Nattarings

50 Question Quiz.

2011-02-10T23:38:00.000Z

Because I was challenged I have answered the call.

1. What time did you get up this morning? 

4:30am. I don't sleep much so during the week I normally get up early and do an hour and a half holosync meditation before I go to work.

2. How do you like your steak?

Made of tuna or tofu. I don't eat meat other than seafood.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? 

Black Swan. Outstandingly good. It's going to look better on small screen. I can't wait for the blu-ray.

4. What is your favourite TV show? 

Doctor Who of course.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? 

For the moment I'm very happy where I am but I think Berlin is my favourite city in the world.

6. What did you have for breakfast? 

I made a banana and raspberry smoothie. It was nommy.

7. What is your favourite cuisine?

Falls equally between Japanese, Chinese and Italian.

8. What foods do you dislike? 

Meat.

9. Favourite place to eat?

Sweet Mandarin in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. The best Chinese food I've ever tasted and so friendly it's like visiting family every time you walk in.

10. Favourite dressing? 

Balsamic.

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? 

A Hyundai Accent.

12. What are your favourite clothes? 

Comfy ones.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?

Everywhere, everywhen. Give me the chance.

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? 

The cup was made twice as big as it needs to be. (The engineers
are reading that and giggling)

15. Where would you like to retire?

I'd like to think I haven't found it yet. Gives me something to look forward to.

16. Favourite time of day? 

There's few things more beautiful than a late winter sunrise except a mid-summer sunset. I guess I'm an edges person.

17. Where were you born? 

North Tyneside.

18. What is your favourite sport to watch? 

Rugby.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back? 

I'll leave it up to them.

20. Person you expect to tag you back first? 

Hoping it's Heidivodka.

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? 

People always interest me.

22. Bird watcher?

Hells yeah. Bow-chick-a-wow-wow.

23. Are you a morning or night person? 

Yes.

24. Pets? 

No.

25. Any new and exciting news that you'd like to share? 

Not at present.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? 

Taller.

27. What is your best childhood memory?

Spending time with my Grandad. He died when I was young.
We were very close.

28. Are you a cat or a dog person? No. I love both.

29. Are you married?

No.

30. Always wear your seat belt? 

Yes.

31. Been in a car accident? 

Yes once as a passenger when a drunk driver hit my brothers car and once as a cyclist when an incompetent driver rammed me off the road.

32. Any pet peeves? 

Bullies. And people asking me about favourite thing as I tend not to do favourites. (You can guess how I'm loving this list)

33. Favourite Pizza topping? 

Olives.

34. Favourite Flower? 

Roses. My Grandad used to grow them.

35. Favouite Ice Cream? 

Rum & raisin.

36. Favourite fast food restaurant? 

Moams, but they don't have it here.

37. How many times did you fail your driving test?

2.

38. From whom did you get your last email? Amnesty International.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? 

Apple. It wouldn't take much.

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? 

Pulled up by the side of the road to watch the sunset.

41. Like your job? 

That's a tough one. Ask me again some time.

42. Broccoli? 

Yes please.

43. What was your favourite vacation? 

The first time I went sailing.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? 

Heidivodka.

45. what are you listening to right now? 

I've got 30 Days of Night on in the background.

46. What is your favouite colour?

I've really had enough of picking favourites.

47. How many tattoos do you have?

2, but looking for 2 more that I've owed myself for a while.

48. How many people are you tagging for this quiz?

5.

49. What are you doing when you finish this quiz? 

Going back to the movie.

50. Coffee drinker?

Yes, but I prefer tea.

Now you do it.

30 day challenge - Day 23

2010-12-20T20:13:00.000Z

Day 23 - Something you crave a lot

Peace.

30 day challenge - Day 22

2010-12-19T08:25:00.000Z

Day 22 - What makes you different from everyone else?

What an awkward question. There's nothing that makes me different from everyone else apart from the undefinable spirit that makes me question what makes me different from everyone else, But everyone has one of those.

The truth is, if I'm honest, I don't know. I'm keen to hear your views.

30 day challenge - Day 21

2010-12-19T08:16:00.000Z

Day 21 - A picture of something that makes you happy

There is one thing above all others that is making me happy to be me right now. Her name is Rebecca and she is truly a wonder.

And she may murder me for putting this photo up.

30 day challenge - Day 20

2010-12-19T08:00:00.000Z

Day 20 - Someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future

For reasons of sanity I'm no longer focussing on the future.

30 day challenge - Day 19

2010-12-16T21:29:00.000Z

Day 19 - Nicknames you have and why you have them

Other than Nattars, none, and I've already discussed Nattars.

30 day challenge - Day 18

2010-12-15T19:25:00.001Z

Day 18 - Plans/dreams/goals you have.

Short term goals are to find a new job, Then, if things don't improve with my disgusting housemate, find a new place to live.

Longer term is to complete my professional chartership and become a chartered engineer. Also to get through the Holosync programme, preferably without going completely nuts along the way.

Longer term, I'd like to travel the world meeting people I've met on the internet in person. I've made some great friends and I'd love to meet them, stay on their couch a few nights and get to know them better.

30 day challenge - Day 17

2010-12-14T17:50:00.000Z

Day 17 - Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why

I'm having enough trouble inside my own self without straying into someone else, but there is one person Who I think would really benefit if I took over their lives for a day, I think it would do me the world of good too.

Me - circa, early to mid teens. We'd both have a great time in each others bodies laughing at how ridiculous we were / have become. The only drawback would be the inevitable urge to try and "fix" things before they went wrong which would likely make everything worse.

I wouldn't want to change a thing that has brought me here or I might not be here.

30 day challenge - Day 16

2010-12-13T21:34:00.000Z

Day 16 - Another picture of yourself

This was taken by a lovely young lady at a gig a few years ago. We'd never heard of the band and went on a whim. The young lady is no longer in my life, but I still like the band and rather unusually I do like this picture of myself.

30 day challenge - Day 15

2010-12-12T20:19:00.000Z

Day 15 - Put you ipod on shuffle: first 10 songs that play.

1. Learn to Fly - Foo Fighters
2. By Tomorrow - Candie Payne
3. Take it back - Barenaked Ladies
4. Farewell my love - Seth Lakeman
5. See Emily play - Pink Floyd
6. Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros - Flight of the conchords
7. Original fire - Audioslave
8. Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55 "Eroica": IV. Finale: Allegro molto - London philharmonic (by way of good old Ludwig van)
9. Bad Dog No Biscuits - Seatbelts
10. Voodoo People - Prodigy

30 day challenge - Day 14

2010-12-11T12:58:00.002Z

Day 14 - A picture of you and your family

Erm, sorry, I don't have one. That's rather upsetting. I shall endeavour to take lots when I visit over xmas and I'll get back to you.

I really should have read through this list first.

30 day challenge - Day 13

2010-12-10T21:38:00.000Z

Day 13 - A letter to someone who has hurt you recently

Another tough one as I've not let anyone upset me recently but myself and I'm in no mood to write a letter to myself. Sorry.

30 day challenge - Day 12

2010-12-09T19:17:00.000Z

Day 12 - How you found out about blogging and why you have one.

I honestly don't remember and I'm beginning to wonder.

30 day challenge - Day 11

2010-12-08T18:53:00.003Z

Day 11 - Another picture of you and your friends

Photos of me with friends are thin on the ground. The ones that I do have make me look a lot more adventurous than I am. Last time was snowboarding, here I am with my loyal crew at the end of a sailing trip.

30 day challenge - Day 10

2010-12-07T18:09:00.002Z

Day 10 - Songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad

This is another difficult one for me as I prefer the huge, eclectic music library and shuffle button approach to music rather than sit down and ponder what to listen to. I see music as something to ride an emotional wave on. Great music makes you feel things not the other way around. However I shall endeavour to pick out a single song I can relate to each emotion. These are examples only and not indicative. ;-)

Happy - The rhythm, The Cat Empire. Happy in music form.

Sad - That day, Natalie Imbruglia. This is a great song for cheering me up. Fantastic lyrics.

Bored - Wandering star, Portishead. This is such an interesting piece of music it's hard to listen to it and stay bored.

Hyped - Lost in space, Apollo 440. By far the best thing about that film, this has long been my cure for earworms.

Mad - I can dream, Skunk Anansie. This is a great angry song

30 day challenge - Day 9

2010-12-06T19:20:00.002Z

Day 9 - Something you're proud of in the past few days

This is just a little thing from this morning.

This morning before work there was freezing fog, it was just starting to snow again, there was ice and snow underfoot. Through all this I kept my discipline and went for a run, (albeit a short, slow run) around a frozen lake while I could barely see 20m ahead of me down the track.

See it on a route player here. Yes that is a start time of 7:37am, no it was not dawn yet.

I'm not particularly proud of the performance, but I'm proud of the discipline as I slowly begin my training again. I think this will have been my last "fat month" after a marathon. They've gotten too hard to bounce back from. "Fat week" next time maybe?

30 day challenge - Day 8

2010-12-05T19:19:00.002Z

Day 8 - Short term goals for this month and why

Goal 1 - Get back into the habit of running and start my next lot of marathon training.

Why? I've signed up for my next marathon. It's in Prague early May next year. It takes me about 4 months to get fit enough for a marathon.

Goal 2 - Get through the holidays with some semblance of sanity.

Why? I don't like this time of year, between Christmas and birthdays, shopping and travel, I tend to lose track of myself and end up frazzled. This year is all about organisation and centring and keeping things light.

Goal 3 - Instigate some personal life changes.

Why? I can't really talk about these in public yet as things are currently in motion but I am endeavouring to get myself out of a rut that is causing me to suffer.

30 day challenge - Day 7

2010-12-04T18:07:00.002Z

Day 7 - A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you.

At an early age I started learning martial arts. I studied various styles but one stood out for me as something I love, Karate-do. I've not been able to train in it for some time but the philosophy and code of ethics it instilled in me is still a powerful influence on the way I think and act. I hope I'll be able to go back to it one day.

30 Day challenge - Day 6

2010-12-03T10:26:00.002Z

Day 6 - Favourite super hero and why

As I've said previously in the course of this challenge I don't really do favourites. I'm fickle. It depends on my mood what I'm going to enjoy. Growing up I read the X-family of comics most often. New Mutants, then X-force. Probably just as I was a teen.

Just for the sake of the challenge I'm going to choose V from V for Vendetta. This will no doubt kick up a debate as to whether V was super powered, or even a hero for that matter, but he was pure. Not in the white goodness pure sense but in the scientific sense. He had something he had to do. He did it.

