Fast as slurry off a grape, (But not on a Harley!) :o)

Life changed...... in a heartbeat..........

2012-01-10T20:02:00.005Z

Well, it finally happened………..

I've had a bleddy heart attack.

Yup, happened at 01:00am in the morning on Wednesday 7th December just gone (2011). It was a bit unexpected, to say the least. I'd thought it was wind or indigestion (or something) and ended up ringing the out of hours doctor (I was buggered if I was going to dial 999), after writhing around in unbearable pain for nearly an hour waiting for Ibuprofen and Paracetamol I'd taken to fix it to get a grip..... which of course, it never did.

Cut a long story short, she (the doc, bless her) insisted on calling out an ambulance .....once you mention 'chest pain', you kinda know you've pushed it over the edge. They ran some tests in the ambulance, and decided I needed taking in. I protested greatly, but I wound up being admitted to the Cardiac Care Unit when blood tests showed I’d had a heart attack, so I guess it was just as well.

So much for being invincible. {:o(

The pain had eased off a bit by the time I'd got to talk to her (the doc on the phone), and if it had eased off a bit earlier I most likely wouldn't have rung her at all. I told the cardiac consultant and he doubted I'd have been alive by the morning. Trouble is with living alone; had I arrested, it would've been 'Lights Out' and so I would have been unable to ring anyone. I guess I was lucky.

I had an Angioplasty on Thursday, late morning. Naturally it went tit's up (Wouldn’t you just bleddy KNOW it???!!!) when the stents were being put in, as one was put in the wrong place. It meant three needed to be put into the coronary arteries instead of just the two. The Cardiac Consultant doing it got the ‘markers’ mixed up and put it in the wrong place. In case you don't know it, it's all done under a local anaesthetic via an artery in either the groin or the wrist. I had it done via the Radial artery in my wrist and was watching it on the screen he was using. It was bloody fascinating. I don’t hold it against him… he was doing his best, and believe me, it looked to be amazing he could do it at all. He was a nice guy.... just one of those things.

No, I’m just pissed at my luck yet again, in the same way I am when I buy the only dodgy TV on the shelf…… only a bit worse I guess.

Anyway, …… the dodgy stent is sticking out into the Aorta (artery) like a car sticking out of a junction, so the blood flow has to go through the mesh from the side instead of flowing through the unobstructed open tube if it was ‘in line’ with the blood flow. It means I'm now on 'platelet' medication (prevents the blood platelets from being as 'sticky') for the rest of my life instead of just a year.

I ‘arrested’ on the table too and it took two defibrillating shocks to get my heart going again. It happens from time to time, so not that big a deal really and they kinda anticipate it happening. They have to cut all the heart’s blood supply off for a short while, and the heart stops, or ‘fibrillates’, sometimes as a result. He warned me that I would pass out for a while. My last words on this earth were very nearly ...'Oh, Ok' (Always thought it'd be 'FUUUUCK!'..... maybe it still will be... LOL) Had a nice burn to my chest…… you wouldn’t believe how sore a burnt nipple can be. Man, that is real serious voltage. I laughed to think that I've been saying for years .....

'Baby, let me tall ya, this boy has absorbed a lotta voltage'

You gotta laugh, haven't you? {:o)

They had found that one cardiac artery….. one of three supplying blood to the heart muscle, (a third of my heart’s blood supply), had been blocked for ‘some time’. They unblocked it and inserted the first stent there, but can’t be sure if I will benefit from the restored blood supply…. depends on how bad the damage to the heart muscle has been. If it’s ‘dead’ it won’t recover. The second stent was put in to open another artery which was almost blocked, and this was the one which was put in the wrong place, so another was put in do do the job, and that one was ok.

Still, being positive for a rare moment… my heart is in better shape now and I’m not getting the chest pain that I was getting so often that I had been ignoring it. I'd thought it was either the usual ‘stress’ and anxiety pain courtesy of that fucking job and/or that of just being so unfit. It was actually angina, not just an anxiety ‘stress’ pain; to think I’ve been having angina pain for years and thinking it was stress and anxiety and when it got real bad, a ‘panic attack’ pain. Sometimes it would happen when I wasn’t feeling particularly stressed and I always thought that was real odd……

Those bastards at work over the years have a lot to answer for..... Yes, you fucking soulless, yellow-livered, weenie bastards.... you know full well who you are.

Sorry, to the rest of you...........

I was only in there for three days, and when I was back here, sat alone after Maggie had dropped me off and had a cuppa with me, I looked around and thought how quiet and empty this place would be if I wasn't here any more. How everything here would mean nothing to whoever cleared it all out and dumped it.

Trouble is, in many ways, it also felt like I'd just been to the dentist or something trivial like that.

Kinda weird, man.

The last thing on my mind was Christmas and like last year, I pretty much didn't bother with it. Sent off the cards again, and that was pretty much it really. Had an ok day though.... No Problem Pete called in for a natter and a cuppa late morning, and I took the little 350 Guzzi out for a spin to visit a couple of people in the afternoon. If you have nothing else, you have your mo'sickle, and she sure was a tonic to ride on Christmas Day. Took her for a thrash along some twisty roads on the way out. Got soaked on the way home in the rain.

Been finally getting off my ass and doing some exercise this week. Been out on the bicycle every day for the last five days and have worked up from going hard at it for three miles on the first day to doing sixteen and a half miles on it yesterday. (Yeah, I know, I know, but I’m an all or nothing personality, y’see…) Legs and backside, (especially my backside), don’t like it much, but, hey, no chest pain, ......so that’s good then. {:o)

Amazing what they can do so quickly now, …….even with a balls-up. {:o)

It's late, I know, ......but Happy New Year to y'all
K. {:o)

My new little cutie...... {:o)

2011-10-20T16:13:00.000+01:00

Hi y'all,
here I am again on another rare occasion, as writing to my poor old Blog is proving to be these days, to mention my latest weak moment.

It was lateish at night, and I was on eBay, browsing for a bike I could buy, tart up a bit and sell again at a profit to get some desperately needed dosh coming in. As per the usual I wound up looking at sickles I'd like to buy for myself, as opposed to, say, a little scooter thing which I could sell to some pubescent, pustule-ridden, seminally incontinent punk kid, or more likely, his parents, for twice what I paid for it. Could be for a daughter I guess, but they're all little darlin's aren't they? Yoofs are quite something else.
Anyway, I digress. One of the bikes I was looking at was a darlin' little V35, 350cc, Moto Guzzi. It looked as immaculate as they come for 1986 and before I could contain myself, I'd bid a limit of £900 in the last few seconds,..... immediately thinking "Oh NO!!!" when I realised I really shouldn't have done it.

BIG relief when it hadn't made it's reserve, and so I hadn't actually 'won' with the bid my auto-bidding had reached.... £870.

Whew!

Close call.

Put the 'puter to sleep, and went off to watch a good old John Wayne film, 'The Cowboys' on the telly. Checked emails afterwards, (like the saddo I am), only to read one telling me the seller had re-listed it for twenty-four hours, and was giving me a chance to buy it at my 'winning' bid as a 'Buy Now' price of £870.

Bugger!

Shit!

Damn!

Well, I tried, I really did, y'know.

I struggled with the decision for more than an hour...... the usual thing a lot of you bikers out there will be familiar with.... looking at pics of the bike, road tests, reviews, opinions, searching for the downside, but only seeing the upside, thinking of all the reasons to buy it, and few of those why you shouldn't, etc. etc. etc.

Decided I really mustn't.

Then I bought it........

As you do.

Drove up to the other side of Milton Keynes a couple of days later, on one of those lovely hot sunny October days we had with my buddy, No Problem Pete, and the trailer, and brought the little cutie back to her new home.

As usual, things were not quite as good as first thought..... The old girl wouldn't wouldn't do the 90mph she should, (Only 14,000 miles..... should still manage it), a bit smokey from the right cylinder, the 'new' tyres were old and perished.... (no I didn't look ..... had 'bought' it anyway) the rear with a two inch split in it close to the rim and filled in with some wax or boot polish, as were all the tiny perish splits, and the battery was dry and way too small, but I knew it was dodgy anyway. Chucking oil out everywhere when thrashed and dripping it on the floor. Haven't had a bike do that in a good few years..... well, the Enfield does a bit, but this little thing was worse.

I had her up on the nice new Bike Lift Bench (Haven't told you that saga yet, have I??? Another day), and took some things to bits. off with the carbs and checked and cleaned them, fixed the choke lever that wouldn't stay 'on' on it's own, checked the timing... not too bad, but will do it properly later on, tightened the alternator which was completely undone and not charging after a few short rides, and generally fiddled with her to get the last few gee-gee's liberated. Tightened the heads down, which needed doing as the bolts were the wrong torques, and checked the tappets, putting new gaskets on, which at least cured one oil leak from a rocker cover.

Oh, and couldn't resist, ahem, 'machining' the zorsts with my beloved fifteen mil' masonry drill on an extension shaft. Cambel replacement 'standard' silencers, and all stuffed up with baffles. Sounds MUCH nicer now, and she finally just managed that flat-out ninety mph on the next run after all.

Got some fork gaiters to put on sometime soon, and will leave the slight fork seal leak to keep things lubricated through the winter. I have a feeling the cartridge dampers inside the forks are knackered. A job for another day. The old girl seems to be using more juice than she should be, and I know the right carb is running rich for some reason, so I'll have to take it off again and have another gander at it.

Ordered a new 'standard' and very expensive battery from the EXCELLENT Tayna Batteries.... a HUGE battery for such a little bike. After filling the old one already on the bike with about 200ml of water, it's holding it's own better than I thought so I might delay filling the new battery with the acid Tayna supplied, especially since it's the same battery recommended for the bigger 850 Guzzi I have tucked up 'awaiting attention'. Tayna advised that the new battery can be stored as supplied, and unfilled with acid, for 'several; years', so we'll see how the old battery survives the cold that's fast approaching.

So.... there we are.... another mo'sickle I didn't really need, especially since I'm tryin gto live on bugger-all to stretch the savings and survive for long enough to get my shit together in the land of unemployment.

What can you do, eh?

She is a pretty little thing though, and another one which makes me smile when I look at her leaning over on her prop-stand in the coy way she does.

Kinda reminds me of a girl I used to know.....

............. a long time ago.
K.x {:o)

Here's a link to the EXCELLENT Tayna Batteries website. You won't find better for any vehicle, including lawnmowers, powered wheelchairs, you name it...... {:o)

Car Batteries, Motorcycle Batteries, Leisure Batteries - Next Day Delivery

Laughing in the rain

2011-09-06T16:58:00.002+01:00

My buddy, No Problem Pete called around with his little 400 sporty Honda yesterday. I forget the model, but kinda like a CBR 400, an early R45. A Jap import. Cute little bike, 1985, a bargain buy on eBay.

“Take it for a spin”, he said, so I did. Couldn’t go far, as the alternator wasn’t charging the battery, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to run her up the blacktop and back. Haven’t been out on the bike in a few weeks, for various reasons, not one of them being all that good, but there you are. No matter. Got my lid and gloves and off I went in just my workshop overalls under the black rain clouds and soaking wet roads for a quick blast on this cute little number of a bike.

No, not this one, but one very like it.........

You fit in this little bike, as all good bikes, like you were born as a part of it, like you always were a part of it, like you’ve known it for years and not just been introduced. Everything fits, she feels good under you. Feels like she approves of you right off, and you feel just the same. It’s an instant thing. Like women, some bikes are introduced to you, unexpectedly met or whatever, and there is a polite time when you are more than aware you are strangers, but some, oh boy, some feel like they were always around, like you knew them before. Familiar. Comfortable.

Doesn’t happen all that often, but, bike or chick, when it happens it feels real good. Real special, and you know it’s going to be good from the get go. It’s a bang, crash, wallop love thing, and you can’t wait to get together. Wanna forget all the getting–to-know-you protocols, and get stuck right in.

Know what I mean?

If you don’t, I sure hope you get to knowing before you grow old and die, because you can live years out in a few seconds when you gel like magic. I’ve had moments in life when I’d sacrifice all that was to come for another second of it.

This bike felt like that good. We went off, me and this little gem of a bike. She was old by today’s standards, but even so she felt so damn good. Revved clear to the red line at fourteen thousand without a hesitation and would go past it eagerly given half a chance. So light, so small, so agile. Wet roads, old tyres, but she was as eager to please me as could be.

Hungry for me. I felt suddenly alive within yards, and the years dropped away, like they always do when I go down the road on a good bike. Hell, it happens on any bike really, but on something so cute and special, it really kicks in and the world beyond the bike and the road just vanishes. Like magic I’m not fifty-bloody-seven any more. I’m a young greaser on a motorcycle and once again free of the years that age us. The willing engine revved up and I shifted her through the gears in split-second clutchless changes, with barely a slight off and on flick of the throttle.

The old magic returned and I let her run free. She was loving it. What she was created for, what we were born to do together. Slipping off the side of the seat into the bends, wary of the old tyres on the wet road, and hugging the bike up real close, we gambolled together down the road as one in the spray we kicked up behind us. Laughing together at the fun of it all, the world stripped away to the simplicity of the moments flashing by second by second.
The only way I know to be a boy again, at least momentarily, free of all the crap the years have heaped onto my once free and wild spirit.
We hit a huge downpour and I was soaked through in seconds, the rain hurting my naked skin under the thin blue overalls. I was laughing out loud and screwing her open wider, making her wail harder, and she was so alive under me, urging me to whip her harder.

"Harder, big boy, harder, and fuck the rain."

It was real hard to turn her around and go home again.

On her back, I was just a boy on a bike, ....... laughing in the rain.

Just to say 'Hello'..........

2011-06-09T23:49:00.000+01:00

Well, the Harley fetched a good price on eBay and was taken away by a good new owner and his Chick on a trailer up to Yorkshire...... same area the Fantic went the week before. Sad to see her go, looking very vulnerable and alone perched on the trailer going down the roads. I hate selling my mo'sickles, and watching them go always brings a lump to the throat and something in the eye.

Still the bloke that bought her was one of the old brigade, and had bought it as a twenty-first present for his son. Lucky, lucky boy! Hope he deserves it.

The day the H-D went, I fired up Hoover, my 1200 Suzuki Bandit, and the little bitch was running on three cylinders again. It's a long story, but I've been plagued bu a mysterious misfire for way longer than I care to admit. It's turned out to be duff NGK Iridium plugs....... the best money can buy, and take it from me, you wouldn't believe the weird symptoms they've given. It's had me tearing my hair out...... well, if I had any I would've anyway.

She was missing on number three, so I took the plug out..... one of four brand new Iridium NGK's which had cured the misfire, and shoved in an old plug that was ok.

Misfire cured.

Quite unbelievable.

I've put in a new set of standard NGK plugs, and so the old warrior is running fine now. I resent the eighty quid I've spent on two sets of faulty Iridium plugs though. It's a lesson I've learnt before........ NEVER take it for granted that plugs are ok, especially just because they're new.

I dragged the 1976 850T3 Moto Guzzi (Italian bike) out and am going to breathe some life in the old girl........ She's been off the road for eight years now, so I'll let you know how it goes.

I'll try and not leave it so long........ I keep breaking the promises to write to my poor old neglected blog here, don't I?

As always....... more effort required. {:oI

Bye for now.........

Bikes sold, one gone, one to go.......... {:oI

2011-05-28T20:24:00.000+01:00

Well, I've had some luck in selling a couple of the bikes, quite a lot of luck actually, which is bleddy rare for me, let me tell you

The Fantic has been sold and has gone courtesy of eBay, and the Harley has also been 'bought' by someone on eBay for more than I thought I'd get, although it's worth every penny and is immaculate. The Harley has yet to be collected and the dosh handed over, so I'm not counting my chickens just yet.

The Fantic was a real eye-opener though........ It turned out to be a very rare Thierry Michaud Replica bike, and I had had no idea it was so special. The couple of photos here are of my Fantic after it was washed. Water sure makes things gleam a good bit. {:o)

As soon as it was listed live on eBay on Saturday evening I had several emails asking what I'd take as a 'Buy Now' price, and eventually someone who was a real expert on these bikes emailed me and said:-

"My advice to you is to let the auction run, as I believe it will make close to a Grand!! It’s a Fantic 300 Thierry Michaud Replica and is VERY rare bike Good luck!!!

I had a bit of a Google and found that Thierry Michaud won the Scottish Six-Days Trial on a Factory Works Fantic in '84, '85 and '86, which is no mean feat, let me tell you........ He was world trials champion three times too.

Here's a link if you want to read more about him....
http://www.thebikeinsurer.co.uk/thierry-michaud-a-frenchman-who-adores-the-ssdt/

Here's a YouTube link of him in 1986......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py7xWk1qqEc

Anyway....... get this........ I was offered £1,500 CASH!!!! on the Sunday morning by a guy up in Middlesbrough via an email........
Yup….. one thousand, five hundred pounds!!!!!

I thought I’d be lucky to get £500!!!!! {:o)

Then another guy offered £1,250 cash if the Middlesbrough guy pulled out

The first guy who'd promised me £1,500 managed to scrape up the cash (Sunday), and came straight down, .....a five-hour journey he said.

In the event he knocked me down to £1300 because he could see it had evidence of having had a sidecar on it, the engine wouldn't start (I thought I had a while to get the carb cleaned before the auction closed) and a footrest had been welded on........ all minor stuff and he was trying it on really I think, but, what the hell........ I'm hopeless at this haggling shit and besides, I'd done WAAAY better than I ever dreamt I would!!!

My Flabber was completely Ghasted......... I've never made so much as a quid profit selling anything before in my entire life, and here I've made a huge profit in a single deal. Well, I think it's a huge profit anyway...... {:o)
Fancy, that old bike I paid £350 for 18 years ago and has been buried behind all that junk for years, was actually a VERY rare bike........ Few were ever made. Special bits in the engine, special paint job (which was good bit knackered!), special frame and special suspension. Done up and restored, it's prolly worth more than double what I've sold it for, but I don't have the access to sourcing the parts like these specialist boys, and anyway, I’m delighted with the deal.

He texted to say he cleaned the carb and it started just fine. I guess he knew that all along.

Whatever...... it cheered me up the most I've been for ages.

Yet another example of my dear old dad's mantra......... "You never know what's around the corner".
K. {:o)

Wonders....... they will never cease. {:o)

2011-05-19T23:25:00.000+01:00

Well, by the skin of my little withered appendage I have managed to start to get yet another of my mo'sickles ready for the eBay market.

I tried all day to get my ass in gear, and off it too, but it wasn't until something like 4.30 this afternoon that I finally unlocked the workshop and dragged out a bike that never gets used. It's a 240cc Fantic, an Italian competition trials bike I've had stored away for several years now. I bought it partly to help a guy I knew with BIG money problems and had gone bankrupt, losing pretty much everything. He was selling his trials Fantic, and I kinda fancied having a go at trials anyway, so I gave him what he wanted for it and took home to play around on it.

I'm a fast road rider, and road riding and off-road riding are opposite ends of the motorcycling spectrum. Starting trials in my late forties was a non-starter, and I never got going with it beyond just messing about half-heartedly on the newly acquired Fantic.

Not my Fantic, but one like it

So, here I am, getting with the program of trying to thin-out a bit, and get rid of things I'm just never going to use. The Harley wasn't one of them, being more than usable, but this poor old Fantic of mine sure deserves an owner who will use it as it was intended to be used.

I washed it, ......power washed it, which blew some paint off the engine and forks for a start. It's quite tatty, and needs a good going through, if not stripping and doing up. It's all there though, and would be usable with less that a couple of days work, to sort things like the front brake out and draining and cleaning the carb and plug to get it fired up again. I'll have a bit of a look at it tomorrow..... IF I can get my sorry ass in gear a good bit earlier than today. This time of night I can get a bit of enthusiasm going, but every morning I start from scratch again and begin the long haul to coax myself into something resembling 'action', usually later in the day.

So..... tomorrow, at least get the carb off and cleaned out, clean the plug too and mix up some two-stroke and see if I can get it to fire up. As I remember it was always a bit of a pig to start...... maybe the crank seals aren't all they should be, or the plug a bit tired. Dunno.

No, not me, nor my Fantic either...... just a trials rider.

Hell, looking at the pics online makes me wanna have another go at it. Dangerous territory now I'm 56-almost-57..... there lies anything between simple embarrassment and a hospital bed with me in it. Still, maybe I could just have another little try at it.

Maybe I should do this Fantic up a bit....... maybe, maybe, maybe.......

Maybe I should just use common sense, stick to Plan A and get it sold, more like!!!!

I'll get some photos taken, and let y'all know how it goes........

K. {:o)

Betraying my Baby......... {:oi

2011-05-18T22:02:00.006+01:00

Well, I've gone and done it..... I've put my Baby on eBay.

My beautiful burgundy Harley is up there with the rest of them, all lined up in the online cattle-market to be chosen by their next owner, whoever he or she may be. Yes, quite a few Chicks buy these Sportsters, partly because it's a Harley, and partly because of the low seat height on them. Chicks look real good on Harley's, whether on the back or on the front.

Always did.

Always will.

Some things are just sooooo 'right' and a girl on a Harley is one that God himself must surely have ordained.

She's been cleaned and polished by me for the last time, and I'm taking her down for her MOT on Saturday morning so the new owner will have a years ticket.

She looks real good.

I parked her under the apple tree to take her eBay photos and, as it always does, it felt like a bad thing to be doing.

Deceitful.

A betrayal of a good and faithful friend.

I always feel bad when I sell any of my bikes, especially those who have really got under my skin, ...........and this little honey sure has done that.

I can honestly say that every time I've opened the workshop door I've felt a big smile spread over my face. Every single time. She always looks so damn pretty sat there quietly waiting for me, her paint and chrome glinting softly in the dim light of the workshop, a perfect, dignified, beautiful thing in the oily, untidy chaos surrounding her.

I've gone out there just to look at her, just to cheer myself up on the many days lately when nothing else works, and she always at least helps for the moment. Sliding onto her low seat, she fits so perfectly as I take her weight off her prop-stand and heave her upright. Heavy iron. Solid and friendly. We sit there together for ages, sometimes in silence, sometimes I talk to her. Make promises to her we both know I can't keep, but promises I mean nonetheless. Places we'll go together; the dawns I'll ride her through, the roads I'll thread her along under bright moonlight, and most of all how I'll never sell her to another.

Me and my motorcycle, something simple that has always been the mainstay in my life. When those I trusted the most have betrayed me, when life has bent me to the ground, I've always had a motorcycle like this one to remind me that all you need is a big bike and the road. Ideally a big bike, a Chick and the road, .....but sometimes the Chick is the thing that brought you down. A bike is always there. She never leaves.

It's you who sends her away.

So, there I was, taking photos of her posing proudly in the sunlight, unaware we'll never ride in sunshine or under moonlight again. That we won't battle through rain and freezing cold again. That I won't open the garage at three in the morning to sit on her on nights I can't sleep for the bad-shit crowding my head.

That she won't carry me safe and sound for miles and miles and miles and miles, in the reassuringly solid way that is quite unique to her.

That I broke my promise, and she has only ten quiet days left with me.
K. {:o(

HEY!! I’ve bought an Amazon Kindle Reader

2011-05-08T20:48:00.002+01:00

Well, when I say I’ve bought an Amazon Kindle Reader, I haven’t bought it today, but about a month ago or so,……. and, y’know what? It’s fantastic. {:o)

Let's get this straight, right from the beginning. I love books. The paper ones; hardback, paperback, whatever. I have spent a fortune on them, and the house is crammed to the gunnels with them.
I love the feel of them, the weight, the smell of them, especially the second hand ones which have had a life already..... No it's not a fetish, but doncha just love to fan the pages and smell the wafted air from the pages, both new and old?

No?

Ok, It's just me then....... No matter. (Sigh)

I love the expectation of the postman delivering them. (Yes, most bought from the excellent Amazon)
I love leafing through them before I read them, cuppa tea in hand, and with several to choose from.
I rarely lend them.
I NEVER get rid of them.
Covetous of those I don't have.
Possessive of those I do.

So. .....Y'all got that?.... I love books...... I rilly rilly do.

But........ I love my Kindle too.

I never thought I would..... a friend, Suzy, bought one and was soooo enthusiastic about it, that I wound up left-clicking a couple of times and before you knew it, I'd bought one. You know how it goes. All too easy to do. I thought I'd just blown a load of dosh on yet another cheer-up faddy possession I'd soon leave abandoned and unused. Another thing that seemed a good idea at the time.

But I love it. Haven't read anything on paper since. (Two weeks or so)

It really was as easy to use as the blurb said. I had a quick look at the instructions, in the Manly Way we Real Men do...... and hey, waddya know.... It was really easy to use!

It connected to my Kindle account via my Belkin wireless router, independently of any computer and, being already registered to it by those very nice people at Amazon, it downloaded my books onto itself. (I'd already `bought' some free Kindle books on Amazon and downloaded the `Kindle for PC' software, so had an account already set up).

By the way..... I bought the wi-fi one, not the 3G version, as I'm happy to do my downloading within range of the wireless router, and don't really feel I need to be able to do that away from home, which you can do with the 3G. You don't need to have the computer on or be connected to it to download, or to use it to buy from Amazon, or browse the internet. I haven't used it to browse websites on the internet yet, but evidently it will do that too.

It charges from a USB on a computer, or a three-pin 240 volt plug, and both the plug and USB cable are supplied with the Kindle. Battery life seems good. I seem to charge it every two or three days, and I'm using it a fair bit every day too. Takes maybe a couple of hours or so to charge. Haven't timed it, but it's not too long. I’ll give you a possible tip here….. I let it discharge to the point that I got an exclamation mark ‘Low Battery’ warning on the battery level symbol at the top of the ‘Home’ page, and then had a helluva job recharging it. It just would not charge up. I rang the helpline, and spoke to a call-centre helper; unfortunately with a ‘foreign’ accent….. having hearing problems I struggle with ANY strong accent, and so it was a bit of a struggle although her English was actually good and she could understand my Cornish accent fine. Hat’s off to her, whoever she was. Eventually, when we got nowhere with the problem, I was put onto an Irish guy…. Lovely chap, but the accent was a problem still, but not as bad so we fumbled through.

Anyway, that’s kinda not really the issue. I seemed to fix this by ‘restarting’ the kindle again, as in ‘resetting’ it……. I guess like turning a computer off and starting it again when it’s gone all to hell. I’d already done this the once to no effect but after doing it again it finally charged up fully a couple of hours later. I haven’t charged it since, but fingers crossed it’s now ok again.

I’d say not to tempt fate and let the battery go almost completely flat before recharging it. Do it a bit before that.

The friendly Irish guy phoned me a couple of days later, as he said he would to see if the problem was resolved, and I have to say the support was excellent. It was my problem with my accents really, although many people have the same problem with these call centres from what I hear.

Whilst I think of it….. the battery life is weeks rather than days between charges, BUT if you leave it connected on Wi-Fi, and especially with a weak signal which draws even more battery current as it struggles to get a good signal, then the battery will need charging more often. Te other big drain on the battery is when you have a lot of book on there….. I had some 330 books loaded on. The kindle works away in the background indexing all the books, which can take days or longer. It does this even on ‘screensaver’ idle, and will drain the battery more quickly. I was advised to reduce the books I had loaded onto the Kindle, but I didn’t, and I think the indexing has finished, because the battery seems to be lasting longer. I have a friend….. Suzy who got me interested and finally tempted to buy this Kindle, who has over 2,000 books on hers. I haven’t asked her yet if she has problems with battery life.

I always turn my Wi-Fi connection off when I’m not using it, so it’s off almost all the time as I rarely use the connection. I also turn the kindle off completely (hold the power slider switch over for seven seconds until the screen goes blank) when I’m not using it for several hours, instead of leaving it on the ‘screensaver’. Not sure it makes a lot of difference though, as I believe it only uses power when ‘turning’ pages or automatically changing the picture on the screen saver once in a while.

Ok… what’s it like to use?

For novels and such it's just great........ I wouldn't really use it for reference and `information' books where you'd frequently flip to and fro the pages in a paper version, as returning to previous pages some way back isn't as convenient as with paper books, but otherwise it's just fine.

I REALLY like the easy way you can select a word and the dictionary kicks in to reduce my ignorance.... So easy.

As an avid collector of quotes, phrases and such, I especially like the way you can highlight and save words or passages from the book into a separate `Clippings' folder automatically. Very easy to do.

You can read PDF's on it, but I can't comment on that as I haven't done it yet. You can read documents of your own on it too, PDF and, I think, Word .docs. Amazon automatically keeps your books bought from them online, so if anything happens to the Kindle, you haven't `lost' books you bought. Other books and documents, you need to back up yourself onto a computer, which is very easy to do if you're reasonably computer literate. When you connect the Kindle to a computer, the computer `sees' the Kindle as an extra `drive', and you just drag and drop documents to and fro the folders, from either the computer to the Kindle, or vice versa.

Simples!!!

When I go anywhere, and I'm usually on a motorcycle when I do, I take at least a couple of books and a couple of magazines; I can never make up my mind completely enough for just one item, but this kindle can hold THOUSANDS of books. Not sure how many thousands, but a thousand would be plenty, surely and I know it's more than two thousand. Suzy has something like 2,500 on hers. So far I have only some 330 on mine.

