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11:21 am
[Link] |
Breasts and Thighs and Hearts.
Starting, as usual, with Jake, this soothing song drifted to the top of my conscious mind.
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04:09 pm
[Link] |
The late great Jake Thackray.
I have been listening to Jake quite a lot over the last few days, musing as to how a song written for an inner-city Leeds school nativity play ended up being covered by a (good) Elvis impersonator living in Alabama. There are no decent Jake renditions online so I won't do a compare and contrast.
He used to write songs and perform to order on TV programs. Loads of his stuff was never recorded in a studio. He just sang to the audience and camera, and the BBC kept, or released, the recording as they saw fit.
Here is an example.
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01:06 pm
[Link] |
PG Wodehouse on Parenting
"The male codfish, which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all."
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09:28 pm
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The mind wanders
From a perfect smile to Planxty, then to Andy Irvine, and on to his musical partner Paul Brady and the memory of this perfect song.
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12:26 pm
[Link] | Make some space in your day for Kimya Dawson.
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12:07 pm
[Link] |
Medecine
The passage of a cold through my system is greatly eased by the purchase of 1 litre of Morton's OVD (old Vatted Demerara)rum.
Swine flu no longer holds any fear for me.
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04:55 pm
[Link] | Jake Thackray is one of my more embarrassing musical tastes. He has a whole 31 interested lj followers. Why are there Russians who have an interest in a dead, forgotten, Yorkshireman.
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11:19 am
[Link] |
Stuff
Last weekend I sat down and started to write out again an idea that I hope will form the basis of an MPhil, PhD or even just a paper in a journal. The first 3 of my headings were dealt with, each taking two hours to plod through. I closed the file, like you do, and ignored it. Now after nearly a week I just raised to courage to look at it again. I am quite pleased. I have, so far, managed to say what i wanted to say.
( This is for my benefit. I don't expect anyone to read this )
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01:02 pm
[Link] |
What is happening here?
Walking through the local supermarket i see something that I have not seen outside Harrod's Food hall.
There were three of them. How do you cook them, for how many people, and for what occasion? And if I was selling something for £104 I would make sure that the label gave sensible advice.
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02:46 pm
[Link] |
The Old School
I lived, and went to school here for two years. To my regret now, I hated the place.
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11:44 am
[Link] | I did manage to get a good bit written in a generally busy weekend. I am pleased with what I have written. (For those who have not read or followed my ramblings, I am certain that language psychologists have missed something very big and blindingly obvious.) Drove to London yesterday, three appointments, drove back home. Sixteen hours in all, and into a maelstrom at work today. Usual post London daze.
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11:08 am
[Link] | Who regrets adding work colleagues on their Facebook friends-list?
We will soon all be back here.
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04:35 pm
[Link] | Good progress so far. Today is Remembrance Day and was idly looking up my grandfathers regiment, and came across the following excerpt from the regimental diary during the Gallipoli campaign.
"Seeing this situation, and noting the danger to the line, 2nd Lt Moor left his trench and ran across the open. Confronting the men he then stemmed the retirement by use of his revolver - he was forced to shoot several men. After this he led the men back to their former line and successfully recaptured the lost trench. For his bravery and resource 2nd Lt George Raymond Dallas Moor was awarded the V.C."
For all of our current connectivity and information overload i think we have no real understanding of what life has been like for most of human history.
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04:53 pm
[Link] | Today has been a strange day. The business has doubled in size since I came here. I spent the last two days using the web to research and log into the on-line procurement or e-tendering portals that the big boys use, the places where multi-million pound contracts are advertised. To do this i have had to ignore all of the work that i was supposed to be doing for the little guys who have provided the bread and butter business that kept the company going for 15 years.
I know that any time now people will be ringing in to get answers to questions that I have not even looked at. I know that I have done the right thing but I can feel all of the muscles in my back and shoulders knotting up, though, for the life of me I cannot understand why I should feel so sensitive about it today.
My solution is the usual useless solution: A fugue through familiar harmless internet sites, clicking on the next before Iv'e even read the current one, going back to the same unread sites three of four times, and then logging out in self disgust at my wasting even more precious time.
Tomorrow will be better.
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12:54 pm
[Link] |
Too dazed to think straight
.....But this week i am listening to Richard Hawley
And Josh White
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09:39 am
[Link] | I am starting to log into Livejournal before Facebook.
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01:29 pm
[Link] | Is anyone else disturbed by the ubiquitous adulatory reporting of the dead in Afghanistan? As an ex-soldier I do want the fallen to be honoured, but not to the extent that another generation is taught the old lie. "To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori."
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04:39 am
[Link] |
Through hollow lands and hilly lands.
My grandfather and his cousin lived on adjacent farms. The farms, on the shore of the Erne are still known to this day as Reynolds of the Hill, and Reynolds of the Hollow.
James and Mark
Originally uploaded by drunkordry
About twenty years ago I had a proper career, BMW, status, guaranteed good pension and a predictable future. It didn't suit so I quit. Since then I have done another degree, joined and left a near cult, set up and sold my own business, done really exciting work for Army on my own terms, and otherwise been self employed ever since.
A song turned up on Youtube that took me back to my state of mind twenty years ago. It sums up how I felt then, and looking back, I am sure that I did the right thing. I still wonder however where I would be If I had followed the rational and conventional path, rather than wandering.
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10:39 am
[Link] |
The past catches up.
Seven or eight years ago, I helped my friend Geoff design a website that allowed people to search the internet using maps. It was not a mapping site; it was a way of searching. I did the psychological optimising...that is I laid out how the the site should present information so that it could be processed with out using language, which is how we mostly search in the real world. Geoff wrote the code and did the search engine optimisation. Nobody could really understand what we were trying to do. Our financial backer pulled out, and the company in which Geoff works decided to drop the project.
The pilot site has lain in a quiet corner of the web, without decent graphics, with out of date information, and no promotion.
www.mapzit.com/
I met Geoff last night and he had just looked at the weblog records for the site....In the last year it has had 3 million hits.
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03:12 pm
[Link] |
Time to grow up!
For the last ten years or so I have spent two or three months a year vegetating at our family property in Co Fermanagh. It is a beautiful place and has many strong childhood memories.
My Grandmother on that side died before I was born. My grandfather and his son lived there. There about 30 acres of pretty poor land and a lake on two sides of the farm. My uncle had schizophrenia and grandfather was fairly conservative. Nothing was done to the house from the time that my grandmother died. The house is almost exactly as it was when it was built in 1860. My uncle went into a home in the 1980s leaving my grandfather living alone, although the family rallied around and he had more company in the last few years than he did for most parts of his active life. He died in 1996 leaving the farm to my mother and her sister, but with my uncle "having use" of it whilst he remained alive. This left the place in limbo.
I took advantage of this and used the place to chill out knowing that the repair and upkeep was not my responsibility. It really is a great place to get away from the speed and grime of urban life.
In January this year my uncle passed away
The farm was duly passed to my mother and her sister. My mother then immediately passed it on to me. I was delighted. Since then there has been the gradual realisation that what once was an unalloyed joy has become a burden. I would not have it any other way, but what had been a retreat from work, has now become more work. I will do the work...and it will be worth it one day.
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streetsounds's journal