And I am a great fan of his message. Those who rule us should never be allowed to forget that they do so only at our suffrage.

30 day challenge - Day 5

2010-12-02T18:02:00.004Z

Day 5 - A picture of somewhere you've been to

Finally an easy one. I may surprise some people who still organise the wold by stereotypes by putting aside playful rivalries and Britishness by posting a picture of what I am unashamed to say is my most favourite city in the world, Berlin. I know I said I try to avoid having favourites but it's hard not to. I don't have a bad thing to say about the city or it's people.

This is perhaps one of the most famous landmarks in the world, The Brandenburg Gate.

I took it when I last visited. The day after I took this photo I ran through the Brandenburg Gate at the end of the Berlin Marathon. It was my first marathon and I was very proud to be there for the marathon that was celebrating the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin wall. A terrible thing from a sadder Berlin that I'm glad is resigned to the past.

Some sections of the wall are still standing as a monument. They're quite amazing to see covered in the murals painted to inspire thoughts of freedom and unity and to remind us of the pain it caused, but what always seems to amaze folks most the first time they see it is just how thin and small it was.

30 day challenge - Day 4

2010-12-01T19:43:00.002Z

Day 4- A habit that you wish you didn’t have.

Hmmm, another toughie. Not because I don't have bad habits, quite the opposite in fact. There's lots to choose from, that's my problem here.

I'm currently going through a phase of self improvement in my life. An essential stage of this self improvement is self analysis and the more I look at myself the more I'm seeing that I don't like or I'm not proud of. There are many aspects of my personality that are doing me harm.

To choose one to express in this blog is therefore a toughie. And no, indecision is not normally a bad habit of mine.

I think I shall say a habit I wish I didn't have is a habit to distance myself from others. I choose this because I often use humour as a defence and a way of keeping people at arms length and, more often than not, this takes the form of sarcasm and acerbic wit. This can be hurtful to the people closest to me, the people I'd least like to hurt.

30 day challenge - Day 3

2010-11-30T19:42:00.003Z

Day 3 - A picture of you and your friends.

Not as easy a challenge as it may sound as I tend to make sure I'm the one taking the photos so don't usually appear in them but here is a picture from a skiing trip we had in March 2009.

This was the trip where I first tried (and fell in love with) snowboarding. While I did spend quite a lot of that trip on my backside as a result of my over enthusiasm and lack of experience, here I'm sat down on purpose to look cool for the group shot.

30 day challenge - Day 2

2010-11-29T15:41:00.002Z

Day 2 - The meaning behind your blog name.

This one is rather short and dull. Back in the early days of the internet before the time of twitter and Facebook in the realms of chat rooms and the like I was given the nick name Nattars. This was because I was usually at my computer working hard and obsessively on something or other while ignoring the numerous chat rooms I was logged into and messages from people thereon. Then answering multitudes of comments in one stuttering rush.

I have been Natters on the internet ever since, hence these are my Nattarings.

30 day challenge - Day 1

2010-11-28T19:48:00.003Z

A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself.

So, here’s a recent picture of me,

It was taken by a friend who caught me by surprise this summer when we were on a trip to the lake district. I don't like having my photo taken and try to make sure I'm the one holding the camera.

And those facts aside here’s 15 facts about me that you might consider interesting.

1) I am a younger brother.
2) I am a Geordie.
3) I paid for my university by working in a kitchen, in a bar and as a karate instructor.
4) I learnt latin by singing in the school choir.
5) I sang in the school choir.
6) I was once engaged but I’ve never been married.
7) I don’t like to eat meat.
8) I’ve fallen in love with 2 people during my life.
9) I use Holosync.
10) I have crushes on at least 3 people I follow on Twitter.
11) I’m a huge Star Wars fan.
12) I don’t believe in God.
13) I try to avoid having favorites.
14) I do not approve of hereditary leaders.
15) I am an insomniac.

Thanks for reading, more fun tomorrow in day two.

30 day challenge - The Inspiration

2010-11-27T14:55:00.004Z

I've been getting close to a lovely lady on Twitter recently, @dryeyedcrab. As part of the "getting to know you" process I read her blog. She told me she'd read my blog and it was one of the reasons she followed me. This led me to look at my blog and realise it's been over a year since I posted here.

In order to fix this I'm going to quite blatantly steal from @dryeyedcrab and do a 30 day challenge. The rest of this post is stollen directly from her blog.

What is The 30 Day Challenge?

Here's how it works - post every day for 30 days :

day 1- a recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
day 2- the meaning behind your blog name
day 3- a picture of you and your friends
day 4- a habit that you wish you didn’t have
day 5- a picture of somewhere you've been to
day 6- favorite super hero and why
day 7- a picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
day 8- short term goals for this month and why
day 9- something you're proud of in the past few days
day 10- songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad
day 11- another picture of you and your friends
day 12- how you found out about blogging and why you have one
day 13- a letter to someone who has hurt you recently
day 14- a picture of you and your family
day 15- put you ipod on shuffle: first 10 songs that play
day 16- another picture of yourself
day 17- someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
day 18- plans/dreams/goals you have
day 19- nicknames you have and why you have them
day 20- someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future
day 21- a picture of something that makes you happy
day 22- what makes you different from everyone else
day 23- something you crave a lot
day 24- a letter to your parents
day 25- what I would find in your bag
day 26- what do you think about your friends
day 27- why are you doing this 30 day challenge
day 28- a picture of you from last year and now, how have you changed since then?
day 29- in this past month, what have you learned
day 30- your favorite song

Let the fun begin!

So that's the plan for the rest of the year, then next year I'm going to restart my Thing a week articles. Tomorrow will be Day 1.

Hello, my name's Paul and it's been a month since my last breakdown.

2009-10-01T18:55:00.000+01:00

Hello, all welcome back. If this is your first time reading my blog then you might get a bit confused as the very next thing I'm going to do is reference a previous entry. Namely the one from August 24th, "and it all came tumbling down" when I described a minor, possibly not so minor break down I was experiencing and how my life appeared to be crumbling around me.

I also mentioned that I was going to try and build my self back up from the inside out. Using a variety of tools, some old and familiar, some new and shiney, I've been doing that now for a little over a month and I just wanted to update the blog as to how I've been getting on.

To be honest it's going very well. In a painful, ego kicked in the teeth, unflattering self realisation kind of way.

First off what have I been getting up to in the wonderful world of self discovery. The old comfy techniques I've been rediscovering are Tai Chi, Chi Gung and meditation. I've always read voraciously, but over the past month my reading habits have changed away from the technical world of engineering and maths to the more esoteric landscape of philosophy, even some religious texts. No, I'm not converting. I don't believe in your god or gods, but I'm open enough to realise that there's some good advice hidden in the texts (sometimes very well hidden). I'll make the same deal I always do, If you don't pick on my beliefs I won't pick on yours. If you want an open friendly discussion of beliefs then get in touch, I'm more than happy. I digress. Sorry.

Of these old shoe techniques the common thread is moving meditation. I've always loved it. I've always benefited from it. I wish I'd never stopped. It used to be that the perfect form of meditation for me was the kata. While and practising Bassai-Dai in particular I was always at the most wonderful place. Centred. I'm still not ready for karate but I have found that with the right outlook running can become a wonderful way to meditate. I tested this theory to the limits recently with my first marathon and learnt a lot about my self. I've been resting since but I can't wait to start again.

New techniques have involved a number of self development "tricks" from a few different books and the interwebs from a few different gurus and enlightened types. These have each played parts in various degrees but the new tool that has helped the most has been Holosync, and it's Holosync that I'd like to talk about for a bit now from my beginners perspective.

Holosync worried me at first, before I'd tried it, because it uses some of the same terminology and phrases as cults. There's things like "levels" and an "inner circle" and it costs a lot of money. This all does not bode well with my cynical, sceptical side. However, I saw it working in someone. With remarkable results, in a very short timeframe. Then I talked to other people who'd used it and they all said much the same thing. "It kicks you in the teeth but mostly it works for the best.".

So I researched some more. I learned about the technology behind it. Holosync is a technology, pure and simple. In a basic sense it uses sounds to stress the brain so that it gradually becomes more capable of coping. There's more to it than that but I won't go into it here. But I recognised it for what it was. Holosync is a tool. Nothing more. Nothing less. Moreover it seemed to be a tool that worked in the vast majority of cases.

Then I tried it. There's a free introduction cd with a basic baby steps lite version of the sounds on there. It made me feel good, better than good. I felt euphoric. I wanted more. I ordered the first level. This costs. It's not cheap. However there is a money back guarantee for up to a year so I figured what the hell. Most accounts tell of a deep euphoria coming with this Prologue version as well when you start it. It really didn't work like that for me. I was in agony for the first two weeks. Splitting headaches were the least of it, but I persevered. And it got better. Over the month it was sometimes even pleasant. Mostly though I stuck with it because it was working. I've discovered some nasty things about myself in only a month. Holosync hasn't done this on it's own but it's certainly helped. I suppose fixing them comes next.

I think I'll leave sharing my newly found issues for another post though.

Those perfect, simple moments.

2009-09-08T22:39:00.001+01:00

Last weekend I went sailing. It's a company trip I do once a year where a some of us get together, charter 3 or 4 yachts and take a bunch of novices out to give them a taster weekend and teach them the basics of sailing. Most people either decide it's not for them or they fall in love and come back year after year.

This was going to be a nice simple blog with a map of our route and lots of pretty pictures of the Scottish coastline and us looking dashing, windswept and interesting. Possible even some witty anecdotes from the trip. Maybe some wise old words of the sea.

No matter what I tried I couldn't write it. It wouldn't work. Something kept blocking me. So I went back and looked at my experience of the trip. I enjoyed it. Everyone on the boat enjoyed it. Everyone learned something. Nobody died. Job done. I was wrecked.

And that was it. The trip was just one more thing that had given me experience and drained my reserves beyond my capacity to replenish them and I couldn't bring myself to commemorate it. Then, in a moment of epiphany, I was swept away to one of those perfect simple moments that I try to experience and enjoy at least once every time I go sailing. To lie on the bow as the yacht tacks and look up at the Genoa as it passes over.

This to me is such a natural place to be. Lying on the bow of a boat under sail. Such a natural experience. Something that just feels right. Something that has become such an intrinsic memory that I have trouble picturing reality without it. Yet it's so rare. How many people will ever have shared this experience? Perhaps hundreds of thousands. Probably less. I know countless sailors with much more experience than me have never done it, wouldn't even consider to try it. How many more times will I get to experience it in my lifetime. I can't even consider other than to say I'd love it to be more, don't think it will be many and I'm one of a very privileged few to have seen it even once.

