No Black Friday Here

Well it's Friday and I'm waiting for my hire car to be delivered so I can drive down to Ampleforth to the holiday cottage for a week of quite after two hellishly intensive weeks. In that time I managed to see an amazing gig and a great talk about robots and what fun they can be and how great libraries are. And that reminds me that last week the BBC were celebrating libraries and Scroobius Pip wrote a poem for them to celebrate all that was good about libraries.

I'm still raving about Jordan Reyne and am going to have to order the rest of her albums, as she has been my going to sleep music all this week. I really wish I'd have bought all her albums at the gig. But anyway , the weather is still grey (and it was yesterday too) , but that's the only thing that is not great today. I'm feeling excellent and happy and looking forward to next weekk/

Did you realise that a week on Sunday it's the anniversary of  the bombing Pearl Harbour? I wonder what put that into my head.

Katy Lied? ... Katy Did

Today I know lots of idiots are getting into fights , being conned by the big stores into buying stuff they don't want. There's fights and police involvement , very seasonal indeed, but that's not for me , I don't do queuing unless there is absolutely no other option. Most of my friends are the same.



The only Black Friday I have time for is the Steely Dan song from Katy Lied and with that I will leave you for today. Hope you have a very enjoyable day.

Remember - Be Positive

Very often I deal with advertising campaigns which say "Don't Forget" (or else something bad will happen or you will miss out). I always say use positive words. Instead of "Don't Forget" use "Remember" , instead of "Don't Fail" say "Succeed". Anyway last night I forgot to take make drugs , except I'd also forgot whether I'd taken them or not so it was a case of potential overdose or feeling a bit rubbish going to bed. I opted for the latter. This morning I have taken drugs and feel fine.

The sky is still grey and it's quiet out, neither hot nor cold.

Would You Touch This Man's Tash?

My friend Glen has had problems with people touching his Tash in Tynemouth (hows that for alliteration?), I think he's grown it for Movember,  so I suggested he goes for the look on the right!

I'm still being amazed by the Australian singer Jordan Reyne,  so it's an excuse to include one of her videos in my post , the amazing Shadow Line.

So be positive and have a great Sunday everybody, always look for the good and good things will come to you , oh and make sure you smile , that's always a good thing.

Not Burning Out ... Burning Bright

This week has been mental and could be deemed as stressful. Planning always helps but when things go wrong it can be disconcerting. It is great to have back up options in place as well as having the ability to deal with things as they occur. Luckily I'm not in that situation that often and have always come out stronger and more confident. I was thinking of a TED talk I watched a while back about stress being your friend, and while it's not good to be permanently stressed , it is good to be under controlled pressure every so often. I , like everyone else, don't like losing control, so wherever possible have safety nets in place, which , ideally I don't have to use.

Things aren't finished , but I am looking forward to having a week and a half's holiday in a very quiet cottage in Ampleforth.

The think is this week I've had a lot of good things happen, not leaste finding out that I have enough loyalty points from Enterprise Car Rental to pay for two weeks hire , which is like finding £200 in your wallet you didn't know you had. I also watched another TED talk about the benefits of smiling which I now try to do as often as possible.. I used the talk a couple of posts back here.

#mikeydredsplaypile

Then last night I was at an amazing concert, saw two incredible acts , Jordan Reyne and The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing , both of which I will be seeing again. Sometimes at a gig I'll buy a CD if I like the act. I ended up buying 4 and am listening to the Crone EP as I write this post, by the incredibly talented Australian Jordan Reyne.

So this week has so far turned out to be very rewarding despite the tribulations and the icing on the cake was Preston beating Bristol City after a bad run and Newcastle continuing their winning streak.


Anyway we're halfway through the weekend, and I still have work to do, but am fully confident that i can tackle whatever happens, sometimes you need to change the way you look at things , sometimes you meet things head on. I have done a bit of both this weekend but am looking forward to next weekend when I will be well into my holiday. You enjoy the rest of your weekend, I will enjoy mine.

Backsliding Fearlessly

Mott The Hoople

Don't know what brought that to mind, I think it's the name of a Mott The Hoople song, which will be somewhere in my collection because I do have quite a large one. It's actually on their first album, the one with the MC Escher sleeve featuring the paper crocodiles.

One of the things I like about writing a blog post is the way you can just ignore the rules and flit from one thing to another as your mind sees fit ... or unfit as the case may be.




As I say I don't what inspired me on this post but now as a video for this post I want an Escher animation , you would think that someones bound to have done one on Youtube, and when you look there are quite few on there but this one is very inventive and a joy to watch. The guy looks like a cross between Gru and one of his minions in Despicable Me!

