe, Warrington and Wigan and explained the difference between Rugby League and rugby Union.

So sixty pages in I will probably be finished in less than six months.

He is also an excellent writer and DJ and worth checking out in print or on the BBC. 


If you want to buy a book of my poetry there is one on the link below.


I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "Long Tall Scally" by Pete Wylie as I found the Gerry Monroe song from which the title was stolen (Sally not Scally) still makes my blood run cold.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Wednesday 27 December 2023

Two Pages At A Time

 


I am generally reading "Pies and Prejudice" by Stuart Maconie two pages at a time. This is because it contains so much interesting stuff like Port Vale is the only football league club not named after a place, it's named after Port Vale House where the club was instigated and Robbie Williams is a huge fan.

He is an excellent writer and DJ too and is worth checking out in print or on the BBC. I was worried that it was a book with no chapters but I have reached Chapter  Two.

Again I thought this would be a difficult read but it is not, at two pages at a time it will take me six months to finish, but we shall see.

If you want to buy a book of my poetry there is one on the link below.


I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "One Piece At A Time" by Johnny Cash cos it sounds like Two Pages At A Time

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Monday 25 December 2023

A Few More Pies With Prejudice

 


"Pies and Prejudice" by Stuart Maconie is about him returning north. He is an excellent writer and DJ too and is worth checking out in print or on the BBC. I was worried that it was a book with no chapters but I just reached Chapter 2.

Again I thought this would be a difficult read but it is not, but I can see it taking me all of January to finish as it has 352 pages.

If you want to buy a book of my poetry there is one on the link below.


I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "London" by Thea Gilmore and Sandy Denny

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

  1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
  2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
  3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
  4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
  5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Tuesday 11 May 2021

The Split

I have decided to stop posting my Vocal writing on SevendaysIn. I will continue posting on both platforms but this will be less focussed that the Vocal posts , and more just to record what is happening and to share music and links to books , and not to be too bothered about how many words I am posting.

This week is mainly not doing anything in Thirsk, and spending time away from work, although I have had a nice Whatsapp chat with my lovely boss.

The place I am staying is excellent and has a smart TV that is allowing me to watch whatever I want to, so I have re picked up "Better Call Saul". I find it amazing that now you can go on holiday and take the minimum of entertainment with you because ereaders mean you can take books on a device and it's the same with music and films and TV thanks to streaming services such as BBC iPlayer and All4, so I'm not short of anything to watch although I took an age to work out how to get rid of subtitles off iPlayer. You need to pause the program and then the subtitles icon appears on the pause screen.

So I'm not writing for Vocal so I can share the semi appropriate "Holiday Road" from "Nationl Lampoon's Vacation" by the genius Lindsey Buckingham. I call also reign back my posting on here although my Vocal posts may continue on an almost daily basis.

Thursday 28 January 2021

Colder

Although we have not had snow, temperature have been continually less than zero for more than a week now, meaning that snow has not melted and pavements are covered in frost.

The temperature has warmed a little and though there was a flurry of snow , it's now just continuous rain, and still cold.

The BBC has just stated it's going to be a dry day , but snow and rain in Scotland (for the Scotland being anywhere north of Watford)

Music wise I listened to a lot of Lou Reed the other day , a 5CD set featuring "New York" , "Songs For 'Drella" . "Magic and Loss" , "Set The Twilight Reeling" and "Ecstasy" , and every album is excellent , all far outstripping the David Bowie produced "Transformer" his breakthrough solo album and often listed has his peak.

These five albums prove that Lou Reed solo was far from a one trick pony. "Transformer" contains some stunning songs (my favourite is "Vicious") but we will go with the opener from "New York" "Romeo Had Juliette".

Have a great Thursday everyone.


Monday 25 May 2020

Growing Old is Mandatory but Growing Up is Optional.


yesterday I was feeling in a black and down mood that I couldn't shake off, not sure why, but it was like I couldn't snap out of it , but there is always part of my mind that says YOU CAN hit normal again. The weather ranged from sunny to overcast , and overcast doesn't hely.