Everyone has these experiences. Most of us everyday. Most of us fritter away precious moments that we'll never experience again because it all seems so mundane. I know I do. Then something like this comes along that is unusual. It is so far beyond the mundane that it strikes you in the face and screams LOOK AT ME! If we are lucky we get the opportunity to seek it out again and revel in the glory a few more times. If we are extremely fortunate we notice the secret behind that moment. That every moment is special and must be enjoyed to it's absolute fullest.

So please try and remember to look for special little moment and enjoy them. It may be your child smiling at you unexpectedly, It may be waking up early and looking out of the window at the first rays of sunrise or it may be being in the wrong place at the wrong time, having to drop to the deck and watch a sail fly across your vision as you look up at the sky. Enjoying these things helps to make all the other crap fade and can recharge your lust for life when nothing else will.

This has all been described by others far better than me so if I may I'll leave you with a couple of quotes.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

Roy Batty, Blade Runner

"Because we do not know when we will die,we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well,and yet everything happens only a certain number of times....
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood that is so deeply a part of your being,you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless".

Brandon Lee

Sorry if that was preachy or out there but it needed to get out of me.

And it all came tumbling down.

2009-08-25T21:56:00.001+01:00

Hello again. Sorry to those of you who have been waiting for a blog with baited breath. I've not had anything to say and I dislike talking for talkings sake. I'd much prefer a conversation somewhere. Now however I do have things to say. For those with just a passing interest I might as well put in the disclaimer here that this blog will likely fall into the TLDR category, best not to bother. It's long and introspective. Come back next time. Who knows there may be monkeys then. For anyone who is interested in what's been going on with me recently and what I plan to do next, please continue. I hope I don't bore you.

First off, an apology to those who have been following me recently and especially to friends that I've worried, or angered, with my melodramatic outbursts on Twitter. Yes I've had a tough time, no I did not need to pour it all over the Twitterverse. I was having a personal crisis I couldn't cope with and I didn't cope, I certainly failed to keep it personal. Sorry if I upset you.

The culmination of several uncomfortable experiences all at once was what has, in a painful and roundabout way, led to this blog and more importantly the subject behind it. I don't want to rake over everything again here. Suffice to say in the middle of it all I was forced to take a long hard look inside myself and wasn't overly pleased with what I found.

I had considered myself to be at a reasonably good place in my life. I was happy. I had a good job, a nice place to live, great friends and a wonderful family. There were gaps in my life but they didn't worry me because things were going well. I felt happy. I felt good. Then that life I was living was threatened and I realised just how fragile my happiness was.

If you'll forgive me slipping into metaphor, I was standing on a still but delicately balanced platform that felt like joy above a great turmoil below. A turmoil I couldn't even see from my home on the platform. The platform even seemed strong to me from my place atop it. It would stand up to the occasional breeze that came across my world. It would rock when they came but it was comfortable and I loved it. Then the breezes gathered and became a wind and my safe platform shook. I became frightened. Then a final gust smashed against the platform and the illusion that it was shattered and it all came tumbling down and I was dropped into a turmoil. All that from a a few light breezes all coming at the same time. Sorry if that sounds like I'm slipping into melodrama again but metaphor has a want to do that.

The point was, my happiness was rooted in my lifestyle, my current situation. Everything I was happy about was external to me and worse I had convinced myself was an integral part of my self. I had convinced myself that situation was stable. That I could remain there safe and happy. It was not. It was a house of cards, fragile and impermanent and when it was threatened I realised the fear and emptiness it had been hiding. As the minor crises hit me one after the other the security was stripped away and I became afraid. I panicked. I could not cope.

Panic is exhausting. It simply can't be maintained. It requires too much energy and has to come to an end at some point. For me it did with an anti-climatic, simple realisation. One of the crises I was facing was potential redundancy. Not unusual in these uncertain times but more worrying to me than the financial problems that would inevitably come with unemployment in a recession was the emotional problems I hadn't even considered before. I love my job very much. I love working for the company I work for and the opportunities it offers me to do fascinating and varied work. This job had become one of the pillars my platform was stood atop and without me realising I had made it an integral part of my personality. More even than calling myself an engineer, I was this job and couldn't even conceive of being anything else. It was more than just a job at stake. It was a part of what defined me. I did not want to lose one of the core parts of what made me, me. As the date of the announcement came closer I became more of a wreck. I was unable to deal with this part of me being ripped away, not to mention the risky and uncertain future being jobless at the moment would entail.

Then something both strange and wonderful happened. A sense of acceptance. I remember it clearly. It was a Thursday afternoon. I looked at the clock and knew that the management teams consultation meeting was over. I knew at that point the decision had been made. The letters would be posted on the Friday. Those made redundant and those who would keep their jobs would find out on the Saturday and there was not a single thing I could do any more to affect that outcome one way or the other. This sense of acceptance brought with it a great calm. The winds were still blowing all around me but I was able to stop in the middle of them and catch my breath. The panic left me and I was able to see things a bit more clearly. I saw that the way I was acting was not helping. I also saw clearly how unhappy I had become and how little about what I was calling me was me.

I knew I hadn't always felt like this. I did not consider myself by my nature an emotional wreck unable to deal with the world. This illusion and false sense of security had slowly built itself around me and I had become dependant upon it. I started to look within myself.

Someone who I have come to trust a great deal, and who has been going through her own self discovery for the past few years, suggested I read “The Power of Now”, and was even kind enough to lend me her copy. I'm reading it for the second time now and really should return it. I loved the simplicity of the book. The lack of any flowery prose or convoluted text that so often accompanies religious works or self help books. As I read certain parts it occurred to me that, “I already know all of this”. This led to the question, “Then why aren't you doing any of it?”

If I hadn't always been this fragile, when was I not. At what point in my life had I been best able to cope. When had I been truly happy and what had I been doing differently then that I was not doing now.

At first this was a difficult process. I had got out of the habit of self reflection. In fact I had learned not to look too closely at myself at all, prefering to believe the simple illusion of happiness my mind had been telling me was real. As I became able to examine my life more closely though I realised that I was most at peace in my early twenties. At a time when I was not well off, had debts, was working myself ragged with two jobs and a degree and yet I was also finding time for other things. I was practising Karate every day, teaching most days (technically a third job but I never saw it like that). I was meditating daily and studying a wide range of philosophy, centring on eastern philosophy such as Buddhism and Taoism but also reading western philosophers and seeing more correlation than contradiction. I practised Tai-Chi and other martial arts. I was focused and still. So why had I stopped?

A few years ago an injury forced me to bow out of Karate, for a while at least and I had honestly not even considered the entirety of what I was giving up. Unable to do the core of what I loved I walked away from the whole lifestyle. I know longer studied any martial art, never mind teach one. I stopped meditating. I still read the occasional book of philosophy but it had become an intellectual exercise, nothing more.

So now the crises that started all this have for the most part resolved themselves, for better or worse, with little intervention from me one way or the other and I'm left with some frightening self realisations. I have decided to look at this as a glass half full situation and build something better from the experience, namely me. I've decided to see what I can do with myself to make me happier, more joyful, more content and more at peace with me rather than some illusion of me made up of external things like my job. I can't go back to Karate just yet. I'm not ready and wouldn't feel right doing a different martial art either. I don't know why and I can't explain it yet. I am going to go back to studying teachings of people who have already achieved such inner peace. I'm also going to try something completely new to me called Holosync. I learned about this from my friend, the one who's book I still have. I feel the need to stress she did not recommend Holosync. What she did was explain it and describe her experience with it, good and bad and I'm excited to give it a try.

I've learned better by now than to promise regular updates on my blog but I will try to keep you informed as to my progress. There's even things in this blog I'd like to go into in more detail but I think it's long enough, perhaps in the future. In the meantime please feel free to get in touch and ask me about any of this. I'm only too happy to talk things through.

Thing a week 13 - 13

2009-02-09T19:10:00.000Z

What other subject could I discuss in thing a week 13 other than 13. I can think of few other examples in the modern western culture where rationality and superstition collide on such a monumentally ingrained level. Society has attached such a stigma to this innocent and innocuous number as to hardly be believed. Developers will build streets without a house number thirteen because they know it wont sell. Hotels often don’t have a room thirteen for the same reason and it’s not uncommon for high rise buildings to skip the thirteenth floor. There’s even a recognised phobia of the number. No, honestly there is. It’s called triskaidekaphobia. Try slipping that one into conversation.

But why? It’s only an arbitrary number. If you start at one and count upwards you’ll eventually get there as surely as you’ll reach nine, forty two or six hundred and sixty six (all of which are also numbers with a perceived psychological significance). Don’t get me wrong. Thirteen is quite special in its own right. It is a prime, one of those special numbers that Pythagorus (the triangle guy from maths at school) and his insane followers worshipped so much. It’s the first year of teenage life and as such a major step to adulthood. It’s the number of the original colonies forming the United States. There’s any number (no pun) of good things about thirteen so why is it demonised.

As usual with traditions they follow the Christians like to take credit and claim they started it. In this case it’s down to the rumour that Judas was the thirteenth to take his seat at the last supper or that thirteen is one more than the number of disciples Jesus chose and as usual they ignore things they don’t like, such as evidence that thirteen had significance in mythology long before them, or contradictions like the fact that in Italy, which most people would agree is quite a Christian country what with the Pope and all that, thirteen is widely considered a lucky number.

Maybe it’s because there’s not quite thirteen months in a year. There are a little under twelve and a half lunar months in a year. Many ancient societies were built around a lunar calendar and the discordance of twelve months and an extra bit could have been irksome I suppose.

In short I don’t know why it gets picked on and nothing’s been resolved in this little blog. Which is as it should be. I’d rather start a discussion than end one any week of the year, especially the thirteenth.

Thing a week 12 - All in an inch

2009-01-26T18:33:00.000Z

Just a short one this time. In fact probably not even an inch (or about 2.56 cm). Basically I’m rushed off my feet and don’t have time to write blogs at the moment. However that’s no excuse to shirk bloggy responsibilities, or to miss an opportunity to pat myself on the back.

Everyone remember how I took December off exercising to get fat while I had a couple of little injuries Well at christmas I got an absolutely adorable belt. The best thing being that I could adjust it myself so it actually fitted. I cut it deliberately as short as i could get away with. It was straining on the last hole. As of this weekend I could move it up not one but two notches. That’s right, I’m getting skinnier. Hell yeah.