What would I like to see on it? (Bearing in mind that maybe I'm not fully aware of all its capabilities yet)

I would like to be able to select the chapter heading to be on each page, if I wanted it. I have a rubbish memory, and it would be good to be able to `flick' to and fro the e-book more easily too. Don't see this as much of a problem though; like I say, I have a lousy memory, and I have been just fine with it.

A page number instead of a `percentage' place mark would be good..... although maybe this is available, and I haven't found it yet.

Ummm..... do you know, right now, I can't think of anything else.

I haven't tried it's read-aloud capability, nor it's audio music playing function...... in fact I've done nothing else but just reading the books on it, and there are plenty of free books available, particularly the older books now out of copyright. The other functions are icing on an already delicious cake.... It is a e-book reader, and it excels at that. It's what it was designed to do, and what I bought it for. It does that very well.

Buy a `protective' wallet for it on eBay..... so much cheaper and excellent.... Well the black `leather' case I bought for something like £7.99 inc. p&p was anyway. It's actually easier to hold in a case. The bottom function buttons are very SLIGHTLY fiddlier to use, but the page-turning buttons are as easily accessible as when it's naked. (That's the Kindle, as in out-of-it's-case, not me, y'know, `naked'!)

Whilst you’re on eBay, there are people selling DVD’s packed with books in ‘mobi’ format, which is the format the kindle uses. Many are also in PDF format, which I’ve heard isn’t as easy to read. Haven’t tried to read PDF’s yet myself, so hold judgement on that, ok? A cheap source of loads of books, but try and make sure you know what books are being offered so you don't buy a load of books you'll never read..... I guess if you only read a quarter on what's listed it's still a bargain.

The e-Book really is the future, and that actually kinda makes me sad, because if someone like me can make such a turnaround, ........someone so beloved of the traditional book and so outspoken that he would never prefer something like a kindle reader to the heft of those much loved book, ....... Then the printed book really is in trouble already.

And I feel like a traitor to the book, and I'm sorry for that, so I will still buy those really special books in traditional paper form, ……..but I have been seduced by this lovely Kindle reader.

I doubt you will be disappointed if you buy one. Easy to use, works as well as the blurb says, and the way Amazon have their bookselling tied into it, it is seamless in its function with them. I buy few things these days that turn out to match the bullshit advertising. This one was a lovely surprise. It was more than that….. it was BRILLIANT!

But .........I wish I didn't feel like I was helping to light the fire under my lovely paper books.

I am a traitor. {:oi

Click on this link and go have a little look..... not that you're going to buy one of course..... {:o)

The beauty of machines long gone,...... and the bikes we first loved.

2011-05-07T21:56:00.003+01:00

I was browsing and came across this lot on YouTube..... Marble and Ball Bearing Machines. I love these things.... real clever stuff.

This guy makes them very well........ look at his YouTube 'channel' list of vids (on the right side)

http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/7/K5MVNnVbWa8

Brilliant!!! balls land right in the exact spot every time. Shows a different return mechanism halfway through. Amazing stuff!!! {:o)
http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/29/6FLB-FcX0CY

Soooooo neatly made.....
http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/49/p6R7R33dE84

Real neat elastic band gun..... shows how it's mechanism works, about halfway through.
http://www.youtube.com/user/denha#p/u/26/nkqesLSXe4Q

Those of you who like to fix and 'make' things will especially be able to see the craftsmanship, difficulty and cleverness in making these things. Must be sooooo many prototypes made and much experimentation to get it just right. I'd love to know how he bends the wire so beautifully. No scrapes, no burrs, no kinks.

When I've got my shit together, (should I ever do so), I'm gonna make pointless things like this......just to sit there and watch and listen to it all working away.

Machinery of any kind working away is a pleasure to watch, or rather, these days, machinery that you CAN watch working...... everything now is hidden away from sight, and what machines there are available with a few visibly working parts are pretty ugly.

No brass, copper, and polished steel and alloy gleaming away any more. No oil and fuel minutely weeping from compression joints and housings and flanges. No hot metals gently marinating in the machine's juices seeping out here and there, spread with an oily rag as a watching mechanic wipes it away like a mother tending a child in need of her tender care.

No characteristic smells of those old machines. I cut my teeth, like all us Old Greasers, on old British bikes, and they were all pretty much the same. By the time yoofs like me got our deadly-keen hands on them, they had been through many hands before us, grading ever downwards from experienced hands when they were proud and shiny-new bikes, through those less able, to finally find themselves at the mercy of us youngsters. Keen as mustard, but knowing Sweet Bugger-All.

When we had our first bike, we yoofs of sixteen and younger, were not yet learned in the battle-hardened skills of Old Greasers, so essential to keep these bikes reliable and running as they should. Those poor bikes; the likes of the 175cc BSA Bantams, 250cc BSA C15's, 200cc Tiger Cubs and the like, they gave themselves up to us as cheap and worn out shadows of their new selves. Like old whores long since bereft of any traces of pride, they stood before us tired and jaded, having no choice but to turn tricks for us as we eagerly clutched at them and made clumsy love to them all.

Mine..... she was a 250cc Ariel Golden Arrow Sports, but with a shameful past. She had killed her previous lover.

He was riding it around a field, with no helmet as we all did back then, especially in fields and the like. His father heard the bike go quiet and after a while when it didn't restart he walked over to the field to find to find his son dead. He'd come off it and hit a tree and was lying beside the bike. The bike was undamaged and stayed there leaned against the hedge in shame to die itself, until one day my father took it away for me.

I was fifteen when I first had my eager hands on her and I loved that bike the way you love the first girl you adore. Every bit as much. My every waking moment was filled with thoughts and pure lust for her. I'd wanted her for years. I worked on her and made all my mistakes on her, both in working on her and riding her flat-out everywhere I went.

She taught me well, did that bike, like an older woman would nurture a youth in his clumsy loving of her. She kept me alive no matter how I abused both her and my luck. I rode absolutely flat-out on her everywhere until we both suddenly found ourselves with our luck clean run out one sunny morning. In a split second my life was changed forever. Riding back alone from Damar Bay to Wadebridge, in Cornwall where I lived, we suddenly found ourselves at the wrong place at the wrong time ......... and her second young lover was very nearly killed.

I was hit head-on by a green Mini Van which was overtaking on a blind corner. We were both doing around 60 to 70mph, and so it was a closing speed and an impact of around 120 to 140mph. I never even saw the colour of the car. I was smashed to bits, and made it to the hospital, so the surgeon told my poor Mother, with less than fifteen minutes to spare, and that it was a job to keep me alive.

My beloved Ariel Arrow died that day. Twisted and broken, no one ever rode her again. Never.

It wasn't her fault. Neither was it her fault when her other lover died. He made the mistake, not her. I didn't make a mistake, it was just fate choosing us to hang on the scales of chance with Death in the other pan.

Bikes, they never make the mistakes, they just struggle to keep us all alive and get us home again, despite our wildness and mistakes. So many since that old Ariel Arrow have looked after me and kept me safe, and I've loved every single one of them in return. Hoover most of them all.

God, ............that lot was upsetting to write. Always is. Some things never leave you, do they? God, I was so young. But for nothing, not the slimmest measurable thing, was I nearly dead at sixteen.

Then I did it all again at eighteen. Never once did I not want to ride again as soon as I could get a half-healed leg over a bike. Bikes and women...... you can't keep me from climbing back on before even the dust has settled. What else is there in life? Nothing. Good luck to you if you think there is.

Where was I, before I rolled along that old overgrown and rarely visited track?

Yes, ...... the beauty of machines and the way those old first bikes let us practise on them so we could learn to take care of later loves better. Ride them way better too. We learnt real fast. We were all so young and wild back in those days, and there was no choice but to learn the lessons quickly, those of us lucky enough to survive out on the roads to ride again the next day. Yup, that's pretty much no exaggeration, not for the wildest of us anyway. There was a saying, not unique to us I guess, but very apt nonetheless......

"There are only two kinds of Greaser; .......the Quick and the Dead".

I was Quick. (And, yes, a good bit lucky too)

K.xxx {:o)

Oh dear, ......he's gardening {:oI

2011-05-06T19:55:00.007+01:00

Hi y'all,

I can’t believe the last pathetic attempt to gee myself up into action and start writing on here regularly was so bleddy long ago.

Or that I failed so immediately either.

I am sooooo weak.

I’ve just done a Tweet Thing on the Tweeting Twitter Thing website…… I signed up and did a couple Tweet Things ages ago. Not really sure about the point of it really, but there we are. An Old Greaser has to at least attempt to keep abreast of these exciting times we live in. Anyway, if you’re desperately bored senseless, and want to stimulate a couple of brain cells, go you ahead and visit my Tweeting Twitter Thing.

It really will change your life………….

http://twitter.com/#!/slurryoffagrape

So………. What exciting news, here on the Fortress Wheelrest front?

Biggest thing…… lost my job……. Well, not as in ‘sacked’ or made redundant, but I finally just threw in the towel. It had got unbearable to carry on. Thirty-eight years caring for people, and poof……… it ends with a whimper.

So be it.

Fare thee well, fellow carers…… I’m gone. End of.

Unemployed whilst depressed is the new deal.

Hopefully it will, eventually, be just ‘unemployed’. Then maybe, eventually, I’ll find some way of making some dosh again…….. Everything is kinda ‘eventually’ in my life right now. I’m faintly having some very faint illusions of being faintly self-employed, although just how or doing what is even fainter in it’s clarity, but, hey ho, who knows what’s around the corner.

Who gives a shit…….. that’s what’s getting me through right now. Who gives a shit.

Ok, ………on a positive note….. a habit I’m trying to muster into my day to day way of being……… Positiveness……… On a positive note….. I’m trying to get a vegetable garden going.

A WHAT!!!!!?????
Yup, a vegetable garden. My New Thing….. An idea stimulated ‘cos Unemployment whilst depressed Plan ‘A’ entails living off savings in a minimal way for as long as possible in the hope that Something Will Come Along…….. I’m kinda thinking like the Calvary always did for good old John Wayne. What’s good enough for good old John Wayne, is good enough for me. Bound to happen. Always does on the films.

It doesn’t come easy to an Old Greaser, though. A vegetable garden is second only, and a very close second, to that of caravanning. I wish to be shot if I ever even get close to doing something other than using a caravan as another shed. The only thing I can think of as a honourable use for one besides that of living in one as a simple way of life. That’s ok too. The holiday towing-them-around-for-fun thing is quite something else……… still, everyone to their own perversions, so don’t get upset if it’s your thing. I just wish y’all didn’t bugger up the ‘flow’ for me and Hoover as we ‘press on’ in blissful harmony along our beloved blacktop.

Where was I? Yes the vegetable patch. There are two now…. Veg patch No.1 and, yes, you’ve guessed it…. Veg patch No.2

Veg Patch No.1 .....early on in the digging struggle.
Helluva job digging them over, and I’ve recently planted a few bits into the mud. Well, it wasn’t mud, but dry earth, until I thought it a good idea to water it before planting…… THEN it was proper mud. Like all my schemes that seem a good idea at the time, it suddenly wasn’t a good idea.

Never mind.

Life is a never-ending learning curve. (Sigh)

Some plant things I'd bought already growing in pot things from a garden centre. Not cheap either. A pot thing with four raspberry stick things in it..... over nine bleddy quit they were!!! Jeeees!!!!

Veg Patch No.1 ..... finished and with some evidence of plants attempting to grow.

What made it worse was the fact that I felt real odd in the garden centre. It wasn't natural for an Old Greaser.

Everyone knew it too. They were all staring, I’m sure-certain. I thought my dick was hanging out for a minute, but you can usually tell...... kinda cold and tingly on the end. I felt like saying “You lookin’ at my Bird?”, ......from habit, as you do, ..........but I was on my own. Right now I still haven’t got a Bird…… (that’s a Bird, as in a Chick). These are desperate times I'm living through, let me tall you. Even if I did have a Chick, somehow it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway,…. the "You lookin' at my Bird" thing...... Aggression in a garden centre just doesn’t work really, does it? Pretty much for the same reasons as it doesn’t in a Church ……… just not done, is it? So I didn’t get all iffy about it...…. just kinda pretended I was dreaming and wasn’t really there, all nonchalant and cool, but in fact was wandering around looking like a lost soul trying to figure out what was what.

I tell you, there’s a helluva lot to it y’know. God only knows how the planet ever got started, ‘cos you gotta do it just right, or the bleddy stuff won’t grow y’know. It’ll just keel over and die. I've read all about it I have. I tell you, it's way easier to do the timing on Hailwood's racing 250 Honda Six. In the dark too ………..with just an old pair of pliers and a bit of fag paper. Way easier. If you don’t know anything about it, that Honda had six cylinders, and believe me, it would be a right soduvajob to get the timing right with just an old pair of pliers and a bit of fag paper.

No, I’m not going to explain. Ask an Old Greaser …..if you can find one amongst the newbie fairies riding around in disguise these days.

So,........ 'Unemployed and Growing Vegetables'.

I’ve even…… and I sure would appreciate your discretion in this matter……… I’ve even purchased several gardening magazines. Just, y’know, to get the gist of it, and maybe gee-up something akin to enthusiasm for growing stuff. Got twelve six-pint milk bottle bottoms with various seeds growing way past the point where they should be ‘Pricked Out’........ ‘Pricked Out’ I believe it’s the correct term, so I hope you’ll excuse my using it, ………and please stop sniggering at the back there, Peterson…. It’s not smart and it’s not clever.

I fished out some lettuce seedlings from their overcrowded crowded milk tub yesterday(‘seedlings’…..see, I’m getting into it), and shoved them in the mud. Seemed like a waste of time…… they looked like they’d died as soon as I dragged them out of the cosy bit of compost they were huddled up in, and if they last a bleddy week, let alone actually grow, no one will be more amazed than me.

Ok, that’s it for now……. I rilly rilly WILL try and write to this blog more often. I won’t make any more promises to you, dear gentle reader, having been broken more than the once before, I won’t swear to every day, but maybe at least once a week wouldn’t bend a push-rod, eh?

Have to see………

Take care out there, y’all,
K.xxx {:o)

On Nothing....... and it's effects on life.

2011-01-12T15:49:00.000Z

Ok, here I am again…… as promised yesterday, but I have to say, only by the skin of my teeth.

Right, start writing………..

Um…… what exactly?

Just start writing about whatever comes to mind.

OK…………

Nothing.

Still Nothing.

Bugger.

What about ‘Nothing’?

Ok. (You’re talking to yourself again y’know)

Has Nothing got any power at all…….. most would say ‘No’……. BUT……

Doing Nothing is still doing Something, because if you’re doing Nothing instead of Something, it still changes your life. It STILL has an effect.

Everything changes your life

Every thought, every conversation, every action…….. and every non-action.

All life changing.

There is no doubt though that action, however small brings about the biggest changes, but in a way so does non-action too. It means you didn’t do Something that changed things at that moment, that day, or whenever. That means the effect of the action you will eventually take in the future will be different as a result, because of the non-action in the present.

What is Nothing anyway? I guess I mean Nothing as in No Action, rather than the Nothing we perceive in the vacuum of Space, the Universe…. Up and Out There. Even that isn’t Nothing. There is stuff everywhere.

There is no such thing as Nothing really. Nothing is always Something.

Nothing, in its purest form of inaction, must mean just lying, sitting or standing still, not thinking and with your eyes shut. How many can do that? Is it possible, unless in a comatose state? I doubt it, but maybe someone knows better.

If your eyes are open and seeing something, even a blank white wall, then that will promote some Thinking. If they’re shut, that will promote some Thinking too. Thinking is not doing Nothing……. and Thinking is vastly underrated as far as being regarded as action goes, in my opinion anyway.

Mind you, I would say that, being an enthusiastic follower of The Thinking as I am.

It’s a source of constant fascination to me, the effects of actions and non-actions on each of us and others too. You’re reading this and as a result, directly or indirectly, it might well have some effect on your life and perhaps in a way you will never consider or be aware of.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of Nothing, when I’m very aware I should be doing Something because I’m sat on the tracks in life right now and there’s a train coming my way. It’s not going to stop and I really should be taking some action, preferably actions, to at least get out of its way. The most I can muster to do is to try and keep my mind from sinking ever deeper into the mire that numbs it right now, which I know isn’t enough, but at least it’s some form of action, however small.

You do what you can do; you can’t do a whole lot more than that at any given time in life.

But I digress.

Ok, I’m trying to make myself feel better about doing Nothing, but in fact it’s real hard to actually achieve the state of really doing absolutely Nothing. Something is always happening in the background, even if It’s only The Thinking…….. and eventually The Thinking leads to doing Something. It pretty much has to.

I actually subscribe to the philosophy that it’s better to do Something, even if it’s the Wrong Thing.

That’s all very well and good, BUT sometimes it can put you in an even worse position than you were in before; maybe one that is murder-hard to put right, or even just to get back to where you were before doing the Wrong Thing in the first place. That’s where doing Nothing can sometimes actually be the best thing.

Right now doing Nothing is giving me the space to not have to handle the inevitable consequences of doing Something, and if you know you can’t handle the consequences, and have the slack to hold back until you can, well doing Nothing can be the best thing to do

Doing Nothing will still, therefore, change your life.

It’s changing mine right now.

Please, God, for the better.

Kx {:o)

The lies we're told..........

2011-01-11T17:40:00.000Z

Ok, gonna try and write to this every day, but quite how to write anything worth the while, let alone reading, is quite another thing.

Mad Eddie from the States says I’ve gotta write something in a journal every day, so it might as well be on here as anywhere.

Ummmmm………….

Thinking……………..

Still thinking………… {:o*

Pete called in, and we’ve, yet again, been wondering how I can survive once I’ve plucked up the courage to tell ‘Them’ to stuff the job…… that’s the job that’s been driving me nuts for the last fifteen years.

Fifteen years.

Think about that.

Ok, never mind……. I will.

That’s at least how long this job has been having a serious effect on my mental state, and so my life here at home. Someone asked me recently why I didn’t leave years ago when I first knew it was screwing me up?

Well, the answer is, I didn’t know at any given moment in time that it was…….. not to the extent that it has. Each and every day was just a drip into the can that was tipping the scales against me. It was my job….. the only one I knew how to earn a living at, and it paid out every month for the privilege of doing exactly what it wanted to do to me. Each month I took that money, and allowed those in authority over me to do it all again for the next month, and the next, and the next………

It’s like a hypnosis, a paralysing hypnosis, where you believe, as I still do now, that you can do nothing against the hold it has on you. You have your bills to pay. You have the things that you like to do, and they all have to be paid for too. The Man wants your taxes to pay for the mechanisms to keep you in line…….. so you keep going.

You were brought up to believe that if you work hard, behave decently and are honest, you will be rewarded.

You will be regarded with integrity, and your efforts will be honoured above those who fall short of those standards.

The hypnosis that started as a child has you prisoner, as do the financial constrictions you willingly pull around you as you gather more and more of the moss of possessions all around you like a cloak.

Then you finally realise it was all a big lie.

You see bastards succeeding with deceit and betrayals, and you realise most of them are above you laughing all the way to the bank; comfortably doing less than you are to hold them up there above you. Telling their lies every day to comfortably pad their nests out even more.

You stand and tell the truths about whom they are and what they’re doing, and no one above you listens, even though they know you speak the truth, and you feel the injustice of it all.

You look around…… and they’re all at it, in every walk of life…….. those at the top, doing it to those under them, and it’s happening everywhere.

You despair.

You wish you’d seen this years ago when you wee young and could’ve fought back.

You try and throw in the towel……… but it’s hard.

They keep paying you at the end of the month to carry on……. month after month after month, and the fear of not making it through a month without that financial carrot to chew on holds you like a quicksand.

How many lives….. good lives, have been sacrificed for the bad to succeed?

Failed......... {:o(

2011-01-04T18:37:00.001Z

Hi y’all,
Yup, failed to do the Nanowrimo, and failed miserably at that.
Work stress stuff has crippled me yet again, and I’m on a slide that’s likely to result in unemployment sometime pretty damn soon.
Ideas as to how I can earn a living on a postcard please…..
I keep thinking of self employment, but will need a shedload more gumption than I’ve been displaying in my sad life of recent years…… can’t even maintain the blogging habit on here, let alone employ myself gainfully.

Can you make a living selling on eBay?

Make stuff and sell it on eBay???, …. woodturned stuff, wooden puzzles? kids toys? Rocking horses, soldered glasswork, jewellery

Become a Photographer? Visiting peoples homes, and maybe weddings if I get good enough???

I dunno.

More Thinking required, much confidence, .........and MUCH more effort too.

Right now, just sitting on the tracks watching the train approaching……..
K.x {:oI

Nanowrimo starts today............

2010-11-01T10:13:00.008Z

Hi y'all,
well Nanowrimo starts today, and I'm doing all the writing avoidance things to not get going........... getting this damn laptop updated and working again after not using it all summer, being the main one.

Sun's out, and I should be Out There........... got the guttering to clear for Gill today sometime, ........ she's my mate Restless Richard's Chick, and I'm sure it would be a Good Idea if I got my finger out and had a practice run up at the job by clearing my guttering, and fixing up all the bleddy leaks in it, the biggest being the missing end cap.

Can I be bothered though...... somehow it's always easier to do other peoples stuff........... you ever noticed that? Maybe that's because it's somehow more satisfying to help someone else. I dunno.

Life is but a mystery, and I really should give up trying to figure it all out, don't you think? :o)

Anyhow, anything with Richard is a right bleddy laugh, and in the event it will be more fun than I think clearing guttering can ever be.

None of this is getting words out for my Nanowrimo though is it. Going to do a ghost story, methinks........ just for the fun of it........ like Lovely Bones, that film 'Ghost', and another book I read a while ago, the name of which escapes me.

Right, I'm off to at least open Word, and save a document with the working book title at least. :o)

On Trailer Matters............

2010-09-22T10:22:00.008+01:00

Hi there, my neglected blog-reader………

Mind you, I doubt there is one who checks it out these days, since bugger-all gets loaded up on here from me lately. There is hope, though…….. Nanowrimo time is looming up on the horizon again, starting as it does every year on the first of November, and I’m going to try at least to write more often to this Blog by way of getting back into the writing groove again. I damn nearly said ‘every day’, but knowing how my best of intentions pretty much fall by the wayside these days, saved face by using the looser term, ‘more often’. Since once a month would technically fall under that umbrella of commitment, so that kinda guarantees some chance of fulfilling an evident promise of intent, yes?

Sat in the garden today, having failed miserably to do what any man of strength would do, and follow last night’s resolve to get Out There and carry on with The Trailer. “The Trailer?”, I hear you ask yourself in awe of what this can mean. What wondrous flurry of activity has been missed during this spell of non-communication with my fellow man (and woman) out there in Blogland?

Yup, as you suspected, I’m doing Great Works in the workshop, even though at a snail’s pace of a few hours here and there. I’ve had an old trailer of four foot wide by six foot long stuck away for something like sixteen years, and finally got around to getting it ‘done up’ to sell on ebay. It needed mudguards, tailboard with lights, number plate etc, tow-hitch, new tyres, and painting to make it sellable but, in The Thinking About It, I somehow decided to lengthen it, keep it and sell my old faithful trailer which I made about twenty-five years ago.

The old one was a bit narrow at three-foot three inches, and could do with being longer than it’s seven-foot too (that’s too as in ‘too’, not ‘two’, ok?). So, with much enthusiasm…….. ok, SOME enthusiasm, …….. I set about this old trailer I was going to just tart up and sell, cut the tail section off and welded in a metre to extend it to its present length of nine foot-three inches. (I know I don’t need to tell you girls (who may still be reading this) how much difference three inches can make.) You can see that I struggle to go completely Metric, and so mix the old Imperial and new Metric measurements, which, believe me, can lead to some bleddy Great Mistakes in making things in the workshop. It was going to be just a fraction over eight foot, but I thought “What the hell, an extra foot could come in real handy.”, and so there it is; nine foot-three inches.

As with most things in life, things aren’t as simple as you might think, and so it’s taking a while to get finished. For a start, the axle needs to be moved, or the thing will be tail-heavy, I want it to be easily as useful as the excellent smaller trailer so I’m strengthening it, welding on hooks all around the bottom, altering the tail-gate to be more user-friendly, adding a ladder-rack at the front, and am going to make provision to secure a big bike inside it, should the need arise.

Photo labeled before the bottom rail was replaced (See photo below)

Ok, that’s enough boring stuff for one day…….. I’ll bore you with some more another day, real soon(ish), and will get back to my book….. Duncan Bannatyne’s ‘Anyone Can Do It’. (I wish!) Lovely warm, sunny underpants-only day, and I’m using the justification for being sat on my ass in the sun, of it being the last warm day we’re likely to see now Autumn is pretty much here.

Wherever you are…… hope it’s all going ok. If it isn’t, chin up…… tomorrow’s another day. :o)

Something, instead of Nothing........... :o)

2010-07-31T12:57:00.003+01:00

Not much going on right now……. Hasn’t been for a while.

Just thought I’d say Something rather than Nothing, but I guess there’s not a lot of difference between the two which means I might as well not bother, but I am, so that’s Something I guess.

So here’s to Something.

Wrote to my buddy mad Eddie in the States today……… well, last night too actually. Today was in response to him answering right away. He’s been on a downer lately and the once long,-deep-and-regular emails have dropped off for a while now. Mainly my fault I guess; plodding and struggling through life’s thick mud as I’ve been doing for a while now kinda leads me to ‘not bothering’ with a load of things I really should be bothering with.

‘Not bothering’ is kinda misleading though……… it smacks of those things ‘not bothered’ with being unimportant to me. Couldn’t be further from the truth really. Depression kills your life. Kills everything within shouting distance of it too. Kills friendships. Kills passions. Kills your job. Even kills your doctor’s patience too, if you refuse the mind-and-dick-debilitating medication which fails to cheer-up seventy percent of those who swallow it.

Kills the fucking lot really.

Mine’s from my job, and it’s not bad enough to have me curled up in a ball, but it’s bad enough that I can’t be bothered, unless I have to on someone else’s behalf. Work mostly. Which keeps me topped up nicely, thanks.

It’s the bullshit that's increasing in a way that would’ve been unimaginable a few years ago. Actually, it’s still bleddy unimaginable. These son’bitch weenies, all sat in their cosy offices are pissing on us all down here. As if we didn’t have enough of it to clear up as it is. I am often overwhelmed with their ingenuity, and ability to treat the ridiculous as entirely reasonable and practicable.

Anyway……… enough. I’m on a day off, and if I don’t watch it I’ll spend it walking around here having a bleddy good row with the buggers.

So, there’s Something, instead of Nothing.

Now, I’m off to do Nothing.

Y’all have a good day doing Something.

Or Nothing.

Either way, don't feel bad doing it, ok? :o)

Kxxx :o)

Sadly neglected.............

2010-03-03T20:51:00.003Z

It’s the only way to describe my poor old blog.

Sorry Blog, but I’ve been distracted of late, and would make with a stinging nettles and the flogging, but there is a dearth of them, being in the midst of winter such as we are. Be assured, though, that I will rectify the matter with the oncoming of Spring, and meanwhile will make every attempt to write to you far more often.

Trouble is……. writing long emails as lately has taken some steam from the boiler.

I was hoping the muse would kick min if Io started some mindless rambling, but so far not much is going on………. Half watching a film doesn’t help a whole lot I guess. It’s “Becoming Jane”……… about Jane Austen before she was a successful writer……. I turned over to it at random from a crappy cooking contest program…….. one of the plethora that cascades from the telly these days by way of national entertainment.

Anyway……. it’s a good film, and it sure highlights the lot of women back in those days. Having an opinion about anything was considered such a wrong. Even to an Old Chauvinist Greaser like me it defies belief. I’m frequently in despair of what this country is turning into, but when you really think of the reality that we’ve left behind from the ‘good old days’, well, there was a lot wrong, for sure-certain. You either had, or you had not……… boy do we ever have it easy these days.

What is a real pity is why the things that were good had to be sacrificed and squandered so completely to make way for the things that were so wrong to be put right…….. if you see what I mean.

Why is that?

Maybe it’s the momentum of a ‘pendulum’ in all things, in that it has to swing to and fro and only settles on the middle when the energy to push it ceases to be.

The nature of a pendulum being what it is, though……….. sitting in a rested middle means it ceases to be a pendulum, and just becomes a useless weight.

I guess it just has to swing, at whatever price.

Nite,K.x :o)

Women make it complicated......... (but it's kinda ok.) :o)

2009-10-25T15:29:00.006Z

I wrote this a while ago………. Took it out of an email I was writing at the time, and made it stand up on it’s own. Go on……… tell me I’m wrong. :o)

Women make it complicated

That's the one thing that worries me about getting the love of my life.......... women have a gift for making things real complicated......... for example, you fancy something to eat, and they start insisting you heat your beans in a saucepan, transfer them to a clean plate, add lettuce, cabbage, cucumber and stuff like that, and lord knows what else. Most of it has to be bloody opened / peeled / washed/ cracked / prised / sliced / diced / grated / mashed / tossed / whipped / stirred / folded / buttered / oiled/ fried/ boiled/ blanched/ grilled and heated in many other weird ways, and in several other saucepans, casserole dishes, you-name-it, too.