I have a dripping tap that I can't fix and don't want to risk a flood despite the online help that shows how to "simply" fix , but I have contacted someone to actually do the job so awaiting a call back (it is a Bank Holiday).

I don't think my mood was helped by watching episodes of "White Lines" , "Vikings" and "Altered Carbon" , all excellent TV but not exactly taking you to happy place (and still 50 episodes of "Vikings" to go)  , but actually watching "Spy" with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Statham really lifted my spirits ant the end of the day , both of them providing comedy gold in this James Bond spoof  with lots of violence and swearing but absolutely great entertainment.

I also couldn't even be bothered to write, but enjoyed listening to a few records. Sat at the keyboard to learn Tom Waits' "In The Neighbourhood" and then at the guitar for a run through "Crossroads" and "Cocaine" all of which were adequate but not yer shareable.

I didn't even want to walk, but then got myself out and actually completed my 11K steps for the day and that again made me feel better.

For me , it's basically find something that makes you feel better and do that that. Hitting targets is usually good , but maybe avoid the darker things.

Having said that I am going to share Tom Waits' "I Don't Wanna Grow Up"  which featured in the "Cracked Jukebox" documentary broadcast on the BBC, and is really one of my aims of life. The song appears on the soundtrack of the film "Jojo Rabbit" as well.

Apparently the Ramones covered this , so I need to find that don't I? I did, and really OMG that is soooooo god The Ramones covering Tom Waits , almost as revelatory as Hendrix covering Dylan, that is brilliant and has made this weekend end on a definite upward trajectory.

Great quote from the Youtube feed:

"My dad always said growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional."

Today is Bank Holiday Monday and I intend to enjoy it very much.


Thursday 22 August 2019

Drinking Cherry Cola in Unmarked Cars


I don't know what put this into my head , possibly the fact that the BBC (and virtually all the media, see here) had reported that the outcome of the meeting between Angela Merkel and that dangerous clown Boris Johnson was that the UK had thirty days to sort out the brexit backstop when what she had said was a sarcastic comment that it might be thirty days or two years to sort out the backstop, but I cannot find any trace of that , all the media just mentions the thirty days, but really these days , generally we can't trust what's being said.

This made me think of when the BBC were so anti product placement that songs had their lyrics changed to ensure they weren't banned from the radio. One example was the Kinks "Lola" which was fine addressing gender fluidity in majorly homophobic times but Coca Cola was an absolute no no and had to be changed to Cherry Cola, the irony being that there is now Cherry flavoured Coca Cola (and lots of other atrocious flavours) , I wonder if "Lola" gave them the idea?

The when Mott The Hoople were going to call it a day David Bowie gave them "All The Young Dudes" which kicked off their singles sales bt was only approved when the line "And Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks & Sparks" became And Wendy's stealing clothes from unmarked cars"  although eventually the original words were restored.

Again the censors didn't like that but let though:

"But she never lost her head 
Even when she was giving head"

again addressing trans and sexuality in Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side"  a hit single from the Bowie produced album "Transformer".

So I'll leave you to savour "All The Young Dudes" but seriously check out the rest of the songs.

Wednesday 14 August 2019

2012


This is post 2012 ans 2012 was the year that the UK staged the Olympic Games with those amazing opening (mastered by Danny Boyle) and closing ceremonies celebrating the diversity and history of this country resulting is a racist tirade from the Daily Mail denigrating the Windrush citizens who came here and help rebuild this country after WWII , the article on their website was eventually pulled.

The celebrations included our NHS and industrial heritage and each of these ceremonies last a while but these days you can watch them on your big screens.

There is also a plethora of music featuring David Bowie, Queen , Muse and many, many more.

This post is one of those diary posts so that I can easily find this in the future. There was a great TV series on the BBC about the "preparations" which I can't find on iPlayer but I can find "W1A" that morphed out of it with much of the office comedy.

So enjoy your Wednesday and if you have eight hours spare get these videos on your big screen.

Monday 1 July 2019

Where Was I?