Whoda thunk it. Healthy eating and regular exercise actually works.

Thing a week 11 - I’ve been ill and I don’t like it.

2009-01-18T21:38:00.001Z

On Wednesday I woke up and couldn’t hear properly with my right ear. This was an irritation at worst, inconvenient at best, but I thought nothing of it. I’d probably been sleeping funny, and since I’ve been sleeping unusually well lately I decided to take the rough with the smooth and got on with my day. I figured at some point I would get that strange pop sensation as in a plane or when climbing a mountain and my hearing of the right hand side of the universe would be returned to me.

By lunch time I had a dull pain spreading through the right side of my head and it felt like that side of my head was swelled up and I had a constant dull thud, thud, thud pulsating through my senses. It went beyond my hearing. Thud, I could feel the pulse in the back of my jaw, almost taste it. Thud, I could see see the pulse as a flash behind my eye, of the kind that used to come just before an insomnia nightmare migraine. Thud, vertigo, a strange sensation that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before, I certainly don’t remember it. My balance left me and I stumbled. I had to catch my self, support myself arm outstretched to the wall and stand still, eyes closed, until it passed. Thud. Thud. Thud. I took some paracetamol and the sensation passed and I was left with only the dulling of all noise to the right, a slight clumsiness and the self-knowledge that no matter what the mirror was trying to tell me my head had swelled to at least twice its normal size and still undulated to a now lazy but constant thud.

Then night fell and discomfort rose. Sleep, so often for me a distant prospect at best, was not even a blip on the horizon. Constant pain. Constant Thud. Faster Thuds as the pain grows, intensifies and becomes more acute. There have been times in my life when such a constant and immediate reassurance that my heart was still beating loud and strong and constant to the point when I could experience it with all my senses and it was overloading my perceptions to the point of exquisite agony would have been a welcome blessing. But not now. Not here. More pain killers. I plead with my body for some peace, a brief respite for sleep. It hurts to lay down my head and the room spins as my head moves. The pain relief overtakes the thudding and I feel the unpleasantness of being drunk. As I eventually fall asleep I apologise to all the glasses of water that helped me through the day.

Thursday started as Wednesday ended and painkillers became a part of breakfast. They were a regular companion for the next few days to be honest. The whole world became more distant. Dulled and somehow further away. No longer just the right hand side. The painkillers had taken all of me away to a place that was so similar to that wonderful terrible state that an insomniac knows so well. I can’t adequately describe it other than a dullness, a detachment from the world. A second hand experience from your own eyes. It’s a state of mind normally reserved for the insomniac and the new parent. Stay awake for a few days and keep functioning. You’ll find it. I realised this on Saturday. That’s when I decided to put the painkillers to one side and deal with the pain otherwise. I’d allow the pills to help me sleep, if I needed them, but I’d not walk willingly back to that distant world.

Now it’s Sunday evening and the pain has largely gone. I’m left with a slight ache behind my right ear and I still can’t hear properly on that side. I can hear the sea, as if I had water in my ear from a swim and the ocean refuses to leave, but I think my body has the ear infection mostly on the ropes. I feel on the mend.

Now after all that self indulgent whining I'll end this dirge of a blog before I go full emo. We all know you should never go full emo.

Dull, dull, dull

2009-01-07T19:23:00.000Z

Hello again, welcome back. Sorry about the delay. I was talking a break from the internet over the holidays. Speaking of which how were yours, good I hope.

Now, however, the holidays are over and it’s back to work. This is the reason for the rather downbeat title of the first blog of the new year I’m afraid. Work. Not my job per se. I want to emphasise that. I actually enjoy my job for the most part. The problem is work, or rather the lack of it.

I work for a consultancy, this means the work generally comes in peaks and troughs. We’re either rushed off our feet or scrabbling round for work, but there’s always something to be getting on with. This first week back though I’ve been experiencing something new. Nothing to do. Not constant, I’ve been able to scrape together the odd hours work here and there, but there have been stretches, such as the whole of yesterday afternoon, where I’ve had literally no work to do. It is dull.

I did all the things I was supposed to do in this unlikely event. When there was no lovely profit making project work to do, I did admin and business management. When this ran out, I asked my bosses for work, I rang round the company, other departments, other offices, asking for work, I rang customers to try and rustle up some work. Nothing.

I then moved on to personal development. I gave my self some training, learned a few new tricks to deal with flood water. I spent some time training some minions (I like to call the juniors that because it gives me a happy face, it’s a good thing really, imagine if I used my powers for evil and got real minions, scary). Then nothing.

Because I look after our teams resource plan now (remember, I told you back in week 3) I know I’m not alone, because I rang round the company and outside, I know it’s a simple case of there’s not much work out there at the moment, but there’s several promises on the horizon.

I read the paper. This is where I start to deviate from the staff handbook approach on how to deal with a lack of work. I played monopoly on excel. It’s a great little spreadsheet I found years ago. If you want it, send me your email address, I’ll forward it to you. It helped pass the time.

In the end though there’s no denying that the new work year has started dull and is putting a severe dint in my shinny new optimistic approach to 2009. Hopefully it will change for the better soon. In the meantime I’ve decided to use any wasted time on other things. Hopefully I’ll put out a couple of extra blogs over the next few days and catch up so that at the end of the year there are 52 things a week. That would be nice.

Thing a week 09 - It’s the most hectical time of the year!

2008-12-15T20:06:00.000Z

Yes I did just make up the word hectical. I think I like it. I may introduce it into a conversation tomorrow, just for fun.

This is in fact last weeks blog which didn’t happen last week because this time of year is just far too hectic. I work for a consultancy. The problem with consultancy work, like most others, is the necessity of clients. Clients tend to get to December and decide they have lots of things on their desk they’d like to get finished before the new year. So they send it to us and expect it to be done before January. Which would be fine apart from the big holidays that eat up at least most of your staff for a quarter of the month. So we get the work package from the client at the beginning of the month and take a couple of days going through it, then put in a request that they send us all the data they didn’t bother to give us that we’ll actually need to do the job. The problem being that they’re short staffed because of Christmas so it takes an age for them to get it to you. Anyway a week or two in and ready to start work with a week or two (if you’re lucky) left to finish. That’s just the professional side. On top of that there’s the personal issues of travel arrangements and shopping for gifts and life in general. It all adds up.

So sorry if you were inconsolable with grief on Wednesday that you didn’t have my pointless ramblings to make your life better but I’m rushed off my feet, I’m full of cold and I’m using all of my spare minutes playing Fallout 3 which I think I’m addicted to. It’s a brilliant game that is eating into my not sleeping time. Sometimes insomnia pays off.

Thing a week 08 - What do you mean, “Bah! Humbug!”?

2008-12-03T22:26:00.000Z

It may surprise people to learn that I really like this time of year. I like the cold, I love the snow (which we’ve actually been getting this year) and I really love the dark mornings when I’m out and about early before most people are even up. It’s a strange but in a really good way feeling to walk through the city when it’s practically deserted.

That said however, I’m not a fan of Christmas. It looms there like a dark cloud to blight what could be a great time of year. For any newcomers to the blog, go and check last Decembers entry for a good old fashioned Christmas rant where I vent a narrow slice of spleen over the glib fetid stench that is the modern Christmas. I don’t cover most of the reasons it’s bad, but I make a start. In this blog however I’m not going to moan about the stolen pagan festival though. It will probably come in a week or two because I know you all love to hear an ill thought out rant on the keyboard. Today I thought I’d pay homage to the little silver lining that comes with being a Christmas grump.

May the force be with you and protect you if you should dare speak out against Christmas. Point out to the most ardent environmentalist that they are using enough electricity on ridiculous lights and ten trees worth of wrapping paper or talk to a dedicated economist about the irony of people getting into debt buying presents they can’t afford in the middle of a credit crunch or mention to anyone that you think 3 tonnes of tinsel is just a bit too much and bordering on tacky and you will invariably be met with one of a limited number of responses. My favourite of these being the wonderful Bah! Humbug!

Bah! Humbug! It’s a great thing to hear. There are a couple of reasons I love it. First is the simple sound of it. How often in the general course of a year do you actually hear someone say Bah! out loud. Never. From January to November you’d be lucky to get this super syllable once, then suddenly it’s everywhere, and Humbug is a great word to say. It feels good coming out of the mouth. Try it yourself now. Hummmm, B’ug, Fantastic! almost as good as carbuncle or dumpling. Secondly and most importantly is the little internal smile I get at the thought of humbugs. I don’t have a sweet tooth. I was the freaky kid at school who preferred fruit to chocolate. But there’s something about humbugs that are just gorgeous. They’re so nice, and again, they feel great in your mouth.

Of course the Christmas bores aren’t referring to the delicious sweets. They’re quoting... anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Well done, it’s the catch phrase of the awesome Scrooge from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. But where did he get it from? What does the word mean?

Well from the on-line dictionary we have this,

humbug
Pronunciation: \ˈhəm-ˌbəg\
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1751
1 a: something designed to deceive and mislead b: a wilfully false, deceptive, or insincere person
2: an attitude or spirit of pretence and deception
3: nonsense, drivel
4: British : a hard usually mint flavoured candy

and from the first three definitions we can see what Scrooge was getting at. Already in the 1840s, Dickens, through Scrooge, was sick of the crass commercialisation of the Christmas festival and how it had become false and deceptive and drivel and needed an outside force (four of them in fact in the story) to bring back the true meaning. Ironic really that it is now said as an attempt to put down any comments against the nonsense and pretence that has overtaken the modern Christmas. I wonder if it makes Dickens spin in his grave as much as Orwell does every time Big Brother is on the TV. Ahhh to the miss-represented classic. The fourth definition is the best though.

Still, I don’t want to be labelled a grump so I wish anyone reading, happy Saturnalia.

Thing a week 07 - Workers comp’

2008-11-26T20:34:00.005Z

There’s actually been a lot going on since last week but I’m really not ready to put any of it down in type yet. Good bad or indifferent.

I could make little inconsequential comments on things, I got the skates out again this weekend did a bit of a play. I went out with an old friend, my first proper night out in Liverpool, that was nice. Went out with the housies for one of their leaving do’s, he moves out on Saturday. I did the whole public speaking thing last night, scary stuff. etc. etc.

Doesn’t make for much of a read tho’ does it. I really can’t find the words to flesh things out just yet. Like I said, a lot’s been happening.