Then you gotta make up some gravy / sauces / dressings and things called ‘garnishes’; I ask you, what’s a bleddy garnish? All this makes a helluva mess, and so then you’ve gotta wipe up all the clutter, clean the damn chopping board(s) (just the one will never do!), and all the stuff you used to mutilate, sorry ‘prepare’ the food.

Even though you’ve been up to your elbows in soap and water for half the day, you have to wash your hands for the tenth time, get out knives / forks / spoons / chopsticks and other things you never knew existed before you met her, and lay the damn table, using a nice white Irish linen cloth. That’s the one that has to be washed every time you as much as look at it, and not to mention ironed as well afterwards.

I mean…… IRONING a table cloth??? Jees!

Then, because it’s now fast becoming a ‘romantic’ meal, when you thought it was just ‘fancy something to eat’ you gotta turn the telly off, find the candles, fix them in the holder, and light the soddin' things. Bugger, burnt your fingers. Now you gotta run your hand under the cold tap, and suffer the indignity of being told you're “such a baby” into the bargain, and not to make a fuss 'cos it can't hurt THAT much, (It bleddy well DID!) as she holds your hand under the tap with all the grip of a hairy-assed Sumo wrestler. Strength mysteriously absent when she didn't have the strength to carry the four-tons of shopping she made you bloody buy yesterday, and on your day off too.

Then you gotta dry your hand in a clean towel, get told off for getting garage grease and stuff under your nails, then get a real bollicking for being vulgar, when you nuzzle up close to her scented long neck and suggest to her that dipping them in some fresh, warm, Pussy Juice would get it off it real easy. Her sensitivity is pretty rich considering she spent half of last night with her legs over your shoulders, shouting “FUCK ME!! FUCK ME!!” to the neighbours.

There were you, thinking that it was what you were doing all along, surprised and dismayed that she hadn't noticed you were doing your bloody best! She shouted “DON’T STOP, DON’T STOP!”, so you’d tried to get a few more revs up, without falling out and missing a stroke, despite the cramp in your left calf and splitting a couple of toenails scrabbling for some grip with the other leg on the damn slippery black silk sheets. The ones she suggestively mentioned would be soooo sexy. The ones you knew bloody well were going to be trouble the second you looked at the price tag, as you coolly flourished the plastic to impress her with your New Man Spares No Expense style.

Anyway, by the time she's got the Burneeze cream out, and struggled with the plasters that won't stick because of the overzealous application of the cream plastered on your fingers, everything has gone all to pot, quite literally. The gravy's gone all weird, the stuff you opened / peeled / washed/ cracked / prised / sliced / diced / grated / mashed / tossed / whipped / stirred / folded / buttered / oiled/ fried/ boiled/ blanched/ grilled and heated in many other weird ways, and in several other saucepans/ casserole dishes/ you-name-it, has gone all to hell too, and the candles have dripped wax all over the bloody Irish linen white thing you'd been forced to spread on the table.

She’s started to knock up something else, to replace the burnt stuff, and for sure-certain you can feel a good few more laps of kitchen-based domesticity coming up. You resign yourself, and start to scrape the burnt pans, after being told not to "just-stand-there-looking-at-it-if-you-hadn't-made-all-that-fuss-and-been-more-careful-in-the-first-place-it-wouldn't-have-burnt". Your helpful suggestion that maybe if you could “sort-of-just-stir-it-all-together-and-see-what-it-tastes-like, babe”, meets with a disgusted “Don’t be stupid; you can’t do that!”.

“Actually you can”, you think to yourself, but know full well that such thoughts won’t overwhelm her powerful Girl-Logic software systems, and so you strategically keep the thought secreted well away from the Brain-to-Mouth short circuit, that has dropped you right in it so often before.
At long last, after a repeat of the whole performance, you finally sit down to eat. You find yourself thinking “What a bleddy price to pay for a regular shag”, and just in time shut the thought down in blind panic, only too aware of her sensitive telepathic and intuitive skills. The ones have seen right into your thoughts so many times in the past. HOW does she do that?
Then there’s trying to see what you're doing in the soft, dimpsy candlelight, whilst attempting to look into her eyes romantically, and not spoil it by being a wuss, and wincing at the pain of the damn fork pressing into your burnt fingers. When you see how she is looking back at you, you realise, with the fixed grin that you desperately try to warm up, that lovemaking that night is going to call on every ounce of proficiency you have at your disposal.

Too late, she’s triggered your simple and hair-triggered Primary Man Circuits. The Member for Bathpool is stirring, albeit pretty half heartedly like mortally wounded old soldier making one last effort to rise up and salute the distant call of the Bugle; loyal to a fault, and willing to fling himself into the breech one last time for Honour and Valour. You find yourself wishing, not for the first time, that you’d avoided introducing the Ferret again that morning, close thing though it was, after climbing aboard twice last night. Doesn’t she realise the damn Well isn’t bottomless? “Not really” is the obvious answer, by that look of “You’re going to be a Lucky Boy tonight!” in her Make-Sure-He-Notices furtive glances at you.

Then she goes and reaches up and does that thing with her hair. The thing she does without knowing how it leaves you helpless, and at her mercy every single time. With an inward sigh of contented resignation you smile at her, knowing she’s always going to have her way without even trying.

Still, you remembered dreaming of one day meeting a gorgeous nymphomaniac just like her, but sometimes realise it’s resulted in life being much more complicated, and an awfully long way off the simple life you once enjoyed. For instance; Getting up out of the armchair when the adverts start, opening a tin of beans, shoving a spoon into the tin, and back to sit down again before the film kicks in again.

Food.

Done in a jiffy,………..and if you lick the spoon clean, absolutely no washing up.

Simple.

Quick.

No Wucking Forries! :-)

© Kevin Udy.

2009-10-06T15:07:00.004+01:00

Have just received my new Microsoft keyboard from Amazon, a bargain at £11.95 inc vat and p&p, and bought to help with the Nanowrimo thing. The laptop and the board it sits on (to keep cooling vents free and unblocked) weighs a bit heavy on the old knees after a few hours, so just having the keyboard alone on my lap helps a lot. It’s a wired USB keyboard…… maybe I should’ve got a wireless one. Maybe I will, and use this one on the computer upstairs. Maybe. :o)

Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000B9OIIU/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

This is an ergonomic keyboard, in as much as the keys are curved at something like six degrees upwards each side, and although I only type with two fingers…….. despite my intentions to learn to touch-type……… it’s surprising how you find yourself hitting the wrong keys when they’re arranged and spaced even only a little differently. The slightly more comfortable position for the hands to sit over the ‘home keys’ night make the touch-typing a bit easier I guess, so I should persevere with the practice lessons I guess.

Not a whole lot happening here at Fortress Wheelrest. I’ve been practising on the model plane flight training software, and am a lot better than I was to start with. I can take off and land ok now, turn, level out, swap left for right when the plane is coming back towards me again, which is the big thing that’s hard to grasp without too much ‘thinking’ whilst the plane goes straight into the ground. I can loop fly upside down ok(ish), throw it about, doing some aerobatics, and recover straight and level afterwards, but the intuitive and instinctive stick movements are a looooong way off as good as they need to be. It still goes into the ‘virtual’ ground fairly regularly. This flying training software has already paid for itself in saved crashed to get me as good as I am so far.

Ok, that’s it for today……… not worth the reading really, but since no-one's reading it, (unless the visitor counter's faulty), ………who cares? :o)
K.x :o)

On buying cheer-up stuff, and new hobbies....................:o)

2009-09-30T00:56:00.010+01:00

Hi Y’all,
I’ve kinda fallen off the blogging for about a week now…….. had some crap from work that put me in a dive, and took the wind out of my sails a good bit. Pile-of-shit job dominated by weenies. Not that it’s by any means unique in that description these days; I guess a good few of you could say the same thing, so Enough Said.

The result has been no writing. Stopped dead in it’s tracks.

In an attempt to drag myself back up to some altitude, I’ve been doing The Usual and been throwing money I can't afford at buying stuff I don't really need, to cheer me up. In effect, buying cheer-up presents for moi, ..............and y’all will know by now that I LOVE presents! :o)

I do it all the time, even though I know it only achieves a few things……… none of which were the primary aim………..
1) Blows a lot of (very) hard-earned cash
2) Clutters this place up even more than it already is.
3) Cheeses me off even more when I have to face up to what it’s cost to be ‘lifted’ for such a short time.
4) Often breeds a New Hobby, which adds to the pressure to enjoy yet another one I don’t have the energy or time for.

I wonder how many, or rather, how ‘few’ men do this? I say ‘men’ because have a feeling the ‘few’ are mostly men. I work with women, have done for something like 37 years, and find that very few have ‘hobbies’. Many read, probably more than men do, but few have any other interests. Not many have the traditional interests of sewing and knitting, few draw or paint, and certainly those that indulge in the traditionally ‘male’ stomping grounds are like hen’s teeth. Bleddy rare.

So, as far as I can tell, it’s mostly men who have hobbies, and they tend to have one or two that they stick to. How many gather them up like swept leaves like I do, and keep them all, ready and waiting to be dipped into? I have what I call Option Paralysis …………. Having so many options, that the effect is to be spread too thinly and so not really doing or enjoying any of them, but at the same time feeling the pressure that having invested in them all, I SHOULD be doing them.

Part of it is definitely a cheer-up strategy, and that I think comes from spending so much time alone, and in particular having no woman………. a ‘hobby’ that supersedes all others, cheers like no other, and somehow has the catalytic effect on me of inspiring me to be more active and finding the energy to do all these hobbies. A Woman is a very special thing to have in your life, but she sure does have to be the right sort of woman.

Quite a few aren’t content until their man is well and truly in harness, and pulling for all he’s worth too. That suits many, and I’m the last to say it’s always a bad thing, but it is for me, that’s all. It’s why I’m alone……… I won’t settle with someone who is wrong for me, and not just for my own sake either. If she’s a mismatch for me, then it follows that I’m a bad blend of man for her. Depending on who compromises the most, or if neither do, it’s a rough ride, and a waste of two lives.

If that sounds like I’m a selfish pig you’ve read it wrong. Read it again, and think about it.

So, throwing money at stuff, and a new hobby. I was already blowing a small fortune on writing books to keep myself enthused about the Nanowrimo writing marathon in November, ( http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ), then No-Problem-Pete got interested in buying a Radio Controlled (RC) Model Aeroplane. A Hobby Zone Super Cub, to be more precise.

Oh dear.

Some of you will know what's coming..................

Cut a long story short, he bought one…….. actually he bought two on Ebay, kinda accidentally. He’d bid on two to make sure he got one, but unfortunately that strategy backfired, and he wound up with both of them. Both were brand new, and are ‘electric, powered by a battery electric motor instead of the nitro engines, which is pretty much the same as a petrol engine. Of the two he bought on Ebay, one has an uprated, higher voltage battery pack, and so a bit more powerful, which was the one he got flying with.

He was doing very well, until a big crash the forth time out, when the radio control lost all contact due to interference from another source somewhere nearby. It went over on it’s back, and dived smack into the ground, breaking in half just ahead of the tail and also breaking up the battery compartment and the nose cone. It’s all been all glued up, some parts replaced, and is ready to fly again, so all is not lost.

I had a go with it for a couple of minutes on it’s first flight, and was absolutely bleddy useless, so I’ve bought a Mode 2 (Most comon control configuration in the UK) £20 flight training simulator for the computer, called RC Plane Master by Reality Craft.

http://www.marionvillemodels.com/computer-simulators/RealityCraft-RC-Planemaster-Flight-Simulator/product.aspx

It comes complete with a control box that is exactly the same as the control boxes used in flying these model planes, and so I will be able to get some ‘stick time’ in before flying for real. That way, I’ll hopefully gain some reactive skills without smashing up the relatively expensive plane.

Oh yes, …………. you guessed, didn’t you?

I bought the other plane off N-P-Pete, and also ordered a ‘Disaster Crash Pack’ of spares too (because the inevitable will definitely happen). It includes all the major parts likely to be damaged in a crash, apart from the complete fuselage……… and some glue, and a spare battery pack so I can get more flying in whilst the battery is being recharged.

Here’s a YouTube vid of one flying, and flown by someone who’s pretty good at it too.
Believe me, it’s far from easy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeB3sP-rVYQ&feature=related

There’s quite a few vids on these things flying, and some with on board video cameras, which look brilliant. You can fit floats in place of the wheels to take off and land on water, and even skis for snow.

So, another hobby which I need like a hole in the head. (Some would say that would be a good idea, actually) Well, actually, not quite a ‘new’ hobby, but one I’d got into a bit a good few years ago now, when I bought a Precedent Hi Boy petrol engine kit RC trainer plane. I part built the fuselage, fizzled out, and it’s still hanging in the lounge from one of the beams in the ceiling. Much inspired again, I’ll learn on the spanking new Super Cub, and then get the Hi Boy finished, and converted to ‘electric’, and fly it at long last.

Why electric? Well the internal combustion (IC) engines are very noisy, and so there are fewer places you can fly them, whereas electric powered planes are far quieter, even the ‘noisy’ ones. IC engines tend to be messier, and more troublesome at times too, or so I’m told anyway. Modern electronics, motors and batteries have made electric far more powerful than the previous components were, and so electric is now a viable option compared to some years ago when I first bought the Precedent Hi Boy. It’s a heavy plane though, so I need to learn a lot to be able to choose a suitable electric motor and battery set-up for it.

Hand’s up who’s bored half to death by now?

My apologies. :oI

Well, it’s nearly one-thirty in the morning, and I should be in the sack.

Nite nite y’all.
K.x :o) (Just a reminder……….. the ‘x’ is exclusively for you chicks who might be reading this!) :o)

Word-count practice month is up today.........

2009-09-22T12:28:00.002+01:00

Word count is 6,162 over target. :o)

Total.......56,162

Will start all over again with a new practice word-count month tomorrow...........
K.x :o)

Laugh-out-loud books........... and one in particular. :o)

2009-09-22T09:05:00.004+01:00

Hi Y’all,
I’ve been reading a rare book, ….. One that really made me laugh right out loud.

A lot of books have reviews by people who describe how a book had them ‘laughing out aloud’, and quite often by People Of Note, sometimes on behalf of Publications Of Note,. Sometimes the book was so funny, evidently, that such an open display of humour was unavoidable in public.

Well, that’s as may be, and far from it for me to doubt the truth of the reviewer, but quite honestly I find few books really are that funny. Most are quite funny, but those that really make you do more than chortle, smile, or interrupt the natural breathing rhythm to shove out a reverse sniff from the nostrils are quite rare. Maybe it’s just me who finds that, but I suspect not.

The book which has had me laughing aloud, and to the point of moist eyes a few times, is Rich Hall’s ‘I Blame Society’

To some extent I think it was helped by my having his ‘voice’ in my head pretty much all the time I was reading it. Made all the easier because it’s written in a dialect which kinda makes it hard not to ‘hear’ him in your mind, and that dry way he has of telling a yarn, assuming you’ve seen his stand-up performances, and/or other appearances on TV. I’ve recently seen him on our British comedy quiz show, ‘QI’, hosted by the amazing Stephen Fry, so that may well have been the reason his voice was speaking to me.

It didn’t have me laughing all the time by any means, and certainly not aloud every time I did laugh, but I couldn’t go very far without something funny hitting home. The other day, (the pebble collecting day), I sat on the beach and absolutely howled with laughter a good few times. I rocked back and lay there laughing for a minute, dried my eyes and sat up to read the same bit again, only to burst out laughing and repeat the performance.

It was a pretty empty beach. Just as well. Undignified behaviour for an Old Greaser.

Now, before you get the impression that I’m claiming this to be a great work of literature, I’m not. Partly because it isn’t in ‘classic’ terms, but also because I wouldn’t exactly be qualified to make such a judgement. To be honest, I hold a personal view that a great work of literature could be anything that intensely amuses the reader, is especially fluid and easy to read, and fills your head with what was intended by the author. Still, that’s not the point………. I’m not qualified to judge, that being generally the preserve of the finely educated.

Anyway…….. to quote Amazon’s synopsis:-

‘Married six times, all to women named Brenda, Otis Lee Crenshaw's bourbon-fuelled odyssey takes him from the high mountains of East Tennessee to the bottom of the music charts. A man not above faking his own death to sell more records, this is his not quite true story of romance, recidivism, country music, and an unshakable belief in Marriage at First Sight.’

Ok, so that’s generally the gist of the book, but in amongst it all are some wisdoms, and here is where I wished I’d noted the page numbers where I read them, but I didn’t, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. You will probably have to be the sort of person who ‘thinks’ a lot about life, has been hammered by it at times (and who hasn’t, bar the very fortunate?….. Or perhaps less fortunate, I guess.), and can think a bit sideways at times too.
There was one morsel that tickled me, and I had been dying to try it out on someone since I read it……….. I was at work yesterday, and got my chance. Someone (We’ll call her Cheryl, shall we?) was going on about something or another, bless her. Some detail of out working day that was to be set in concrete as it tends to be these days. There were a few staff around to be amused by my great wit, and so I took a risk……….

“So, I’ve moved all the furniture around and it should be better for you all now”

“Cheryl, do you hear that?”

“What, I don’t hear anything?”

“Exactly, Cheryl, because that’s the sound of nobody giving a shit”

Everybody laughed, mainly because I was laughing my head off, and I JUST got away with it. It was a real close thing, because ‘Cheryl’ is Quite an Important Person, and knew she shouldn’t really be seen to see the funny side of it. It was ok because she knew it wasn’t meant spitefully, and I was just getting a laugh out of it.

Getting away with it. My biggest kick since I was born. :o)

Not so great when I come a cropper though, but isn’t that the measure of how good something feels………….. how bad the downside is. How dark the flip-side of the coin.

Sorry, rambling away.

Maybe I’ve read this at just the right time, in just the right mood, and so it floated my boat, I dunno. I read another of his books, called ‘Things Snowball’ a while ago, and can’t remember clearly, but don’t think it had me laughing as much as this one did. I must have a look for it, and read it again. Different things ‘fit’ us at different stages of our lives.

I’ve actually gone and rummaged around for ‘Things Snowball’, found it after ages wandering around my books, muttering, “I bleddy KNOW it’s here somewhere”, but not being able to see it anywhere. You know when you can ‘see’ where it is in your mind’s eye, but when you look there, it’s ‘gone’.

I suddenly found inspiration, and went delving into The Big Box, so called because it’s a real big box, yanking all the books out, finding it wasn’t there, and then and not being able to pack the same number of books back in again. There’s a lesson to be learnt there, and one I’ve learnt and seemingly repeatedly forgotten; never be too efficient in your box-packing/storing/tidying, because if you don’t leave some slack, you’ll never do such a good job when you go and take something out, and so The Untidiness will start all over again.

Always leave some slack in your efficiency!

In the end, after looking absolutely EVERYWHERE, I found it two books down from the top of the stack on the floor by the bedside cabinet. I KNEW I’d see the bleddy thing recently!

You know what it’s like when you find a book, especially one you’ve driven yourself to the edge of what sanity you have left, and believe me I can scarce afford to go anywhere near that precipice; you just have to start skimming though, and reading at least bits of it, don’t you? I ended up reading a few chapters ……… and, sure enough, ………… nope, nothing like as funny.

Funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny, as the reviewer on the back cover from The Scotsman claimed. Still we all find different humour funny, and so maybe these reviews, including my opinion here, aren’t worth reading. You just have to suck it and see. (Stop it!)

So, as per the usual, I guess I’m wasting everybody’s time here today.

Sorry (sigh) :oI

Ok, that’s enough…….. it was just going to be a few lines.

Y'all know how it is.........
K.x :o)

Remember 'J' and 'R'........... and 'S and 'A', ........please.

2009-09-20T23:22:00.001+01:00

Remember my good friend, ‘J’, whose husband ‘R’ is critically ill with Cancer?

If you do, how about stopping still for a minute, and sending a few positive and good thoughts Out There to them both in their living hell. Please, ……………it doesn’t take long. If you don’t remember them, scroll down to the blog I wrote here on 15 September. ............ Then send out those thoughts.

And for S too, who’s having to do the hardest thing and have her beloved horse, ‘A’ put down this coming Friday.

Spare some thoughts for both ‘S’ and ‘A’ too will you, and especially on Friday.

I think these thoughts, and prayers if you pray, carry more weight than we can ever know.

Thankyou
K.xxx :o)

Word count to date.......

2009-09-20T11:29:00.003+01:00

52,727 word total reached today.

Two days to spare..............

2009-09-19T19:56:00.002+01:00

50,556 words.
Beaten the practice 50,000 word count with 2 days to spare! :o)

End of day word count.............

2009-09-18T21:35:00.003+01:00

Getting there……….
2,858 words today,
Word count now 48,538,
Only a measly 1,462 words to go before 22nd September!

Easy peasy, good as done! :o)
K.x :o)

Books………. and my kinky affliction :o)

2009-09-18T14:14:00.009+01:00

Hi Y’all,
I was stood at the back door waiting for the kettle to boil for yet another cuppa, (not that that has any bearing on it) and got to thinking of my books, and not in the least the ridiculous amount I’ve spent on them this month alone …….. the last two months actually. Just had the visa bill this morning. It was not a cheery sight. (sigh)Anyway, these books……….. I have an embarrassing amount of them here at Fortress Wheelrest, and all the more embarrassing because there are more sitting there unread than I care to admit to, so I’d appreciate your keeping that to yourself in respect of my revealing such a confession to you. :oI

This month the book buying frenzy is all around collecting around me, a plethora of inspiring writing books. I rationalise The Madness by telling myself I'm about to make something of a breakthrough as a Much Acclaimed Author in November, when I do the NaNoWriMo thing. I’ve mentioned it here several times, but in case you haven’t read through the blog, or don’t intend to, ………… nanowrimo is a 'competition' where everyone registered to the website (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) attempts to write a first draft of a novel, screenplay, whatever, and completes a minimum of 50,000 words in the month of November every year.

No money, or any other prizes to be won, just the satisfaction of being a NaNoWriMo Winner if you succeed. So, ......loads of inspirational, and how-too books are descending through the letterbox at irregular intervals to feed this enthusiasm in the long run-up I'm taking to November. I shall then be raising the drawbridge here at Fortress Wheelrest, and repelling all boarders with a bleary-eyed "Bugger-Off-I'm-Busy", Fair Maidens being the only ones granted an audience, which shouldn't take up much of my precious writing time, given the dearth of them clawing at the door these days. :o) (sigh)

So this writing focus I’m swept away with right now, is responsible for my purchasing just about any book on writing worthy of note and praise. Believe me, that’s no idle boast either. Splintering off from that, are the temptation of several books found whilst browsing away, some of which are books of short stories; something else I intend to get 'into', compose, and maybe even sell, who knows.

Short-story competitions would be good to enter too, but as usual taking the first steps are the hardest of obstacles to climb over. Those first steps being the first to progress beyond writing the odd thing for myself, and the long emails I send to a few close friends, and the online chicks I dare to try and find a match with. Boy, have I ever cast a few hundred thousand written words onto the hot sandy wasteland that is Trying To Impress A Woman. Still, that’s the nature of the beast I guess. :o)

Achieving a ‘winner’ status in November’s Nanowrimo will be a huge leap forward towards that end of progression.

I absolutely love my books, I love searching for them in shops, and more usually, online at the Alter of Amazon. God bless them. The trouble with the online method of reducing ones disposable income, is just how easy it is to buy the books, aided by the bottomless variety and availability of so many.

It’s a sickness of possession. It’s as much in the pleasure of being surrounded by them, as that of reading them, and the world conjured from their absorbed words or the wisdom contained within. They are full of people’s stories, fact or fiction. Lives imagined or real revealed. The things that someone has taken perhaps a lifetime to learn can be bought for just a few quid, and so cheap at the price (He desperately convinced himself!). It is cheap too………. I’ve bought practical books over the years for many hobbies and interests, full to the brim with advice found out the hard way. A lifetime’s expertise laid bare for the reader to absorb and learn from. Sometimes years of costly experimenting, learning the hard way from many failures, and these days no materials are cheap to make such failures not worthy of note. All in a book, costing at the very most, say fifteen quid a book, and usually a lot less.

Second-hand books, I adore as much as new, and not just for the cheaper cost. I revere them for their sense of having already had a life in another’s hands. I adore their smell, the yellowing of their pages, occasionally a written dedication inside the cover of having been given with love, and sometimes all that has been left inside, a hint at least of what went before.

I love to posses them, love the smell of them, new or old. Perverse though it may seem, or even actually be, I often hold a newly acquired ‘old’ book up to my nose, and fan the edges of the pages past my thumb, breathing in it’s unique smell. God knows what bugs I fan into my lungs, but so far it seems to be ok. Still breathing. smelling a book is sometimes like breathing in its history. The amalgamation of all it’s ever been, where it’s lived, and the fingers and hands that have held it. Smoker’s books are the only ones that don’t small so nice, but even they are good, because of such an obvious clue to it’s history.

Some books I turn over in my hands, looking for its personal imperfections from the use it’s had, and wonder at who held it, read it; wonder what their lives held. Some have a crumb of cake or bread inside, a hair maybe, and even occasionally a bookmark left trapped between the pages. Traces such as these aren’t often found, of course, especially a bookmark, and especially the rarest of clues to ponder; that of the bookmark with handwritten notes on, or in it.

There’s a website, a bookseller’s I think, devoted to all the bookmarks he or she had found……. pictures of them all too. A little bit fascinating, although not enough for me to exactly turn into a hobby myself. :o) I googled ‘found bookmarks’ to see if I could find the site, but to no avail.

As you do, I browsed a few links that came up ……….. Here’s a site article with links of stuff found inside library books, including forty $1,000 dollar bills. Imagine THAT??? :o) http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Community/Featured/found-in-books.shtml

Here’s one with instructions for making a ‘paged’ bookmark to make notes as you read, for you ‘crafty’ types :o) ….. Good idea, but I don’t know that I could be bothered ……… especially since I’m a rough, tough Old Greaser! :o)
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/5189

I often use a half, or quarter folded sheet of A4 as a bookmark to write notes on. Works as well, takes seconds to fold and use, but nothing like as aesthetic as something so carefully made. Usually I use the wire-bound ‘reporters notebook’ I keep by me when I’m reading.

Books, do you love them as much?

What do you like about them, ……. and are you as weird as me to love their smell?

(PLEASE say you are!) :oI
K.x :o)

Word count so far............ :o)

2009-09-17T23:14:00.004+01:00

Whoopee!!!!
A huge 4,348 words today, and so a total of 45,680 now, with five days to go for this Nanowrimo practice month to finish on the 22 September.

If I don’t make the 50,000 word count minimum on the last day of November, I will want my ass kicking. Mind you, it’s one thing to do lots of sprints on different subjects, often inspired by replying to emails, and another to write continuously on one subject, all the inspiration coming from me, with no prompting from anyone else.

And I still haven’t got one single plot idea to even start off with.

Oh dear.

K.x :o)

Thinking of polishing.......... and the chances of it all....... :o)

2009-09-17T22:55:00.005+01:00

Second blog for Thursday, which is bleddy good, don’t you think? Word count for the month will be brilliant if I can rabbit on about some bugger-all something-or-other for a while, eh?

I’m on the beach at Axmouth ……… or is it Seaton? If you come in from one end, it’s Seaton, from the other end it’s Axmouth. Confusing for a chap, doncherknow? ……….. Anyway, I finally got my ass on the Harley and trundled down here in the end at about mid-day. Lovely weather, just warm enough, not too hot, and the beach pretty deserted. Perfect. I’ve been sat here reading a bit, thinking a bit, but mostly I started to sift through the pebbles around me. I started to pick the good ones out, and into the side pockets of the haversack.

I know what y’all are asking yourselves here. Why would a grown man, (as I sometimes laughingly call myself, even if no one else seems to deem it a fit and proper description), be taking pebbles home?

Years ago………… more than I like to admit to, I bought all the equipment you needed to tumble pebbles and stones, and so polish them. Why? Same as always… It seemed a real good idea at the time.

In case you don’t know it, you put the stones inside a small drum, along with water and different grades of abrasive grit, starting with coarse grit, and working down to very fine grit for the final polish. The drum is revolved by a very small electric motor, and so the pebbles and stones tumble over each other constantly, the grit grinds them smooth, and eventually they end up polished like jewels. It makes a helluva racket, and takes months, certainly weeks.

They look bleddy fantastic when they’re finished, though, and out of the one single batch I did (Yup, just the one, and never did it again!!), I sent the best up to my young niece as a ‘box of jewels’ for her to play with one Christmas. I guess she’d have been six or seven….. I forget now. She loved them, what little girl wouldn’t? A whole box of your very own jewels. Brilliant!!! :o)

Anyway……. I got to thinking………. That would’ve been when I was doing the Thinking Bit, you understand……… I got to thinking, as I was looking at these pebbles glistening wet just below the surface, that it was about time I got the tumbler going again and did some more. When I did the first batch………. Ok, the ONLY batch, I was going to incorporate them somehow into some arty woodturning I was doing at the time, but never really got around to do. That’ll be the woodturning I haven’t done for bleddy years either then. I did a lot for a few years, gave it all away, and them moved house, and haven’t really kicked it back into life. One day, though………..

