Atmospherics

This week I have taken some photographs of mainly St Jame's Park that have come out far better than I expected. Yes my Canon camera has a 25x optical zoom , which goes up to 100x when using the digital zoom, though that is almost impossible to use without a tripod. This is similar to the Sydney Opera House Effect of the Wallsend Cranes from Fenham Hall Drive which you can see here .

St Jame's Park - Newcastle United

Effectively if the atmospherics are right you can actually get a great picture. But you do need a clear ideally sunny or cloudless day and we haven't had too many of those this year, but it is really satisfying when you get images like the one on the right.

I often remark that if you want to take a picture involving atmospherics you have to get it there and then otherwise whatever you are trying to capture will disappear forever.

That has happened so many times to me and sometimes even the time it takes to get your phone out of your pocket means that you lose the moment.

For the first time in my life I have noticed the "Sphere" part of the word "Atmosphere" , basically "Atmos" is from the Greek for vapour and "Sphere" is the ball shape of our planet. "Atmos" is also a Dolby sound system which until today I was unaware of.

I've had at least two time where I have caught "flying saucers" , one being a cloud , the other the sun reflecting off shaped building rooves. , while they are on my Instagram Feed Instagram doesn't allow you to search your own feed for hashtags.

I will update the links if I find the pictures but will leave you with another excuse for this post , one of my favourite Tom Robinson songs "Atmospherics:Listen To The Radio" which I didn't realise was co written by Peter Gabriel..

The Serpentine Twists of An Unexpected Life

Very often things don't go as you would want them or even as you would expect. The sun rises and traverses the sky for eight, nine , ten hours and then it goes dark and the moon may rise and for the rest of th eearth day you can sleep as the dark hangs around slowly dispersing into the next day.

I've still not got my roof fixed but last night I decided to get a takeway from The Diner in Fenham. My normal modus operandi is to order via their phone app, then walk up and pick up (it's probably about 500 yards from my front dooor) and pay by card (I could pay by card in the app but you have to put in your card number and loads of other details each time) .... except ...... their card machine was not working. There is no cash machine close by... so .....

I walked back to Two Ball Lonnen Post Office to get some cash but the cash machine was out of service, 100 yards up the road is a Nisa and that had a working cash machine. I then decided to walk back to The Diner though the estate and notied a van for Responsible Roofing so I photographed the phone numbers and went to pay for the pizza and curry.

I mentioned that I may have found someone to fix my roof and the guy at The Diner immediately told me about a local brilliant guy who did all their work and directed me to where I had seen the van , it was the same guy we were talking about. I have an appointment today with him so things are looking better.

So this is just a post about how unexpected twists can take you to a postive conclusion.

Just as an aside I'm still enjoying "The Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and found out the latter has thirty five books published on similar themes  which feature knowledge , lies , great writing, a sense of humour and a razor sharp wit so I have a feeling I will be purchasing more of his work.

So a perfect song would be George Harrison's excellent "Any Road" which basically says "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There" .

Enjoy this sunny Thursday

Dawn Chorus

The last couple of days I have wolen to the Dawn Chorus, I think I noticed it because I did a surver that asked if I woke to birdsong , traffic noise or something else, and went on further to ask whether I ever heard birdsong in any other situation.

I used to live in Shieldfield and there was a yard behind hit that was lit 24/7 and the birds used to sing all night long so you went to sleep to birdsong and woke up to it.

Part of the reason I'm waking to it it that all the upstairs windows in the house are open so, the double glazing doesn't block out the sound, but it is a pleasant , natural noise to wake up to, although my alarm is also set to birdsong so there is quite a lot of it in mt life.

I have about five bird feeders in my garden, and they do seem a little spoilt, as they do devour the seed at a rapid rate, but as it's coming summer I will let them fend for themselves for longer periods as I am sure they can find many other food sources.

Today is the last day of April, I have hit my step target , and I will follow this post by a shower then my final #AprilSongs post. I will include fifty minutes of the Dawn Chorus from the Chilterns though obviously mine is in Fenham, though you can also hear what seems to be traffic in the background, but it's still relaxing.