Otherwise I couldn’t think what to write. Then I was hit by inspiration by my good friend Jane Doh. I leave it to you to decide whether I’ve allowed her to become my muse or simply stolen her idea. Jane enjoys writing and has put a few paragraphs up on her t’intermaweb blog type thing from her latest work. I liked it. I can’t wait to hear more.

I enjoy writing. When I’ve got the time, which is rare of late, and the inclination I really enjoy stroking my creativity and letting the juices flow. For the past few years especially it’s mainly been scripts. They rarely get finished. Even rarer that they get read by someone other than me. Even rarer that they’re any good. None of that matters because they serve no other purpose than giving me pleasure while I write them.

So after that preamble and a thanks to Jane for the inspiration of which this blog entry is born, I commit to the net the first act of something I started writing almost two years ago and actually do still work on every now and then. I’ve still got no idea how it’s going to end. It’s changed completely at least three times. If anyone reading this is overly religious easily offended by inoffensive things, please remember, this all happens in a tiny universe in the corner of my imagination and not the universe that you live in. I’m not picking on you. Please don’t start picking on me. That said I’m always pleased to have a rational debate over anything. Oh and sorry about the jpeg thing but it was going to be a pain to get the formatting done.

Thing a week 06 - the search for week 5

2008-11-19T19:11:00.000Z

Hello again. Welcome back to my little corner of the blogosphere. Come in, make yourself comfy.

The regular readers out there (and I like to tell myself there are some) may have noticed that my thing a week project to post a blog every week at around the same time hit a small snag last week, namely there was no blog. Thing a week 5 was mysteriously, erm, missing. Well there’s nothing mysterious about it really. I just didn’t post one. That’s right, 5 weeks in and the project’s already falling down, ho-hum.

However it hasn’t fallen down, at least not in spirit. The point of the project was to form a habit of writing a regular blog. While the old nattars would have missed the blog, not written anything for months on end then come back with an excuse and an apology and a promise it wouldn’t happen again until next time. The new nattar blog isn’t going to give you an apology, not even an excuse, this time I have something better, I have a reason.

Last week my faithful little macbook, after years of loyal service and beautiful friendship, eventually gave up the ghost and died. On Tuesday my fine silver friend passed over. Or at least so it seemed, after a little cajoling I eventually brought the old girl back to life, at least in part. The keyboard and superdrive are dead and gone but the heart of the machine is alive and kicking and ready to play. So I had no way to post the blog last week. I was mortified. I even thought to myself, damn, I’ll miss the blog. So The habit is forming and the project survives.

The repair bill for the Mac was going to be in the order of £400, so that’s not going to happen especially just before the evil christmas, but she’s fighting on. She has the electronic equivalent of a pair of crutches, namely an external keyboard and dvd player. Good old usb. She’s more of a desk top than lap top nowadays anyway so it’s not that big a deal really.

So that’s week 6. A reason for week 5. Now my tea smells like it’s ready, posh fish and chips. Potato wedges and salmon steak. It smells lovely so I’m off. Hopefully I’ll do a retrospective blog latter in the week to make up for the missing one but I’m not going to promise anything. In the mean time, please offer get well soon wishes to my poorly puter.

Thing a week 04 - What politics?

2008-11-05T22:17:00.002Z

Well, it’s happened. A mere four weeks into my thing a week project and I can’t think of anything to write about. If only there was some great historical event in the news today. How I wish that every media source ever invented by humanity would scream at me a single message in a billion voices. Why oh why can’t some monumental change come into the world?

I jest of course, as you may have guessed from the title this blog will be about politics, however I will try and mention the American election result as little as possible. I’ll just say thank you to any Americans reading this for electing Barack Obama as your president. From the rest of the world in general. Thank you. Of the rich privileged lawyers who were running for president he was by far the better choice.

What I will do for this forth blog is ask you for a favour. I know it might be too soon in this little project to be asking for things, too early in this relationship to be making demands, so I’ll demand nothing. I simply place this before you and humbly ask that you consider taking action.

In 2006 at the United Nations 153 governments voted to develop an arms trade treaty to implement international control of the hideous and evil international arms trade. That is a massive amount of congruity for the United Nations. 153 countries agreeing on something is outstanding. There’s only 192 member states in the club, all out for themselves, so for that many of them to agree on something is nearly miraculous.

So, 2 years later, you might be confused as to why nothing’s happened. I am. If you’d like some background info, here’s an extract from an Amnesty UK article.

Every year, millions of people suffer as a result of the irresponsible global arms trade. In 2006, 153 governments voted overwhelmingly at the United Nations to develop an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to control this deadly trade. Two years on, we are still watching and waiting for governments to honour this promise to deliver a treaty.

The ATT is due to be debated again at this year’s United Nations General Assembly in October 2008. At this meeting, we need governments to commit to start formal negotiations for the ATT and for them to ensure that it is delivered within the shortest possible time frame necessary to help bring an end the current arms crisis. 1000 people a day die as a result of armed violence caused by small arms alone (rifles, machine guns and pistols), and millions more suffer from the consequences of armed violence.

  Throughout 2008, a group of experts from 28 countries has been meeting to discuss the content of the treaty. Now is the time to turn words into action and deliver an Arms Trade Treaty strong enough to save lives and stop irresponsible arms sales.  

A small minority of governments is opposed to international controls on the arms trade and are determined to block, derail and delay any further progress on the treaty. As a key supporter of the ATT, the UK government must take further action to ensure they do not succeed.   

Despite the suffering and poverty fuelled by irresponsible arms transfers, there is still no comprehensive, binding international treaty on the trade in conventional arms. By contrast, there are international treaties governing the trade in, for example, Dinosaur bones and postage stamps.  

Since 2003, the Control Arms Campaign has been calling for a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) based upon all government’s obligations under international law. If properly implemented, such an ATT would reduce the human cost associated with the proliferation and misuse of conventional weapons, by ensuring that all importers and exporters or arms are abiding by the same high standards regarding the use, management and transfer of military equipment.

  The UK government announced its support for an ATT in September 2004, following a prolonged period of intensive campaigning by Amnesty International, Oxfam and others. Since then, the UK has been a crucial champion of the ATT, working with a core group of like-minded governments to help drive the process forward.

Well the arms trade treaty is on the cards to be debated again at this years UN general assembly in October. I’d ask you to do one small thing for me. I’m not asking that you join Campaign Against the Arms Trade, though it would be nice if you did. I’m not asking you to move your pension into an ethical investment policy, but you could take a look at what your fund is invested in as a large percentage do invest in arms companies because they are seen as “safe”. All I’m asking is that you write a letter or an email asking the people in charge to do something they promised they would because, well, they promised they would. If you can’t think what to write, here’s the sample letter from Amnesty.

Dear ......,

I am writing to urge you to take swift and decisive action to deliver an effective international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The continuing loss of life and tremendous human suffering caused by extremely poor regulation of the international arms trade makes it vital for the UK government to redouble its efforts and mobilise international support to ensure that an effective treaty is negotiated as quickly as possible.

Two years ago, 153 governments voted overwhelmingly at the United Nations to start work on developing an ATT. I am delighted that the UK’s support for this initiative has been central in moving it forward. However, two years on from this vote we have yet to see governments commit themselves to negotiating the treaty. It is imperative that the ATT is not allowed to slip from the international agenda. Considerable efforts are now required by supportive governments over the coming months and years if the goal of an effective ATT is to be realised.

I also wish to thank you for your work in securing the new landmark international treaty to ban cluster bombs, agreed in Dublin in May 2008. That this robust treaty was agreed after just an 18-month discussion period shows what can be done when governments unite with a common purpose. We must now see the same political will brought to bear on the ATT process.

The UK’s strong role in supporting an international Arms Trade Treaty demonstrates a deep commitment to preventing irresponsible arms transfers that risk contributing to serious abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law, and to armed conflict and poverty. A small minority of governments remains opposed to tough international arms controls, and will continue a concerted effort to block and delay progress towards an ATT. I urge you to do all you can to prevent any attempts to undermine these humanitarian aspirations.

Sincerely,

If you’re in the UK the best person to send it to would be David Miliband at the Foreign Office. His address is
David Miliband - Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1A 2AH

or you can email him at msu.correspondence@fco.gov.uk

It would also be good if you could contact your local MP and ask them to put some pressure on. If you don’t know who that is you can find out at They Work For You. It’s a great site for pestering our elected representatives in actually representing us.

If you don’t live in the UK I’m sure you can find your own politicians to mither, maybe you have a new president you want to test out.

Anyway, think about it. Please and thank you.

Thing a week 03 - I’ve been developed

2008-10-29T21:44:00.000Z

For those of you that don’t work in a caring sharing modern company environment it may be necessary, before I start, to explain a few things about the modern company family I’m a part of. They aren’t a bad company to work for, truth be told. They’re worse than some, better than most, the pay sucks. As far as modern touchy feely company policy goes they are really good. Not up there with the likes of Google and been bags in the office but a long way ahead of a cola bottling plant intimidating its workers with violence. For a middle sized engineering company in the UK they are ahead of the pack as far as employee friendly policies go. Pay still sucks though but I suppose every thing’s a trade off. Better conditions = Worse pay.

In a modern workplace such as this there are certain hoops you have to jump through every now and then. One of these is the PDI or personal development interview. If you don’t speak “human resources” this is where you go in to a quiet office with your line manager who you talk to everyday anyway and bullshit each other about what you’ve done the last year and what you will do next year. I go in saying I want this or that training and here’s how it would be good for the company and I want more responsibility blah, blah and they’d reply blah etc. At least that’s how I thought it went. Yesterday I had a PDI of an entirely different flavour. This time things happened.

While I’ve been with the company I’ve been unlucky with managers. They’ve moved on or what not and with one shining exception they haven’t given a damn about me or my career. I don’t think I’ve had two PDIs with the same person and generally resulted in nothing much happening apart from me wasting a morning. My latest manager is one of the good guys I think. He’s smart, knows the job inside out and I think I’ll learn a lot from him, that said he’s still fairly new to the company and doesn’t know the staff management procedures so one of the big bosses came down from our head office to do my PDI yesterday with my new manager sitting in to learn the ropes and it was a whole different animal. I went in there with my now habitual cynical attitude to the whole process, said where I wanted to go in my career and he did something completely unexpected. He listened, worse, he paid attention. He even gave reasoned and reasonable responses. He even put things into action there and then. I’d say I needed this training and he said, “I agree that’s a great idea. That would help us on these jobs, I’ll book you on it. That confused me a bit, then I asked for more responsibility and he said, “Yes That would help the team if you could take some of the management tasks off the seniors, how about you take over this, this and this on these jobs”. I was on the ropes by now. Then he hit me with the knock out punch. Honesty. All this was good and would help the company and would I also consider doing some more extra training and going for professional charter-ship because it meant the company could charge more for me and get more money, It would mean more work but as a result I’d likely get a bigger pay rise. I was floored.

