Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts

Sunday 6 March 2022

The Creation is Finished, Women's History Month and The Situation in The Ukraine


I only did one post on here in February and we are six days into March already.  I have finished "The Day of Creation" by JG Ballard and it was more difficult than I expected, being a revisit, but still drew me in completely. Not everyone's cup of petrol but an absorbing read for me.

So I need something a little easier for my next read, so I am going to go back to "Riverworld" by Philip Jose Farmer starting with "To Your Scattered Bodies go and you can read more about it by me here.

March is Women's History Month and I think I shall have to write something about some of the incredible women, marginalise by the patriarchy, without whom the world would not be as incredible as it is.

On another note I wonder if Vladimir Putin thought that Ukraine was going to be as simple a pushover as the USA and UK. He installed is puppets in the USA and UK but the USA saw sense and much to the annoyance of the idiot part of their electorate, got rid of Putin's Puppet, while the UK still has his puppet at the help, and if Putin is kicked out Johnson will welcome him with a red carpet and a Lordship.


Today's Music Choice - Batyar (Bigmouth Strikes Again) by The Ukrainians

I just remembered that The Wedding Present morphed into The Ukrainians to cover Smiths songs in a Ukrainian folk style , so "Batyar (Bigmouth Strikes Again)" is a perfect musical response to Putin

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. The Never Ending Story - My Directory
  2. The Never Ending Music - My Music Directory
  3. The Never Ending Poetry - My Poetry Directory
  4. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
  5. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
  6. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
  7. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer

Wednesday 5 December 2018

Settle, Skipton, Sound Bar and Russia


I have to say Settle is a lovely place to say, although not a place to drive round. The people are friendly and everything is in walking distance. On Monday I met up with a hero of mine Mike Harding in The Golden Lion although missed him in The Royal Oak the same night, and absolutely lovely, funny and great man.

The cottage we're in is at the bottom of Castlebergh Crag and I went up there Monday afternoon and took this video. There's a few photographs and my fear of heights was tested. The Crag is used for rock climbing but that's not anything I will try out of choice.

Russia?
Incidentally the blog has had over a thousand hits from Russia for some reason, I don't see my posts as particularly Russo-centric, but I'm not complaining to much.

Yesterday I took a trip to Skipton to revisit The Huntress of Skipton Castle woods and see what the town had to offer as I'd only been briefly once before.

The train journey was incredibly cheap, half what The Trainline tried to charge me, which would have been cheap anyway.

My big discovery of the day was The Skipton Sound Bar and vinyl and music shop and bar and there's a short video I took here. The people are really friendly and I picked up a newspaper copy of "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull, a Kool and the Gang 12"single and a Best of Duke Ellington 45rpm single. I'd recommend the place to anyone.

It is worth visiting for their posters and photographs, but they are very welcoming and were really helpful when I couldn't open my bottle of prosecco.

I also had coffee and cake at The Kibble Bakery a dog cafe which was again most excellent and much preferable to the adjacent Cafe Nero.


So I'll leave you with the lead track from the Best of Duke Ellington single which is actually rather good.


Wednesday 1 August 2018

Vietnam


Vietnam?
Every so often I get a reasonable amount of views from some places. Recently it's been Russia, Germany, Peru and Brazil an dthe latest one is Vietnam. I haven't a clue why this happens in this way, it may be that the save up the figures for a month or a quarter and send the to google causing a spike in my viewing figures.

I don't think I've been hit by any spy bots, but only Russia may have been in that area,. Maybe if I mention ISIS, Trump's assassination, Boris Johnson drowning Theresa May there may be a little interest but I doubt it.

But it is weird how these countries apart from Russia don't really seem to repeat their visits.

The USA has little interest in this blog although I do hav mant American friends who may or may not read this.



This is just a very short post (though a lot longer that some of my early posts) about this situation.

I think an appropriate sng for this will be New Order's take on Jimmy Cliff's "Vietnam" which appeared on the "Best of War Child"digital only album release.

Have a rather excellent Wednesday everybody.

Monday 15 May 2017

Time Sharing


When I started first in programming at Littlewoods we were given access that used a "Time Sharing System" which we were told would make it seem as though we were the only person using the system. It was a lie of course but we dealt with it.

In life we often have to work out how to share time between work , chores , stuff that needs doing , time to be alone, do what you want and rest , and spending time in a social environment with friends, family and loved ones. I try to load mine in favour of the last two, but each of these groups can also be subdivided into sub groups.

Today I have to go to work so that's eight hours out of my day , after six hours sleep, ninety minutes of getting up and showered and writing this, then an hour to walk in to work , to try and hit my 11K for today, but I need to get the bus home as I have a delivery from Iceland coming. How mundane is this post? Still these things may be the highlights of some people's lives.

Ideally aim to do what you want and enjoy , and be happy. Life is difficult and confusing at times, but if you do things you want, then life improves wonderfully.