So it's quite a leap from a seventise rock band to a kids animated film , although The Beatles did do Yellow Submarine , so maybe it's not that far fetched , and they have an actual Yellow Submarine in the Matthew Street complex in Liverpool.

Anyway this post has told you little although it may have joined some dots that didn't actually need joining, but I hope it stimulated you or made you smile a little. It's time for bed for me, so I hope you are having a great week and tomorrow it's Friday. Have a good one!!

Sometimes I'm Suddenly Awake

It's half an hour after midnight and I'm wide awake. I don't know why. I just am. I really wish I could feel like this on a work morning, but on those days i could well easily turn over and go back to to bed. It is quite amazing how clear headed and awake I feel.

I keep thinking of reading a book or watching some TV or listening to music but that might disturb the neighbours. So instead I'm just going to write another blog post.

Now Then Now Then

This week has been good and I'm looking forward to next week, barring an unnecessary trip to London when I have some extremely interesting stuff going on at work, though I will be able to cope, and looking forward to seeing the grammatically challenged The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing at Think Tank on Friday with a few friends, a great venue where I've already seen a few gigs.
Their name is a reference to the chalked graffiti discovered above a section of blood-stained apron thought to have been discarded by Jack the Ripper as he fled the scene of Catherine Eddowes' murder. I nicked this information from the Wikipedia page although Fiona had pointed out the Jack The Ripper connection.

So obviously I've taken a band video for this with a picture of them to peruse at your leisure. Right I will now try and go to bed , who knows , if I sleep on the edge I may soon drop off ......

One Misty Moisty Morning

Well woke up today to a grey day and and Steeleye Span song which was one of my mum's favourites, though I think I introduced her to this version.
at 1 pm it's still grey , moist and cold. Not the most inspiring weather and a day to be wrapped up and warp inside. The

Today has been quite manic, firstly I had to do some major coding changes on the website as Amazon have changed their tracking method, at least they actually tell you unlike Play.com and Emusic who just stopped their tracking years ago.  That took me a coule of hours and got me thinking about mortality and the fact that as you get older time seems to go faster. As a kid when you were six you got six weeks holiday in the summer and that was like forever. It was like 1/52 of your life  so far. To do the equivalent summer holiday now I'd need more than a year off. It doesn't really pay you to pay too much attention to these sort of statistics, though I suppose I am a little fore resentful of things that take away my leisure and enjoyment time such as work, although actually I do enjoy my work as well, despite some exasperating situations that do crop up.

The French Oven

After that I nipped into the Grainger Market for some fruit and veg and I nearly came out because of the queues at the stalls and the sheer volume of people in there. It was wonderful to see people at The French Oven and all the cafe's with barely a seat free. I didn't bother venturing into the town center as, no doubt , it will be full of Christmas shoppers, despite the fact that it's still six weeks before Christmas. My dad's Christmas strategy usually consists of complaining that there is nowhere open at 8pm  on Christmas Eve.

So I am now back home, and I've cleaned out the wood burning stove and made up a fire , though not yet lit it, it's had one run out this week and it does warm the room very well. So I'm all set up to have another excellent weekend and hope you are too. Have a good one.

Sharing is Wonderful

While it's good to have things and be able to do things it's no use at all if you;re the only one who benefits from those things. The problem is with modern society is that the emphasis is on accumulation and possession to the point where it's not enough for you to succeed but others have to fail. The has resulted in a plethora of TV programs which often promote non intellectuality as a desireable trait. You all know what I 'm talking about and hopefully you hold the same disdain for such things as I do.

Just Smile

Today I shared a lovely lunch with Fiona , Juliet, Kirsty and Mark at Dat Bar in Newcastle and it was an absolutely wonderful couple of hours, and the food was good too. I could have gone there on my own five times but it would not have been anywhere near as enjoyable. The food was wonderful and the conversion about everything from Mark's Nokia phone to TV programs , why Juliet and Kirsty didn't like Gotham and Fiona's handbag expertise meant that every second was totally enjoyable and is another thing that I can look back on with enjoyment.




Too many times we put things off for one reason or another, and sometimes weeks turn to months turn to years turn to never, so you should never put off things like this more than once as they can be so rewarding for everyone involved. There were lots of smiles and laughs today and that's the way things should be when it's practicable to be so. It should essentially be the norm in life.

So I know the weekend is nearly over, but do something enjoyable and share it with someone , and have a lot of fun doing it. Put a smile on everyone's faces.