So today as well as my usual tasks I dipped my first little toe into staff management with some of my new responsibilities and it felt great. I’m not completely sold on the PDI idea, but at least now I know that they can work. And yes, I do feel on my way to being a bit more developed.

Thing a week 02 - Once more unto the bard dear friends once more...

2008-10-22T23:08:00.000+01:00

Or how education is controlled by idiots and wasted on the young.

The main thrust of this blog is something we Brits tend to be very proud of and most of us completely ignore, namely the works of William Shakespeare but there's also an undertone commentary on the regular complaint of the politician and tabloid on a slow news day about children not reading anymore.

I'm a big fan of the works of Shakespeare (though not the man himself, do some research and you quickly realise he was a bit of a git), it doesn't matter how, reading the books or watching the plays performed I'm hooked, but I wasn't always.

Like most high school pupils in the UK I had Shakespeare rammed down my throat at about the age of 13 or 14 and I hated it. The national curriculum force fed us two of his plays, in my case Romeo and Juliet and Henry V, and I hated them. Now they're two of my favourites. I was simply too young to get them. They didn't appeal and I couldn't relate. It put me off the bard for far too long.

In fact the whole reading list was fairly dire and for the most part obviously not aimed at the young teen audience. Which brings me to the second point. Books forced on children at school are so often the choice of middle aged committees based on "classics" they think children should be reading rather than good books that they will enjoy reading and will encourage them to read more so that they will carry on reading throughout their lives and find the classics on there own. Thankfully because of the wonders of comics and a great library I was an avid reader despite my education so I still read lots now. Most of my old school friends don't.

So how did I fall in love with Shakespeare. No surprise there. It started with a girl. A little over ten years ago on my first stay with a University. I was studying chemistry at York and got together with a young thesp. In an effort to impress, I borrowed her books and read with all diligence. The relationship was short lived and when it ended I was heartbroken. Now I would have to buy my own copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. No mean feat for a poor student. Then, six years after being put off Shakespeare for life by a misguided education system I had rediscovered and become smitten with Shakespeare while studying chemistry. Education is truly wasted on the young and it would be great if we could just let people learn things instead of teaching them until a person knows what they want to be. Sadly impractical though.

And how better to end this blog than with a couple of the great turns of phrase from the master wordsmith, firstly the first Shakespeare I learned by heart to impress the young lady (and it worked and hasn't failed to raise a coquettish smile whenever I've tried it since)

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all.
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more.

and lastly how the git with a great turn of phrase wanted to be remembered,

If thou survive my well-contented day,
When that churl Death my bones with dust will cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover,
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.
O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought:
"Had my friends Muse grown with his growing age,
A dearer birth than this his love had brought
to march in ranks of better equipage;
But since he died and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."

Thing a week - A Tribute 01

2008-10-15T20:06:00.004+01:00

Has anyone heard of Jonathan Coulton. He's a musician, very talented, writes a lot of great comedy songs. You should check him out.

Anyway the point is he can attribute his fame almost entirely to the internet and no small part of that was a podcast he did some time ago called thing a week. It's still on itunes for free download. Plug plug. Thing a week was a simple concept whereby Jonathan would give away free a song every week for a year. People like me heard it, liked him, went to his website and bought his stuff. Not a recording giant in sight, not even the toes poking out from under the bed.

Anyway again, the point, I'm often trying to blog more regularly. But, and then, yet...

So this is the project, inspired by Jonathan Coultons' thing a week, I aim to post a blog at about the same time every Wednesday for a year. This means we can be a team. It gives me a week to find something at least mildly entertaining to put on screen (and compose some waffle to pad round it and make it less interesting) and it means that if anyone out there who does start reading this mess has carte blanche to get in touch and chastise me if I'm late.

So I'm not promising length or quality, in that I may be the first honest man, but I do promise to feel guilty and post something if I forget and you pick on me. I've set a reminder on the ical and everything. I have high hopes.

I'll tell you why I don't like Mondays.

2008-08-19T18:50:00.000+01:00

I very nearly lost my faith in humanity yesterday. Why? Let me tell you.

My day starts early, I generally leave the flat at about six, I ride my bike to the station and have a bit of a play on the way. The city centre is mostly empty at that time so you can get away with things like jumps off the library steps without bothering anyone. Then I can get to the station in good time for the 6:35 train to Northwich.

On Monday the train was running late, in fact a lot of trains were running late, a lot of trains were being cancelled. I asked one of the conductors what was going on. To use his words, it was down to "a bunch of thieving scallies" who had stolen a load of copper wire out of the signals at the rail depot. Already by 6:30 am they were in chaos with only 5 of 46 scheduled trains having been able to leave the depot. But he assured me my train was on the way and only delayed by about 5 minutes. He was a nice helpful man who was obviously feeling put upon with complaints that morning but was still helpful and professional so I thanked him for his time and went back to waiting for the train.

Sure enough, it turned up 5 minutes late so I wasn't overly annoyed with the bunch of thieving scallies. Then the train didn't move. It continued not to move for some time then it was announced that it had been cancelled because of a shortage of drivers, but it was all right because they were very sorry for any inconvenience. This was about 6:50, the next train is at 7:39. This was not good, but I decided to make the best of it. After all this was very nearly an hour to spend playing on my bike.

Well I'm back at the station and I'm feeling quite good considering I'm running over an hour late, I'm sweaty and tired, but the 7:39 train was bang on time. Then it didn't move. It continued not to move for some considerable time. We were told this was because they were waiting for some extra staff to join the train from another train that had been delayed. So 2 hours after I left the flat I was on a moving train on my way to work. I was starting to lose my temper with the bunch of thieving scallies.

Then it comes to the time to get off. Running very late, and my bag is gone. Hmm. I suspect thieving scallies. This is turning into a very bad morning. My bag is gone with my clothes for the day, my bike lock and my wallet. At work it didn't get better. A lot of the jobs I was working on were delayed, waiting for data, so I was pretty much finished by 2. I cleared it with my boss to have Tuesday off and left early to try and sort things out.

I've spent my time since then ringing help-lines and visiting offices to report my missing cards and this is what saved my view of people. Everyone has been really helpful and understanding and yes, I know it's part of their job, but still, for the most part everyone went above and beyond to help me out. So thank you for Tuesdays army of good souls that helped me forget the low down thieving scum of Monday.

It's him again

2008-07-20T18:14:00.000+01:00

Hello again,

How are you? What have you been up to? Anything nice? Been busy?

I have. I've been up to my eyeballs in all sorts of things. Some of them interesting, some of them hectic, all of them overlapping. Whenever I thought the chaos was over and I'd have a few days peace, bang, another thing blows onto the scene. I even got tempted to write the odd blog entry every now and then but by the time I got the chance I forgot that I was even going to do it.

So here it is, the readers digest version of where I've been the last few months rather than pestering you all over the intermaweb.

First off I suppose was the getting fit again. I used to be very fit. Uber fit. I could put marines to shame in the fitness stakes. This changed a few years ago when a doctor advised me to take a year off and rest or I would likely need major surgery on my knee. The knee problem is an old thing, lets add it to the pile of things I'll talk about later. Well a year off exercise easily becomes a habit that easily becomes two years, then three, then I'm thirty and fat. Not Good. But losing weight, especially at 30 is not as easy as putting it on, this is a design flaw in the universe and if I ever find out who's in charge I'll lodge a complaint.

Now however, I had a target, a cause if you will, the Greater Manchester Run. This is a 10 km run, about a quarter marathon for the non metrics. I ran this in the respectable time of 55 min 23 sec. I was proud of that. I've never been a distance runner and I wasn't expecting to get under an hour. The next 10 k is on Saturday (amusingly called the Moonraker 10k run for some reason) and there are some half marathons planned for the end of the year. I've really caught the runners bug.

The problem I'm having with the running is the uneven effect on my body. My legs are now totally buff. woo-hoo! I have a runners toned arms and even my man boobs have receded and actually look good. Unfortunately my beer gut is very slow on the uptake and lagging behind. If you've ever seen a frog at full stretch you'll get the idea.

Fitness leads on to my next endeavours, new toys! I've recently treated myself to quite a few retail therapies. A new bike, I've not rode on a bike since I was about 17. Over the last week it's starting to rival the skates as the most fun way to get to work. The Wii Fit, this is perhaps the reason computers were invented. It's awesome fun, if you get the chance try it. The new camera, an Olympus E-500 along with aperture, I'm still learning to play with them properly but I am loving it. Oh and a PS3. I do so love the bonus time of year.

This has been an upbeat bit of a tale so far and it's getting long so i won't bring up any of the down side of the hectic. Maybe some other blog, maybe it will mean I post again before i forget how.

For now I'm off to sit in the afternoon sunshine and take reality off the hook for a couple of hours with a good book and have some quiet time.
Speak to you soon I hope. with any luck things will calm enough now for me to infest the net again and pester you all on forums and social nets.

What's been occuring

2008-04-21T21:42:00.000+01:00

Well it’s been yet another age and here we are again. I’ve had high and lows and been a bit to preoccupied to write, sorry, then I get out of the habit, then I wonder if there’s any point in writing a blog since in all likelihood nobody out there is actually reading it. Aren’t the occasional bouts of depression and paranoia that come with chronic insomnia fun.

So what makes me put digit to keyboard after all this time. You can all thank a conversation I had today with my latest favourite super hero, the Fabulous Laura. She saves cute dogs for fun. Anyway, the long and short of it was after a too brief chat when I should have been working I decided it was time to break the silence and let you know what’s been going on. I’m going to stick to the highs since I’m in no mood to analyse the lows and I won’t remember them all since the last blog so you’re just getting some highlights.

So middle things first, as some of you know I’ve been a bit, how can I put it, dissatisfied, with my current employer for a while. There where a number of reasons for this and to be fair to them they are doing things to help put things right. Their latest efforts a few weeks ago involved giving me a very generous pay rise, it takes effect this month so I’m planning on treating myself with some new toys, I’m planning on getting aperture for my mac. Has anyone tried it? More slowly but apparently just as surely I’m getting more of the work I want rather than the jobs no one else does and even more slowly I’m getting aimed towards some of the training I’ve been after for a goodly while. So things are looking up in the professional stakes. If anyone is interested in what I do, ask, otherwise I wont bore you.