(Those who’ve read enough of this blog over the month’s since it started last February, will by now be noticing a distinct pattern here.)

Hell, cut me some slack here will you……. I can’t help it if I get distracted, can I? There’s always something new just around the corner to be tried, and you know what we boys are like don’t you girls? If you’re a bloke, you’ll be well familiar as to how tough it is being a man and having to play with all these toys we gather around us. Must be a real simple life just to do a bit of hoovering and cooking, eh? :o)

Mind you, these days most of you will have been broken into domesticity and servitude by some little honey-trap, and you sure have all my sympathy because I know it’s real easy to let your guard down and get dragged down into it without realising. It’s the power of The Vagina. Why the hell we gave you Chicks the vote is quite beyond me……….. you had a load of power without us shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s no coincidence we’ve lost the bleddy empire since then, but far from me to bleat over spilt milk, and be accused of raking over long cold coals.

Thankfully, the woman hasn’t been born who can tame me, and believe me a good few have tried, bless them all. (that statement really fires up My Girls at work…… never fails!!!) :o) They generally see sense, give up pretty early on, and then we settled down to what comes naturally, each fulfilling our natural roles and so letting life roll along smoothly without all the frictions most couples suffer these days. As God intended, I think you’ll find.

Mind you, some have said that may be a small part of why I’m Chick-less right now, but I hold a different view. I rather think it was more a search for The Large Penis. Shame that. Still, we all have to live and learn, eh?

I myself have every hope for the future. It’s just a bit of a dry spell, that’s all. Won’t be long now. (He said through a fixed grin and clenched teeth)

Where was I? Oh , yes, ……… collecting stones, type:- Various, many, for the polishing of.

It would be good to be able to identify what is what, stone-wise, and have the experience to know which will polish the best, but I just picked the best I could see, and meeting different criteria. Some because they were already nice and rounded, no cracks, and smooth. Some because they were quite translucent, and therefore definitely ‘jewel-like’, some for the shape they already were, and some for the colour. A few had the lot all in one.

I got to thinking, (Now doing both the Thinking Thing, and Selecting Pebbles…… multi-tasking, yes?) as I was sifting through all these stones, about how massive ‘chance’ was playing a big part here in which stones were being picked. It struck me just how much like life what I was doing was.

How the chance of being picked was so very slim if you backed right up to me sitting at home this morning. That I would happen to think of collecting some stones TODAY, and that’s a load of chance before you even start with the slim chance I would choose this beach for a start………… then choose this particular spot, this EXACT spot.

From there, there’s the chance of being spotted as I sweep each layer of stones to expose fresh ones, it only taking a few to cover others out of sight. OK, so you’ve been picked out of the billions on the beach………. The odds are hugely and unimaginably, better now you’re chosen and in the haversack. Once taken home, (some would factor in me actually making it home, seeing I’m seen by many as lucky to be alive every trip!) there’s surviving a further selection of those much better odds before going into the polisher. Only the best of those chosen will make it in there. Then being weeded out as the polishing process goes along….. some being ditched as each grade of grit is changed.

Finally, when all is done and finished, a few are found to be the best of the lot. Out of them, there is very likely to be just one; only ONE that just has the edge on the others, and that one, that single stone, will be The One.

One little stone pebble, chosen today out of billions on that beach today, a stone formed millions of years ago, crushed, compressed, twisted, broken, and ground ever smaller over the years. Shifted around by angry seas, and it’s final destination it rested at today at the mercy of the weather that drove those seas to drop it there.

One polished stone. One lucky stone.

How much like ‘life’ is that?

Kinda makes you think, and although I don’t mean that it bears any more resemblance to all that can potentially happen to any of us and any time on any day, I’m like a pebble on a big beach, and one not as handsome as he once was either, hoping to be picked from the flotsam surrounding me. Or conversely, there’s a pebble washing around in tide somewhere, and waiting for me to pick her up for a polish.

I won’t spoil the philosophical and deep train of thought by following that with the base and cheap laugh from exploring the concept of all that rubbing together we’d have to do. Perish the thought. :o)

Now I’m thinking of how it really is like life………. we all get together, and grind all the sharp edges off each other until some of us make it out the other side polished, perfect and gleaming.

The rest of us end up quite polished, broken, or covered in cracks and pits.

Life……….. one big Polishing Drum of Chance.

Nite, y’all,
K.x :o)

The wonder of British Plod.........and the IOM Plod's money-crop on Mad Sunday. :o)

2009-09-17T09:25:00.010+01:00

Hi Y’all,
Thursday, and another day of my weeks holiday grinds into life, and with some hope of it being a sunny day too. Here I am, reporting in at the writing station, and I must say it’s getting to be the first thing I want to do of a morning………. to write. that bodes well for November's Nanowrimo. :o)

Mostly it’s emails, mostly to prospective New Chicks. Spurred into productivity, I admit, by my having hit a rich and glinting seam over the last couple of months, it’s golden reflections illuminating the digging and hacking away in the candlelit gloom of Kevin’s Mine of Hope and Comfort Sometimes too, I’ve recently been hitting the blog with some thoughts, random and rambling though they may usually be. Occasionally I’ve written stuff no one will ever read. That’ll be the real Wild Stuff then. The stuff no one would most likely understand. The stuff Plod would love to read.

‘Plod’, being a quaint and old-fashioned term for out great police force, and I actually mean that. The last police force in the world you can tell to fuck off, and not get shot for the indiscretion.

Mind you, it’s been a long time since I expressed such an imaginative course of action for our enforcement officers, the last time being way back in ’98 for leaving a thirty-limit on the Isle of Man, at double the limit I must admit, but, in my feeble defence, just before being outside the limit. They had, quite accidentally I’m sure, set the speed trap up thirty feet inside the limit and with the Goforit, or Golf Lima Foxtrot de-restriction black-stripe-on-white plainly in sight. I was quite upset at what I saw as an unfair and dastardly reaping of a abundant crop, there being some 35,000 of we bikers over there for the TT races, and a fair percentage of us being Adrenaline Freaks on a rush of speed.

(Golf Lima Foxtrot??…… There was hell-up amongst the Politically Correct weenies (small ‘w’) a few years ago, when it was disclosed that it was a common police radio instruction amongst traffic cops when chasing speeders…….. and it stands for, if you haven’t worked it out, Go Like Fuck.)

Let me point out that the spot they picked, quite accidentally I now realise after the calming of the years, was at the bottom of a downhill left-handed sweep and in deep and high hedges in the countryside. The last of the village buildings had been passed, and it was "Whoopy-doo" time with the scent of the speed-unlimited roads opening up again.

On the Isle of Man, there are no speed limits outside of the villages and towns. Let me tell you, it is an Adrenalin Freak’s Paradise.

They pulled me over, and, being a man with a strong sense of what is Just and Fair, I was a bit upset at their apparent cunning. Actually, ..........I was fucking livid, and then some. I suggested, quite graphically, that they might explore the pleasures of inserting the hair dryer up their ass (hand-held speed gun), and that they’d missed their vocation by not seeking employment with the IOM Tourist Board. Throwing the skid-lid across the road (I kid you not. I was bleddy mad as hell), I doubted the authenticity of their parentage, and offered to wipe my bottom with the speeding ticket.

Why was I so upset about such a thing? Well, see, there were a few reasons. Being whacked out on antidepressants that weren’t working, being over there with no chick, and it having been the wettest TT in living memory all added up to my being mentally right down on the floor. It was also the third time I’d been so sneakily ‘had over’ by the cunning IOM Plod in the last three visits to the Island of Speed, and on every occasion it had cost in excess of £160 in fines. That’s each time, so we’re talking about £500 in total (each being in excess of £160), and I do freely admit I was in considerable excess of the limit, before you point it out. :o)

You see, not unsurprisingly I guess these days, they set these traps up all over the place, and one copper over there told me that on Mad Sunday they gather something like 200 of we poor unsuspecting, safety-conscious, Speed Freaks an hour over the whole island. When you go to pay the fine, you just pay the fine, no licence, insurance, or proof of identity is asked for………. Just pay here, (sir), and sign here, (sir), and thank you for your cooperation in the matter, (sir). :o)

And, whaddya mean you’ve never heard of Mad Sunday??? Where y’all been all your lives??? :o)

Briefly, Mad Sunday is a long-standing tradition of mayhem and an open day for we nutters. It’s one mental day, where the mountain Course of the Isle of Man TT circuit of public roads used for the racing are opened up to one way traffic, and so becoming a race-track as it is on race days. Then let loose to all who dare to ‘ride the mountain’ on Mad Sunday. Many don’t dare, and with good reason. Safety is not a word that goes with the day. It’s the single reason I go over there, and quite secondary to watching the fantastic racing, which makes mainstream track races look like a kindergarten tea party.

Have a look…….. have a taste…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRmNZlEXjQ0

Anyway………. the bottom line is, that our police force really is the best in the world. Mad and wild as I was, those two coppers just politely pointed out that maybe I might consider the pleasures of being arrested if I didn’t calm myself (sir). They just completed the paperwork, explaining that should I use it for the purpose I’d suggested, that more paper would not be provided to complete such an undertaking.

No gun was involved at any point, no handcuffs deemed as necessary, and no sudden appearance of any overwhelming ‘backup’ either.

Then they watched, as I cleared the thirty-limit sign a few yards away, and nailed the bike to 140 down the road away from them.

God bless them all. :o)

K.x :o)

September thoughts....... I use the term 'thoughts' loosely! :o)

2009-09-16T16:51:00.003+01:00

September………….

It’s brightened up this afternoon………. sunny, blue skies and white clouds, mixed as a fifty-fifty spread. Lovely day, and here I am writing away again. I’m kinda doing a trial run for the November nanowrimo by writing everything in Word, and then cutting/pasting into wherever they need to be, usually emails. That way I have everything in one document to keep a word-count. Last month’s, running from the 22 to the 22, was 27,000 words, this month’s count from 22 August is 39,550 (right there, at that moment). I’m going to break through 40,000 today if I can, which will mean a daily diet of 1,666 words at least, to make the 50,000 word minimum limit by the 22 September. Even if I don’t do it, it makes 50,000 in Nvember an easyish goal………. All I’ve got to do is write every single day. Skip one or two, and each days ration needs to increase; skip too many, and it will be a struggle. I’m going to reach for 100,000, and go for the impossible. As is in my nature……….. all or nothing.

Anyway, that’s getting way from this lovely day here. I guess I should take the bike, maybe Hoover for a change, even if she is still running like a sick dog. I took her out for a short wakeup spin the other day, and she seemed to be running a bit better. I’ve gotta have another look at the carbs, and I suspect it’s the emulsion jets worn oval. That’s going to be over £80 for four tiny little brass tubes.

Back to today though. A September day, and a typically lovely one too.

Both the happiest and the worst times have happened to me in September. I love the damp chill of it, the sniff of winter to come, but still warmed by blue-skied sunny days. There was a time when sometimes I loved it, and sometimes I hated it, and sometimes just bounced around between the two emotions. Most times I love it these days. It’s a peaceful month.

No other month feels like this one does……….. not even December, with all of Christmas consuming it like a blanket of snow. No, it sure is a strange month, and today feel kinda good, even though yesterday didn’t, especially with all its bad news. It seems it’s rarely a bad month for weather these days…….. our summers seem to have been replaced by sunny springs and Autumns,…… well, Septembers anyway. I checked up on which months are in which season, and, as I suspected, September is actually still summer, and autumn starts in October. Just shows how off course I’ve always been with that then, in considering September to be the start of autumn.

Yup, September is a funny month for me.

I was married in September, and she left me in September too. Just before the tenth anniversary…… ten days before I think……….. I guess facing yet another anniversary when all you wanna do is walk out of the door is a real hard thing to face. It would make you gather your nerve and make that move wouldn’t it?

I had both bad mo’sickle accidents too in September….. different years of course, when I was sixteen and again at eighteen.…….. fractured something like 23 bones, give or take a few ribs, on a life support system both times, an emergency tracheotomy carried out in the ambulance after the second accident, and bed ridded for six months recovering from the first and not fully fit for a year. Started and finished most jobs in and shortly after September too. There seems to be a whole lot around September for me.

Writing that makes me realise that most things were not that good………. getting married the only good one really, so why do I ever think well of this month? Somehow I suspect it was the magnitude of getting married to the young woman I loved so much. That event somehow carries enough weight of importance in my mind to easily balance the ending of that great relationship, and more than balances the other shit that happened in the Septembers before it and after as well.

The mind sure is a funny thing, the way it reckons all the totality of experiences into an overall ‘impression’ that we all carry of most things. When you look at those inner visions, and measure the facts of the parts that form them; the percentages, and importance, they so often just don’t weigh up to what we tend to think, or feel, about something. It goes some way to showing why we can get so many things wrong in our assessments of life, and think of experiences and chunk of life as something so very different from the reality of them. How off key we may be in basing future decisions on those impressions we have.

Come to think of it…………. I used to dread Septembers for a long time after Sue (Ex-Wife) left………. I had it in mind that it was an hugely unlucky month for me, and for an equally longish time, I now feel ok about it. If I was pushed, I’d say it’s no longer a month I don’t like. Sometimes a echo of past dread hovers around, but mostly I appreciate it as a lovely month.

Mellowing with age, I guess, and being so far from the bad times I had when I was younger too. I realise as well, that no month, or any other time frame, is necessarily responsible for any of life’s experiences, good, bad or indifferent. It’s just the way it is, and some things are bound to group up in a time frame from random, or from practical reasons linked to a certain time. After all, you’re very likely only ever going to choke on a sixpence from a Christmas pud at Christmas. :o)

Wadya think? :o)

Woo Hoo.... 40,465 words now! :o)

K.x :o)

An very, VERY ill man, .....and a Horse, ......and those who love them...........

2009-09-15T09:28:00.005+01:00

Hi y’all,
Not the best or most cheery of mornings this morning. Got a very short email from ‘J’, someone who I used to work with and who has always supported me in bad times, saying that her husband, ‘R’ had got Cancer. Just had their Sapphire Anniversary (45 years) too.

Stuff like this always suddenly reminds me that you just don’t know what’s around the corner in this life…….. good or bad, and that life is only as long as the next morning you wake up to a new day and all it holds. I guess it’s a 24/7 day or night thing in reality………. It’s only as long as the next second that slides past to leave you still breathing……… or more realistically, having conscious thoughts. You can be alive and dead at the same time. God knows I’ve looked after a few in my job who are no more than the living dead……… and no, I’m not talking about the terminally ill. I look after people with profound Learning Difficulties, as it is so politely and so very politically correctly known these days. For some individuals, calling it any sort of ‘life’ at all is the preserve of only the twisted and unhinged.

We treat our animals far better than we do our own species……… those of us who aren’t sadists anyway. Which brings me onto the next email I had…………

It was from ‘S’, another good friend, and what’s more an ex-girlfriend, and sent to say she was going to have to have her beloved horse put down, as she is just too old to get through another winter.

I’ve been dreading this email from her, because from first knowing her, I knew that one day she’d have to face up to doing this, and bearing the agony that goes with it.
‘A’, her beloved horse is lucky she isn’t human, because if she was, she’d have her life prolonged for as long as possible, and so the struggle to live it too. I had tears in my eyes reading about what ‘A’ meant to her, and how she’d always wanted her own horse…….. the bit that really did it, was the image of a little 3 year-old girl asking Santa for her very own horse every year. I could really feel how especially happy and proud she must have been to ride her for the first time. Her dream come true, and now the horrible pain of it coming to an end, and by her own hand, so to speak, not some accident or natural cause. That would be plenty bad enough.

I can easily imagine the bond of her having had ‘A’ through such bad times as divorce etc., and through the happiest of times too. I didn’t have an animal for comfort at those times, just a series of bikes……… my Guzzi, for instance, and that was a bike that I always said got me through the Winter Of Discontent after my wife buggered off. Having ‘A’ to cry with, talk to, and laugh with too, would be a real big deal, along with all the rest she shared with her, and those twenty years and more when she’d been comforted, pleasured, and cheered by her big horse-heart. I’m not a Horsey type, but I do know they are very special animals.

At least ‘A’ will have been lucky to have had so much love all her life, and taken care of by a woman like ‘S’ right to the end. Few of us can have the same in life.

I sure hope, whatever happens to my other friend's husband, and especially if it’s as bad as it can be, that he doesn’t suffer for long.

God bless you, ‘R’ and I send some thoughts and ‘hope’ over the space around you, and to you 'J' as well.

You too, 'S'......... and, of course, dear old 'A'.

Please take a few minutes and send some focused and good thoughts out for them all too, will you?

Who knows what a difference a few focused thoughts will make .......... quite possibly at least the difference you'd like to feel if you were them.

I know I can count on you.
Thanks...........
K.x :o)

Testing Trevor and Sam's Locost...... :o)

2009-09-05T13:12:00.007+01:00

Hi,
Smee again. Blimey, three times in, what a week or so? Wonders will never cease. :o)

Just got back from Westonzoyland airdrome, where Trevor, his son Sam and No-Problem-Pete are giving Trevor and Sam’s Locost Kit-Car it’s first outing on tarmac. There’s a bit of the old wartime airfield that is used for such things, for a suitable donation to the landowner, and it’s just what they needed to flag wilting spirits around the building of this car.

It’s quite an achievement, as Trevor and his young son Sam have been building this car from scratch in a tiny little scabby single garage, with no engineering facilities whatsoever. Trevor tells me it’s been three years in the gestation so far, but I can’t believe that time has goes so quickly……. Well, I can, but don’t want to actually acknowledge it.
It’s been built using the book “Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as 250 Pounds: And Race it!” by Ron Champion.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Your-Sports-Little-Pounds/dp/1859606369

If you’ve had anything at all to do with kit cars, you will have heard of his book. It’s quite an inspiring book, and such is the proof of that is Trevor and Sam’s effort that I drove on the airfield this morning. I’d say get this book, even just for the pleasure of dreaming of what could be. I guarantee that if you’re the sort of bloke……. Or a very, very rare Chick, …….. who likes to make things, you’ll love this book.

It gives you all you need to start from scratch with just a pile of tubing you’ve bought, and something like a knackered ford sierra as a donor vehicle to gather the engine, gearbox, wheels, brakes, hubs and stuff from…….. actually the book uses an old rear-wheel drive ford escort, but they’re like hens teeth to get now.

Not for these two valiant souls was this going to be a traditional kit-car supplied complete with ready-made chassis, body tub and panels cut to fit, seats, brackets and pretty much all you need to assemble into a complete car. Nope, Trevor and Sam, armed with only a book for guidance, went ahead and welded up the entire chassis, all the axle links, the front suspension wishbones, the lot. Pete with his expertise in building fibreglass boats, helped them make the lift-off bonnet, and to modify the rear fibreglass unit to fit their chassis, sourced from e-bay, and meant for an entirely different car.

In building that chassis, clever young Sam soon became something of an accomplished welder, and so for that matter did Trevor. Few boys these days get that sort of opportunity, and it’s something you just can’t put a price on at that age. Quite, quite priceless.

I’ve put my oar in from time to time, mainly in the way of encouragement, and often just by putting things in perspective when it’s all going wrong, and it all seems too much of an uphill struggle. When I point out how well they’ve done considering the garage is so small, and with so little by way of engineering equipment, it usually perks Trevor up.

Sam doesn’t need perking up……… he has the advantage of yoof on his side, and we all know how that flattens mountains, don’t we? :o)

Ok, the car shows it’s rough edges as a reflection of the VERY primitive environment it was built in, and that it was the first attempt Trevor and young Sam have ever made in building a kit car of any sort. Despite it’s home spun appearance, it drove ok, stopped when braked, and we had some fun sliding it about a good bit. It was actually a great success, although there were some fuelling problems with the engine that stopped play several times.

I took some photos, and will load them up on here when I get them sorted out.

These cars are soooooo much fun, some bastard little weenie will soon make it illegal for sure certain. With that in mind, I won’t elaborate greatly on just the sort of antics it encourages, but suffice to say, with your ass sat almost over the back axle and the centre of gravity so low, spending time creatively sliding around sideways is quite impossible to resist. Unless you’re a weenie, of course.

Trevor and Sam’s faces said it all after they got out from their first circuit of the small area of tarmac available to them. It was real good to see that all those, often despairing, hours spent in a freezing cold and tiny little garage were suddenly all worthwhile in just a few minutes on bit of old airdrome.

We are fast losing the last remnants of men (yes, and some women too, but traditionally it’s always been, and still is, mostly men) who traditionally built all sorts of wonderful stuff in sheds and workshops all over this country. The weenies that govern us have all but outlawed it, and hey won’t be happy until they have driven the final nails into boarding up the doors of our sheds and workshops.

It breaks my bloody heart, but a sight like this morning, of a Father and Son, bonded and forged in what they have created together in a poxy little garage gladdens my heart, and it displays to the world that you little weenie bastards out there haven’t beaten us yet.

K. :o)

On fingering with Mavis, and helping your writing stress levels. :o)

2009-09-03T12:37:00.003+01:00

Well, here I am, sitting here without a thought in my head as to what to bash out for y’all here. I am determined to get some more entries on here, but what stops me, is the lack of anything which seems at all meaningful to say, so I don’t even start. Starting is sometimes the hardest thing in life…….. often way harder than finishing. To finish, you just have to keep right on going, even if it’s the worst slog in your history, but to start, well, that’s often another thing altogether, isn’t it?

I loaded up an old copy of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on the desktop ‘puter upstairs last night, not expecting it to work for a second, as it’s a pre-Windows XP edition, ……….and hey, guess what? It worked!!! (As long as the CD was left in.)

I had a go at it….. thinking that learning to touch-type would be a brilliant help for the Nanowrimo month on November ( http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ). Naturally I was disappointed that I hadn’t improved my skills after about three minutes, and so called it a night. It doesn’t bode well for the future, does it. (Not that there’s a helluva lot of future left at fifty-bleddy-five!)

Still, it WAS gone midnight, and so way past bedtime for we Old Greasers, despite there being no damp chick there murmuring “Come to bed Big Boy”. That always gets me in the sack for an early night, and I sure miss the good influence of a Chick warming the sheets up for me. (Sigh)

Where was I? Oh yes, giving up on poor old Mavis and her touch typing…… (there’s a joke in there, if I could only think of it, I just know it!). I’m going to put her on this laptop too, and will make a more determined effort to master it before November. I noticed it was bleddy uncomfortable to assume the position, holding your hands over the master keys, those being a-s-d-f on the left and j-k-l-; on the right, doncherknow. :o)

I think I may well be too damn old to get the hang of it, but boy, wouldn’t it be great to be able to not only type way faster, but to be able to look at the damn screen instead of the keys when just using the two fingers. I’m always looking up and realising that I’ve hit the sodding Caps lock key, which is easy to correct in Word, but means retyping in an email program ……. Outlook Express anyway. To sort it in Word, if you’re wondering, just highlight the line(s) of text, hold down the Shift key, and use the F3 key to toggle through the three options… all capitals, first letters capitalised, or no capitalisation…. Brilliant!

Ok, y’all who don’t give a monkey’s about this will just have to cruise on down, but those who hate the Caps Lock PiTA (pain in the ass…….. come on, keep up!) go to this site…..
http://www.xp-tips.com/caps-lock-warning.html (Several good tips and tweaks there) and follow the instructions to enable a warning beep every time Caps Lock, Scroll lock (ScrLk) or Number lock (NumLk) is turned on or off. It’s real easy to do. HEY, JUST DISCOVERED SOMETHING ELSE…. If you hold the Number lock (NumLk) key down for five seconds it will turn the warning on, and if you hold it down for another five seconds it will turn it off. (On my laptop the same key does both functions, and so I have to hold down the Shift key to enable the Number Lock key)

How brilliant is THAT???

How SAD is getting excited at it too, I guess. (Sigh) How did it ever wind up getting like this? A used-to-be Hell Raiser getting excited at finding out how to enable a Caps Lock warning on and off. Jees! I really need to get out more. Some pussy would help no end y’know,………. if you could see your way clear, that is.

No?

Can’t say I entirely blame you hunny. :o)

Thank God I can laugh eh? My sides are bleddy splitting as we speak. No, really, they are. :o)

You want another tip?

This drove me bleddy MAD one fine day, until I figured it out. If you suddenly find that every time you type a letter whilst working in the middle of a document, that the next letter on disappears with every new letter you type………. It’s because you’ve accidentally pressed the ‘Insert’ key at the top right of your keyboard. Press it again, and all should be well. There should be a warning beep for that one too, but you soon know when you’ve done it! I don’t think it does anything if there is no writing ahead of your cursor.

Ok, that’s pretty much the sum of my computer knowledge; all of it found out the hard way, and passed on to y’all, free and for gratis. :o)

Well, the muse, such as it was, has left the building, so I’m off to get Mavis loaded on here, and have a bit more of a determined effort to at least put some effective time in. Boy, do I ever admire anyone who can touch type. I knew someone once who could type as fast as you talked, and it was real weird to see the words you were speaking flying across the screen, just slightly behind the sound. What made it really impressive was that she was looking at the screen the whole time, and when I checked it, there was not one single mistake after several minutes worth of talking to her. Not spelling, Not anything. Nil. Zilch. Nothing. Just perfection.

She was a real young beauty too, proving once and for all, not that I’ve ever doubted it for one second, that brains and beauty do go together.

And yet, …………a lot of assholes who consider themselves so wonderful in what they do in life, would have just described her as ‘just a secretary’.

Just like people are ‘just a lorry driver’, ‘just a digger driver’, ‘just a waitress’ etc. etc.

Well, some people should try these less ‘valued’ jobs, and see just how hard it is, and just how shit they are at it, too. Whilst they’re about it, see how all that’s below them crumbles without those below them thanklessly slogging away every day.

Yup, I’m one of those slogging away, making the dreams and promotions of the weenies above me happen. Those junior to me get buckets of appreciation every day from me, and I make sure they feel the sincerity in it too.

On that cheerful note, as per the usual, I’m off to finger with Mavis.

Y’all have a great day! :o)

K.x :o) (A reminder, dear reader, that any x’s in this Blog are for the Chicks only. Don’t you chaps (Trevor) be confused now.) :o)

Finally....... an entry, and about the NaNoWriMo

2009-08-30T12:56:00.006+01:00

Hi y’all….. not that anyone’s reading this now, I guess, especially since I seem to have pretty much abandoned any hint of regular entries here lately. No excuse, ……..just the usual lethargic apathy, and fuck-it-I’ll-do-it-tomorrow lifestyle I’ve turned into something of an art-form. :o)

I can’t even blame the long sunny summer we haven’t had again this year. Nope, no excuse, …………especially since I often describe myself as a Wannabe Writer.

Which brings me to the latest obsession that has consumed me for pretty much all of August, and has passed the time whilst looking at the rain from the Sun Room here at Fortress Wheelrest.

I’ve been spending an absolute FORTUNE at the Alter of Amazon, buying pretty well all the well-recommended books on writing, both on the technical aspects and the inspirational and emotional side of the craft. The stuff that makes you want to sit like a saddo and type away for hours, sometimes about bugger-all. At least as far as those who don’t write, or maybe even read, would see someone like me as I guess.

What has sparked this off then?

Well, it’s a thing called The NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), or Nanowrimo thing

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

You basically start on the first of November, and by the 30th will have sent off at least the minimum 50,000 word draft of a novel, script, or whatever. everyone who manages to get at least those 50,000 words out is a winner.......... there are no prizes, no awards, though, just the satisfaction of achieving those 50,000 words in the month of November, and so being eligible to wear the t-shirts, badges etc, if you wanted to buy and wear them that is. I think I might lash out a few quid for one. :o)

The website is just kept ticking over for most of the year, but freshens up and really kicks in, in October in time to encourage everyone to gear up for the 50,000 word-writing marathon for the month of November.

Just imagine if you could do that, eh? Write 50,000 words in a month! It doesn't matter what you write about, or how good it is; the important thing is to write every day for that month, and get those 50,000 words out. At least fifty thousand of the little blighters. One word at a time. Writing something like 1,667 words a day, every day, for a month.

I'm going to aim for at least 2,000 words a day. Absolute minimum. That'll be 60,000 words, and, hell, maybe even more. the big trouble I can see, is no ideas on what to write whatsoever, and if there's no ideas, maybe I won't be able to 'flow' well enough to get those words out every day. Hmmmnnnn I guess I'll have to rely on my ability to ramble about bugger-all, but that will mean 50,000 words about nothing.

Still, all the advice I read from authors has one common thread, and that is to write, even if you don't know what to write. just get the words out, and more often than not, something appears out of all those words and thoughts solidify into some idea, or direction, and the writing takes off on it's own. I know it happens, because I find it happening all the time when I email, write on this blog, or whatever i find myself writing about.

So, I'm optimistic in that I'll succeed in this. it will be good to succeed in something these days.

Writing is very therapeutic in any case, if you need any therapy that is, and even if you don't think you do, it still will have a good effect of one sort or another. Why don't you have a go at it too? It sure would at least give you some focus in that dead November time, when winter weather is starting to really settle in, and Christmas looms just too far ahead to be within grasp.......... for those lucky sods in good enough shape to want to grasp it, that is.