I really don't know how to handle weather, if it's too hot I want to get inside and go to sleep, also today is grey and overcast and I would have loved to just stay in bed but it's start of the month and quarter end at work so I really need to go to work.

It looks like I'm unbanned from Facebook though I have a feeling that may only last until I share something. I won't share anything from Instagram, Facebook itself, photo uploads maybe just the posts I do on my blogs, and maybe youtube shares for birthdays but that's going to be a limited set of videos.

I will install Messenger back on my phone so that people can get in touch with me, but if you look at these posts you can see the pathetic bans have served with. One of the best things was that they give the opportunity to dispute the ban but you cannot submit a dispute because you are banned, very Kafkaesque. YOu can see the posts relating to the bans here if you are interested. Have spoken with a couple of people who say they know people who continually get banned for posting explicit content but usually just get a weeks ban.

But I have enjoyed the BBC coverage of Glastonbury, allowing me to enjoy the music without the discomfort, I also watched the finale of Deadwood which was just like an extra TV episode to wrap it up with the same amazing dialogue and acting, also the finale of The Looming Tower which effectively posits that when people don't work together then bad things can happen, a definite must watch. I followed that with Wild Bill with Rob Lowe which contained at least one OMG moment so that could mean another TV series to follow.

So I found a great live take of the The Mekons "Where Were You?", one of my favourite singles ever, for the the people who noticed I was "inactive" on Facebook during this ban.


Friday 24 May 2019

I Played A DVD


I am definitely becoming lazier and lazier. Also while I have a large CD and digital music collection, there are big chunks of it I have never heard and probably never will. It's similar with DVD. This week I have actually taken the DVD from it's place on the shelf, switched on the DVD player and switched the channel on the TV and actually watched  the films. The two I watched were "The Golden Compass" which was excellent but has been on the shelf unplayed for ten years, and "Fight Club" (adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's novel) which has been there for even longer. Both these films are excellent, and I should have watched them years ago, but apathy and laziness has meant that despite knowing how good these are ("The Golden Compass" was the film of the first book in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series which is coming on TV from HBO and BBC).

I don't know if this is just a digital malaise, because my vinyl collection is always played when I purchase anything and I often share things on my Instagram Channel , but when you buy digitally it is so easy to put it on one side for later, and after a week or so it's forgotten about. If anthing gets put in a box or a drawer then thats usually it. I still listen to music digitally from my network and on my phone, but still eschew streaming services such as Spotify or Amazon as to use them without wifi means that your data gets consumed fairly quickly, so I load albums from my network to my Google Pixel which I may upgrade to a Pixel 3A in the future.

So one of the good things of being in the digital world is that I can share suitable music with you as I post entries on this blog, but I do think digital storage has turned us into magpies , buying things that we don't actually use or properlay appreciate. With that I will share "Digital" buy Joy Division with you with an excellent video taken from the equally excellent film "Control".

Friday 19 April 2019

This Land Is YOUR Land


Tonight I caught a bit of a program I was recording about the great Woody Guthrie , Three Chords and The Truth which will be available on BBC iPlayer for the next month. While it is a great song and applies to any country, but is geographically situated in the USA stating that the land belongs to the people , not to governments and not to corporations.

I didn't know it had been used at Barack Obama's Inauguration as while it was sung in schools as an almost national anthem, only the first three verses were sung because the next three were deemed offensive.

At the Inauguration all six verses were sung, and it was very uplifting and moving and I am glad to be able to share it with you on this post thanks to Youtube. The documentary is very revealing but I just had to share this with you. Here are those words:

This Land Is Your Land
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walkin', I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said : 'No trespassing'
But on the other side it didn't say nothin'
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple, I saw my people
By the relief office, I'd seen my people
As they stood hungry, I stood there askin'
If this land made for you and me ?
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walkin', I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said: 'No trespassing'
But on the other side it didn't say nothin'
That side was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
Songwriters: Woody Guthrie
This Land Is Your Land lyrics © S.I.A.E. Direzione Generale, Ludlow Music Inc., Woody Guthrie Publications Inc, LUDLOW MUSIC OBO WOODY GUTHRIE PUBLICATION INC, LUDLOW MUSIC INC OBO WOODY GUTHRIE PUBLICATIONS
Enjoy , digest and remember This Land is YOUR Land
I suggest you watch and enjoy

The documentary features Billy Bragg now a UK music elder statesman (though he's younger than me), but I was surprised that I couldn't track  down a Springsteen recording of the song on Amazon as I am sure he has recorded the song, but maybe not.

