Let It Rain

The sky is grey and it's raining. I normally like rain but at the moment it's a threat because I have an intermittent roof leak  that I have been waiting three weeks for the roofer to sort out. He's an OK guy but  not as quick to deal with this as I'd like.

I'm reading Matt Haig's book and one of the things we should listen to to relax and unwind is rain and waves, things that you hear but are constant but don't grab your attention but give your mind a relaxing bed to sleep on, it's a good idea. Youtube has some sequence of up to twelve hours of natural sounds (waves, rain etc) that you can put on and fall asleep to, check here.

When  I was starting to write this Chris Hawkins played "Sometimes" by James which brings up rain and waves and water in its lyrics and I will share that with you this morning.

I often go to sleep listening to lots of music, Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" is wonderful because like natural sound there is nothing that grabs your attention. The night before last I listened to Alice Cooper's "Killer" and I got through most of that. Last night I put on three Weather Report albums  ("Heavy Weather", "I Sing The Body Electric" and "Mysterious Traveller")which is excellent jazz instrumental but fell asleep before the first piece had finished. I got up three times to go for a wee (I am old and diabetic and it was one of those nights but that is life) but each time chose a different Weather Report album and went straight back to sleep.

I think I will also include "Birdland" which was going to be my original piece for this, but we can have both.

10,250 Steps To Go ......

Sorry to keep going on about this step challenge but it does help you notice things. It seems my average walking speed it about 3.5 miles per hour. I believe that the average walking pace is about four miles per hour. Today I need to do 13,250 steps , a mile is about 2,750 steps for me so today is about five miles, hitting six miles on Monday. It's 8:30 and I have done 3,000 steps so that's a fifth of today's distance.

I was really tired for some reason last night so was in bed at ten then up at six this morning after a night of strange dreams that you really don't want to know about (boring not interesting). That means I have got a start today so hopefully I can keep on track. There's only two days after today.

The only slight problem today is the drizzly rain, though there's no wind so a light umbrella is ok.

The weekend started yesterday after an incredibly intense week with work and exercise and stuff , though this weekend there will be no let up. And after I finish on Monday that's followed by a 7:10 doctor's appointment on Tuesday as well as having some repair work doing to my garden fence.

I have finally given in and used a complete random play on my music collection on my phone. Luckily I have good taste so I've not been hit with any duds so far, although there's been the odd revelation. The song for today was just a reminder of the band everybody hates to love (I don't , I love Carter USM) and "Bloodsport For All" came on much to my delight, so that's the one I'll share with you.

Have a brilliant Saturday all ... 10,250 steps to go .....

Autumn Equinox and Here Comes The Rain

Thursday or Friday was the Autumn Equinox, this means the nights will be longer than the days. Yesterday looked as though it was going to rain, but didn't but it was very grey. Last night there was a huge downpour although it's fine now. The good thing about rain at night is that your don't have to water your garden (which I mowed yesterday).

The less good thing is that grey skies tend to make grey moods in me, sunshine does lift my spirits. I have LED lights in my house which apparently cat more natural light, but I prefer normal daylight.

Gorilla

The thing is that I am lucky in that I live in a wonderful place, with lots of wonderful friends , with lots of opportunity to do things should I so choose. Yesterday I spent most of the day in the house, reading , watching catch up TV, listening to music, playing guitar and messing about with Garageband and taking delivery of a vinyl version of Status Quo's Piledriver which I had purchased for it's Vertigo Swirl label (see here) I love the 3D optical illusion you get watching it , which is why I bought it. I wrote a blog post about it here



Today's music will be Garageland by The Clash for the simple reason that mentioning Garageband reminded me of it.
 
Anyway I think today is a good day for doing something to lift your spirits and make yourself feel happy. It may be having a bar of chocolate , a glass of wine or enjoying time with people you like and giving big hugs. Stay positive

Falling Down

Today , and the last few days have been sodden by rain and black clouds. I came home to my website not working and my favourite FTP program not working , but it's so old I can't trouble shoot it so have to get used to a new one , then I went out , luckily with an umbrella but got hit with another downpour.

Anyway I'm sorting things out slowly but finding it really hard to be positive about the whole thing. I think part of it is the dark clouds that don't exactly brighten your mood. But I always find positives in things even when all seems like it's disappearing over a cliff. If that's what happens then you deal with it . If stuff goes your probably not meant to have it. Certainly my old FTP program hits that category nad my new one is Windows 10 Compatible so it was probably going to have to be done.

