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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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..........

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 were 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?

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

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............

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)

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)