Speaking of new toys I bought myself a new pocket camera recently. I like to have two cameras. A big “proper” camera for planned trips and events when I know I’ll need a few good memories and a compact camera to keep in my pocket. Just in case I see something I’d like to snap. My old sony cybershot has been on the fritz and getting worse for some time so I decided on a shiny new olympus mju, yes, like the ones of the advert with the annoying child and the dog, I got the new version as my first treat to myself over the pay thing. I’m a big fan of tech that bounces. And yes it does take pictures under water. I’ve not tried to freeze it yet but it did survive Newcastle weather and my two year old niece last weekend so it must be tough. Next to replace is my proper camera and I’m thinking I might go all out with my first D-SLR. Wait and see what turns up on ebay I suppose.

There’s more to tell but I’m tired of typing and you’re probably tired of reading (be honest). I’ve not talked about my latest trip home to Newcastle when I got to dance with Wiley Kit from the thundercats and cement my place as favourite uncle with the cutest blonde bundle of trouble I’ve ever met. I’ve not mentioned my latest exercise regime and why I’m off the booze and ice cream for a month. I didn’t even get close to why I shaved my beard off.

This is what happens when I don’t write things down regularly. Ah well. I’m a rotter. Hopefully someone out there is reading this and specially for you I hope to talk to you again soon.

That was the week that was.

2008-02-17T10:47:00.000Z

Yes that was an event filled and for the most part funderfull week. A lot of it's still jumbled up in my mind so I'm not going to talk about it yet. I'm just back here to sift through the pieces and try and make some sense of it all by finding the one event that started it all. It's quite important to me that I do because it set off an avalanche of events that led to me being a happy chap once again.

Where to start, at the beginning I suppose but where is that. Real life stories don't have starts and ends. They constantly intertwine. A tantrum becomes a rest, a fight becomes a reconciliation. A week last Thursday I think is a good place. That'd be the 7th. I was in the office naked. Erm hang on, maybe I should start a little earlier and explain that.

I've been increasingly worried about my mental state of late. I've been getting angry a lot. First because there was a lot to be angry about then it was just like a habit I'd picked up. I was blowing up over tiny, inconsequential things. This is not like me. One of the things that was really winding me up was an ongoing situation at work which I won't bore you with so when the weather picked up to the point when I could skate to work again I jumped at it. As long time readers know I'm a big fan of my rollerblades and treat them like a kind of moving meditation. There's very little that can upset me after a good hard skate. When I got to the office I was a bit ripe so I had a shower and the thought suddenly popped into my head, "You are at work naked!". I burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it. I've had showers at work tons of times and it never even occurred to me. Anyway it put me in a great frame of mind to deal with the day. Find the silly and rather than let it upset me laugh at it. I'm sure I got a few odd looks that day for my strange little giggles but there is so much in the world to laugh at.

Now stop picturing me naked in the shower and find something else to laugh at. The water was very cold ok.

A lot of the rest of the time between then and now has been spent back up in Cumbria. Yes that hellish surveying job has started again. I haven't got the battery power to talk about it now. Maybe some other time, but I wanted to share a few pics with you of what I consider to be one of the most beautiful parts of the world. To use the now famous Pratchet footnote, "For Americans and other aliens reading this" If you get the chance to visit our little island don't do the London thing. It's not that nice a place. Hire a car, go to the lake district. Here's some of the reasons why.

What I did on my holidays

2008-01-28T22:46:00.000Z

I've been away for a little bit thanks to either a shortage of time or a shortage of wit with which to write. You know how this bit goes, I say sorry and promise to write more often, you say yes, that would be nice and shrug your shoulders in a believe it when I see it kind of way then wait for the next random event to inspire me to actually type something, anything. Well lets just skip that bit and pretend we did it eh. You really want to read about the random.

Not technically what I did on my hols, just this weekend. I went to a barbecue which turned into a party then escalated to a shindig. Thankfully it died down before we had a full blown hootanany on our hands. No you read right, I said barbecue, yes in Salford, yes in winter. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm glad it did.

There was of course a reason given. It was arranged by my good friend Hannah, who is a visitor to our shores from the merry old land of Oz, in honour of Australia Day. This is a day when Australians celebrate Australia and, I'm told, Barbecues are cooked on and beer is drunk. Thanks to the way the planet works they have their summer over the Christmas period (crazy I know) so the timing of their national day is quite clever and conducive to barbies.

Salford is approximately 15000km or 9400miles or 1.59684e-9 ly from Australia. If you drill a hole straight through the Earth from Salford you would come out, well actually in the Pacific Ocean a little bit South East of New Zealand, but it's quite close to being the opposite side of the planet. So yes the idea sounds crazy. And it was. This is exactly why it worked. Winter can be a dull and dreary old affair. Especially now with storms and rain rather than good proper snow. I'm not knocking it, it keeps me in a job, but it used to be fun to model snow melt. Back to the point. Winter can be depressing. Especially towards the end of January when the holidays are wearing of and the sniffles are setting in and to be stood huddled round a barbecue gathering for warmth off the charcoal and talking nonsense while waiting for snags (that means sausages, we were practicing our lingo quite a bit), it was a fantastic occasion. The planet either agreed with the bizareness or felt we deserved points for effort because it gave us a mild clear night to enjoy it in.

Later it got colder and we moved the party indoors and a game called cereal box was played. There was also a good old fashioned sing song where everyone chipped in with any Oz songs we knew. The home and away and Neighbours theme tunes featured prominantly with some of Rolf classics thrown in for good measure and the crowning glory of the whole first verse of the Australian national anthem.

It anyone else wants to celebrate their national day outside their nation, I suggest the UK. We seem to have a knack for adopting the mildly insane. We call it quirky and eccentric and accept it for the fun it is.

It's true, It really is!

2007-12-20T09:40:00.000Z

What's true? A change is as good as a Holiday.

Having said that, I'm enjoying my holiday immensely so far. Not so much the Christmas bit, obviously, or the evil act of shopping, but once all the tinsel and gaudiness is out of the way this trip home is doing me a power of good.

I'm not at work, I'm spending time with old friends and family, I'm getting up late. It's fantastic and it's bringing back chilled out Paul who everyone used to know and giggle at.

So rather than the bitching and moaning of the last few posts lets try and get back to the crazy, some insane rant about rollerblading down the motorway perhaps. Sorry can't help you I'm afraid. I'm on holiday. i may have mentioned. It's wonderful thank you.

Yes thank you. That's a good one to talk about. Thank you to everyone who does work so that I don't have to. While I'm on holiday, thanks to all the people who still beaver away and make the world tick over. Especial thanks to those who work to make my life a bit easier. The shop keepers, the chefs (I'm looking at you Rooster, I bet your working like a dog this time of year, thank you, it's appreciated) the nurses and doctors, thank you very much to the mams and dads who welcome home a 30 year old child and insist on doing his washing and cooking while he treats the house like a hotel, and everyone else who thinks they deserve it, hell even the estate agents can have a piece of this one, Thank you very much.

Now I'm on holiday so I'm going back to my lie in. I hope you all have a good holiday in the near future. It may well be on a par with change, but holidays come with a fried breakfast and in my book that's a winner.

My wretched mood

2007-12-04T22:57:00.000Z

As some observant types have noticed I've not been my usual relaxed self of late. I'll be honest I've been a miserable, angry little sod. Not at all fun to be around and there are a million and three different reasons. Some justified and if I talked about them you'd say, "you're actually holding up really well". Others are petty and small and if it wasn't a case of all things at once I wouldn't even notice them.

First off, some thank yous to those who offered kind words and offers of comfort, shoulders and ears. I may yet take you up on those offers, be afraid. I do appreciate it and I don't express that enough.

And now into some of the reasons for status messages like "P*s*ed Off!" and "Just bloody sick of the lot of it.". Well one reason actually I won't go into them all. Worst of all, it's going to sound like one of those second kind of problems, the petty ones, and it really isn't. I suppose, like most things, a problem is always larger and more impressive when you're close to it. However I know I'm not alone in this so I expect to strike a chord with some.

You see dear reader one of the things that has been bothering me so much at this time of year is this time of year. I'm not a Christmas person. I don't like the so called festive season and I find nothing more depressing than someone telling me I should be merry. They can rarely offer a good reason why, an increasing amount don't even relate Christmas to a Christian celebration, not necessarily a bad thing. However my innate dislike of organised religion is not the main reason I don't like this time of year. It isn't even the short days (insomnia makes for some very long nights all year round) or the weather (though I do occasionally miss a proper snow filled winter from my youth rather than a wet overcast one from today, anyone still not convinced by climate change?) or the thousands of other reasons that statisticians and psychologists give for the suicide rates always spiking at this most wonderful time of the year.

I don't like birthdays either and try to celebrate mine on as low a key as possible. This is connected, trust me. You see my birthday is quite near Christmas, very near in fact and like many people with birthdays next to old pagan holidays I was put off both Christmas and birthdays as a very young child by one short simple phrase, said to me at least once a formative year after formative year by some well meaning relative or another,

"This is your combined Christmas and birthday present"

What?

Why do people think they can get away with this to a child? They wouldn't consider it for someone with a birthday in June. The usual excuse given for the evil "This is your combined Christmas and birthday present" is It's a big one so... here's your combined Christmas and birthday present, I'm not a parent but as a former child I beg you all, get the 2 smaller presents. Always in that order as well, combined Christmas, then Birthday present. I promise you to a small child their birthday is more important than Christmas. It's personal. It's their day. It should be all about them. Not some Christian festival borrowed from the Pagans and stolen by the corporations.

There are other reasons I don't enjoy this time of year too numerous to mention here but one more is connected to my deep emotional scars and the present thing so I'll make a quick note of it. I hate the idea of being obligated to buy presents for people. This is not how generosity is meant to work. I prefer, if I'm out and about and see a little something one of my friends will love, I'll get it for them. If I have something I don't use that I know someone needs I'll make it a gift. If you've never done this, try it sometime in the new year. get someone a present out of the blue. It doesn't have to be large or extravagant, just personal and for no other reason than you thought they'd like it. The look on their face is worth it, gratitude mixed with true surprise, not the Christmas present surprise of "oh look, you got me the thing I was dropping hints for". That look is very addictive. If your lucky it also comes with hugs.

Mark Thomas

2007-11-17T23:51:00.000Z

Sorry for the delay, but anyway, Mark Thomas.

