Saturday And Shattered

Another hundred miles of train journey today, although in the west the sunshine was great while in the east it's very misty and foggy still. The trains were comfortable, not to packed , but had no room for major luggage, no catering and no power sockets. I suppose that's the problem living up north. The journey I did there and back was Newcastle to Carlisle, seeing my dad and girlfriend , taking a trip to Gretna and having a light lunch just out of Carlisle.

I must admit, I hate city centre driving , lane switching all over the place, not my cup of tea, but overall an excellent day and saw some great scenery as well. Anyway today I will be haveing an early night probably, and have nothing major to report although I hope to to have something in the next couple of week.

Tomorrow is more weekend work, but I will make time to relax, and watch some fun TV like the excellent Blacklist.

I've included the JAMMS (KLF) - It's Grim Up North , we know it isn't but it's fine to let the southerners think that.

Have a lovely night everyone.

Friday Is Here

Yesterday's post was an interesting exercise and probably makes no sense to anybody, and I need to go back and read in myself. But given this was the first time I'd used voice recognition on the phone I thought it did pretty well. I will try it again, with a bit of preparation next time.

Anyway today is Friday , end of the week and I have a journey across the route of Hadrian's Wall tomorrow by train to Carlisle to see my Dad and his girlfriend which will be nice. Although the journey takes a while by train there are some great views and it's getting towards summer.

Anyway this is just a short post to let people know I've have not lost my marbles and I can actually write reasonably coherent sentences that people are able to read and make sense of.

For some reason the Squeeze song Electric Trains (which mention's The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia in the brilliant chorus) came into my head!

Everybody have a brilliant day and an even better weekend.

Virginal - A Speech To Text Exercise

Computer

This is the block the i was gonna do daily by just talking so i'm not gonna make any changes whatsoever this is just what it hears from what i say which is quite an impressive really low draw something oddities that you recycle come out of this recycle i never said that is what i did i did now anyway i just interested in what you catch we say and i am at watson this can actually capture and what it actually end up with and yes i am just like this is just stream of consciousness stuff now so i don't know where how are you put a. In when you just actually speaking. Are so actually put in a4 no a full stop. That's quite impressive anyway so there's not going uni links in there's not gonna be any um pictures not gonna be any video this is just um my first attempt at a complete leave um spoken blog post and this is on my samsung phone um ball my note any does lots of arms ball i'm not gonna make any corrections to this i'm not gonna make any changes and this is just as i actually spoke it today 11 you realise all day anyway this this is gonna be it right that's enough amber post office

The post above was done using text to speech on my phone, just to see what it would do. Sorry if I'm talking rubbish, but it was an experiment I've been thinking about for ages. Now I've done it. The title was meant to say something else!

THe title virginal should have been translated as "I Hear An Owl"!

Forgetfulness and Elton John

A friend told me that Elton John has a film showing at the moment, with only two showings only at selected cinemas. An interesting strategy, but I do think that the showing of concerts and other live (even though they may actually be recorded)  events at cinemas enables people who couldn't get to or afford the actual event to experience it. In Britain a lot of plays and operas are done with cinema simulcasts.

Incidentally Elton John appears in one of my favourite Orange adverts which I have to include below at the dawn of  3G.



Always makes me smile, then , as everyone knows I can be very forgetful. The benefit of this is that you can re read and enjoy books and rewatch films, and I was wondering what I should read next and then remembered I bought a pile of books while I was on my last holiday, so I think one of those will be accompanying me to work today.

It's frosty outside, but the sun is out and it looks another gorgeous day. So have a great day everybody.

More Blue Skies

It's the start of the week and there are clear blue skies and frost on the cars and rooves or is it roofs? Grammar is such a weird thing , especially English which is probably the most complex idiosyncratic language in the world. How do you pronounce the word "wind" . You need to see or hear it in context.

I was just on Amazon's Kindle store and noticed that Ebooks are subject to VAT. I'm not sure if paper books are, but I assume not if Ebooks carry that notice.

Still that's a minor thing , so I'll include The Strypes Taxman as a video (check out the drummer he looks about 8 in this clip.

Have a great day, it looks lovely out.

So Glad and English As Tuppence

That people are enjoying my blue sky pictures, it's always nice when you do things that people like. Today we've had more gorgeous blue skies. I've been out for a couple of walks and yesterday mowed the lawn for the first time this yeatr and the garden is looking fine after the winter.

I'd ordered some Aftercut from Amazon and Yodel delivered in a huge box on Saturday, so we shall see how that performs. I need to change the bird feeders as the plastic perspex ones don't seem to do for the birds here, so I'm going to pick up a couple of wire ones and hopefully the birds will enjoy that.

The Local Church

I'm listening to Radio 6 and an advertisement came on for a program called "English As Tuppence" about Vivian Stanshall singer with the Bonzo Dog Band, presented by their musical leader Neil Innes. You can listen here for the next week, though it is three hours long. Now this would be ideal to listen to on the way to work but as you can get a consistent signal between Newcastle and Darlington and they don't let you download radio broadcasts I'll just listen at home.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, I certainly will do

Kate Bush, Matt Haig, Jon Evans, Books and Why You Should Go OVO

I have a date for collecting my books for World Book Night on the 23rd of April. The book I have chosen is Matt Haig's The Humans so I need to get myself a copy fairly rapidly as April is nearly hear. However, many years ago Waterstones had a promotion called "Try Me For 99p" where you could pick up a number of loss leader books for 99p. One of these was The Blood Price by Jon Evans whicj, although not my usual sort of read, is a rivetting , exciting page turner which I would recommend to anyone, although I suppose I can draw certain vague parrallels with what happens in the book. Anyway that's the literary bit.

I've also nearly completed my power switch to Ovo Energy, after being with E-On for years (and having a fixed price deal). The thing that turned me on to them was that when the Big Six said they had to raise prices because wholesale prices were going up, MD Stephen Fitzpatrick implied they were being economical with the truth as he hadn't seen any price rises for two years. Articles here and here . The guy deserves respect and to be quite honest iof you're looking for a switch just go OVO. Their website is here

Oh and the wonderful Kate Bush has announced fifteen dates in London in August, her first since 1979, which will be amazing but the tickets probably sold out last year, full details here . Kate is one of my favourite artists who has manged to just do what she wants on her terms. Her albums are always a pleasure but The Hounds Of Love is still my favourite.

So that's more positives and hope I've given you some food for thought if you are in the UK and thinking about a power switch.