Bitey - We Are Here To Drink Your Beer!!

That was a word Chris Hawkins used to described the cold this morning. The laminate kitchen floor was so cold that I had to put slippers on.  Outside the cars are frozen up and I am considering walking into work today. The sky is clear so it will be interesting to see the sunrise this morning. The roads are clear and on Saturday they were frosted up , and we did have snow flurries during  Sunday night.

Yesterday I was walking past the Westgate Ark Charity shop on Two Ball Lonnen I had noticed they now have cats in the window, and couldn't resist taking an instagram video that you can see here. A lot of people seem to like it and it is cute as hell.

I'm currently clearing recordings frome my TIVO box in anticipation of taking delivery of a V6 box, although as Yodel are delivering it I haven't a clue when I will get it, but rumours have it that it's an improvement on the TIVO box.

Anyway I'm sort of prepared for the bitey weather out there, though luckily I have the option of catching a bus if it really does get too cold.

I wimped out from seeing Alestorm last night but I'll include their video for "Drink" for you to enjoy as I get wrapped up and ready to continue my walking into work to deal with whatever awauts me when I get there. The Alestorm video will definitely wake you up.

"We Are Here To Drink Your Beer!!"

I know it's Monday, but be positive and have a great start to the week.

Books To Read

I've been finding it difficult to keep up with the walking, basically due to personal laziness. The thing is the last couple of days I've done more than my required steps to keep my rolling three month million steps going and keep thing am I obsessed or am I focussed and is there a difference. The thing is I know it benefits me physically so I know I have to keep doing it, and I will keep doing it as long as the weather is reasonable , and if it's not I will find another way of keeping up. I have Fenham Community Pool less than ten minutes walk away.

It's funny , while I am not an avaricious reader , I am reasonably well read. I am proud to have passed that on to both my daughters, Kirsty is always reading and recommends some good stuff and Juliet had read "Lord of The Rings" by the time she was 8. Her teacher at her new school didn't believe her so gave her a grilling, and she answered every question he asked. He was well impressed. It's a book I have a few copies of and have read about five times even though it consists of six different books, and often released as three separate books. I was introduced to Tolkein at secondary school and "The Hobbit" was one of the first books we had to read and most of the class loved it. A great introduction and great preparation for "Lord of The Rings".

My favourite book of all time is Clive Barker's "Imajica" , incidentally another book that is often split into three separate volumes. I love it, it has everything you could want from a twisted fantasist spanning five dimensions with magic , horror and lots more.

There are two books that everyone is assumed to have read and be familiar with that I have not touched. They are:

• "Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger and
• "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac

It's something I am going to do something about before the end of the year. I am currently reading "David Bowie: A Life" by Dylan Jones which is essentially a chonological compilation of interview snippets, but still interesting to get an idea of Bowie, although the number of people who come on the when appeared doing "Starman" on Top of The Pops their life changed and nothing would ever be the same again seems a bit far fetched to me. Yes Bowie was innovative but he was also a magpie and loved attention, and this got it in spades.

It can't happen again because at the time most of the population watched Top of The Pops religiously, now we have the internet, and so many ways of communication and finding an sharing information that were not available at the time.

Incidentally at my second ever gig somewhere in Ingol someone asked us to play it, and though I'd never played it before we managed to do it!! 

A lot of people these days can barely listen to two minutes of a song.

So it's obvious what I will leave you with isn't it.....

May Is Finished ......

...... June is here and we are one day away from the weekend and a week off work for me.

This is the hundredth post this year so averaging 20 a month or two every three days.

Tonight I went for a walk over the estate bordered by Two Ball Lonnen and Fenham Hall Drive and it was great weather and the were a lot of loud raucous families as I walked along Cypress Avenue.

The thing is while they were good natured and having fun , it made me feel all "Eden Lake" , no horror film has had such an effect on me.  It is Ballardian in it's turning of the normal into horrific and threatening, only Ballard could make a book that featured the bomb at Hiroshima feel mainstream.