Before I start, I do swear a bit in this one, so if you're easily offended, get a grip on yourselves. Read on. Follow some of the links and maybe you'll find something worth getting pissed off about and you'll direct your anger at some of the evil things happening in the world rather than someone typing a swearword on the internet.

Mark describes himself as a fat dad with a failing mouthwash regime. I call him a hero of modern politics. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

He calls himself a fat dad because he's got two kids and a complex, but to be honest, he's not in bad shape for someone in his mid forties. So he's half right I suppose. I can't comment on the mouthwash.

Why I consider him a hero will take a bit more of a back story. A story which starts with the sad fact that I knew more about politics at the age of 10 than I did at 18. The reason for this was a tv show called "Spitting Image" which at one time told a growing boy all he needed to know about the world of politics and the strange people that inhabited it. The show started in 1984 when I was 7, by the time I was 10 or 11 I knew every member of the cabinet and shadow cabinet and what they did. I was aware of the scandals and the stories. I was interested and wanted to fix the broken world I saw around me. By the time it finished in 1996 it had descended to picking on celebrities with silly jokes and I'd long since lost interest. I was going off to university, the traditional time of political activism, and I couldn't give a stuff.

Then in 1996 a loud mouthed comedian from south London somehow managed to get channel 4 to give him a tv show. That was Mark. It was called the Mark Thomas Comedy Product. It slapped me round the face, yelled in my ear that there were some serious problems that needed looking at then put me down. Unlike the puppets on Spitting Image (I'm not being derogatory there, they really were puppets) here was a man who literally put his money where his mouth was. He would go out and investigate the shit, then protest against it and even better he would tell everyone else and ask them to join in. Genius. If you go to his website you'll be greeted by the banner "If you're not pissed off, You're not paying attention.

I could go on for pages and pages about the sort of things he gets up to but I'd best not here because it's late and I'm tired. Maybe I'll talk about some of the things he's done, and inspired me to do next time. This time I'll just talk about the show I saw.

The focus of this tour and Marks latest campaign is one of the most draconian laws our retro-active over-controlling draconian government has put in place in the name of countering the so called terrorist threat. What's so evil about this law ls that it sounds so innocent. SCOPA is a law that actually makes it against the law to protest near the Houses of Parliament (and quite a large chunk of London to boot) without getting written permission from the authorities first. i.e. the poeple you are most likely to be protesting against, those in the houses of parliament, have the final say as to whether you are allowed to protest. What constitutes a protest under this law, One person wearing one pin badge. That's right, a tourist walking through parliament square wearing a "give peace a chance" t-shirt could be deemed to be breaking the law and be arrested. This show was about Marks attempts to fight the law by obaying the law. The shows blurb reads;
"Comedy that really makes a difference! This is Mark's true story of cake icing as a political weapon, of demonstrations to Defend Surrealism and getting to like the police. Mark turns an 18 month battle over Parliament Square and the right to demonstrate into bizarrely brilliant stand up. This is how Mark fought the law ... with the law's permission! It is a laugh out loud funny world inhabited by anarchists, Goths, artists and a chap called PC Paul McInally, in which Mark becomes a Guinness World Record holder, organises 2,500 protests in one day and changes the law in the process." and since I couldn't sum it up better I won't.

I think I've rambled enough for now. If you want to know more, drop me a msg or email. I may pick this up again in a future blog even. For now, it's late, good night.

The Shins

2007-11-10T15:16:00.000Z

Well the new lease on life continues apace, the private life of Paul becomes more and more public and much more and more fun.

First an explanation on chronology, I went to two gigs this week. I'm going to do a blog on each, a kind of mini review of the night and the experience. The first on Tuesday was Mark Thomas. The second was Thursday night, that was the Shins. "But Paul," I hear the more observant of you cry, "the title of your blog is the Shins, surely you have made some mistake with your timeline. Why put the second night before the first, pray tell?" and since you ask I will tell. Both gigs were outstanding for very different reasons, but the Mark Thomas show was important and I want what I say about that to stick in your mind, so if you read these blogs together you'll read that last and it might stick.

But first the Shins. And before them the friends. I'd never heard of this band until recently when I was introduced to their music by my friend Hannah who's lovely. Thank you Hannah for the music (anyone who starts humming ABBA to themselves, shame on you!). Anyway when I got the annoying email a few months ago from ticketmaster I very nearly deleted it without thinking, then I noticed the Shins were playing. In Manchester. Yippee Skippy! I rang Hannah, she rang Steph and Laura (two of my new friends in manc I met thru Han) I bought four tickets.

So Thursday night we went it was great. I've got the tickets and I'm waiting for the girls in Kro bar, which is just across from the Manchester Academy where the gig is and I'm doing the standard first one there act. Nursing my pint, looking at my watch far to often, glancing at the door whenever it looks like it moved and generally trying not to look like a lonely alcoholic. Then Laura and Steph turn up and I got hugs. Yay me! and Hannah turns up and we have excited giggly catch up chat and we're sat outside so the smokers can smoke and it's November in the north of England so everyone's shivering and turning a lovely blue colour. Then it's time to go across the road and we shove our way to about half way up the hall and the band starts to play.

Now I'm a bit nervous at this point whenever I see a band for the first time because some of them are a bit hit and miss. Arctic Monkeys for instance, brilliant albums, could listen to them all day. Bit crap live. And I'm a fairly new Shins fan, I didn't want my new found love of the band to be shattered. I needn't have worried. They were outstanding. True artists. A joy to listen to. Another little sound-bite quote you get on album covers.

They didn't play my favourite song, Baby Boomerang, but I'll forgive them because they did drip with entertainment and the crowd lapped it up. They didn't do much in the way of banter with the crowd but when they did they all came across as nice chaps. They even talked about a busking competition they'd had on the streets of Manchester that day. The bass player won with a princely sum of £19. I would have loved to have seen that. Just outside Boots getting a sandwich for lunch and coming across a guitarist in an international band to say, I've got a ticket to see you play tonight. Priceless.

Any way it was a great night, good music, all right venue and absolutely brilliant company.

Puressence

2007-10-21T10:42:00.000+01:00

My last blogs have been quite personal tales about me digging my way out of the rut I'd found myself in and striving back towards a happy life.

Well this one isn't, it's a nice simple tale of what I did last weekend (I know it takes me a while to blog, sorry, but my new busy life is, well, busy) and a review of a gig.

I had a fantastic time. My friend Sarah was coming back to Manchester for a visit and she wanted to see this band play that none of us had ever heard of, So a group of us went out for a few drinks just to see Sarah, but no one wanted to see the band. Sarah was adamant she was going and with my new sense of adventure wanting to see an unknown band and my old sense of Gentlemanly conduct not wanting to let Sarah go off on her own, I valiantly decided to acompany her. I'm so glad I did.

The band was Puressence and despite my ignorance they are actually quite an established band who have been around for some years and have a small but very loyal fanbase. I don't know why they aren't more famous. They were fantastic.

On the down side, the stage design was terrible, the lighting was bad and someone liked the smoke machine far too much meaning that you couldn't actually see the band for some of the songs but in the most important aspect, the music, they were outstanding. I am now a fully fledged fan. During the last week I've bought nearly the full back catalogue, so thank you Sarah for a great night. I'm a convert.

I recomend you check out their myspace page, listen to their music and if you can see them live.

O.K. that's done, next time I'll go back to some floaty wierd stuff about flying on rollerblades again or something, promise.

Learning to fly... again.

2007-10-01T22:27:00.000+01:00

About 8 months ago I put down my rollerblades. The excuse I gave myself was that the wheels were shot and completely useless. This, while technically true was not the reason. That part of me that loved to skate, among other things, was buried very deep and didn't want to see the sunlight.

Last week I ordered some very nice new racing wheels.

This weekend they arrived and were fitted.

Today I went skating. Hot damn it felt good!

This was the plan, now that I've moved to Manchester from Northwich it means getting the train to work. The Manchester train station is about 25 minutes walk from where I live. The Northwich station is about 15 minutes walk from my office. While I enjoy the walk, especially in the early morning when no-ones around and the sun's just coming up, my re-awakening sense of fun nudged my subconscious and said in conspirital tones, "you could skate that". What a fantastic idea!

So I like to start early. I normally leave the flat at about 6 am to go for the 6:30 train. This puts me at my desk before 8. While skating is faster than walking I figured, Paul, you've not been on your wheels for a while, leave at the same time, take it easy, get used to things again.

Oh it so didn't work like that.

6 am I sit on my front step, strap on my boots that feel like 2 old friends welcoming me back to the fold and I skate. I leave the square with a measured easy glide, taking care over the uneven tarmac. I gingerly try some step-overs round the corner and there it is. The wonderful flat levelled tarmac of the main road. The decidedly empty main road. Like a water-slide on a hot day it was calling me. It was irresistible. I put my mind on a back seat, spread my wings and let my body remember how to soar. I sped I swooped and I played for miles. When the cars started to appear I left the main road for the city centre and the pedestrian areas. I jumped, I laughed, I genuinely laughed out loud like a schoolchild who hasn't learned yet that this is wrong. I almost fell on some cobbles and again over a tram line and it was then that I looked at my watch. It was gone 8:15. I looked around to get my bearings, I had been far too swept up in flying to care where I had gone. I wasn't that far from the station, I turned towards the station to catch the 8:30 train.

I was a bit more confident by Northwich. It's a quieter town and I remembered it's roads in the grey depths of my wheels memory. I decided since it was already after 9 and the rush hour traffic was gone I would allow myself some music for the short skate I was determined to make directly to the office. I decided to trust to the fates, they'd been doing well so far today. Ipod on shuffle, I pressed play and waited.

I have the bestest shuffle button in the world.

The Jam - A town called Malice, hell yeah! I admit to a bit of a Billy Elliot moment and I was off. Head down, legs pumping back in the moment. Flying again. About halfway there the song ended and I was resigned t to the fact that it had been a stroke of luck. There was no way it could do it again, from 50 odd gig worth of music there was no way it could, by complete randomness, pull out another gem that would make my blood race. I would slow down, just enjoy the rest of the trip at a leisurely pace. There is a saying, "The Universe doesn't give you what you want. It gives you what you need.". 3 words,

Beastie Boys - Sabotage.

The track finished as I reached the office door.

Of course the Universe also likes to be repaid for it's gifts which is why it played the joke of turning off the isolator switch on the office shower so I got an ice cold drenching but once again, I was hot and sweaty and I had to remember "The Universe doesn't give you what you want. It gives you what you need."