Enjoy Yourself

We have blue skies, though summer is over and autumn is here, our precursor to winter. Autumn fills the landscape with amazing colours, as the leaves on trees and plants metamorphose and fall to the ground.

Autumn Garden Colours

Every opportunity you get you should find something to enjoy. It maybe taking with a friend, listening to music you love , going out for a walk, reading a book , watching a film or a show. All of these things and more can lift your spirits and set you up for the week ahead, whatever you have coming.

If things are going to be hard, it's good to prepare yourself my making yourself feel good when you have the opportunity. A friend posted an interesting article about the 21 things that happy people do. The list is here, please read and take them on board.

While I know there are certain people who embody the apparent oxymoron that they are only "happy when they are miserable" , I'm unlikely to persuade them to change their view on life , but I hope that for everyone else, you will take some time today to make yourself happy. Enjoy the rest of the weekend and set yourself up for the coming week.

I've included the joyous Later.. medley of Madness/ Enjoy Yourself featuring Prince Buster and Suggs of Madness for your enjoyment.

Sonic Wonders

Some of my favourite mood music are three albums I own by Beaver and Krause. I was intrigued to find a TED talk by Bernie Krause, and thought I would give it a try because the name sounded familiar. Bernie is a very very engaging speaker and gives and absorbing talk on the sounds of our world and how they can indicate the health or otherwise of localised ecosystems.

The talk had bme spellbound and have one of his albums playing at the moment, and it's amazing how much peace the sounds of the natural world can give you, whether it's for relaxation , meditation or otherwise. The music of the natural world.

I know this post is going to sound all new age, but I do believe it is far better to work together and in harmony than to try and further your aims through aggression. I love the sound and feel of rain as well as sunshine, I think that snow is wonderful and am happy in most sorts of weather.

Wonderful Sonics

Anyway I've included the talk, please do watch and maybe leave a comment. I was talking to a businessman on the train and he had never heard of TED but was extremely interested in what I told him and said he would check it out when he had biked home from Newcastle.

This is the start of my weekend which is a precursor to a week that will see me in London and Brighton, so I may or may not be active on here, but we shall see. Have a fantastic weekend and keep on being inspired and positive,

We Need More Love And Positivity

I'm seeing a lot of picture posts on Facebook, which aggressively imply that the poster with take retribution on someone who has crossed them in some way, even unfriended them on Facebook. Every so often I have a clear out of contacts , sometimes accidentally deleting people. Recent me and someone I'd accidentally unfriended took two months of attempting to reconnect, including manny missives to Facebook admin. We only play Scrabble together but the unfriending put that at risk, but we managed to sort it eventually.

Love and Be Positive

The TED talk above is a wonderful inspiring story of someone who overcame adversity and now lives a wonderful fulfilling life.

So people think that treating others badly shows that they are strong. It doesn't it just shows your transgressors have rattled you , and therefore succeeded. I admit that sometimes you have to fight but that should be a last, not first resort.







The best and biggest things are built by people working together it a spirit of co-operation, and sprinkled with a healthy dose of love and respect. So find a friend , give them a hug or a kiss, do something together , even if it's a chat , or a coffee or a drink. Do something together, you never know what may come of it. Work together and you will achieve far more that working in a fractious , frictional environment. Wars and negativity and aggression destroy , Love and cooperation can build lasting monuments.

Picture This

Deanham Gardens

This morning, it was very foggy , but I thought in the dark and with the streetlights I may get an interesting picture. The main road had a few cars, but then I took a static picture down a side street. As I instagrammed it there seemed to be some really odd effects possibly caused by the mist , but I took the picture and this is how it turned out. Lots of people seem to really like it, which is fine by me, and makes me want to keep taking pictures. I know that there are billions of digital photographs out there, but it just gives me a warm feeling to post something that someone actually likes. It makes such things worthwhile although ironically most of the good feedback has come on Facebook!.

Thank you to all you who like the picture, and have a great night. There are lot's of pictrure related songs , but I'll go for Bread's If:

Three Really Nice Things

Mmmm

Today three people have really made my day just by appreciating something I had done. What I did wasn't much but it does make you feel good when people appreciate your efforts on something. The people will probably never see this but it is amazing what effect a simple well intentioned thank you can do. It makes you want to try harder for people and makes you appreciate those people as well.

This is going to be a short post because it's really just about another way you can brink positivity to the fore and make people happier. If you engage with people , talk with people , your smile can carry through the most mundane of mediums , even text.


So if you can thank someone for something, do it with a smile, and bring sunshine into yours and their life. Enjoy tonight everyone. This also gives me an excuse to include one of Barclay James Harvest's rockier moments which I first heard on the Old Grey Whistle Test , and it is an absolute killer riff. As I said Enjoy your night.

On The Bright Side

Stormy Monday

Well I've woken up , it's dark, it's raining , it's Monday and I have to go to work. The thing is , it's October so winter is coming on , and the rain means that gardens are watered , in fact the world is behaving as expected, which is always a great thing. Credit Nature or credit Your God but enjoy the fact that everything is happening as it should do.

Yes I don't like going to work in the cold and the wet, but the 100 mile round trip from Newcastle to Darlington gives me ample time to read and enjoy myself, although I need to make sure I don't miss my stop because I'm too engrossed in a book.

I've included a video of BB King's Stormy Monday, because today is a Stormy Monday,  which was also the name of a film featuring Sting set in Newcastle!.

Anyway loads of great things will happen this week, try and make one of them happen or be part of it.

Going Mobile With Entertainment

I was pleased to find that the latest version of BBC iPlayer now allows downloads to my phone, actually allowing the same as 4OD. This means that as well as music, and TED I can now watch quality TV on the move.

Mobile Phone History

A lot of mobile companies advertise how brilliant their service is, but it's only any good if you can maintain a constant signal. So it's fine if you are not moving , but when you are on the train very often there's a heck of a lot of signal drop out. That's why you need to be able to download what you want to watch and listen for when there is no signal. Devices these days have huge capacity that you can usually expand with an SD card (unless you go the Apple route) , so this week I am going to be really spoilt for choice.

Although annoyingly the 4OD app still demands you be connected to wifi when my EE 4G would be far better for downloading programs.

I thought I'd include an appropriate TED talk for this post. So Have a wonderful week my friends.