Anyway we are into June and I think as I mentioned "Cypress Avenue"  (Cyprus Avenue  on the link)I will choose that song from Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" , once included in every rock top ten list, which was very unusual in that there are no electric instruments on the album. The people who rated "Astral Weeks" so highly rated "Moondance" even higher, quite rightly so, and if this has got you thinking just buy both these albums, they should be in everbody's collection.

Anyway it's time for bed, so enjoy some Van Morrison before you hit the sack.

Fit For Nothing

Not exactly. I have completed the step challenge and today I didn't have to do anything, apart  from an early doctor's appointment, coming home to see about repairs to my back fence and decking, then going to work and trying to sort various things, meeting a friend for lunch , losing my new headphones , finding my new headphones, and without any effort hitting ten thousand steps (about four and a half miles) that I hope to do every day.

I was expecting to do about 5K steps today , but sometimes it is easy to hit a few thousand steps, other times it seems ludicrously difficult.

I prefer walking through parks and fields to being on roads, but I do prefer a solid footpath, not mud that you sink into. One of the problem with the Town Moor is that cows graze there, and that  means that they can turn areas near gates and watering troughs into black mudbaths , with little chance of you negotiating them without some mishap.

Anyway the good thing about this walking malarkey is that it may keep me slightly fitter, and any form of exercise is better than nothing at all.

So it#s time for bed , and I only need to get up for work tomorrow. I still may walk in to work, but there is no pressure, apart from finding a more interesting way to walk into work.

Today while on the bus between Fenham and Byker I watched a talk about abandondoned Malls by Dan Bell turns out to be a good friend of my good friend Dave, the world is getting smaller every day. So I will include that below ,, and "Destination Eschaton" by The Shamen is always an inspirational way to close the day.

Goodnight my friends.

Getting Biblical With Pink Floyd - #ALifeInNumbers #23

This morning it's grey and cold and it's like there's almost a sea fret over Fenham (which I believe is the highest point in Newcastle so we're unlikely  to be troubled by floods.

As a teenager I got of of a bootleg cassette record of a Pink Floyd tour , one of the songs "You Gotta Be Crazy" finished up as "Dogs" on the vastly underrated "Animals" album , the second song was monstrous, even on a second or third generation cassette bootleg, and that was called "Raving and Drooling" (see below for a very early airing) and that became "Sheep" which is the song featured for number twenty three in the sequence. Those two songs are available on the Experience edition of "Wish You Were Here"

Sheep? 23?  What the hell is going on here.

You know I like to go off on tangents and 23 was a problem number like 31, but while reading my Bible (you know that's a joke unless you equate The Bible with Google or whatever book I'm reading) I remembered that "Sheep" contains a take on "Psalm 23".. as you can see Roger Waters amended it slightly, but it would fit in with the other mindless violence in the Bible:

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want 

He makes me down to lie 

Through pastures green He leadeth me the silent waters by. 

With bright knives He releaseth my soul. 

He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places. 

He converteth me to lamb cutlets, 

For lo, He hath great power, and great hunger.

 When cometh the day we lowly ones, 

Through quiet reflection, and great dedication

 Master the art of karate, 

Lo, we shall rise up, 

And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water."

So this was an excuse to include another of my favourite Pink Floyd songs and provide you with ten minutes of brilliant music accompanied by images from the excellent black comedy "Black Sheep".

Enjoy your Saturday even more my friends.

Picture This

Deanham Gardens

This morning, it was very foggy , but I thought in the dark and with the streetlights I may get an interesting picture. The main road had a few cars, but then I took a static picture down a side street. As I instagrammed it there seemed to be some really odd effects possibly caused by the mist , but I took the picture and this is how it turned out. Lots of people seem to really like it, which is fine by me, and makes me want to keep taking pictures. I know that there are billions of digital photographs out there, but it just gives me a warm feeling to post something that someone actually likes. It makes such things worthwhile although ironically most of the good feedback has come on Facebook!.

Thank you to all you who like the picture, and have a great night. There are lot's of pictrure related songs , but I'll go for Bread's If: