Heat and Silence

This is going to be a very short post, but it's August now and trying to think of something to say. The weather is still hot , and there was a bit of rain today. That's about it. Somewhere down this blog there is an exercise that I carried out in Craster to write two thousand words with no planning whatsoever and it turned into an essay on the difficulties of trying to write two thousand words.

Anyway was talking with someone yesterday about how you can integrate silence into talking to enable things to sink in to a potential audience. almost all of us have filler words because we are uncomfortable with silence. Once these are pointed out you can eradicate them , because we tend to take our own behavior as the norm. So when we repetitively reuse a phrase it dilutes the meaning.

So that's

Fighting With My Left Hand III

Cm Successfully Held down for first time in about four months

I've just managed to play a Cm chord . It used to be easy but using my little finger on my left hand has been awkward since the incident. This is a huge step forward . I'm managing with the other three fingers , but losing that later use of all the fingers of your hand makes certain tasks a little difficult.

I'm waiting for an appointment with a neurologist , and two doctors have remarked that there is obvious muscle wastage , usually attributed to results of a trapped nerve , which is better that the initial potential diagnosis. Obviously there's still a long way to go and I keep trying to do other things with my left hand and think "Did I ever do that with my left hand?".

Anyway despite the downpour last night wondering whether to attempt to mow the lawn and make some more newspaper logs.

4.45 ... The Deluge Is Here

An Exception at The Tynemouth Volkswagen Rally

Just been woken up by a noise that was actually the promised rain coming down. Plans for mowing the lawn , making newspaper logs and maybe even going out for the papers and into town could be out the window. Well the first two are anyway. After a great day yesterday meeting friends and seeing lots of Volkswagens in Tynemouth, and the Red Arrows doing their stuff at the Sunderland Airshow south of the Tyne , finished by a barbeque and taxi journey home , I'm sat here in the middle of the deciding what I'm going to do today.

Coincidentally yesterday I watched this excellent TED talk about the car as art , though I'm certainly not a petrol head myself.:


Well actually things and ideas are formulating in my mind now , which include tracking down a Southern Comfort advert favoured by my friends Dawn and Colin which should appear here. Actually it's the first one on this list featuring Odetta singing the elusive Hit Or Miss

It's slowly coming light and dawn is breaking , wondering whether to go to bed or to stay up messing around , I'm sure I can find things to do but then I may be tired later , but my mind is racing with a million things.

Is this the end of last week and the start of the sew work . One thing is certain it's been a extraordinary week in many ways including lots of sunshine and a little rain. You need the rain though ore else everything dies off , but I do enjoy the sunshine .

Coincidentally Opencast

New OpenCast  Office

Often things happen and because of some other event we notice stuff that we maybe wouldnt have noticed . This week a number of things happened that are sort of tenuously connected and are sticking in my mind because  of the way things happened. It started with an instagram post by a great friend of mine CEO of Opencast Software referring to the Happy Mondays song . This came about when they were asked to do a cover for Rubáiyát: Elektra's 40th Anniversary album. They loved John Kongos' He's Gonna Step On You Again , and covered that , Shaun Ryder lifting the "Twistin' My Melon Man" from a quote from a Paul Newman film.

 Anyway apparently (and this has been verified by the Guinness Book of Records) , He's Gonna Step On You Again by John Kongos is the first commercial single to use a sample (the Africa Drum Loop). So here is its to listen to:

Tokolshe Stalking a Mad Dog

The band liked their cover , re-titled "Step On" so much they released it as a single and covered another John Kongos song Tokoloshe Man. Now listening to Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie they were talking to a guy about the top record covers , and that included the Happy Mondays "Step On" which most people don't realise is actually a cover. Aparently when Kongos was stuck for inspiration he would ring his mum and one of her suggestion was Tokoloshe Man, and the Tokoloshe appeared as a voodoo dwarf in the last series of Mad Dogs.

So if you want a copy of the Happy Mondays Tokoloshe Man you will have to hunt down the album or get Loaded.

There were many other coincidences that happened this week but that's all they were  , but it is sometimes amazing how many things coincide when you dont expect them to 

Heatwave

Despite the rain during the night the temperature tells me it's still hot. T-Shirt for work today I think , though not a Star Spangled Chestwigs or Half Man Half Biscuit one, which will confuse or offend the more genteel among the people I will run into today. Hopefully trains will be stopping at Darlington.

I need to get off extra early to get my train tickets for the next three work days, which is unfortunately always a trial. The number of times you pass a piece of paper with your exact requirements and they still come back with an super saver instead of a normal ticket. Though in my time in my current job cost of travel has increased by 50% and wages not. We're continually told to practice austerity while governments , banks and corporation are profligate in what they take out of the economy.

Anyway it's nearly 6:30 am so time to publish , pack up and get out.

Sun and Soak, The Beatles and John Niven

Just a short post. After all the fantastic weather we have had for the music Festivals such as Mouth Of Tyne and Summertyne , today we had a downpour of Biblical proportions in Darlington . It was very very wet. We are now back to hot and sweaty and obviously very summery, not great weather for work.

There's not much else to report without actually going into a diatribe about petty annoyances, although I always like to maintain positivity and starting from last Saturday it's actually been a great week for me, I just wish it could be as good for everyone else.

I've managed to watch a lot of films , about to finish a book that's going straight to the charity shop although it's full of surprisingly pertinent coincidences involving names and ice cubes, but it's continual name checking of eighties bands is very trying , but I won't let it beat me.

Oh yes I'm looking forward to August 15th when John Niven's new book Single White Male is released. His whole canon is to be recommended though I didn't really like Music From Big Pink , boringly serious for me. He's worth following on Twitter (@NivenJ1) but be warned not for the easily or even difficultly offended.

Anyway I think I will post a music video as well , which I've done before , one of my favourite two Beatles' songs "Rain" . Apparently the bass on the original single was so heavy it had to be damped down when remastered for CD. I don't remember having taht problem with my seven incher , but that's another story .........

Don't Keep Calm - Go Wild!

A short ranty post this . I sick of all these idiotitic KEEP CALM posters that say KEEP CALM KILL A ZOMBIE or KEEP CALM PAY YOUR TAXES or KEEP CALM DRIVE A SPORTS CAR. All of those scenarios cause people to go wild and annoy me intensely. The original KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON motif was sensible and fine , but it doesn't mean you can add anything to KEEP CALM , it should make sense.

Incidentally the first time I saw this was at the magnificent Barter Books in the old Alnwick Railway Station.





So
I've added my poster. Feel free to copy and distribute