DO IT!

Thing is it's half way through the week , for most people it's on or near payday , and tomorrow will be a bright and lovely day , with lots of great fun things happening . There is so much good to enjoy that most of the time you can ignore and forget about the bad. Which is my intention for this short post. And I will choose one of my mum's favourite Carpenter's songs "Happy" because will make me happy and it's a damned site more uplifting than that Pharrel song.

Goodnight and sleep well my lovely friends.

Don't Worry .. Be Happy

Just a short post today , but I'm quite surprised that I'm getting 50 views of the page and comments from unexpected sources , all positive. Hope you are all enjoying these.

There's only one song , obviously , the totally happy Bobby McFerrin number "Don't Worry, Be Happy". Well today we have rain , the weather is overcast , people are saying summer is over , but it can always be summer in your heart. The rain waters the gardens and plants which can feed is or give us something enjoyable to look at. That just reminds me of a wonderful TED talk about a guerrilla gardener in LA. I'm including it here. Watch it - it is inspirational and uplifting and may give you some ideas!!:


   

Anyway the weekend is here, and if you can bring your sunshine to others , spread the happiness, help others and feel good. Enjoy yourself and if you see me say hello !

Early Morning Rain

Well a trip to Penrith today , and hope the weather turns out better that it is looking now. Yesterday was like that a deluge during the night followed by early morning rain and then by home time blue skies. Check out my Instagram feed here . Hope the light will be good enough to take some photographs and I'm takeing both my cameras and my iPad just in case I get the opportunity for some good shots.

I will be traveling along the route of the River Tyne from Newcastle parallel to Hadrians Wall , which I helped light up in 2010. Check the link above and you will find some video . One thing about taking photographs and videos is that you never actually appear in them , although then again I could not afford to keep replacing the broken lenses, I think I've only seen a handful of acceptable photographs of me and the current profile pic is over five years old , so need to replace that soon .

Anyway , I know today will brighten up , there are lots of good things happening , and I will see some wonderful scenery, but will leave you with the excellent Gordon Lightfoot song eponymous with this post:

More Rain

Last night at 2am I was woken up by a huge downpour. The upside is that I don't have to water the garden , but as my contact lenses settled in my eyes , focusing slowly on a magazine ensuring the right lens in the right eye, I could still hear the rain coming down , admittedly not as bad during the night. I had been tempted to video it as deep rivulets streamed down the road outside, but decided not to (it was 2am).

Hopefully the trains will still be running on time and the tracks haven't been washed away. We shall see. Not sure if the song is appropriate as it's now after the deluge, but there's still a lot of rain in the sky , so who knows I may be boating home and it's and excuse to play the wonderful Jackson Browne. 

Oh I managed to export a picture from Artrage, amazing how an unconnected event can stimulate the mind into working out how to do things. It's definitely not intuitive , but that's down to Apple's super intuitive interface. Thing is generally iPads are mostly for looking not doing , but I can actually start working on pictures in Artrage. It's very primitive but this is the first one I've done , mainly to test that I can actually get stuff out  of it!

Tara

Where's Summer Gone?

On holiday last week in was mostly cloud and rains and people were telling me that we'd had our summer at the end of March. Well since I've come back barring overnight rain (which is what you want ) it's been very sunny.

It seems a lot of people actually want it to be grim , and bad things to happen. If you keep predicting something will happen (like it's going to rain or there'll be a power failure) then eventually you will be proved right. This doen't make you some kind of prophet , just a misery guts who can't enjoy the moment because there might be something bad round the corner.

The weather is great , and I am going to enjoy it , despite having to go to Sunderland tomorrow!! The Fantastic Baggies had the right idea:

You Can Always Talk About The Weather

Day three of trying to do a post a day for the month of May. Today would have been my mums 73rd birthday and she wasnt a fan of the rain! It's pouring down so today's trip to Cheltenham has benn postponed for the closer and more familiar Worcester.

I can't really complain as the holiday in Knighton was blessed with brilliant weather every day and part of the thing about holidaying in Britain is the unpredictability of the weather. It never fails to exasperate me when people expect the weather to behave predictably , the Met Office do their best , but there's always something else that can cause a knock on effect and knock all predictions out. So just take it and enjoy it for what it is!!