Wednesday 8 August 2018

I Wonder


After yesterday going on about Roman Numerals I thought what is the Roman Numeral for Zero? It turns out there isn't one, but medieval scholars used the word "nulla" to signify zero. In IT we used to be familiar with the concept of "null" (and those who know what they are talking about still are).

Zero is the numeric representation of no items, as in "I have zero pounds in my bank account", but it is a numeric value, it is one less than one or one more than minus one, though this summation could be done with any numbers. The formula:

x - x = 0

is always true, though mayb Stephen Hawking, Andrew Wiles or someone else could possibly dispute that successfully with me.

Null on the other hand is a complese absence, it cannot be used in computation whereas zero can, and will often cause systems to crash if returned as an answer. Null is the bane of any programmer's life, in that it is often valid but you can't actually do anything with it, and no doubt I will come across it in some calculation today.

I'm still feeling absolutely shattered and  despite have nine hours in bed last night after watching Black Sails and Nightcrawler, I didn't feel up to walking into work, so though this would be the first time in a long time that I walked into work having done less that a thousand steps.

Then I decided to get off the bus at the BBC and walk down Barrack Road from there thus giving me a couple of thousand steps.

I thought I'd include "Countdown" by Lindsey Buckingham from his album "Out of the Cradle" as I love the song and it's vaguely numerically themed.

The sun is shining so it should be a good day.


Friday 23 June 2017

Wooden Heresy


Reading Rob Young's "Electric Eden" I'm discovering a lot of interesting things.

Christian rituals apparently don't allow the use of wooden vessels as it is too close to the "pagan" rituals from which they were appropriated. Wood was seen as a vital living spiritual essential in pre Christian Britain. It provided fire , material for weapons, homes , utensils, and was alive and grew and was all around. Omnipresent ... remind you of anything?

Then it got on to human sacrifice, in early times the top dog / king / leader was sacrificed to the gods to ensure a good harvest. So being to leader of the tribe was not exactly a career move with a future. As time progressed slaves / captors were substituted (obviously someone didn't fancy being offed themselves) and when the Romans came human sacrifice was outlawed and animals replaced humans under the sacrificial knife.

Today this has become to Sunday Christian Ritual and Harvest Festival but it's roots are in the human sacrifice practiced by people who came up with the idea that killing the top dog might be beneficial to the community. While I'm not an advocate of extremes putting the Prime Minister out to pasture would be a great idea at the moment, but she's hardly an inspirational or even competent leader, the gods would not be happy with her.

And I suppose this is all leading up to talking about faith which can be very dangerous. Actions being based on arbitrary directions from an unproven source.

I have faith that the sun will rise, that a light will come on when I press a switch, that a letter will appear on my screen when I touch that letter on my keyboard, that my bus will turn up on time (sometimes), because I know there are mechanisms behind it that will cause it to happen. But as for God (well I follow him on Facebook and Instagram) but I have not seen any evidence of God's existence. God may exist but God's existence for me is decidedly unproven, but I am agnostic.

Anyway the song has to be George Michael's "Faith". It's Friday, the weekend is here, and Glastonbury is going to be all over the BBC this weekend and there are some good bands on, and you can watch them on your big telly.

Sunday 4 June 2017

Welcome To The Machine


I've just been struck how much machines are encroaching on our working lives. The Luddites smashed the machines during the industrial revolution because they feared that their jobs and therefore their livelihoods would be threatened. The French threw their clogs (sabots) into the machines to wreck them (hence the word "sabotage"). It turned out the Luddites were wrong , the industrial revolution produced great economies of scale for goods that could be mass produced, and generally standards of living improved.