Anyway, read through the blogs............. some are very good, and illustrate how life changing doing something like this can be. It's on the drop-down list under the 'fun Stuff' tag, ...............NaNoWriMo Blog................ but here's the direct link to the blog page anyway........ http://blog.nanowrimo.org/

On the right side, are various peoples blog entries, and some are quite inspiring to read if you take the time to scroll through to those which catch your interest.

I'm telling everyone who may be the slightest bit interested, and a good few who couldn't give a shit, all about my commitment to this, and that's to kinda make it all the harder for me to abandon it as soon as it gets to be a struggle. I have to say, it's pretty demoralising to find I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm going to write about, so any suggestions will be welcomed.

OK, that’s me for today. I guess if I aim for shorter blogs, I might write in here more often. mind you, November's gonna be a real lean month for this blog, and for emailing too. I guess I'll leave the web-dating alone too, which will give my ego and self-esteem the world of good for a start.

Women, I mean, who needs them anyway? (Sigh)

OK, that's definitely it.

Y’all keep happy. :o)

I need the encouragement, y'see.
K.x :o)

Death of a Little Black Flying Thing........... :o(

2009-05-24T22:12:00.010+01:00

I was just sat here in the sunny garden, reading Jeremy Clarkson's book “For Crying Out Loud”, and a Little Black Flying Thing you could hardly see landed on the page. I brushed it off, and quite unintentionally killed it. It died quite horribly………… well, on its own scale, it was quite horrible, but at least it was quick I guess. The poor little blighter left a green smear about 15mm long and 2mm wide on page fifty-one, the only trace remaining that it had ever lived at all.

It got me thinking, partly out of respect, and partly from regret that I had carelessly snuffed the life from it………. I know not whether it was a he or a she, so have regrettably to refer to it as ‘it’.

The Thinking led to consideration of how little most of us leave behind as a trace that we ever were.

(Brace yourself, dear reader, we’re going in,………. As in ‘In Real Deep’)

That Little Black Flying Thing, (Which was black on the outside, and thus as far as the inverse insect world is concerned, not one of a minority group.), at least left a mark on page 51 of my book, which will forever remain as a reminder of its Last Day Flying.

I will, in all probability, remember the moment for at least Quite Some Time, and will hereafter refer to this book as the ‘Memorial Edition’. I’m like that; I remember the detail of life, commonly regarded by most successful people as unimportant. Pity about the Big Stuff, more commonly regarded as important, and which I pay little heed to then, isn’t it?

That nearly leads me down another track of tangled thought, so I’ll get back to the subject that was in mind…………. How little remains of us when we’re gone.

I guess the most long lasting evidence for most of us is perhaps a headstone in a churchyard. It may be something quirky enough, and perhaps with a similarly quirky inscription, to catch the eye of someone wandering through the graves. It may make them stop and wonder of the life that boiled down to those few words, before moving on to continue weaving their own life-tapestry, having soon forgotten what they saw there. Most likely it will be a small, comittee-designed, standard issue, Politically Correct marker in the grounds of a faceless crematorium, individuality being snuffed out by the controlling will of the faceless weenies. It may be a small and oh-so-tastefully-discrete-flat-on-the-ground marker of the life it represents, and also easily grown over until it can never be found again without a shovel.

Family photographs will maybe remain floating about for several generations, although diluted amongst it’s numbers of inherited keepers, and long since lost in dark boxes and drawers. The stories that accompanied them will soon be forgotten, as will the names and position in the family hierarchy. Inherited possessions too will wither as they are handed down or lost completely through loss, breakage, sale, .......... or worse, .......... simply thrown away.

Modern photographs, now taken digitally and mostly never printed, will last not even half a generation now, and those that do will be lost amongst thousands of others on hard drives, or discs, never to be looked at again. The boxes of photographs that many have, are already a passing tradition thanks to this digital medium which, quite ironically, has made recording the past easier and cheaper than it ever has been in history. Maybe that proves a theory, that the easier and cheaper anything is, the less permanent or valued it becomes?

Those lucky enough to have had the gist of their lives recorded in the written word will have their stories preserved perhaps for a thousand years or more, but they are the very fewest of us all.

Both my Father and Stepfather, both gone some eighteen years ago now, have little left already to mark their lives. My Stepfather’s laid-flat, tiny grave marker has long since grown over, much to my shame. Many living close by him, and one in particular, swore to keep his grave tended, and I for one never expected it to have gown over so quickly, nor how easily I could forget it’s exact position. I shouldn’t have trusted the word of those who promised they would keep it tended I guess.

I keep some mementos of both of them close by and always visible in the house in areas I sit or stand, and from time to time handle, use, or find one of the few of their tools I inherited. They were the diminishing generation of men who made, repaired and modified things in their garages and workshops, and the wear on those tools linger like an echo of their toil, skill and efforts. I think of them often, but when I’m gone so too will they be gone. No one else knows the stories they told me, my Father in particular, and I have been meaning to write their stories down. Those stories to at least hand on to my only niece in the hope it will mean something to her, but knowing it probably won’t.

We all, even the most mundane of us, have led complicated and different lives, and it all goes out like a light on our passing, just like my Little Black Flying Thing this morning. I guess, the scale of things being taken into account, its green smear of life’s juices spilt, and these thoughts, written and then sent out there in this blog, is the equivalent of a funeral with full military honours to accompany it.

Has anyone ever squidged something so small and most common, and yet thought of it so deeply? Probably very few in the history of the written word. :o)

So, dear Little Black Flying Thing, I salute you, your tiny life, and all it meant to those around you (sniff), and will remember that you remain forever, a green smear on page fifty-one……………

K.x :o)

Rambling on the beach.............. :o)

2009-05-08T20:45:00.000+01:00

Well, I’m on the beach here at Axmouth………. Rattled down on the Harley, after starting to get some work done in the workshop, as The Harley’s due it’s Mot on Thursday and the damn belt-drive is scuffing the tyre somehow. I stood there looking at her, canted over on her stand in the sun, and she looked back at me and said, “Fuck it, run me down to the coast man!”

So here we are…….. she’s up there in the sun basking in the attentions of those who pass her, and I’m down here listening to the surf tirelessly rolling the pebbles around in it’s foamy caress. Poetic, that doncha think? I’ve been reading James May, the Top gear columnist, and he’s very good……. Right up my street………. Unafraid to fly in the face of convention and the barricades of bullshit everyone hides behind these days. A very funny man.

The beach is pretty well deserted, apart from a few people so far away it’s hard to make them out. The nearest to me is over a hundred yards away, and is a bit distracting in that she’s divested herself of all clothing except what may well be a tint pair of knickers. Can’t quite see to be certain, given that I only have the luxury of a sidelong glance, but she sure whipped the top off quick enough.

I’m bleddy sure they do it on purpose y’know. Never mind, I’m pretending to nonchalantly be uninterested, as she’s pretending that I’m not too. It’s all a bleddy game isn’t it? Every single woman who gets her kit off within eye-shot of some poor bloke, knows full well she’s distracting the poor bastard from his reading matter. I don’t care who you are, or how much you say you’re not bothered….. you bleddy notice at the very least. you just tell yourself not to look, but it's a helluva job not to let the eyeballs swivel in their direction. :o)

Where was I……….. being poetic about the foamy surf, rolling ceaselessly up on the shore, turning the pebbles like a giant polishing machine, ...........like she just turned a moment ago, making sure she was looking over here as she did so, to make sure I was making sure I wasn't looking. Jees, what games we all play. Sweetheart, is it really necessary to fling you’re lovely long hair about like that, let alone your Items Of Distraction?

Bollocks, I’m not going to give her the satisfaction……… besides another one has beached herself to Starboard, and is at least keeping her kit on in consideration for the poor old bastard sat over here. :o)

Shit, lookout, ..........her friend is manoeuvring down the beach, a big lass, but very pretty, and has just smiled nicely, and so I smiled back. Nice and civilised it is too. Look at us all here……….. all on our own, and who knows what stage of life we’re all on, each with an entwined story, uniquely complicated and unimaginable, but nevertheless we're all separated by convention. Unwritten rules of separation, long since written in stone.

Yup those rules made for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men (Douglas Bader, Reach For The Sky), but what courage it takes to break them. A beach, is still a very private place. Only a very few would transgress, and sit nearby especially in such a wide empty space, and rightly so. How many would welcome the company though? Maybe more than you would think, our society being so high in numbers of unattached and single people. We are so wary of people these days too…….. strangers, and especially women wary of single men, weirdoes every one of us.

How did we ever get to be so afraid of each other unless reliably introduced?

I can remember, years ago, sitting on a beach with a girlfriend I had at the time, and a deaf bloke walked up, sat right down beside her on the far side from me, and started chatting to her. He could communicate quite well, and was soon sat down beside her nattering, and signing away. What pissed me off, was the bloody nerve of it. He was definitely blatantly ‘chatting’ her up, and there was I sat on the other side of her not included in the conversation one bit. It was exactly as if I wasn’t there…… he didn’t even say “Hello” to me in any way whatsoever, right from the start. The girlfriend said later that she didn’t like to be rude, especially since he was deaf, and maybe, she thought, lonely. I didn’t say anything either, as I didn’t want to seem petty. I was certain he was well used to using this as a chat-up technique, but, with hindsight kinda had to admire his balls……… (as in ‘courage’, you understand!) Courageous enough in approaching a single girl alone on a beach, but when her boyfriend is sat there right next to her, well, it was going to get him a slap one day.

Anyway, that’s kinda besides the point……….. it being, why not try to engage someone in conversation? What’s there to lose? If they don’t like it, it’s going to be obvious enough, and easy to just politely disengage and walk away. These constraints, especially seemingly the British rules of engagement, are soooooo powerful though. I would love to have someone’s company here, preferably female it has to be admitted, although not for the obvious reasons you, dear reader might think, but pretty well nothing would get me to approach anyone here to start a conversation. Not unless it was very easy to do.

Weird, huh?

Yup, pretty damn weird.

Hey, lookup, some chick approaches now with a dog in tow……….. nope……. I gave her a smile, said “He looks keen to get in the water”……… she smiled very slightly as if to say "You've got a bloody nerve", and looked the other way. Never said a word in reply. Shit, man, I must be a real bleddy ugly guy. I might as well have asked her to lose the dog, and come over and sit on my nob for the way she reacted. I guess "He looks keen to get in the water" sounds like "Fancy a shag".

Maybe it amounts to the same thing for a woman. I suppose you'd have to be one to experience being hit on all the time, and when you are, you hear words differently. Conversations take on a different slant. I think I could hack it though. I'd far rather have to turn opportunities down than have none at all.

Would ANY man ignore a woman who politely spoke to him? I think not, and if he did, what a rude pig he would be. Women sure do get licence to be as rude as they like. I guess it goes with an abundance of choice and opportunity. It’s as if speaking will get you raped. Maybe that’s what it’s all about. She knows getting into a conversation may well result in something she doesn’t want, so it’s simpler to just ignore a guy's approach. I guess I can see the logic, but some of us are decent enough not to push their luck beyond acceptability.

It really is all to do with looks, and don’t bother telling me otherwise……… boy am I ever sick of hearing that it’s all about personality. Take my buddy Mad Eddie in the States…………. Some three or four years younger than me, but waaaaay better looking……… man, he has women crawling all over him. Waitresses giving him their number, smiles galore on the street, the works. A few years ago, I had far less trouble engaging women in light conversation, getting eye contact, smiles etc. I’m not saying it was an everyday thing, but it certainly wasn’t difficult. Now…………. It’s got so bad that one single acknowledgement of the briefest duration is notable. Since I turned fifty it’s all gone tits up.

Not about looks?

I think it is all about looks.

Tha's not as bitter and twisted as it sounds......... I do undersatnd how it works, i just wish others would admit that looks do count hugely that's all. :o)

He ho, (half an hour later now) just had a nice chat to another woman walking her dog……… I’d walked down to the water’s edge here, and was kicking stones into the water as she came along……….. she had a watch, and I was wondering at what time it was, so I asked. Said her dog was nice, and had he been in the water yet, and we had a nice long chat. Nice. And guess what, I didn’t rape her, soon learned that she had a husband, partner, whatever, and that was fine. We chatted, and as soon as she seemed to want to move on, I went with it, and off she went. Just a nice chat. Proof, if you need it, that we’re not all monsters.

Yes, it would’ve been great had she been free and available, suddenly thought I was Mr Wonderful, and begged me to introduce The Ferret there and then, but she wasn’t, she didn’t, and I was just fine with it. Why wouldn’t I be. :o)

Maybe some women just don’t give you the time of day because it’s like doing you a favour, and I have to say, it's usually the good looking ones. Well, there’s a saying, that the mark of a man (woman) is how he (she) treats someone who is of no obvious use to them. By that standard, the woman I’ve just spoken to is a far nicer woman that the snooty one with her nose in the air. She may not have been as pretty, but sure was far nicer.

Mind you, I guess, too, it’s all a big skill, talking to strangers……….. so shyness could be the deal with Miss Snooty, so I guess I’ll cut her some slack. no, soddit, she didn't look very shy to me. you can kinda tell. :o)

Maybe I should make it a new hobby kinda thing, starting conversations with strangers, and not just women because, God knows, I could do with some more friends. (Sigh)

Never mind, its’ the way it goes I guess, and anyway, it’s a glorious day here.

It’s about 5.40pm now…….. wind’s getting a bit chilly, AND Topless over there has slipped her bra back on, so things must be getting real nippy.

When I win the lottery, I’m gonna do this every damn day! Cruise around, and sit on beaches. Well, not just on beaches, but I guess you know what I mean.

Ok, that’s it……… another ramble about bugger-all, and all raw straight-from-within thoughts too, so don’t judge me too harshly dear reader. Y’all think weird and politically incorrect thoughts too, (oh yes you do!!) I just openly express them, that's all. Bear that in mind when you’re sniffing haughtily at what’s written here in this blog. :o)

Topless is getting dressed, ……………….. and I guess I should be hustling the Harley home too.

Bye for now.............

K. :o)

Petrol Head stuff........... and a rant about bastard weenies (small 'w') :o)

2009-04-25T21:10:00.011+01:00

Well, I’ve been neglecting my reader out there, and so I guess there’s no one out There reading this drivel now, which is fine, because this is just a waste gate for the excess boost I run from time to time. I guess that’s why it’s often a rant, negative and seemingly from a Dysfunctional Fuckwit With No Life.

Well, ok maybe there’s some truth in that, but No Life to me is just gazing into space, drinking yourself into oblivion every day, doing drugs until reality doesn’t exist even on a good day, or simply staring at a TV without any signs of life in the windows to the soul. Me, sure, I waste time, but I’m never bored……….. most of what I spend time doing at least involves some cerebral input. :o)

Anyway, I’m making plans as we speak to get outta this winter’s rut, ………and yes, I know it’s been spring for a while now, but you can’t rush these things y’know. Might even get the rut filled in a bit before next winter sinks hard won Summer enthusiasms.

I’ve been spending my money……… bought two MGB engines and gearboxes on Ebay, which had been sat in the grass in a field for five years without a cover of any sort, for a grand total of £11.50. I need to get the Marlin rebuilt, y’see, and one of the mental blocks stopping it kicking off, is the two litre fiat Twin-Cam engine it had fitted, because the damn thing drinks fuel. It’s a gorgeous engine, and the second most tuneable production engine to the Ford Cosworth, because Fiat designed it specifically to be able to modify and uprate for production racing.

When the Marlin was on the road, many moons ago now, I loved driving about in it so much, I’d take it out with any excuse whatsoever, rain or shine, and at around 22mpg, 29mpg driven like an old woman, it was costing a shedload in fuel. It was pretty quick too, having a higher power-to-weight ratio than a Porsche 911, and I’m not to be trusted with that much grunt in a car………. Being a lifelong bikes, I feel soooooo safe in a car. You can’t fall off them y’see?

My thinking is that a MGB unit won’t lead me astray, and I should be able to get 40mpg out of it in a light kit-car.

Anyway…….. bought the two MGB engine/gearbox lumps, (Each hitherto to be known as the ‘Field Units’) and only expecting to get some spares from them, and possibly only from the gearboxes too. Five years out in the rain is a bleddy long time, even for simple lumps of iron like MGB engines!

I took the heads off them both when I got them back here, and got one turning in the end, and found the bores were hardly worn, although one was quite rusted up, and so it would need to be rebored anyway. I think it is actually pretty rebuildable with some elbow grease and effort, But it’s prolly better to stick to Plan A and get another unit from a scrapped car, and one that has been stored in the dry.

I was hoping they’d be overdrive ‘boxes on the Field Units, but no luck…….. they’re not. I was going to strip the crank and heavy stuff out of one of the engine/gearbox lumps and use it for a template to build the car around, and then look for a good engine and overdrive ’box at my leisure. Probably one out of a scrapped MGB complete with all the ancillaries (Carbs, manifolds, alternator, starter motor, ignition cables etc etc.).

Lo and behold, someone at work knows a MGB nut who had such a unit, but for a whole lot more than I was going to spend. It’s supposed to be a very, VERY good unit, and has been reconditioned as the bloke with the car was going to do it up, but gave up after too much time had passed without getting the body finished. He wants a LOT more than I was hoping to spend, BUT if it’s as good as he says, and I have no reason to doubt it, then I guess it’ll be worth it. By the time I end up rebuilding a

better second-hand engine that either of the ‘field’ units, and maybe having to source a lot of the ancillaries, I could spend even more.

The £400 MGB unit in the donor car

Boring ramble tonight eh?

Well, I guess that’s what you get from a Petrol-Head. What are we all going to do when the weenies (small ‘w’) finally get their way and outlaw all that we love? As it is you can go to prison now just for a high speed. I doesn’t matter that it’s on an empty road………. Locked up with the scum and vermin. The police can drive like lunatics……… and yes, I’ve seen some very bad driving from that lot too over the years, and it’s worse now than it used to be, believe it or not. The craziest overtaking I ever saw on a bike was a copper on a bike. I couldn’t believe what I saw at the time. He was relying on the fact that oncoming traffic would commit suicide rather than hit a copper. Before anyone gets fired up, yes MOST are top notch……… but not all I’m afraid. Like everything, there are exceptions. I’ve seen some pretty stupid stuff by ambulances, and especially fire trucks, considering the weight they must be fully laden.

These weenie bastards in charge of everything cannot understand how we like to play around with all this old stuff, bikes or cars, and I’ve heard that the day will come when you’ll be forced to scrap anything over a certain age. They’ve pretty well stopped us crawling over scrapyards in search of that elusive part, and I think I’m right that Brussels would like to scrap the whole scrap yard industry. You need a part………. Buy new. If you can’t get new, then you’re forced to scrap it. We should be making things to be repairable, and these days with computers to design it in, it would be real easy to do……… the reason ‘we’ don’t, is to keep selling us more crap. Mechanics are just fitters these days………… no one fixes anything any more……. Rip the whole thing off, and bolt on a new bit. Bend a few valves on a cylinder head, and you’ll be charged for a complete new head. It’s gone way beyond fucking crazy.

All the politicians feathering their own nests. Fucking control freaks every single one, from jumped up little local councillors to those slimy weenie bastards crawling around Parliament. That fat bastard Prescott for one. I particularly object to that two-faced bully-boy. Face like a Bulldog licking piss off a thistle doesn’t help a whole lot either.

(There, that’s better.) :o)

Still, when has it ever been different.

Mustn’t grumble.

It’s not the British way is it.

I’m wittering again, so I’ll quit. :o)

Y’all take care out there, ………..and remember; never miss an opportunity to fuck up a weenie’s day if you possibly can. .......... It’s always worth the effort

They fuck enough of yours days up.
K. :o)

Life, losing it........and on getting it back.

2009-04-09T11:19:00.007+01:00

Just a few lines to at least add something to this blog. Completely blank mind, as per usual, but sometimes if I just start writing, something will happen across the synapses.

A good friend of mine, Sally-From-Over-The-Hills emailed me some real cute pics of a baby hedgehog……. let’s see if I can get them on here……….

Cute as hell, eh?

Just about anything is cute when it’s young, isn’t it. Shame it doesn’t stay that way in a lot of cases, don’t you think, although we all see ‘cute’ (for want of a better word) as something different I guess.
Jees, I really can’t get the inspiration today!

Ummmm

Errrrr

Soddit!

Not been much happening to me lately, as per the usual, so that doesn’t help a whole lot. I’m someone who really needs to Get A Life, although I have to say it’s harder to do than most people seem to think. The trouble with a Life is that, once you’ve lost it, finding it again, or getting a new one isn't so easy because they seem to be in damn short supply. Like everything in life, reality doesn’t hit until it hits you.

If you've actually got a Life……… hey, what’s the problem, man?

If you haven’t got a life, you’ll soon be able to tell the asshole/smug bastard/sonofabitch/lucky blighter with it, what the problem is! ............. Once you get to be able to figure it out, that is.

Funny thing, life. Maybe it’s the Universal Law applying, that says it takes a lot or energy, power, whatever you want to call it, to move something when it’s stopped, and maybe that ‘law’ applies even to something as unambiguous as ‘Life’.

Yup, anything which is stopped takes far more of that precious energy to get it rolling again, than it takes to keep it rolling once it’s moving. What's more, you’d better have some momentum on board to allow the energy to overcome the bumps, slopes and hills, or you’ll grind to a halt when you hit them, which will need more of that energy, and so on and so on.

Pretty much most of my adult life, once I’d finally learnt some of life’s basic lessons as a late teenager/ early twenties, I’ve always kept a mind to that momentum and had some in reserve to cope with the hills. You have plenty of that energy to overcome the obstacles anyway when you’re young, unless you hit too many cliffs and sheer mountain faces.

I’d always take care of the smallish ho-de-hum daily stuff that can cause problems, or big trouble if enough stacks up on top of the other. Taking care of the money, keys, credit/charge cards, maintenance of my bikes and cars, paying the bills on time, keeping out of debt no matter what I had to go without, maintaining good(ish) health and fitness, keeping in work despite hating what I did most of the time; ………. y’know, standing on my own two feet, and doing all the stuff most people do to avoid their Life grinding to a halt. Or worse…….. breaking down, or crashing into bits.

If you keep on top of it all, it’s not so bad, or so hard to do, BUT if something knocks you off your perch, and if you don’t have the momentum or backup to lever yourself back up to speed, THEN it all becomes a whole new can of worms.

I hit depression as a result of pressures of work………. mostly the result of weenies (small 'w'), Bullshit and Political Correctness, and all the ammunition it gives people with no experience, talent or ability to step all over those who do have these things. With hindsight I realise I’d suffered from depression on and off since late childhood, but it didn’t last long; usually a day or so at the most and not especially debilitating even then. When it did hit me for a good solid length of time, grinding me down no matter how hard I tried to keep going until I finally just couldn’t crawl into work one day, it was a surprise. It wasn’t as bad as it can get by any means, but bad enough that I lost the energy to keep this life moving as smoothly(ish) as it was.

When I was off sick with it, and doped up on those fucking pills that seemed to help only by way of doping me up, then it was all I could do was keep Life going at a slowest crawl. I was on my own with it, and so only the very barest essentials were maintained. Sometimes I wouldn’t even wash for days on end, let alone bath or shower, and as for everything else, .........well forget it.

Although much better now, and back to work now for some three years part time, I have lost all that Vim I once had. Everything’s too much damn trouble home here. I'm doing ok, but only just in the eyes of many 'normal' people. I don't eat well, hardly ever clean the place, although that means as in dusting and hoovering. Nothing's rotting in a corner, or going mouldy in the kitchen. I go to work, and work hard there, but I come home and just grind to a halt as soon as I walk though the door. Like I said........ it's better than it was, and even then not as bad as it CAN get ........... I'm not by any means just sat here looking into space and crying into my beer (I don't drink anyway), …….. I read a lot, and spend time on the computer and internet, not games and things, but as regards writing the blogs and reading about all the things I’m interested in.

Living alone with no Chick doesn’t help one bit, because if I’m prepared to put up with whatever needs to be done, eat bugger-all food, (as in a good diet), housework, etc etc, then I don’t have to do it. There’s only me here………. although there was Lomax, my kitten, here too, but he disappeared a month ago at seven months old, and I sure do miss the little chap. He was great company, and we were glued to the hip, me and him.

So, with not bothering with this, and not bothering with that, and having few friends who want to do much that involves me, slowly Life erodes and deteriorates until it’s as stripped-down a life as you can have and still resemble someone ‘normal’ with a life.

Don’t misunderstand me here……….. It could be far worse, but it could also be a fuck’s sake better too. ........ it's just bad enough that skies are never as blue, the rain and the cold feels that bit worse, and There is just never enough energy and inspiration to fire you up for much at all.
And, yes, thanks all you smug bastards out there,........... but I do realise it’s my fault, and that only I can get it all going again……… (and I WILL …..soon(ish)),.......... so bugger off back to your Ikea kitchen and your perfect life and do us all a favour.

(Hey! Don't get so pissed......... I was just (kinda) joking around, ok?) :o)

All it would take is the impetus, energy inspiration and initiative to make about 500% more effort, and I’d be back up there bouncing along with the best of them. I can’t explain it, but the nearest I can get to explaining it is by saying that it’s like an invisible wall you just can’t get over, under, around or through, and you just can’t see why not either.

Bit like a housefly on a hot day, hammering against a glass window and trying to get out. I often watch them and feel sorry for the little blighters. .............. (That'd be just before I kill them spectacularly dead with a Ikea magazine then!)

(Did you see what I did there, eh???) :o)

Still, what keeps me going, and moving towards cracking it, is the fact that you never know what’s around the corner, …….. as my dear old Daddy used to say.

That little hedgehog didn’t know someone was going to find him, did he? ………he’s one very lucky hedgehog, because she’s going to be the backup that gets him back up to speed again. I sure hope so anyway.

OK, that’s gotta be it, or I’ll be here all day……… I finally got the Muse, and got going, y’see?

If you’ve got a life, and especially if it’s a Good One, (Complete with that Ikea kitchen and the perfect kids) then take real good care of it.

The worst thing you can do is think it can never happen to you…………. falling off your Last Twig, that is. One minute you're surrounded by thick leafy branches, and the next all you can hear is that last twig breaking.................. and the echo of a sudden yell on the long way down.

If you're real lucky, the most precious thing you have is your Woman or your Man……….. Take THAT for granted at your peril.

I know……….. because I once did.

Bye, bye y'all

K.xxx :o)

A meal and then clubbing with My Girls, a few inspirational quotes, and some Rube Goldberg gadgets. :o)

2009-03-26T14:32:00.007Z

Went out for a meal last night with a load of staff ('My Girls') I used to work with last year, and then to a big pub, which is pretty much a night club in all but name……. the same one I went to a couple of weeks ago or so, with the bunch of staff I work with now.

It was a great night out, and we had a great laugh. They are a good bunch, and the humour is terrific when we are all together. I was in ‘Entertain’ mode, and the restaurant owner said they were all welcome back, excepting myself. He was smiling though.

(Thankyou God for a great night out.)

I got back home, and it’s silence had the usual ‘flattening’ effect. Another rare night out in the company of people with full lives, and another return alone to a quiet house. Jeees, how many times have I come back to a quiet house? Still, at least I don’t have to put up with someone else’s shit I guess. Some would gladly swap places with me in a heartbeat, eh? :o)

(Thankyou God I don’t have to put up with someone else’s shit!) :o)

Had a bad night………. bad dreams which kept me wakening up through the night. Stood outside for a while pondering on it all, and calling for Lomax, as I do every time I happen to get up at night. Made a cuppa, had a read, and back to sleep at four-ish. Slept on and off then until nine.

Exciting life, innit? :oI

(Thankyou God for waking to another day)

This blog isn’t kicking off today……… no inspiration.

Give up for today, eh? Sometimes you’ve just got to let it go.

Instead,……….. here’s some quotes I found whilst browsing around the ‘net this morning. I just might inspire someone else today. :o)

"I never knew I was going to get to the result until I got there." -- Pablo Pardo

"The perfect state of creative bliss is having power (you are 50) and knowing nothing (you are 9). This assures an interesting and successful outcome."
-- Tibor Kalman

The good news is that you can become more innovative just by taking some action, however small, today. My favorite book on this subject is The Knowing-Doing Gap. In one section of the book, 49ers coach Steve Mariucci explains how he stamps out inaction by not sporting a watch:
"Always know what time it is. It is always NOW. And NOW is when you should do it."

"The best measure of a blog is not how many people it reaches, it’s how much it changes what you do. Changes your posture, your writing, your transparency, your humility. What blogging has done for me is made me think. I get to think about how the outside world will understand something I’m trying to do, for example."- Seth Godin

Exhilaration is the Breeze
That lifts us from the Ground
And leaves us in another place
Whose statement is not found
-Emily Dickinson

................ And here's some U-Tube links:-

This wooden marble 'adding machine' would be fun to make........... maybe a lot bigger with more adding slots to calculate a far bigger number.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A&feature=channel

Here's a link to a music machine........... whether you think it sounds good or not is immaterial really.............. just think of the work to put it together, eh????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Ajg1G3vik

That got me looking at Automata........... something that's always fascinated me, and which I'd love to get around to making someday. I'd love to make something that is complicated, and goes all around the woods to do bugger-all in the end.