So before I leave , here's #ATuneaDayinMay , what more appropriate that The Buzzcocks "Boredom" from the "Spiral Scratch" EP. This allows me to have a brief rant on the genre of "indie" music. Many "indie" bands are on major labels, so how can they be "indie". It's 1984 doublespeak (which the governments in the UK, USA and Russia seem to use as a matter of course where the words used mean the opposite of their real meaning) . "Spiral Scratch" however was real "indie" , the Buzzcocks first release which they organised end to end. Ironically in this digital age we all have the technology available to record and release stuff from our own bedroom or office.... and that is still on my "To Do" List.

I decided to include the whole of the EP for you so you have eleven minutes of real "indie" music.

Anyway, have a great Monday everybody.

Tuesday 21 February 2017

Russia?


Russia on Top
The last few days visits to this blog have increased due to visits from Russia. I don't know if these are robots looking for evidence of anti Putin / Trump / May or other appeasers, but every so often visits spike due to attention from Russia.

The other one that spikes now and then is Australia, but as you can see there were no antipodean visits yesterday, almost totally European bar Russia, Ukraine,Canada and the USA.

The blog is in English as you can see so it's unlikely to attract people from countries where English is not spoken or written.







Anyway it's just something I noticed this morning so I think we should have something that at least has a Russian feel, so we'll go for The Leningrad Cowboys backed by The Red Army Choir in Helsinki singing ZZ Top's "Gimme All Your Lovin'".

Have an excellent day my friends.

Wednesday 21 December 2016

Popular In Russia ... and a smidgen of Finland's Finest



Who Loves Me?


Just looked at my view stats for this week and I have been hit twice as much by Russia than the UK., which is nearly three times the hit rate of the USA. The page is in English so it's not that it's a very Russian oriented page or blog. In fact it's not really anywhere leaning, just that it's in English and I write about anything that takes my fancy and feel that may interest others.

My posts tend to get about fifty views on first post but there are pages with almost two thousand views, though they may have been there for many years.

I've just realised that with the graphic this is in fact a very columnar post. Obviously I would love to be popular but that will never happen, though I know I have my hard core of followers who I value very highly.







I think I was going to write something about Christmas and an observation about Darth Vader and a dustbin but I will save that for a later post. It's always good to have a subject lined up that you can drop into your writing.

So the obvious musical piece is by the wonderful Finnish beat combo , The Leningrad Cowboys , backed by the Red Army Choir singing ZZ Top's "Gimme All Your Lovin'" , seriously what's not to like. My friend Krista is Finnish , she is a wonderful designer and has a place KOTA in the Grainger Market. Go and see her and her beautiful place.


Enjoy your Wednesday Evening my friends.

Sunday 12 June 2016

Stay Happy



Didn't get out to AKQ Stottin' last night but I know Trillians would have been packed and it meant that I could watch some good films and get a reasonably early night. Today looks incredibly dreary , grey , wet and not exactly the ideal summers day.

I also didn't realise that England and Wales were in the same UEFA 2016 group , and Wales are top and Russia got a last minute equaliser although the bits of the match I saw looked fairly good, but whether Russia are meant to be the group fall guys I don't know ,  because Wales are looking good.

Anyway today is going to be a relaxing day , I will be practicing songs , listening to music , perusing the papers , getting irked by the Red Tops whicjh will tells us how immigrants will cost Europe £20 Billion (while the UK allows Corporate Tax Evasion / Avoidance of £200 Billion) ,  but knowing that they are rags written by idiots for morons.

Stay Happy
Anyway today is going to be another positive day, enjoying the abundant greenery , maybe taking awalk with a hat or an umbrella , because walking is good for you and does make you feel better and does not cost you anything but time and energy and you can find lots of unexpected things if you go in a random direction. And that thought has given me a song for this piece , George Harrison's "Any Road".

There are so many reasons to be happy , find them and have a great Sunday my wonderful friends.

Wednesday 30 December 2015

Is Viv Albertine Big In Russia amd Australia?


The reason I ask is that my post featuring Viv Albertine here is now my third most read post of the life of this blog. The blog has been going eight years and most posts get about 50 views. In less than a month the Viv Albertine has hit 400 , not a lot in terms of world readership , but a lot for one of my post.

Last Months Readers
In the last two weeks views from Russia and Australia have overtaken the USA as my biggest source of readers (and maybe robots) . The USA has not dropped , but Russia and Australia have increased dramatically and really I can't think of a reason. Australia possibly because it's in the correct language.

Australia is the biggest traffic source from the last month , but Russia has overtaken it in the last week.

And this has coincided with the Viv Albertine piece getting so much attention. There haven't been any comment , people don't comment on my posts for some reason , also the blog has only a couple of followers , so given that visitors must be mostly people who accidentally come across it , ithe figures look quite good.

Seriously this must be one of the most boring , uninteresting pieces I have ever written, I had intended to include some stuff about what has happened to me this year but that can wait for another time.

This year has resulted in slightly less posts than last year but it's still running at a post every two days. So I think I'll put in Al Stewart's "Roads To Moscow" to provide a little interest to this post . The album Past Present and Future is well worth aquiring.

Also I have finished the Viv Albertine book and it is absolutely brilliant , I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone , inspiring , well written , uncompromising , easy to read and thought provoking. Buy it here.