Production lines had people doing repetitive tasks aided (and driven) by machines and wages enabled people to buy goods, creating demand because people had disposable income.Everyone was a winner.

However when I see staff being replaced by autotills at the supermarket (which often break down or don't work) but we as customers have to put up with it because there is no other option. If one doesn't work you move to the next one.

Bookmakers are turning into slot machine arcades, often opened in poorer areas (I have two with five minutes walk where I live), again replacing staff and making existing staff work more than twelve hour shifts often alone. Both these examples I do not see a benefit to the customer or staff only to the business owners.

I don't see myself as a Luddite, but I am worried that a lot more people will soon be out of work with no way of getting back in , and then I see this BBC article on future inequality, read it and frighten yourself because it could happen if we don't do something about the world.

In our own lives think about the phone numbers you can remember. I know my own. That's it. I used to know lots but my phone remembers for me. This is a good use of technology because it doesn't reduce what I can do , it enhances it and that's what the introduction of machines in the workplace should do for people. I also use my phone to measure my steps on my Million Step Challenge, though the app (Google Fit) needs resetting every couple of weeks as it keeps stopping or slowing down .

So I could have gone with The Beastie Boys "Sabotage", will will go for the more obvious "Welcome to The Machine" by Pink Floyd. And remember that alarm clock that wakes you up for work tomorrow, that's another piece of good technology, though I think most of us hate it.

Sleep well my friends

Tuesday 28 March 2017

Ooops


After doing the 15000 Step Challenge that finished on 20th of March I said that I wanted to maintain ten thousand steps a day. On Sunday I decided to visit some Roman Ruins in Benwell a little video here and a photo montage here) .

Despite living here for fifteen years, I had never been despite knowing about it and being so close to the line of Hadrian's Wall (which I helped light up in 2010 - so I've included the video of that and there's a lot of articles on it such as this on the BBC).

Anyway I've managed to go off on a complete tangent.

After the Roman Ruins, I needed to do more steps, but suddenly felt like I was walking through treacle, walking became very difficult, and I was on Nunsmoor and nowhere near a bench or housing. I had completed my steps but was feeling close to collapse, feeling like I'd been kicked and battered, aching limbs like when you get 'flu', and feeling queasy and worried I was going to throw up. I was not feeling good.

I eventually got to a bus stop where Fiona met me, where eventually a bus turned up and then I got home and went straight to bed. I slept and drank a litre of fizzy orange and then I was OK to watch some TV and have some soup.

The following I thought I maybe have to give it a rest, but it was foggy and I thought I may get some good pictures, so thought I would walk over Nunsmoor and took this video here. That meant that I still hit 11K steps yesterday so my idea of giving myself a rest didn't happen. The thing is, I do need to exercise and lose about 30Kg (I weigh 106Kg) , and am thinking maybe on Sunday I became dehydrated.

So today I will walk in again, well part of the way, and hopefully hit my 10K steps which is about 5 miles.

The music in the video is "Shining Light" by Ash , which is my daughter Juliet's favourite band.

Have a great Tuesday everyone

Wednesday 6 July 2016

Just A Few Words

Play The Game

It's nice to actually get up on time and have time to make a cup of tea without having to rush out the door to get to work. This is what I intended to do yesterday , but the alarm was running an hour late. I'm listening to Radio 6 and about to run out the door after finishing my tea.

Tonight Wales play Portugal , a big match for both teams , but Wales do have the most expensive player in the world in Gareth Bale , and he can deliver , ad he has a team round him that can do it's job so don't be surprised to see Wales in the Final though all the money will go on Portugal.

Anyway enjoy your Wednesday , it's half way through the week and the sun is shining and "Everything Counts" by Depeche Mode is on the radio ,  but I will choose The Referees Alphabet by Half Man Half Biscuit as today's music.

"Wouldn't it be Fun
If They Gave The Ref A Gun"