I love the setups where, like a row of falling dominoes, a whole series of events results in something trivial happening at the end. There's a name for these chain- reaction mechanisms but it escapes me right now.............

Ah, yes............ Rube Goldberg Mechanisms.

There's several on U-Tube........... Honda did one, which was an advert called "Cog", and was quite brilliant in itself, using nothing but Honda car parts!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYabfifhEPE

The best one though is absolutely fantastic, called 'The way Things Go'. It used many more spectacular chain reactions, fire and fireworks being amongst them, and although it's a little more amateurish and less 'slick' than the Honda one, it's actually far better, at over a hundred feet long, and lasting for 30 minutes in the full version

Here's a U-Tube link to a shorter version...........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U82eWptFxSs

There's bloke called Theo Jansen who designs and builds the fantastic Strandbeests:-

"Since 1990 I have been occupied creating new forms of life.
Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. I make skeletons that are able to walk on the wind, so they don’t have to eat.
Over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives."

have a look at his website........... fascinating, it really is. No electronics whatsoever, which means absolutely no computers of any size at all.

here's a link to them working.........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_eY22R0TWE&NR=1

........... and here's a U-Tube link to a lecture of his..........

http://www.strandbeest.com/

There's a BMW advert on the end, and a bit at the beginning, but ignore that. I guess he needs sponsorship, and I won't knock this absolutely genius guy for that! :o)

Ok, y’all have a good day out there,…. well, what’s left of it anyway .............. it's pretty much over here, as it's just gone 5.30pm.

Another day without Lomax bites the dust. I sure hope he's ok, wherever he is. :o(

K.

Back-Patch Biker Club party, and Other Thoughts that get sparked off............. as they do. :o)

2009-03-24T09:53:00.004Z

Not a lot been happening. Had a couple of good days at work, despite them being very busy. Good-humoured, and hard working staff makes all the difference in this job, same as in most I would think, and I feel very sorry for those who have to do without it around them as they work. Most times it’s the only thing that makes it bearable.

No-Problem-Pete dragged me off on our bikes to a Back-Patch Club party at their clubhouse a few miles away on Saturday night. It was real good, largely because, as I was talking about the other day here, these are the Real Thing, and it showed in the genuinely friendly, and unpretentious atmosphere. Many who are outside of the biking world would be amazed at how unintimidating it was too.

Motorcycling in this country is traditionally a dirty word, for many reasons, not the least of which it being the traditional interest (at one time!) of the young, and the lower classes, and traditionally perceived as being so 'dangerous' as well. I'ts more acceptable now our wealthier middle class forty-something’s are embracing it as a lifestyle accessory, although it certainly still retains that second-class citizen feel . If you ever want to feel your life is worth nothing more than dried spit on the pavement, look into the eyes of a motorist as they access your worth, and risk to themselves, just before they look away and pull right out in front of you. It happens often; pretty much daily, if you ride a lot.

It’s more often not a case of “I didn’t see you mate” than a case, of “I did, but I couldn’t care less if you live or die” You don’t believe me? Let me take you for a spin and open your eyes a bit.

In fact we as a group cause very little of the perceived trouble to any community. There were some troubles back in the sixties and early seventies, but that was a result of having those upstart weirdo mods, and skinheads about the place, who insisted on using poxy little scooters to display their ‘masculinity’. I mean, who, if they were of any genetically sound ancestry worthy of preservation, would ever use a scooter, an excellent vehicle to shop and commute locally on, as something with which to attract the Chicks? I ask you, I mean, c’mon?

Anyway, I digress……… we’re all friends now, so they tell me. :o)

No, get any amount of us together and you won’t find any trouble……… unlike some other more socially acceptable pastimes, like football f’rinstance. Ask yourself………. If biking events cost a fraction of what football costs to police, and has such a history of violence at their venues, would it not be banned pretty quickly? I rather think so!

Y’all may not be aware of this, but in 2008 there were several traditional biking rallies and activities effectively banned by some pretty sly police and ‘establishment’ goings-on. This was despite there having never been any trouble in years gone by.

It's evidence of the creeping cancer in our society of the weenies (small ‘w’) at work. They are, cold wet slimy drip, by cold wet slimy drip, destroying out country, and they are sneakily doing it by effectvely trying to outlaw the minority interests first. By the time the majority take notice it will be too late. It actually already is

If you want evidence that we bikers, as a group, cause little trouble to the society we live in, just go to the Isle of Man during TT race week (Fortnight if you include Practice Week, and you should really). There, something like 35,000 bikers land on this tiny little island for a week of pure speed, and love of two wheeled (And a few three wheeled) machinery. Ask any of the police over there just how much trouble they have to deal with, and you’ll find they will say none at all. Any night that week there are just a relatively few coppers patrolling Douglas (The capital of the I.O.M.), despite the streets and pubs absolutely CRAMMED with thousands of bikers, and the main drag three-deep with thousands of bikes parked up in rows as far as you can see. I really is quite a sight.

I was talking to a copper over there one year, and he said that the reason bikers were no trouble is because we are what we are from our love of the bikes. We don’t need to kick somebody’s head in to get our kicks (Did you see what I did there?), because we get those kicks from the bikes. That’s right on the button.

Yup, and so take it from me, the I.O.M., during TT week anyway, would be the safest place you could wander alone at night. Ask any I.O.M resident too……….. they absolutely love us. The ones who don’t are the few super-rich who don’t like their little tax-haven boat rocked, but they aren’t the indigenous people, not by a long chalk. However, their influence is slowly (cold wet slimy drip, by cold wet slimy drip) diluting the event, and I fear for it’s future once my generation has slipped it’s mooring from this mortal coil.

Anyway……. yup, it was a great party, and the bikes outside were a good mix of styles and modifications. It was good to be amongst a group where not one was a bullshitter. These boys were all time served troops. :o)

As an aside……….. someone told me that the locality used to get swamped every year with a certain travelling fraternity, but after this back-patch club moved in and sorted out their clubhouse, they strangely visited just the once. There was no intimidation, it was only the knowledge that there were a group of hard-core bikers established there, and so this particular group of ‘travelling people’ suddenly chose to make a mess, and plant themselves for free, somewhere else.

Funny that, don’t you think?

Makes me wonder what would happen if other people got together and refused to stand for any shit from those who think they can do as they please. Maybe one day we will all get so pissed-off with being the victims being trampled on, and the scum openly laughing at the majority, that we will get our shit together, but I fear the opportunity is fast diminishing.

We pay the police to do it for us, but they are so roped in by political correctness, bullshit, and self-serving politicians, that they can’t be effective any more. I fear their numbers are also weakened by an infiltration of weenies in their ranks. They’d be the ones fast-tracked for promotion then.

If we don’t watch it, fascism will take a hold……… history should warn us of that. I for one get tempted to vote for the BNP quite often……… not because I’m racist, nor because I want them in power for one second, but because our thieving, skiving, dishonest two-faced weenie politicians need a big wake-up call!

Sooner the better!

Sorry……….. ranting again. :oI

How’d I get to that point?

It’s The Rambling that does it y’know. :o)

Y’all have a good day out there, wherever you are……… and thank God for at least one thing today, and every day. I’m into my sixth (I think?) “Thankyou God” day, and am still hanging in there.

Mind you, I started to ship some water yesterday morning, but managed to bale it dry by the afternoon :o)

Remember what Churchill said………. “Never, EVER, give up!” :o)

Thankyou God, that I haven’t.

K. x :o)

Happier than God................. one day, hopefully :o)

2009-03-20T22:36:00.006Z

I've been reading “Happier Than God” by Neale Donald Walsh………… it’s kinda a cross between another of his books “Conversations With God”, and “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne.

It makes a lot of sense, despite being quite fantastic (As in ‘unbelievable’), but no more fantastic than any of the conventional religions. It sure supports what I know is happening to me right now…………. I’m in a deep web of negativity right now, and have been for a while to a greater of lesser degree, and I know it’s self-perpetuating, in that it is drawing in more negativity to feed on. ‘Things’ aren’t working out with pretty much anything at all, and I’m bringing it in on myself, but even knowing that, I seem (Please note……..mustn’t say ‘can’t’) to be unable to break out of it………. at the moment. When my father died back in ’91, I went through a extremely positive phase for something like six months or so, and was absolutely invincible, and I knew, and expected everything to go right, and you know what?

IT DID!!!! It was brilliant!

My Dad had just died, all hell broke loose in as much as my world was turned over…….. my five year relationship with my girlfriend fell apart from the strain of it all, my sister decided I was her enemy, because I then fell in love with her best friend along the way, I’d been busted for speeding by the police on the way down to comfort my Sister in Cornwall the evening I’d heard he had died, and was going to get a definite driving ban when it came to court.

Ok, you’re wondering………Two busts by two separate pursuit cars in different places along the dual carriageway, 120 on a curve, and 140mph up a steep hill, a police pursuit by two fast Rovers for eighteen miles and a road block in Lifton to catch me……. I didn’t know they were pursuing they were so far behind. Four minutes behind me, …I counted. Drive a fast car skilfully, with blue lights clearing the way, as hard as you can for four minutes, ands see how far you travel. That’s a LONG way behind. They were not happy bunnies! To top it all, 140mph was the fasted speed ever dealt with when it eventually came to court in Okehampton. The court was packed when my case came up, and it made the front page of the Western Morning News in two counties, Devon and Cornwall.

The bike, if you’re wondering, was a beautiful, and much loved, silver and red Kawasaki 900R.

The day My Father died was a terrible, terrible day, made all the worse by being busted in such a huge way.

So, y’see……….all sorts of stuff going on which should’ve had the depressive, opposite, effect on me, ………and yet I was flying high as a kite despite it all…….. not immediately, but very soon. Everything was all of a sudden working for me to make things happen, and to help me achieve what I was having to do.

Right down the line………. Everything I did went bang on the button, and it wasn’t as if it was an easy time either……… my sister was incapacitated with grief, everyone was supporting her, and I had to sort out my Father’s affairs completely alone, travelling to and fro from Taunton to Cornwall on all my days off for months. It was as hard as hell to do, and pretty much no one to advise me, let alone help. Clearing his big garage and workshop was a mammoth task alone, both emotionally and physically, but I was largely buoyed up by this strange positivism, and it was something I’ve never forgotten. Never forgotten, but equally I’ve never been able to replicate it again to anything like as much, or for so long a time.

I could move mountains, and I did too. :o)

Was that something to do with my Father ‘helping’ me from the afterlife?

Was it God working in my life?

Was it that I’d somehow tapped into positivity, and was reaping the rewards of a generous and benevolent Universe?

Dunno………. I kinda think the latter, but who knows? Maybe it all three????????

Anyway…….. back to the present.

“Happier Than God”, “Conversations With God”, and “The Secret” all enthuse about the laws of attraction, and a kind of cosmic ordering. What you focus on and what your heart desires, will come about. HTG and CWG teach that God is Life……. He is always with us, because he IS us. “The Secret” is more about cosmic ordering.

You need to read he books really, as I haven’t grasped it completely, nor finished the books, but I can say this………… I’ve had a week off on annual leave this week, and having started HTG this morning, and applied some of it by thanking God all day, on and off, but mostly on, I have had the best day so far. I even thanked god for the leak on the Harley cylinder head, because it will give me a chance to get out into the workshop again in order to repair it, and to feel the joy of having done so when I do. See, HTG says that things that seem to get worse, are a sigh that it’s working, because it lets you feel the upside when that eventually follows. An example he gives……… if you desired to be The Light, and there was no darkness, you wouldn’t know you were The Light, because you would be in the light anyway, so darkness would have to surround you first in order that you be aware that you had become The Light.

Gettit??? :o)))

Ok, but I did say it was ‘fantastic’, didn’t I? Cutting edge science is starting to nibble at fantastic concepts that are so far considered too whacky to even listen to. If you believe in any of the conventional religions, they are no less whacky. People are blowing themselves up. believing that seventy-two virgins are waiting to reward each and every one of them. Whacky as hell, BUT, whatever IS going on Out There is way beyond whacky. There is a concept that the whole universe as we know it is in fact a huge hologram, and nothing is any more real than a dream.

An illustration….. You dream you offer someone a cup of tea, and in the dream you give them one, and at the same time imagine to yourself that they enjoy it. So, in the dream, you actually give them the tea, and in your mind imagine them enjoying it, BUT……… it’s a dream, …………so the cup of tea is as imaginary as you imagining them enjoying it, but in the dream it was ‘real’.

So maybe everything we know is a dream, a fantasy, a hologram, whatever. Science has learned that nothing is in contact with anything else, because if you go small enough to sub-atomic level, there are huge gaps between all the particles making up anything, just as there are huge gaps between the planets………. Nothing touches anything else. Solids aren’t solid at all, they just manifest themselves as solid in our physical experience. If you touch something, you actually don’t tough it…….. not really, because if you could see to a fine enough degree, you would see a gap there. It’s all a matter of scale. We are trying to discover things way beyond our physical capability to prove, but is only the half of it is right, it is pretty fantastic……… all of it.

So, I do believe, and have done for a while now, that what we think, HOW we think, determines out lives completely. The trick is, is to manage your mind to the degree that you can turn things around from a negative perspective to a positive one. For some people it’s easy……….. they do that naturally, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar they are the ‘winners’ in life……… I as much that they are generally ‘happy’.

Me, I’m gonna turn this ship around if it kills me. I’ve been trying for a long time, but………. (No, Eddie says I mustn’t say ‘but’………. not in connection to negativity…….. I must say however)………… HOWEVER, it’s gonna change! :o)

If you’re having a shit time of things………. Read HTG, and CWG, with an open mind, a very open mind, and you don’t have to go to church every Sunday to make it work either if you’re not a religious person. If you are religious, I don’t think it will necessarily clash with what you already believe. I think it will reinforce what you believe.

It’s a win-win, yes? :o))))))

One last thing………… don’t for one second think I’m preaching here, or trying to sound like I have the answers. Couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m just reading some books, and some things are making a bit of sense, and I’m passing it on in the hope it might help someone else, that’s all.

And some things are changing my mood, so that has to be a good thing, and some proof that some techniques do work. Try saying ‘thank-you’ all day to ‘God’ whether you believe ‘he’ exists of not. Give thanks for even the bad stuff…..use your imagination as to how to do that, and see if it doesn’t brighten your day at least a little bit. I laughed to myself when I thought up a way of being thankful for the Harley cylinder-head oil leak.

Beat THAT for a turn around!!!!! :o))))))))))))))

And you know what? I dragged the old girl out, and had a good look at it, and it wasn’t as bad a leak as I thought. It leaks when you park it leaning over on the stand………. The oil ‘pools’ in the rear corner of the head, and drips through the gasket until it levels out. When you’re upright and riding it, it leaks very, very little. It still needs fixing fairly soon, and it’s still a pain to fix by the looks of it, ………….but not quite as bad as I thought.

Was that because I said “Thank-you”???

Who knows. :o)

K.xxx (x’s are for all you gurls out there!) :o)

Foaming at the mouth, and well overdue his medication......... NURSE!!!!!

2009-03-19T08:11:00.008Z

Took the Harley down to Cornwall and back to see my 85-year-old Aunty Ruth on Tuesday (17th). She is a lovely woman, and it’s always a pleasure to sit and natter with her. Bright as a button, despite having suffered ill health for a good number of years now, and getting frailer every year. She is someone who really listens to you, loves everyone around her, and is always genuinely concerned about us all. I love her to bits, and she’s always my first port of call before seeing my cousin, and good friend John (her son) and his family. I left late at mid-day, and returned home by 7.45pm, without calling in on John, which is a first. Not feeling my brightest by a long way again, and just didn’t fancy hustling the Tractor (Harley) back along the ‘B’ roads late and in the cold. Being pissed-off kinda makes you feel like that.

God is that thing ever slow, and real hard work to push along at anything like a half decent pace. It has a charm, pretty much purely around it’s torquey, old fashioned long stroke engine, and is ideal for a leisurely cruise around the ‘B’ roads at between fifty and seventy, but anything more than that and it’s stressed and flustered. If you want to go a good distance in any hurry whatsoever……. forget it.

Took it for a short spin yesterday, and found it’s leaking oil from the back of the rocker-box………. A drip-drip leak. It looks to be a pain to fix too, if just tightening it down doesn’t work, which I suspect it won’t. Have to take the rocker box, complete with rockers off, and it is made of a three-part sandwich. Looks like a right lash-up of a design, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve got the spanners out, and had a good look at it. Actually, it's not that big a deal, ............more to do with me having trouble doing anything these days which involves the least bit of effort.

It’s like new…….. just under 9,000 miles. No excuse for it really, and prolly just because it has a bit of a mild thrashing the day before. There’s a fair bit of detail that is nothing short of cheap ‘n’ nasty on this Sportster, which is inexcusable from the oldest bike manufacturer in the world, and from one who sell their bikes on ‘Hand Built Craftsmanship’.

Hand Built Craftsmanship, my ass!

Now THIS is hand built! .....................Purty aint it? :o))))

....... And only God could've hand built her. (Thankyou God, etc, etc.......)

These things rust like anchors if you show them rain, and I know……… I’ve had two of them. The design is archaic, and the accuracy of manufacture, if the swinging arm is anything to go by, is poor………. When you do up the back wheel spindle, you pinch the swinging arm tube. I wouldn't expect that on a Chinese made moped. The handling is a joke, and the performance, for 1200cc is truly laughable, although I grant you that cruisers aren't meant to be thrown around.......... HOWEVER Harley do market this bike on it's handling and 'sportiness'.

Having no centre stand is always a real pain in the ass, and so the back wheel a pain to get out, which is way more awkward to get out than it ever should be anyway. This isn’t a sports bike, and so there’s no excuse not to fit a centre stand, or make the wheel such a pain to get out. It's pure penny-pinching, and sure wouldn't fill me with confidence that moving up to a Big twin would be a good thing. The clearance between the rear belt drive (Instead of a chain, which is a good idea) is way too small too to make allowance for variations between tyre manufacturers sizing. I fitted a pair of Continentals, and the back tyre is just being scuffed by the drive belt.

So why have I bought another one, having found all this with the last, back in 1990 or so? Well, that’s kinda hard to explain.

It’s a bit to do with trying to slow myself down………. Hoover (My 1200S Suzuki Bandit) is like a real bad gurl, who leads you to do things you really didn’t ought to be doing.

It’s a bit that appeals to the old fashioned greaser in me, who cut his teeth on old-fashioned British bikes, and this is an old fashioned bike.

It’s the bit in me that’s still strangely naive and optimistic, in that I can’t help thinking that maybe this time it’ll be different.

And it’s the bit in me that gets taken in by the Harley Mystique, even though I know full well it’s 75% U.S. Prime, Hand Scooped And Fed, Bullshit. Even now I wonder if a Big Twin would be any better…….. surely it would etc etc…….. :o)

Harleys make two types of basic bike…… the lighter, “smaller” Sportsters, and the bigger Big Twins…….. Sportsters aren’t considered to be ‘real’ Harleys by the ‘elite’. They are, of course, and a better engine in many ways, but it’s all a part of the Harley Bullshit. Sportsters are marked down as kinda ‘loss leaders’ to get you hooked on the Harley Thing, and then you sell your soul to be a ‘Real’ Harley Man and buy a Big Twin, which are extortionate prices……… up to over £20,000 a time. That’s a whole lotta money for something that’s not even really well made, not to a level that the price would lead you to expect.

Still, once Harley have hooked you with the Sporty, you have to sell your soul for a big Twin to really be with the 'in' crowd you now want to emulate. A real neat bit of marketing.

(It’s a Man Thang, hunny!) :o)

Yup, it’s real easy to be dragged into it all,…….. like I said, I’ve been around the block way more times than is ever good for a chap, but even I get drawn into buying another one, after swearing “Never Again!”

Strains of Born To Be Wild kinda echo through the barking exhaust note, as you feed her a big handful of beef outta the corner, and point the tiny Sportster headlight down a long straight.

Booooorn to be wiiiiild……………………………. Get outta my fuckin’ way! (Because, like, I don’t have enough steam to overtake ya, man!) :o)

Now, should there be any good ol’ Harley boys out there sharpening their knives, let me just add a bit more insult to injury to help you get up a head of steam. ( :o)…… for God’s sake lighten up chaps! )

There are two distinct types of Harley rider. There’s the Real Thing, and there’s The Rest. Of The Rest, a whole lot (But not all) are wannabes of the highest order. Most emulate the Real Thing. They have pulled out the fat wallets of the Forty-something’s, and have bought the Real Thing’s genuinely bad-ass reputation……….. largely that of the genuine back-patch bike clubs. (Hells Angels, Reapers, Satan’s slaves, Chopper club etc.) They emulate the back-patch dress code, lifestyle, and look real mean ‘n’ moody, and yes, some do look the part…… big and beefy, but that’s not quite the same thing as hard.

Hard is when you fall, break bones, nearly lose your life, but still climb back on a bike as soon as you can. Sometimes several times, if there's enough of you left working to still be able to ride somehow.

(NABD, (National Association for Bikers with a Disability) is a great organisation to get disbled bikers back on the road, and anyone can join)

Hard is when you work on the bloody things all night outside in the freezing cold, because you had no garage when you started out, and spend your last quid to keep it on the road.

Hard is when you ride in all weathers, day or night, for more years than you can remember.

Hard is going against the flow of the general scheme of things, and keep right on loving mo'sickles way beyond your youth, no matter what anyone says.

Hard is doing the time, and the pain.

Hard is definitely not just getting your wallet out because you fancy the lifestyle and image. I saw a t-shirt slogan the other day, which sums it up nicely, ..........

"Spending twenty-five grand, and riding twenty-five yards, does not make you a Biker"

How true. :o)

No matter what you might think of The Real Thing, these bikers and their ilk are genuinely tough, love bikes, have been around them all their lives, ...........and most importantly, ............can ride them. I can ride better than most (Note:- I didn’t say better than anybody), and I’ve caught and passed very nimble sports bikes on the Harley, on twisty ‘B’ roads where it's skill and not performance that shows up the difference. Believe me, that should be impossible to do on a Harley, ................and yes, they certainly were trying to get away from me.

You can kinda tell. :o)

The wannabes swagger around in similar attire, to the Real Thing, albeit pretty much brand spanking new, and over the top sometimes, and certainly revel in the Bad Boy image. The time served riders amongst them are pretty much obvious, but they seem to be in a relative minority from those I’ve seen. Talking the talk is easy these days, but walking the walk is another thing altogether. Harley Davidson themselves promote the whole lifestyle thing to go with their bikes……… they sell everything from Harley cute ‘n’ dinky little ornaments that wifey will approve of, to…….. hell,……… I dunno……… I’ll bet you can even get Genuine Harley Davidson Soap-On-A-Rope, to save losing it………. y’know, ………..for when you slip in the shower, boys, …………as you do. :o)

Harley delicately market the Hard Man, Hard Riding, Prime U.S. Male Bad Boy image, but at the same time distance themselves from those who really are tough and hard riding. Those who built that image they make millions by selling.

An example………I know a bloke here in Taunton……. Old School Biker……… Hard as bleddy nails, BSA tattooed on his earlobes and who’s been riding since he could walk. I used to see him a lot on the way to work, and used to call in and have a good old natter. Mad as a coot, and rode a road going CBR kneeler. That’s a pure racing sidecar outfit registered for the road…….. you need balls to ride that on the road! About two foot high……. Bit like a three-wheeled skateboard, with a big engine. Anyway, he ran out of fuel near a certain Harley Davidson main dealer, and pushed the kneeler along with his foot, as is the practice with these things, into their forecourt to get a few pints of fuel to get to a garage down the road.

Would they help the guy, a real dirt-under-the-fingernails biker?

Nope, they wouldn’t.

Said they didn’t have any juice.

Bollocks they didn’t.

He was just too rough looking, and they weren’t going to make any money out of him. (Although he wasn’t asking for the fuel for free)

NO dealer, big or small would’ve turned him away like that at one time. See what I mean?

Harley do seminars for industry on marketing, and so they should. What they pull off is nothing short of miraculous, it really is. Even I’ve gotten pulled into the “Things are different on a Harley” thing, and it’s true, things are different…… it’s an old fashioned bike, but that’s no excuse for not making it as good as it should be. As good as you portray it too. That’s dishonest in my book.

Do you want to know what the other neat trick is? You will find it real hard, and I mean really, really hard, to find anyone who rides, and certainly sells them, to tell you one single thing that isn’t good about these bikes. Nothings perfect, but evidently Harleys are (Sir). And when someone like me does point out what's not so good, well, blimey! It's as if I rub shit on the bald head of their fathers. :o) Unbelievable really.

Now, it’s not all bad. A Harley is the only old fashioned bike still made in any real volume, and that certainly is their charm. It's the reason I blow hot and cold over the bleddy thing on almost a daily basis. It's an antedote to the blandness of super-eficient modern bikes, and you prolly wouldn't understand that if you'd never ridden anything else but the modern bikes.

I had two Norton Commandoes back when i was young; a red 750 Fastback and later a 850 Interstate. To this day I've only got to see one, and I'm in an embarrasingy nostalgic state. I was always working on them, because i thrashed them two up all the time, and the only way to keep them reliable was to keep right on top of the maintainance. I know if I had another I'd soon be cussing it, but sometimes you can't help, nor explain what you love.

So I can understand those who swear a harley is the finest of motorcycles, and wouldn't be seen dead on anything else, but don't really understand why they have to be declared faultless. Nothing is........ not even me! :o)

Despite all the rambling on here, I have to say that when I open the garage door the sight of my little burgundy Sportster waiting there, lazily canted over on her stand, always makes me smile. I guess that's a pretty significant thing. The right weather, the right road, and the right Chick on he back, in no hurry, and you can have a real nice day. I've done it, and it's real nice; takes some beating as a pleasurable experiance on a good day too, but there certainly is a lot of bullshit sold with these bikes, and a lot of bullshitters riding them too, ........and if there's one thing I HATE, it's bullshit.

The HOG (Harley Owners Group), for example, is a big social thing, promoted and supported by HD themselves……… and that’s no bad thing………. but it seems to me that they do style themselves heavily on the Outlaw Back-Patch clubs, and a whole lotta swaggering goes on. Ok, I know full well that here are a lot of genuinely time-served bikers in HOG, and anyone who's put the years in has my respect, whatever they ride, BUT there are some real bullshitters in there too.

It's not really that I've got a beef with anyone taking up biking at whatever age......... it's the way some think they're the Dogs Bollocks in ten minutes.......... THAT'S what does it!

The dealerships support HOG, and pump them up no end, and they sure spend their money with them too....... all to look the part, and buy the lifestyle. It's real slick marketing. There are some things in life you should have to earn, and not be able to just buy into, and biking is one of them. It’s that which gets up my nose……… it’s the fake, (and not so fake too) male-ego bullshit that does it for me.

Exactly the same as all the sports bike riders who dress up like G.P. riders, and can’t ride the damn things they buy. Don't they realise they're not fooling those who know their stuff?

I guess it all boils down to me not changing enough to keep pace with the was our society is going as the years go by. Maybe it's me that's got it all wrong?

One thing is for sure-certain though......... quite apart from anything else, it's not getting any easier to survive on the roads. You need to have a well developed sixth sense, be experienced to be able to do exactly the right thing in a split second......... actually, do several things exactly right ,to get out of trouble that will most definitely hit you sooner or later, and repeatedly so too.

You need to learn fast, and to do that you need start this thing young. No question about it.

I hate the way biking has changed. There was a time when you had to be the Real Thing to ride a big bike, and especially to be any age worth the name and still doing it, because few took it up in their (comparatively) old age; those over forty had worked their way up over many years. Being an Old Biker was a kinda badge of office in itself, because you couldn’t get there without putting the time in. A respect went with it. If you were full of shit, you stood out like a sore thumb.

The weenies and bean counters have changed it all, and our government in this country have played a big part too, in cutting off the traditional life-blood of motorcycling with endless legislation designed to make it a shard as it can be to stick with biking if you’re young. The constant renewal of our numbers by youngsters is gone. It’s an Old man’s game now.

Sanitised.

Respectable.

Relatively tasteless too.

A lot of biking has the same flavour as all the Bullshit and PC that prevails all around us these days. Bland and with no spirit. There’s no refuge from it any more.

Don't even get me started on how sanitised and 'family friendly' a lot of bike shows are these days. More arrive in cars than on bikes, and you get CAR!!! demonstrations, stunts etc. It's enough to make you throw up, it really is.

It’s all bollocks, ……….and I bleddy hate it!

Bollocks is everywhere! (And, yes, I know that should be ‘are everywhere’!)

(Ooooh......... he's getting steam up! He needs a cold rub-down with a bit of hessian, he does, the poor dear) :oI

Still, there’s no changing any of it, and me being an Angry Young Man won’t do it either. (sigh), so, if you’re reading this, and have got mad at what I’ve said……… , then just read it again and get what I mean here, ok? If you're still all bristling and fierce, then, good, because it was aimed at a bullshitting limp prick like you! (And we all know a limp prick’s no use to anyone, don’t we?)

