Busy Doing Nothing ....

Today has been quiet, though took advantage of a free Beefeater meal with work colleagues. Finally reading a "normal" novel , John Niven's "Straight White Male" and been listening to good music on the journey to and from work. I'm aware that I need to do another music video of me playing and continuing to get the use of my left hand completely back ,and need to get some more of the book down. But that will all come in it's own good time.

This is going to be a short post because I am quite tired, although I'm sure I won't be into bed straight away.

Anyway hope you have had a great day, I'm looking forward to the approaching weekend and looking to have lots of fun and enjoy myself.

A Birthday Is Just An Excuse To Have A Good Time

Well today is my birthday and the biggest surprise was more than a third of my Facebook friends wishing me a happy birthday in one way or another either directly on the site (75 and counting) via email (5) and card (10) , and I am really touched. It really has been a pleasant shock. On the one hand it's easy to post a happy birthday greeting , but it's much easier not to,

So it's a thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I got some nice presents , had a nice tea and watched a wonderful program about the brilliant Nic Jones and his amazing comeback from tragedy.

This is the first post of this month , but I'm just in a very happy mood before I go to be bed. I was considering posting a Rebecca Cother picture, but she may think I'm becoming obsessed with her. Her pictures have really made an impression on me and follow the link and you will see what I mean.

Anyway, again thank you to everyone and sleep soundly. A little bit of Nic for you you all

Good Things Happen

She Loves Me .. A New Rebecca Cother Picture - click for more

Well after the weekend, in some ways today has been apparently full of let downs. But actually those let downs then give way to more good things. I see a lot of sloganeering on Facebook saying that when something that isn't apparently to your advantage happens it's just God (or your favourite supreme entity) making way for the really good stuff to happen.

First of all I had no data signal between Newcastle and Darlington, but that gave me the opportunity to listen to music and read.

Secondly my peace and my table was disturbed by three people alighting at Durham, but we got on like a house on fire and the last part of the journey flew by.

Thirdly power failure closed down the Stand so I missed the Lit & Phil Benefit and my favourite comedian John Scott. That meant a nice meal at Dabbawal with Kirsty and Fiona, whis Juliet could have made it but she has course work to see to.

So today turned out rather well and I thought of this rather wonderful song by Lissie:

I'm In Love With Rebecca Cother......

Well her wonderful paintings and images......

There's a lot of things that I didn't intend to do this wonderful day. Yesterday I visited the Divine Bodies exhibition at The Laing , took some photos which ended up on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Todays CDs

I went to Reflex and ending up buying 9 CDs of 50s and 60s soul and rock. I have a lot of the tracks but the collections looked so good I just had to have them, listening to one of them now. And rather good it is too.

The weather is still fantastic, and I've just remembered I need to design a card for my friends 50th birthday fairly promptly as it's his birthday on Wednesday.

Alan is scared of flying

Anyway  back to the lady in the title of the post. She's an artist as well and started following me on Twitter . I had a quick look at her website on my phone and was instantly enchanted by her wonderful images and paintings. Really they are beautiful and you can just fall in love with them , I challenge you not to. Some are funny, all are inventive and just beautifully presented.

Owl-Vis

I've took this couple of examples from her website which you can visit here, or her facebook page which is here. I just love all these paintings and in our twitter exchanges turned her on to the brilliant Kelly Richardson, who is responsible for som amazing installation art pieces.

I saw her amazing Mariner 9 at Whitley Bay's Spanish City. Anyway I promised Rebecca she'd be the subject of my next post and this is it. Go visit her site , and be as enchanted as I was with her paintings. Have a brilliant day all!!

Another Glorious Day

As I went on about in my last post, summer is still here . We've had a bit of rain but it's still gloriously sunny in Newcastle. I also managed to mow the lawn again and hoover up the leaves, so that was good.

Cat in a Window

A slightly annoying thing is that when posting to blog posts to Facebook (should it have a capital?) , it's stopped including Youtube entries as a preview picture so you are stuck with an annoying selfie of me. I've included a photo of our garden and our neighbour's cat in their bedroom window which tickled me.

My Sunny Back Garden

So I remembered a song called "I'll Follow The Sun", which I'd forgotten was by The Beatles from their Beatles For Sale album, but it's an appropriate song for another gorgeous day.

Everyone enjoy yourselves and finish the weekend with a smile on your faces, because that's what I will do , to be ready for the week ahead.

Summer Means Fun

Kanye West is God?

Well we are getting so much sun that even the doom mongers are admitting we've actually had a good summer, and it's still here. I'm not sure what to do today , probably visit the Lit & Phil to have a cup of tea or coffee and take in the beauty of the building , maybe visit the Laing to see their Divine Bodies exhibition , but just wish I could take photographs, but will make do with just seeing the exhibition.

There are always some amazing thing going on in Newcastle




 Then again I might take the ten minute train journey to Durham and have a look round the cathedral and castle.

One slight down side to the fantastic weather we are having is that I have another lawn mow that needs doing but that is a very small price to pay for all the great weather we are experiencing.

But it is all irrelevant , another brilliant weekend lies ahead, and if you are in Newcastle you can have just as good a time. Wherevere you are have the most brilliant weekend.

(not so) SAD

See Serpent #tabletart

No I have nothing to be sad about, but it is amazing how the weather and lack of light and sun SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) can bring on negative thoughts and just bring you down. There are easy ways to combat this, find something, however smal, to just spark a smile. So I got up and did a bit of #tabletart which I published on instagram and hopefully others will like it. It's not going to change the worlsd but already i feel much better for the day ahead.





I'm looking forward to the weekend and sure that lot's of fantastic things will happen. I have to get off to work, so this post will be short, but I will include today's #tabletart picture and I'm sure you can find my others on Facebook and Instagram , and there's only one song to describe my mood at the moment, one of my favourite Rolling Stones' numbers , "Happy"!