Some will be confused. You're the prolly the ones who haven't ever ridden on a Big Tool, and will die wondering. That's gonna be a real shame. :o)

The rest of you still standing will get what I mean. :o)

Last thought, after pondering a photo of her................

I say all that mean stuff about her, then I take a good long look at her and how she somehow represents the way things used to be, and I think to myself............ awwwww, she aint so bad really, ........... and, besides, it is bleddy good fun going after the Sports bikes on her.

I gotta give it to her, ............she sure gives it her best shot, and I can't fault her enthusiasm.

She frightens the shit outa them, (me too sometimes!!) .............. and that's gotta be a good thing :o)

K. :o)

Serving time......... and learning to walk first

2009-03-16T11:07:00.003Z

Sunday, and the sun is shining. The day stretches before me, and what will I do with it? Something good…….. something useful, or will I ‘waste’ it like I seem to do so many these days. I dunno. Maybe I’ll take the Harley for a gallop. (I use the word ‘gallop’ very loosely……… in much the same way you would with a tractor.) :o)

Too nice a day not to I guess, but the trouble is I just don’t have the inspiration to point it anywhere in particular these days. A woman would help, one who likes to ride pillion on these machines. I’ve known four who loved it……….. two for years, and two for a shorter time, but it made all the difference. Doing things on your own all the time sure leaves the paint of life looking faded and dull.

Still no sign of Lomax. I dreamt he came back last night. I was in the lounge (in the dream), and he came out of one of the polythene shopping bags he used to play with as a kitten, and that still lie on the floor. He was thin, bedraggled, could hardly stand, and was beside himself to see me. It felt so good to have him rubbing up against me, butting heads, feel his warm little body on my chest, and hear his purr. I knew it was a dream as I was dreaming it, and tried to keep with it, but woke before I wanted to. I woke up pretty upset

God, I miss that little chap. He was quite something, and really got under my skin. I guess it’s the result of living alone, having very, very few friends to do things with, and especially no woman.

One minute women were no problem, the next it’s all over, and I’m reduced to loving a little pussy cat. How’d that ever happen without me noticing the shift?

Some hard biker, eh?

Some Sad Old Greaser, more like.

One thing’s for sure-certain……….. no woman’s going to want to rub up against me, unless I get my Shit Together a good bit better than this. Mind you, at fifty-four-and-a-bleddy-half they don’t want to know, Shit Together or not. It’s real hard to get my head around the fact that the party’s over. Sooner I do that, the better, but I guess it takes a while to make the transitions through the stages of your life. Hell, I never made the jump to ‘adult’, let alone ‘old’. Maybe that’s the whole problem. The friends my age all seem to be just fine with gracefully accepting the counsel of the years, ………..but not me, ……….oh no, ……….I gotta do it the hard way.

Always have, and always will. (Sigh)

I took the Harley into town to feed my magazine habit, and then followed a couple of newby bikers on sports bikes out of town. God it’s frightening to see them trying to run before they can walk, it really is. Even more so, because there are soooooo many of them. For pity’s sake, pass your test, and don’t buy something that’s always going to be trying to get away from you. Get a modestly performing bike, and when you can throw that about and are bored with it’s limitations, then get something a bit hotter, and work your way up. That way you won’t always be way ’behind’ a bike that’s always getting away from you, and leading you into situations you can’t handle. Being afraid of what you’re riding, for more than a short time, is a real bad thing. You’ll also do it more like the rest of us did in the old days. Oh yes we did………. Most of us were young and broke, and anyway, the quickest and fastest (There is a difference!) thing you could get back then was like a bicycle compared to what is so easily available nowadays.

Why does no-one want to serve any apprenticeship in anything these days???? The trouble with bikes, running before you can walk is a killer. Worse still, wifey/ partner/ girlfriend/ whoever, so often believes all the bullshit from her big brave man, gets matching leathers and helmet, and faithfully climbs on the back. Oh dear.

Gives me a nice ass to look at whilst I’m lining up for the optimally demoralising overtaking manoeuvre though. Sometimes, though, she looks so good I’m happy to plod along behind for a good few miles. Sometimes it’s kinda restful and therapeutic to ease up for a bit. :o)

I once advised a couple I met in a big dealership looking at bikes, and just day dreaming. It was mostly wifey actually……. Hubby came along to hear the advice, way too late to steer her away from listening to the Old Greaser, and he was quietly bloody furious. I had started to chat to her, as she was wandering about on her own, and she, on the other hand, was very interested in what someone with thirty-odd years in the saddle had to say. They had big plans to take their two kids around Europe on the back of their brand new two big Triumph Tiger bikes. (Big trail bikes, but tall and ungainly, and plenty fast enough to get you into trouble at the same time) They had passed their tests together two months ago, after some sort of quick access training, and certainly hadn’t been riding long at all. It was obvious hubby had convinced her all would be well.

Yeah, right.

I said, ok, great idea, ………….but definitely not with the kids on the back. Told them they weren’t anything like good enough yet, and there was a fair to even chance they’d live to regret it. They had money, looked very confident and successful, him in particular, and boy did he hate being told he wasn’t good at something, especially from what he obviously regarded as a low-life. Why do men in particular have soooooo much trouble hearing they’re not up to something, especially when it should be bloody obvious???? Their ego has killed a whole lot of them.

I believe in starting at the bottom and working your way upwards in life. Our generation was brought up that way, so it’s no surprise that I look at life that way. Ok, I’m not saying I don’t ever try to run before I can walk, because that’s one of my faults in life……… overreaching myself. BUT, because I was brought up to respect my elders, which goes hand in hand to respecting those who know more than me, whether older or younger, I will take advice, and criticism, and try and learn from it. It’s the fastest way I know of being able to run. I also know there are no short cuts around time too, and sometimes you just have to serve the apprenticeship.

An example………….

I took up scuba diving back in about ’85 or so, did the diving course here in Taunton, and soon got the basic Sport Diver qualification. Right after qualifying as safe to dive, I was encouraged,……… pushed actually, along with Alan, another ‘newby’ diver I used to buddy up with a lot, to go straight on to taking the Dive Leader qualification. It meant you would be qualified to organise, and take responsibility for, a group of qualified divers on a dive of any sort, anywhere,……. beach, boat, wreck or whatever.

I pretty much refused at first, because as far as I was concerned, I had only about a year’s experience, and no way was I good enough for others to put, effectively, their lives in my hands. I did it in the end, but purely to snub a couple of real wankers who only had six months more experience than Alan and I following in the training group behind them. They swaggered around, and bullshitted like they were Jacques Cousteau. Worse, actually…….. I doubt he swaggered and bullshitted around a whole lot. He wouldn’t feel the need to do that, for sure-certain. They always got right up my nose.

Anyway, Alan and I both did the course, and, because I wanted to beat these two twats, for once in my life I really swotted up on it all. I passed the examination with something like 98%.

Blimey!!!!

Waaaaay better than Le Wankeurs, which was the whole point of the exercise. Alan got a slightly lower mark, but easily beat them too……… they had only just scraped through, and were both a good bit quieter afterwards when we were around. Although Alan got a lower mark, he was actually a better diver than me, if only at the very least because he was a whole lot fitter than I ever was.

The purpose of telling you this isn’t to illustrate how brilliant I am, but, by saying that I never used the qualification to lead any dives, nor ‘lorded’ it over anyone else, that I believe in being time-served, and doing the miles so to speak, before walking the walk.

You only look stoopid when you try to walk the walk too early, and you rarely fool those who can.

As my dear old daddy used to say, quite often to me when I was trying to fool him with my youthful I-Know-It-All blab……….

“You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

How true.

K.

Thought For The Day

2009-03-13T12:40:00.012Z

It's hard to get the perspective on it all, and I know I keep banging on about it (Those of you who know me), but browsing the net I'm often 'grabbed' by the sheer unimaginable enormity of it all.

I'm also convinced that God is some sort of residual effect surrounding us all, rather than a central intelligence. A collective 'intelligence', an effect of ,yet undiscovered, dimensions to the universe. Perhaps something that happens to us all as a result of out individual thoughts and actions, every bit as much as water rippling when you move your hand in it.

God surely just can't be a central Man-Like intelligence, watching, judging and guiding us............ and I'm fucking sure there are no 72 virgins awaiting the screwball religious zealots, as a reward for their sacrifice to bend us to their will, either!

And if he is.............. WHERE'S MY FUCKING PUSSY-CAT???????

(You can tell I'm a good bit pissed-off as usual, can't you? :o(

Highlighted are the mind-blowing details............ link them together.
What you've got is the ultimate truth that size matters! (Sigh)

Messier 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. The SDSS image of this famous spiral galaxy (interacting with a smaller neighbour at the lower left) occupies about three one-millionths of the total sky area imaged by the SDSS. [SDSS = Sloan Digital Sky Survey (digital imaging telescope)]The SDSS imaging survey detected about 100 million galaxies, most of them much more distant, and thus much smaller and fainter in appearance, than M51. Some of these distant galaxies can be seen as small extended sources on this image, while the sharper, point-like sources are mostly foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. The diameter of M51 is roughly 75,000 light years. (Credit: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

So, please forgive me, but I like to spell things out to myself.............. and not just because I know some of you out there are a good bit on the 'thick' side. (No. Please. No really........ it's no trouble........... I'm just a nice helpful kinda guy.) :o)

Get your mind around it. Focus, and really screw yourself up doing it too, like wot I do.................

A galaxy, 75,000 light years across, occupying about three one-millionths of the total area surveyed, and was one of about 100 million galaxies observed.

One galaxy holds billions of stars 'Suns', and one light year equals 5,878,499,814,186.5 miles (We won't get into the leap year thing, ok???)

It really, really blows me away Man!

You too????

So, with the Enormity Of It All in mind, what is my Thought For The Day?..................

Is all the Politically Correct bollocks in life, and especially at work, really so very important?

..............I rather think not.

The trouble is, we have given power to most people around us, particularly at work, and so it feels like it is.

Do something for me........... tell at least one weenie out there to Go Fuck Themselves! Most of you will come across at least one today.

Prolly best to just smile, and say it telepathically, though, ..........because the bastards usually do have power over your destiny here on Earth.

You never know............ it might make the leap. I did it yesterday to a visiting weenie, and she kinda looked over at me 'funny' as she left the building. I hadn't interacted with her at all....... was busy and had my back to her the whole time she was there, in fact.

Yup, ..............I think it had made the leap. :o)

K. :o)

Knights on White Chargers, mostly reduced to clumping aimlessly around a kitchen……….

2009-03-10T10:58:00.015Z

Browsing the blogs, I came across one entry on nurture vs. nature, and how a mother had noted her children exhibiting traditional male/female natures, despite no steering or encouragements from her or her husband. Actually despite some.

I left a comment, which, as it always does with me, ended up in a ramble which is worthy of putting in this blog………….. so I’ve pretty much copied/pasted it below, and rambled a but more here and there, ..........as you do. :o)

So here it is...............

I’m often called sexist at work, which is social services (in Britain), looking after people with learning difficulties in residential care. I work mainly with women, and joke around with them a lot, often playing the seventies sexist male at my own expense.

However, I do hold the view that, generally speaking, men and women are very different, and are naturally drawn to, and are good at, different things in life. If I take over, or offer to take over any heavy, or awkward tasks, I’m being sexist. It seems hard for a lot of women, I have to say mostly young women, to understand how difficult it is for me to stand by and watch a woman risk injury, while I stand by and watch. It’s my male instinct at work, and it used to be called chivalrous, not sexist.

I was influenced by a Father who taught me to always let a female win when push came to shove, never hurt a female, and to help and protect them no matter what. Most of my generation were taught the same principles as they grew up.

I have worked very closely with women for some 36 years now, in the caring field, after doing my general nurse training back in the early seventies at 18. In all that time, I have seen very little to change the views that my generation was brought up with, in the respect that males and females are different. That does not mean unequal.

What I have seen is the damage to our society that this corrosive drive for “equality” has done in trying to force us into roles we were never designed for. I do understand that equality was lacking in the way women were valued, and their freedoms restricted, but feel strongly that in levelling the playing field, we have long since lost our way in recognising and valuing our differences.

‘Different’ has been identified with ‘unequal’. You can be different AND equal at the same time, in as much as an averaging out of different roles, equates to equality in the long run. What was wrong was that women were not regarded as of equal value in society…….. THAT was where equality was needed.

As a man, I have witnessed the feminisation of men in the name of “Equality” in order to force us to absorb the traditional roles of women……… many of which we are inherently not suited to by nature. Natural male roles are considered unfashionable; you only have to look at the lack of masculinity in the five terrestrial television programs in this damn country to see that……… it’s all cooking programs these days, with mainly men (I use the term very loosely, and not because they cook either!) poncing about like a bunch of girls, drizzling this, and arranging that. Isambard Kingdom Brunel would spin in his grave!!!!

Even the appearance of men, and what is considered as characteristically male, has been feminised hugely ………… body hair is considered repulsive nowadays for instance. Speaking as one who can’t walk topless across a beach without being regarded as the missing link, that is a particular blow. It isn’t especially unusual for a young man these days to spend more time on his appearance than a woman, and yes, I have heard it all before about “why not” etc……... I’m talking about the flouncing about with all the bleddy male grooming crap that’s considered necessary to be attractive to women nowadays. It used to be good old Wright's Coal Tar soap, water, and aftershave. Maybe a bit of deodorant at a push, but she’d have to be real pretty to be worth the risk to reputation. :o)

I’m sure-certain that this forced rush for equality has resulted in males having less of the traditional respects for women. Men are much less likely to protect women nowadays, and have not been brought up to do so because the New Equal Woman is just as capable of defending herself, thanks very much. Sorry, but you’re not. We’re still the physically stronger, and more aggressive, sex and now you have a situation where you fear men, rather than feel protected by us.

Back when I was young, there were all sorts of jokes about how a woman in distress, with a car broken down for instance, would hitch up a skirt to show a leg, and some man would pull up, puff up his chest, and fix the car for her. All just for the price of being made to feel strong and wonderful. In actual fact, that scenario was pretty much a reality, to varying degrees of skirt hitching. All a woman actually had to do was stand by a car with it’s bonnet (hood) up, and hey, presto…….. a knight on a white charger would pull up within minutes (In Britain, anyway). No woman even comes close to risking that nowadays do they? And many men would think twice about stopping too, in case they were accused of some impropriety.

Women don’t feel safe unless they have a mobile phone to call for help, and feel very vulnerable whilst waiting for that help to arrive. Women expect to be attacked, and raped, rather than protected, and that saddens me greatly as a man who would lay his life down to protect a woman.

Sorry……….. I ramble away too much for my own good! I hope you get what I’m getting at here.

In case some are wondering, me having become a nurse and all……….. yup, my job is definitely not suited to an alpha male……… I made a bad choice years ago, and took up nursing for three reasons when I was young and in hospital recovering from a bad motorcycle accident at sixteen.
The reasons?

1) I couldn’t wait to leave home, and nursing was an all-in-one package; work, independence, and accommodation, all in one…… I’m deaf in one ear, so joining the forces was out as an option.

2) It looked a cushy little number, which it did lying there as a patient!

3) An endless supply of chicks, which to a virginal, but seminally incontinent yoof, was some pull, believe me!

God, I loved those 70's uniforms, and watching them come off......... Ahem, sorry.......... Actually, soddit, no I'm bluddy not!!!! :o)

Oh, yes, ..........I also fell head over heels in love with one of the nurses……. Anne Mathews. Went out with her for a good while too after I got out of hospital. Me a very inexperienced (As in 'none whatsoever'!) sixteen, and her a much wiser nineteen. Man, oh man, was that a sweet time.

Anyway……y’all might notice a complete absence of the vocational drive to ‘care for others’ as one of the motivational reasons for taking up Nursing, eh? Still, I guess two out of three isn’t bad, is it? (I got one wrong......... it certainly wasn’t a ‘cushy number’!!!!)

I went ahead, ignoring advice of couple of people, namely my English tutor at college, and my Uncle Jack, to instead take up a job, or career, which utilised my natural talents. Stubbornly I went ahead with Plan A, and painfully learned the skills naturally more inherent in women the hard way, and became quite a good nurse in the end. Having been on the receiving end as a patient after the bike accidents (I had another bad one at eighteen) had a lot to do with how good a nurse I ended up as.

Having slowly realised I was in the wrong job, I also made the mistake of sticking at something that didn’t naturally suit me, to my mental detriment from work-related stress as things have turned out.

I wish I knew what I know now, when I was young. (sigh)

If we really were all the same, after 36 years at the coalface I’d be as good at this job as a woman,………….. but I’m not. The memory is shot to pieces, partly from the head injuries all those years ago, but mostly from the stress damage, ...........but you d'you know what it's all just as much about?

I'm doing a woman's job, and I don’t have a woman’s brain.

It's that simple.

I GOT THIS REPLY ON THE BLOG I LEFT THE COMMENT ON........AND REPLIED AGAIN..........

K, thank you for sharing your experiences. Made for fascinating reading. I'm glad you said that different is not unequal and that there was/is inequality in the way women's work is valued. If the societal movement in the last couple of decades has gone on to show that women's work whether at home or outside is invaluable to their families and to society in general, then it has been worth it, in my opinion. There's no better way to understand a person than being in their shoes. In my own life I do recognize that I'm good at certain things while my husband is good at others - they are purely on a personal level, not gender based. As long as we are able to recognize what a person is good at and encourage that person along those lines, particularly children, then that's ideal. Doesn't matter if it falls along the lines of traditional gender roles.

No, it doesn’t matter one zit’s squirt if the suitability of roles is matched to gender. However, it DOES matter if you’re criticised for not being good at certain roles when you're only crime is that you're simply typical of your gender.

THAT'S the nub of it, and where the whole drive for equality has gone horribly wrong. Being in the ‘wrong job’ all my life, I've been hammered for that by the women I’ve worked with for 36 years, so feel it acutely. Ok, I fully accept that it's my fault for being a square peg in a round hole, but the women who have bullied me mercilessly, and some have believe me, would have got a whole lot more from me with a little more insight as to what makes a man tick. I'd say that's true of most marriages too........... a failure to realise those differences, and for both parties to make the allowances based on that understanding. Men are prolly actually worse than women at that. In saying that, as regards work, I've worked with a lot of women who have been very understanding, and have been supportive in that they’ve done, or helped me with, the tasks I’m weak at, and I’ve reciprocated by doing that which they’re not so hot on. When you do that it all works soooooo much better.

(I just KNOW I’m heading for trouble in talking about this!!! I’m particularly skilled at digging myself a hole, and resolutely continuing to dig as the sky disappears above me)

Ok, shovel in hand………. As always, let's dig just a little bit deeper, eh?

Cooking comes to mind. We cook a lot of the meals for the residents we care for, and if you ever want to see a Man In Distress, stick me in a kitchen to cook a meal.

Then make it nine meals.

Then make most of them different in several ways.

Then make me do it quickly.

THEN expect it all ready at the same appointed time, and at the same approximate temperature.

Then watch it go bang, crash, wallop, with much Bugger, Shit, Damn! :o)

I’ve been watching a lot of this Cooking Thing at work, was married for ten years, and have been in three long term relationships since, and so have seen the gist of it many many times.

But.

Just.

Can’t.

Do.

It!!!!!!!

It’s the Multitasking Thing you girls do soooooo well.

It’s like the Domestic Duties Thing…….. we just don’t have the Nesting Instinct to be fascinated by it all………. And yes, most of you girls are fascinated by it all. I have several Wild Free and Single male friends, and not ONE chooses to fuss over the nest. Not ONE. And all the married male friends do it under duress.

Not one female friend is good at fixing things, particularly their cars……… one or two do DIY at home, but none are really very good at it. (...........Actually, one is VERY good at it!!!!) A couple are brilliant at painting and decorating though.

Men were originally designed to kill, defend, protect. We focus on one thing at a time very well. we are inherently aggressive when provoked. We have highly developed spacial senses.

The trouble is most of that is redundant these days.

It's why we are being outdone by women who have all the other natural skills that are more necessary in this modern world, but if y'all aren't careful, you'll wind up being men with vagina's, and then it really will be a big mess.

Don't say you weren't warned! :o)

I’m lost track of what I’m trying to say here, but I guess it’s a personal resentment at us men being generally slaughtered in society for being masculine. I see the soul of this once great industrial nation frittered away to nothing by the weenies that rule us, and am driven nuts by the pastel-shaded, political correct nature of out politicians, and everything in the media, especially television.

There are plenty of exceptions to the rule, I know, and believe me, you won't find anyone cheering louder at a woman beating a man at his own game. I won't get started on what i think of a lot of men........ but plenty get right up my nose, and I readily acknowledge that the male ego and aggression are the root cause of most of the world's ills.

I do think young women are at risk of losing it all by the attempts these days to emulate men's aggression, and this is no more apparent than in the way a lot of girls and women get drunk these days. I mean........ openly weeing in the street, ...........and getting into some pretty nasty street brawls???? Ask any bouncer about the subject, especially in out cities.

I always though our example was to be abhorred, not emulated. The roles are changing, and it's pretty worrying. We fast are losing our identities, and our respect for one another.

The last word……… just in case I come across a s a bitter and twisted woman-hater. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I adore women, and not for the obvious reasons either. I’m very lucky in that I’ve been loved and adored by some lovely women, and don’t know what a bitch is……. Well, actually I do, but have always avoided them like the plague. Can’t always avoid them at work though………..

Even after some thirty-six years of working with, and under the rule of, women, I am still blown away by how capable y’all are. It happens to me all the time at work. Both your brain hemispheres are joined by a far bigger bundle of nerve fibres than men have, for a start……….. I’m not sure, but it could be 70% bigger. It means you can multitask far better. My boss was talking to me, AND counting the money in loose change at he same time the other day. I couldn’t do that for love nor money!

So, (y’all out there)………. next time you’re going to discipline the poor blighter (Husband/ partner/ boyfriend/ father/ uncle/ friend/ whoever) for not noticing the kids poking the cat in the eye when he’s trying to heat the beans, cut the chap some slack.

He prolly really IS doing his best. :o)

K. :o)

A week...............

2009-03-08T07:51:00.002Z

…………..without Lomax. It feels like longer. Still no sign of him.

Busy shift at work yesterday………. after a hectic bang, crash, wallop start, by being rung by the (very nice) Boss, because I was meant to be in on and early shift, and I was still in bed reading, thinking I was on a late shift. I HATE it when that happens!

The girls dragged me out last night for a staff get-together in The Perkin Warbeck, a big chain pub in town. God, did I feel my physical age, accentuated by a mental age that has stood still. Chicks everywhere, many wearing next to bugger-all, and knowing I’m just an old guy trying not to look.

Anna, one of the youngsters I work with, young, slim, small, gorgeous and born to be on a mo’sickle if anyone ever was, dragged me up for a dance, and so I got up with her before I gave myself time to say ‘no’.

Boy, she lit me up like a sparkler, and it was great, unexpected, and good fun to be up there with her. A lithe body, and sparkling eyes, knocking the years off there for a while. It really fired me up, which meant I enjoyed the rest of the evening. Lovely girl, and it sure was nice of her to bother with an old guy.

I fucking HATE being this age, ………..and with looks that have gone, just to make it worse.

Sun’s out, and Trevor emailed to say he’s got The Seven moving under it’s own power……….. a Locost kit-car he’s building in a tiny ‘standard’ sized garage from the ground up, chassis and all. He’s been waiting for a prop-shaft to be shortened, so it can move under it’s own power……… the missing link ‘tween gearbox and back axle. Hopefully he’ll get it on the road in the Spring……… Summer at the latest.

Going around there for a gander later this morning before work. I must get my finger out, and get mine rebuilt………… the Marlin and the Lomax.

Seems strange to call the car ‘Lomax’, after it having been the name of my little buddy for the last five months.

I hope you’re ok, wherever you are little man.

K.

Lost Lomax Posters ready……………

2009-03-05T23:38:00.003Z

Spent a while this morning before going to work on a late shift, composing an A4 sized Lost Lomax poster to get printed at Staples office suppliers near me. Also printed out about forty A5 ‘flyers’ on my almost-out-of-ink laser printer, but without a photo of Lomax, to push through letterboxes tomorrow on my day off.

The photo in the big A4 posters were better than I thought when they printed them, and pretty cheap really (About .35p each or so), so I had fifteen printed, and will get more done if I need them. Came home again, plastic-laminated them, and punched holes for ties. They look good. I’ll get out tomorrow, and fix them to lampposts etc, and hope they survive long enough to be effective in spreading the word.

I had the dreaded look along the stream, and down by the grill across it, and was relieved not to find him there, so that was a real good omen.

I put one of the A4 posters in the local shop near(ish) me, and went into the big school opposite and spoke to the headmaster, or someone pretty senior, who he said he’d gladly put the poster up, ...........and announce it at assembly!!!! I was blown away by that, and thought that was real good of him. Kids get everywhere, and that’s a lot of eyes about the place, eh? Just hope I don’t get a lot of hoax phone calls.

I saw several rabbits out and about this morning, and they weren’t too skittish, so maybe Lomax will be savvy enough to kill one for some grub. Not sure that he’s big enough, or fierce enough to do that yet. Hopefully hunger will activate his ancestors instincts.

I’ve managed to lose Lomax’s whistle since returning home this morning……….. put it somewhere, and am buggered if I can find it. Soddit! Maybe it’ll turn up tomorrow, or I’ll have to get another.

Five days he’s been gone now. This place is soooooooo empty without him.

It’s going to be a busy walking day tomorrow putting the posters up, and the flyers through letterboxes.

Lets hope it works.
K.

Still no Lomax...........

2009-03-04T09:50:00.006Z

So tired last night that I slept right through until 07:30. Whistled and called for Lomax, and checked the log store etc. but still no sign. I have this gut feeling he’s dead, but at the same time hope he’ll be there each time I open the door and call him. I really should go down the stream to where it goes under the road, and is blocked by a set of bars across it, because the suspicion that he fell in there and drowned is nagging at me. The stream is small, but has steep sides, and is a long way down below the land surrounding it. I dread finding him in there though, and that it will be my last vision of him.

He may well be fine………. who knows, he may have picked some new people to move in with. I put loyalties in him that prolly don’t exist.

Back to sodding work today, after twelve days off on annual leave. As usual, I dread it. What a stoopid move I mad all those years ago to become a nurse, and then stuck at it, and then slid over to learning difficulties. A thankless, hen-pecked, weenie-led grind, if ever there was one.

Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid!

Lets see if I can get off the Lomax Subject, and ramble away at something else instead.

I read an awful lot, and this place is stuffed to the gunnels with books and my ‘hobby’ magazines……….. mostly mo’sickles, photography, astronomy and general science/tech stuff. I keep a book in which I copy various quotes and inspirations which catch my eye, and once in a while I browse through it. Most of them kick off a procession of thoughts as I ponder on them. Maybe I’ll start to put one a day into the blog, and maybe ramble on it.

Lets have a look here for a minute…………………

Ok………. Here’s the first one in the book.

Success
To laugh often and much.
To win the respect of intelligent people, and the affection of children.
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends.
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others.
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I wrote that down, I realised that I could say “Yup” to them all, except I haven’t sired any child (Waddya mean “Thank God!”).

(Would bringing up a little pussy cat count?…. Sorry, but he’s there every second.)

Maybe find it hard to define the redeeming of a social condition……… redeem to mean restore? A friendship as in lieu of a social condition? That could be not only a friendship of your own, but between others….. Ok, done that too. Both definitions.

Looking at it, surely it pretty much covers all bases? I mean, the ‘garden patch’ bit sure helped me breathe a sigh of relief, after realising I’ve wasted so many valiantly hopeful sperm blasted against many a welcoming womb……… at least before getting my tubes tied off that is. Then I was just pretending. :o) Paintballs, as opposed to belt-fed armour-piercing rounds.

Sorry, I digress.

Lomax intrudes everywhere.

Stalls this ramble in it’s stride.

Damn computer keeps highlighting my apostrophe use…………. Must check it out, and refresh on it. The ‘stride’ is belonging to the ‘ramble’, so surely the apostrophe is ok?????

Who gives a shit?

Life’s too damn short to worry about it, eh? :oI

If ever you want proof that I have a pretty direct brain to mouth/keyboard link, with the censure off riding around on a Bantam somewhere, and that I don’t edit a lot out, there it is. (And a Bantam is a dinky little BSA mo’sickle, ……….not a damn chicken ok?!)

I mean, who’d ever put that in a blog, unless they were pretty much knocking it straight out?

(Meeeeeow)

I should write more………. It sure helps you feel a bit better, and I know it more than most, but still don’t use it when I really need to. Why is it so hard to do what helps you in this life, and yet so easy to do what hurts you? Not for the first time have I wondered that, and maybe you have too.

I woke up this morning feeling like shit, and guilty that I’d slept right through, and not been up at the door several times calling for Lomax. I saw him everywhere, as I have done since realising he was in trouble, and thought of writing to this blog, or even just writing to get it out, to release the pressure of thoughts belting around, to let it feel better, as I knew it would. Somehow, stopping me is a 'wall' you cannot see, that blocked reaching for a keyboard or a pen.

It happens a lot to me, and it’s a kind of mental paralysis that is real hard to explain to the well-balanced, or better-balanced, amongst y’all. In case y’all haven’t guessed it, I suffer from depression……… I call it mild depression, because I haven’t thrown myself from a height only to be saved from impacting by means and method of a rope around the neck. Nor have I attempted any other imaginative means to end it all, the favourite of which for a long time has involved a powerful motorcycle, a terminal speed of around 150mph, and an immovable object just ahead. I’ve nearly died from two mo’sickle accidents, and I know it doesn’t hurt. It only hurts when you wake up again

I hope, if the worst has happened, that it was as quick for Lomax.

Stop. Don't imagine it.

Back to the rambling.

Where was I? Depression. Yup, if it gets a hold of you, it really fucks your life up. Skies aren’t a blue, nothing’s worth the bloody effort, and it’s all just too much trouble. Mine is plenty bad enough, so God knows what the curl-up-in-a-ball-for-days/weeks type is like……… or the type when you do actually attempt to flick the switch off, successfully, or unsuccessfully. In my mind, either is just as bad.

When I was nursing, we used to get ‘attempted' suicides, the inference being that the intention wasn't serious, and yes, quite often they were no more than that……… attempted. The standard approach was to not be particularly sympathetic……… not nasty, but just to politely deal with these people, but usually with a shade less friendliness than other patients coming in. there was the feeling that they were wasting time and resources that others were more deserving of.

Well, with hand on heart, I can honestly say I broke the rules………. Very subtly and quietly, because if I did otherwise trained staff would have 'counselled' me as to the correct approach. It wasn’t considered helpful to give attention seekers attention, and so reinforce their behaviour. Ok, there is logic in that, and it is sometimes the case, but I can remember, even as a young eighteen year old, believing that it was wrong to be so unfeeling. I always thought that to even half-heartedly attempt suicide, must have been an awful state of mind to be in, and they were worthy of my sympathy every bit as much as the other patients in there. I’d give a hand a squeeze, a wink, a smile, go over to make them more comfortable, and have a talk……… remind them that their tea was going cold......... whatever it was, it was at least some small comfort.

I was never depressed like I am these days, but actually was I think, to some degree, for short periods without recognising it for what it was. I’ve been diagnosed as having some degree of reactive depression….. yup……… something happens, and I react to it by getting depressed. The trouble for a long time has been there have been continual triggers, and so a continuing, underlying, depression. Living alone sure makes it worse.

Conflictingly, I do have an excellent sense of humour though…….. some would say too ‘excellent’. A psychiatrist once said it was unusual to find such a surviving sense of humour in someone who was chronically depressed. I’m sure it makes me look less than genuinely depressed, but I’m a ‘performer’ and love to make people laugh. I’ve been doing that my whole life, from as young as I can remember, and it’s a habit that is such a part of ‘me’ that it survives, and covers what’s really simmering underneath these days.

I do perk up when I’m having fun, with good company, and out on the bikes………… but, there’s little of all that surrounding me with any regularity right now, and that 'block', that invisible 'wall', that invisible restraint on my initiative, that swirling fog of cerebral paralysis, stops me from actively surrounding myself, and busying myself, with those very antidotes to the Black Dog

Like I was saying back there somewhere……….. why do we often avoid the stuff that’s good for us, and remain loyal to that which isn’t.

Beats me.

Ok, I gotta go see if Lomax is at the door, in the garden, or in the log store. The sun’s out, and he loved being out in the sun.

The photos in the blog of him in the sun were all taken a couple of Saturday’s ago, when we had a real nice day………. The first sign that spring is near, and I was out in the garden with him for most of the day.

He used to be in his Best Heaven, when the sun was out, and I was outside there with him. he'd scamper around me, as if showing off, and I guess that's just what he was doing. he used to make me laugh. It was a lovely, lovely day, and it made me look forward to the Spring and Summer when I imagined us sitting out there together, me reading in the shade, and him there on my knee, or beside me basking in the sun.

At least we did it the once, I guess.

It sure was a lovely day.

K.

Still no sign of Lomax...........

2009-03-03T21:18:00.005Z

Still no sign of Lomax.

I got up three times through the night to call Lomax at the back door, after going to bed at 1.45am. Checked the ‘junk store’, and the log store, each time in case he was in there and too tired, or injured, to be able to come to the back door.

I took the Harley out and after I’d got a birthday card for my niece, Olivia, I drove around all the roads around here, and the posh estate behind me, looking for him. It was raining and I got soaked, so I turned on the heating, and lit the fire, and once again felt guilty. It was pouring outside, and all I can see in my mind is him somewhere out there, feeling alone, hungry, scared and wretched. I missed him watching me as I prepared to light it. He was always so fascinated, and would look up at me, back to the fireplace, and up to me again, as if to say “This is really great, innit?”

And y’know, it was great. For someone so small, and not human either, he filled a room. If he wasn’t somehow interacting with me, he was watching. Sometimes he was sound asleep, but if you got out of the chair, at least one eye would crack open at least a few thou’ just to check out what was happening.

I used to love to watch him sleeping, his little body rising and falling with each breath, and loved how perfect he was, how young, how completely undamaged by life. Just so handsome and perfect. I loved making his day as good as it could be.

I miss him so much.

God, I hope he’s at least somewhere dry tonight.

Everything I do here, however small, had some involvement with him, or he influenced how I did it one way or another, even if only checking he wasn’t under my feet. In most things I do I’m constantly reminded he’s not here.

I’ve just had some ham and tomatoes, stood at the cutting board…….. my staple diet. He loooooved the cheap sliced Lidl’s ham. No matter how sneaky and quiet I was, and even if he was stuck into his grub around the corner, he’d know I was at it, and would pester me ceaselessly for some. He was a ham junkie. I looked down as I was eating it, and there was no Lomax stood on his hind legs, his lithe body stretched to full length, and no little face beseeching me for a morsel.

I can’t believe this hurts so much, I really can’t.

Be safe, wherever you are, and find your way home old son.

I miss you.

K.

Lomax is gone.............

2009-03-02T20:09:00.005Z

I last saw him on Saturday 28th (Feb), at about 4.00pm, as Chris was leaving after calling in for a natter.

He’d been in and out for most of the day as usual, with me going out every now and then to check he hadn’t wandered off too far, calling him with the whistle if he didn’t come to his name. I looked, and whistled for him at about 5.30, but he wasn't to be found. That would happen once in a while if he was having a really Great Adventure somewhere, but he always would come back within range, and answer the call, within another couple of hours.

It got dark, and still no sign of him. I kept calling him regularly until going to bed, worriedly cussing him for staying out so late, and keeping me up. I got up all through the night, and must’ve called him every one-and-a-half-hours at least. i didn't get a lot of sleep, because it was real hard to sleep without him snuggled up on his fleece beside me, as he has for five months after his first, one and only, lonely night in the kitchen.

I wish now, that I’d got dressed and gone to look for him with the whistle, but I was so sure he’d be back by morning.

I knocked on the doors of all the houses either side of me, about twelve I guess, to get them to check their sheds and garages. No one had seen him the previous afternoon. I walked miles on Sunday morning calling and whistling for him. I walked right to the end of the green belt, at the back of me where everyone walks their dogs, and back again, up on the grassy playground, all around the school playing fields, and then down to the canal, checking the fields in between. I asked everyone I met if they’d seen Lomax, but no one had. I took the car out and checked along the roads in the area, including the housing estate, in case he’d been run over, but nothing.

Gone.

Just like that.

I guess I’ve been too cavalier in giving him pretty much all the freedom he wanted over the last month or so. I shouldn’t have let him out after dark……. browsing the ‘net reveals that’s when most cats get lost. Obvious really. Too young at only seven months? I guess so. He trusted me to keep him safe, and I've let him down.

Five months we’ve been together now, more or less, and I’ve watched him grow from a cute little mite into a real character; full of life, ‘talkative’, affectionate, and great company. I’ve pretty much been with him four days a week all winter, and he was like a little dog. Everywhere I went, he’d follow and settle with me nearby. If I left the room, he’d soon follow. He’d bring things to me to tirelessly play ‘fetch’; mostly balls of paper that were lying around for him to play with, or his big favourite, The Rat which Suzy had made for him at Christmas. He’d talk back to me quite often too, and was a real little buddy.

I often kept grappling with whether or not I should ever have had him, and in truth I didn’t really want the tie, but at the same time absolutely loved being with him. Now he’s gone, and it hurts more than it should.

I mean, he’s only a cat, right?

I guess the worst of it is my imagination haunts me with the thought of him dead, or dying slowly somewhere, maybe lying injured. Lost and lonely, and it’s started raining now……. cold and wet somewhere, and wondering where I am. I’ve just lit the fire, and he used to love sitting next to me as I laid the fire, and lit it. He loved this fire, and I feel real guilty sat here in front of it’s heat, when he’s prolly out there somewhere starving hungry, and cold. Maybe he’s not so far away, and I’ve passed within calling distance of him. Maybe he’s heard me and called out, but I’ve just walked right by calling his name as I went.

An imagination like mine is a bloody curse quite often.

I hope someone’s already taken him in, to keep him fed and warm, and that he’ll have had the good sense to pester someone, and look helpless enough to melt their hearts. It wouldn’t take much doing, as he’s a cracking looking cat, and has a remarkable nature. He hasn’t a bad bone in his body, or one nasty thought in his head. The only thing is, he’s a bit shy of strangers, and is likely to stay hidden until he’s in a desperate state.

He's I.D.chipped, and maybe they'll take the trouble to take him to a vet to see if he's chipped, but I'm not so sure people are aware enough of the possibility.

The bottom line is, I want him to be ok, wherever he is. Even if he’s with someone else, as long as he’s ok, I can live with that.

Please God; don’t let him be hurt ……….or dead.

Of course, he could well be having a whale of a time, but I somehow doubt it. I’m trying to believe that he’ll be sat there, or come running out from the log-store, one of the times I open the door and call for him. The only good thing about it still winter, is that everyone will have their windows closed, at least at night, or I’d drive everyone nuts blowing this shrill whistle every hour or so!

I miss that little chap, and I just wish he’d walk in the door. He’d get the biggest hug.

Wherever you are, little man, I hope God is looking out for you, and has put you somewhere safe. K.:o(((((

Serving Time At The Kickstart.........

2009-02-24T22:15:00.017Z

Pete called in again at mid-day, and then went off to Andy’s to fiddle with the GS650 Suzuki he bought the other day.

(One like this GS650, but with a bit more of a 'patina' about it.) :o)

He’s been polishing and said it was looking a lot better than when I saw it the other day, so I dragged the Harley out to at least let her suck some air through her lungs, and went over for a gander.

Yup, sure enough, it looked a lot better, and whilst we were all stood about admiring it, Andy invited Pete to demonstrate his fledgling kick-starting skills on the XS650 Yammy he was doing up.

Peter hasn't yet Done His time At The Kickstart, but is very keen to impress. I have to say, though, that in my extensive experience at trying to impress, and boy, have I ever tried, it's invariably something to regret at leisure.

(Andy and the XS650 Yammy)

Pete, and with some considerable optimism I have to say, swung a shapely leg over the snoozing Yam, gently leaning on her stand looking so quiet and harmless.

They often do that y’know,………. look quiet and harmless. :o)

It wasn’t the wisest thing he’s done that day, if indeed he’d done anything wise that day, which was doubtful. He'd visited me that morning for a start.

He Assumed The Position, with much settling the foot in the optimum location on the long kickstarter lever, and prepared himself for the first stroke. There's generally only the one location, but it's a biker tradition to seem to be choosing from several. It gives you time to gather courage, and/or consider if there isn't something else you'd rather be doing.

A manly swing was taken.

Nothing.

No life evident in sound or deed.

Another, even manlier swing, again to no avail.

Ok……… more ‘application’ needed, and this is where it started to all fall apart. He launched himself into the air, and descended on the kickstarter once again, with a mighty grunt that would've made any woman want to drag him off into the bushes. Mid-way down the stroke, the Peter Foot slipped off the kick-starter, and it flew back up along the Peter Shin. It was horrible to witness, it really was.

If you’ve spent your yoof swinging over a variety of spiteful big British motorcycle engines, and in particular Big Singles, by means and method of applying leg power to a kick-start lever, you can feel the pain quite acutely in your mind just by watching the affair. If, however, you've led a more sheltered and less colourful life, you will sadly be unable to share the experience as acutely, but believe me, it’s excruciatingly painful in the extreme.

Peter was obviously in considerable pain, but, to his credit was manfully attempting to line himself up for another go at it. I was impressed. A lesser man would've quit there and then.

Andy and I naturally encouraged Pete to overcome The Hurting with hearty laughter and several inferences that one simply wasn’t manly enough. I'm sure it helped him a lot, because he soon took another hearty swing at it.

And again.

And again.

Just as well he’s a Fit Boy.

Hope was taking the last train outta town, though.

You could tell he was gpong for The Big One, by the way he gathered himself, and then swung on it from great height, and in the most determined manner so far.

It’s unclear as to exactly what happened. Peter later offered that the kick-start suddenly had no resistance, and slammed to the bottom of it’s stroke, unexpectedly snapping his leg straight.

The vicious bitch must’ve half-heartedly fired. :o)

That his foot certainly slipped of at the bottom of the stroke, and his shin was in the way once more as it flew upwards again, was for sure-certain.

I know, because I saw it.

I swear I felt the pain before he did. It was pain on top of pain. Let me explain to the uninitiated amongst you.

The whole manner of kickstarting a motorcycle is inherently designed to ensure each fresh injury is directly inflicted on the exact spot of the one before, and more often than not inflicted immediately beforehand. There is also a characteristic of the activity which ensures that multiple contusions will pile up in a crescendo of agony, because of the rule of thumb that if it doesn't start first time it's not going to start before the tenth attempt either. There's something about trying to start a reluctant motorcycle which encourages the hope that the Next Time will have it running. It all adds up to a permanent limp. A traditional test of manhood sadly missing these days to filter and preserve the purity of the breed.

You could always tell a Goldie (BSA 500cc Gold star) owner, by the way he walked.

I digress............

Pete hobbled off the bike, and was quite beside himself………. Reduced to assuming a foetal crouch moaning away to himself. (I'm convinced I heard him mentioning his Mummy, but can't be sure-certain, so I won't mention it.)

(Pete, Trying to stand, .......bravely laughing. Mummy would have been proud of her boy!) :o)

I found myself clutching at My Parts in sympathy, but luckily I don't think anyone noticed. Why specifically at My Parts, I’m not altogether sure, but I guess it’s an instinctive Man Thing.

It was very funny, though, and how we laughed as we felt his pain. We boys are sympathetic like that y’know. :o)

Andy strode forward, confident at a superior technique, born of Many Years At The Kickstart, and swung masterfully aboard, as Pete-The-Defeated hobbled away to lick his wounds.

Andy, once astride, prepared himself with much gusto and a deep drawing on the smouldering fag adhering to his bottom lip. As a confidently determined a man as I have ever seen. I was prepared to be impressed by a polished technique.

(XS650 Yam. Andy, preparing with gusto for the First Thrust. Pete in pain, and trying not to be a wimp.) :o)))))

It was going to start impressive first kick.

He kicked.

And kicked.

And kicked, and kicked and kicked and bleddy kicked.

The breathing was a tad laboured.

Oh dear.

Things were looking serious.

Not in the least, Andy, as the smile became fixed and relatively absent of his easy humour. Suffice to say, he was exhausted after some pretty enthusiastic, and, it must be said, determinedly expert kicking.

(Andy considering the honorable options. Pete still in pain, but still unable to look us in the eye.)

Nothing.

Bugger –all.

Less than Bugger-All in fact, which is commonly regarded as Not A Lot.

Ok, then………. Plugs Out, in the time honoured tradition of having a face-saving rest whilst carrying out seemingly worthwhile remedial activity. One of those Man things, we all know about, but never collectively acknowledge. Plugs Out is one of the best, and for that reason, the most common.

We all agreed with a three-way conversation on the subject.

“Pete, whip the plugs out, while I take a leak” (Said breathlessly, .........and not in a romantic way either)

“The plugs?”

“Yeah, (gasp, sucks on fag, gasps again) could be the plugs. Give ‘em a (gasp, suck) quick clean.”

“Yeah, Pete, could be the plugs.” (Sips tea)

“I’ll be back in a minute.” (Gasps, draws on fag, gasps again)

Yeah, ok, could be the plugs. ………I’ll take ‘em out and clean em up then.” (Pete limps over with spanner in hand, glad of the distraction. Clutches at leg)

“I’ve had duff plugs.” (Sips tea)

“Yeah, so’ve I.” (Plug socket clanking on cylinder head)

“Several times. Had some new ones that were buggered, I did. Took three days stripping everything else to find that out, it did.” (Slurps big gulp of tea, as if at the memory)

“Yeah, I've had new ones that were buggered too. Plugs is dodgy things y’know” (wipes already clean plugs with rag to make cleaner. Clutches at leg)

“Yeah, they are. Wouldn't think new ones would be buggered, would you? Fuckin’ things.” (sighs, sips tea)

“Yeah.” (Puts extra-clean plugs back in. Winces and clutches at leg. Hobbles to one side.)

Plugs are back in again. Leads are on. All’s ready for action.

Hope hangs in the air like a damp sponge on a string

Andy reappears, adjusting Parts

Swings a mighty leg over the silently waiting Yam. Adjusts parts again. (Note:-Important, this, to hitch one's Parts well up out of the way in case one's foot slips off mid-way down, causing one's weight to be cushioned on One's Parts as one crashes down on the seat). Determinedly Assumes The Position, and, lithely for one so large, leaps onto the Yammy kick-start again.

He’s a Big Boy, and the Yam could tell it was futile to resist a determined man of such a stature.

It coughs.

“Nearly!”

Then it fired.

Just the once.

“Nearly. Must’ve bin the plugs.”

“Yeah, must’ve bin the plugs.”

“Yeah, c’mon Andy,…….. this time!”

Great joy and hope abounded in we three boys, and Andy applied his person upon the starting device once again.

BRRRAMMMM………It started at last, and a wonderful clamour it was, to be sure. Not as good as it could be, but then again one carb body is cracked around the pilot jet, so allowances were made.

Pete was still suffering, but bravely laughing the laughter of one who is pretending all is well, but knows all present know it isn’t, but are laughing, glad it isn’t them who are suffering.

If you get what I mean. :o)

You had to be there really.

And you had to have kicked many a bike over yourself. It’s an Old Greaser Thing. A common scenario we all knew and loved, back when you kicked these things over every sodding day.

But, like I said, …………you had to have been there. :o)

Nite nite,
K. :o)

P.S.
Why didn't I volunteer my expert services?

Well, The bloody Enfield takes it's toll as it is, I'm a damn sight older, got dodgy everything but particularly the knees, and besides which, someone had to remain standing, and with enough breath to be able to speak, to ring the ambulance, didn't they? :o)
K.:o)

Elf and Safety............ mainly

2009-02-22T22:43:00.016Z

Managed to waste today........... mostly reading and playing around on the 'net. Played about with this blog a bit, and tried to remove, re-size, and reinstate yesterdays blog pics of Lomax,………. but when I tried to delete them as per instructions, it deleted the whole of yesterdays bleddy blog.

Bleddy lovely that was, I can tell you!

How I laughed!!!!! :oI

Luckily I write this mostly in Word, save it on the ‘puter, and then and copy/paste it over to the blog, so it was recoverable, but took bleddy ages to do. That would be because I tried to delete one of the newly re-sized, and reinstated pics……… and deleted the whole soddin’ thing again then.

Oh, joy was abundantly about me.

Got the Mother sorted in the end.

Bought another couple of books browsing Amazon........... bleddy deadly how easy it is to buy stuff online, ……….especially when you're weak. :oI One called ‘Blink’, which is about how we actually need very little time to make surprisingly accurate decisions and judgements. The other………… ummn……… bugger…….. forgotten…… oh yes……… a WWII flying novel called ‘That Summer’ for .01p (Yup, one penny) plus postage of £2.75, so cheaper than a magazine.

I spend waaaay too much on books, and Mo’sickle, Astronomy and Science magazines, with the occasional metal detecting and kit car/retro car magazines too.

Still, I live the life of a hermit, don’t drink, don’t smoke, so what the hell, eh? ;o)

Sunny again this afternoon, but not as nice as yesterday, although still good enough to tempt me to sit outside with a book, a cuppa and Lomax playing around me. It was a bit nippy in the breeze though. Started a book called 'Up The Creek', by Tony James, which is about the his sailing life, and "A lifetime trying to be a sailor" It's obvious that he succeeded, even though the statement infers a failure to achieve that ambition. :o)

I didn’t get far with it, what with Lomax demanding we have a fight, make up, and then have another fight. His focus today was mainly chewing brambles that are lying around. I sometimes swear he’s as gormless as they come!

Bright enough to have me at his beck and call, though. :o) We were up at 06:30 again this morning! :o)

This book has had me laughing out loud a couple of times so far though, so it looks like it’ll be as good as the reviews. For instance, he tells a tale of when he was about nine, I think, living next to a sawmill, and playing in and around it whilst it was working. lethal place......... no guards on the machinery, and him and his friends free to run around it pretty well as they pleased.

One day a worker came in to his father, saying he’d cut his finger off in the damn great big saw that they used, and could he please be so kind as to take him to the hospital. Tony's dad asked him if he had the finger, and he didn’t, so they went in to look for it. Another workmate in there saw them looking, and told them it wasn’t there.

How did he know, they asked……….

“Well”, he said, "It’s not there ‘cos I gave it to the ferret.”

I laughed out loud at that.

Brilliant! :o)

Not so much at the poor bloke's misfortune, as at the straightforward illustration of an era of relative individual freedom, now long gone and tragically never to be seen again. An era when life was openly accepted to be a risk, and you took the consequences of your actions, without automatically looking for someone to blame.

(And, yes, I do know it was far from perfect in those days, thanks!)

Those were the days…….. tough, yes, but so were the people, and a time not dominated by the Elf and Safety weenies, who would've had a blue fit.

If you’re one of them, and are tut-tutting at me, ………you can just bugger off!

I nearly said you could Go Fuck Yerself, but these days you're just as likely to be a woman and I'm something of an Officer and a Gentleman.

So, just plain bugger off, and do us all a favour.

(Ooooh, he’s so butch, so masterful........... and such an angry young man!) :o)

Elf and Safety is noticeable by its obvious absence around here at Fortress Wheelrest, and personal injury is something of a quiet pastime of mine. Actually, it’s not all that quiet in the event, although, in saying that, if there’s a helluva lot of swearing and fuss going on, …….. stuff getting kicked around, and generally flying outta the workshop, .............take no notice. I’m only attention seeking, so be assured the injury is likely to be fairly minor.

It’s when there's a helluva bang, crash wallop, and/or it goes all silent and deathly quiet, that you might want to call the ambulance. It might be wise to turn off the workshop 'lectricks........... just in case I'm still welded to the bared wiring. :o)

This is a typical high standard of lackadaisical nonchalance with an angle grinder.
Well, how the bleddy hell else can you see up close and get such accuracy?
The local eye clinic is hugely appreciative of my selfless availability for young nurses to gaze into my eye(s) and practice their probing skills on me. :o)

Here (above) I'm carefully and skillfully employing years of technical mastery in delicately 'machining' a motorcycle component.
Ok, ok, ............performing an unnatural act on it with a bloody great masonry drill!!!! :oI

First aid is of a reassuringly Manly nature. No first aid box in evidence, and that's because bandages and tourniquets are hastily improvised from oily rags, persistently bleeding wounds rubbed with sawdust kept 'specially for the purpose, and sealed up with masking tape………. or red electrical insulation tape if I’m feeling extravagant. Naturally, after cleansing the affected digit or limb with petrol of course,.......... as you would expect of a Trained Nurse. :o)

Here’s some pics at various stages on treatment/healing, of a nice little session my fingers had with the bandsaw. Lovely sharp bade it was. I never uttered a sound, just wrapped them up in a rag to stop the floor getting all messed up, and put the tools away, and locked up the workshop. Bleddy things took weeks to heal up properly, but I was out in the workshop again the next day. Halfway through some woodturning, see? :o)

The dotted line shows where the saw split my fingers .......... sliced them for about half an inch up the middle lengthways. All flapping about in the breeze, they were. :o)

They got infected. Didn't have no petrol handy to cleanse the wound, see........ I was in the woodworking workshop at the time. :o)

The nails were hanging on by the skin of very little as the days went by. I forget if they made it of not. Left me with a bit of numbness it has.

I put in for disability benefit, but they wouldn't wear it.

Typical innit? You work all your life................. :o)))))

Nite nite, K.x :o)
P.S.
By the way………. these kisses are for you gurls mind. I wouldn’t want any of you chaps out there to be confused y’know.) :o)
K.x :o))))

Cracking Day! :o)

2009-02-21T23:22:00.007Z

Hi there,
What a cracking day!

Lomax decided it was vital he went outside for the First Adventure at bleddy 03:30 am today………… so out he went, and out he stayed, which meant I got to sleep until 08:45 this morning. Boy, was that ever a treat!!!!! :o)

Weather forecast was good, so I loaded up the washing machine, and got it out on the line in the morning sun. The weather turned out to be terrific, so I spent an hour in the garden taking photos of lomax with a long lens on the camera…… took about 200, and got twenty or so good ones out of that.

Sat outside in the sun with a cuppa for a read with Lomax. No-Problem-Pete (because everything is “No Problem” to Pete) called in just after mid-day, and we had some quality Bloke Time. He’s got another bike…….. a old 1982 650 Suzy shaft-drive, so we went around to xxxx (forgotten his bleddy name!!!) to look at it, and had a natter with him and a couple of his mates……… all hard-core bikers, which was great. Good to talk to some who’ve put the years in, and know what they’re talking about. It made a change to have some good company.

Spent the rest of the afternoon reading, photographing and playing with Lomax. You could really tell he was having a great day out there, and loved the sun. He’s whacked out, and has been sleeping on my knee here in front of the log burner all evening. A picture of complete and utter contentment.

Lets hope he sleeps through the night! :o*

Boy, I could do with some more days like today. :o)

Nite,
K.x

Choc drops............

2009-02-20T22:02:00.006Z

Hi there,
Lomax has gone out for the fourth foraging session of the day. He generously let me sleep in to 06.30am this morning, and I managed to hang on until nearly 07.00am, before he had me up for his grub, and getting out for the first of the days Adventures

Hanging on against Lomax’s various wake-the-miserable-old-bastard-up techniques until 07:00am is now considered to be a long lie-in! :o)

Eddie phoned from the States at 10ish, and we nattered for a couple of hours about, well, you name it and we pulled it to bits, and put it together again. He is always real good to talk to, full to the brim with ideas, and I’m good at tweaking them to help give them another ‘edge’. We bounce off each other, the walls and the sky (the ceilings went west a long time ago), and have a good laugh. :o)

Not inspired today re. this blog though………..

Ummn………..

Ok, here’s something I read in a book I’m reading by Boris Johnson….. Seventy Two Virgins:-

“We all have in our lives someone who controls our emotional thermostat. There is always someone whose function is to supply the pipette drops of praise, the intermittent good boy choc drops of external affirmation that gets us through the day. The story of our lives is essentially the rotation of that person’s identity: mother, father, teacher, girlfriend, boyfriend, spouse and so on.”

It caught my eye, and I thought, “Yup, life is kinda like that a lot.”

I adore praise. Tell me I’m wonderful, call me your Hero (girls) and stand back to watch me fly. Piss on my parade, and watch me die. Pretty simple really. One switch……… two positions……… On and Off.

Typical 100% old fashioned Male. Nice and simple to operate. :o)

It’s actually no harder to make the lights sparkle in a woman. Just needs some old fashioned, non-pc male attention………… non-predatory if she’s not ‘yours’. Praise, honest flattery, you know, ………..the stuff that works. The stuff that would make anyone feel good. :o)

It all pretty well adds up to treating people the way you’d like to be treated, and sometimes thinking of their feelings ahead of yours.

I’m real lucky, in that some real nice women along the way have loved me, not in the least my wife back when I was married, and they have all fed me my Good Boy Choc Drops by the handful. Every single one. I have been real lucky with my women. There’s not one I regret loving, and not one has treated me badly. I guess not everyone gets that lucky.

Different people reward us all in different ways, and for me, it’s a woman who lights up the fires every time………. But I’m high maintenance in as much as she really needs to be on site. Or pretty damn close, free and ready to roll at short notice. :o)

It’s different for everybody, but most do need feeding with a reward of some description. I feel sorry for those rubbing up close, but not getting any Choc Drops, no drips of reward, .........and it happens a lot, I think. For both sexes. Some relationships run real dry.

Hard on the bearings, is that.

That must be hell on wheels. :oI

If you haven’t been giving out the Good Boy/Girl Choc Drops, to whomever it is………. get going and start dishing them out……….. and watch him/her light up.

It’s real easy to do, so make sure you do it, because when it’s gone, it’s gone, ...........and believe me, it can happen real easy.

Don't let it run dry.

............. and it includes friends, or anyone who's important to you at all.

And, whilst we are about it, why not include those who aren't important to you as well, eh?

With that in mind, there's favourite saying I live by............

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good"

My father lived by that, and I'm grateful for the example.

This crummy world would be a shitload better if more people lived by it too.

Nite nite,
K. :o)