The last blog of 2010.Welcome to a new follower, Jan vB. an Amsterdam blogger, working in ICT finance, happy to be father and husband. On his interesting blog you will find his take on soul, spirituality and events from his personal life. Find his blog here.
Last night (30th) my small group of friends from my psychic circle 'cleared' a house belonging to a friend who was having some difficulties with 'things happening' in her house that were unexplained and occasionally a bit scary. We were able to help her and after about an hour and a half's work, we managed to get rid of whatever it was that was troubling her and today she reported one of the calmest nights she'd had for a while. Good deed done.
Losing Anyone of course is particularly sad but faces that we lose that we are used to in the public eye: actors, prominent people and those that work for the public good are sometimes almost friends, fixtures, traditions, even institutions (take Morecambe and Wise (for UK readers) for example).
Looking ahead and living for now is really important for us to succeed and for our own mental and physical welfare, but I thought I’d look back, just for a few moments to mention just a handful of people who’ve passed away this year that I thought had something special about them. There are many who fit into this category, so I’m sorry if I miss someone who you were particularly interested in or whose presence you enjoyed.
These are in no particular order and the first is Sir Norman Wisdom who died in October aged at the great age of 95. I knew someone who knew him from his home on the Isle of Man and he was just as pleasant and generous as his public life persona until dementia started to take hold, a surprisingly long time ago. He brought joy to millions over a long period of time and he will be missed as a supreme entertainer with his unique style of slapstick comedy. His duet with Joyce Grenfell on the record Narcissus is hilarious.
I suppose when you’ve made over 120 films, it must have been hard for American actor Tony Curtis to have hidden his light under a bushel, not that he was ever afraid of publicity. This talented actor and artist will best be remembered by me for his superb character in ‘Some Like it Hot’ with Jack Lemon and Marilyn Munroe and for the playboy in the TV series ‘The Persuaders’ with Roger Moore. He took more serious roles, particularly when he was younger and he was a very good actor in his earlier days.
Other great actors to leave us this year were Jean Simmons, Lynn Redgrave, smooth guy Simon MacCorkindale and Hollywood hard man, cult actor Dennis Hopper.
BBC Journalist Brian Hanrahan was another extraordinarily talented man who died aged only 61 and will always be famous for his description, under censorship of the 1982 Falklands conflict and British warplanes: "I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out and I counted them all back. Their pilots were unhurt, cheerful and jubilant, giving thumbs-up signs." He received plaudits from, among others, former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbchev.
Wombles (of Wimbledon Common) creator Elizabeth Beresford, Pink Panther creator Blake Edwards, larger than life politician Sir Cyril Smith, controversial snooker player Alex Higgins, the always under-rated sports commentator Harry Carpenter, Hull man and actor Ian Carmichael who I have written about before but I leave the last two paragraphs for particular favourites.
The first is Canadian born actor Leslie Nielson probably best known for his disastrously inept detective Frank Drebin in the Naked Gun series of pictures. Here was a serious actor, a leading man who stumbled across the Airplane movie, played his comedy straight (a golden rule) and never looked back. A great entertainer who never insulted his audience and took delight in having a laugh at the expense of his own characters.
The last, is the indomitable and supreme comedic character actor Lionel Jeffries – a film hero of mine. His height of mastery was playing alongside such actors as Peter Sellers in a series of Ealing style comedies, mainly in black and white as well as being father to Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Self effacing, gentle and hugely likeable, it’s difficult to imagine who can replace this type of actor today.
Chat soon
Ta-ra Thanks to Wikipedia for Lionel Jefferies picture.
As always on these auspicious occasions, I welcome a new follower ‘A Woman of No Importance’ from Hope in Derbyshire. I wish you many happy visits ma’am. By coincidence, I spent a week when I was 11 on a school trip to Hope in Derbyshire where we stayed at a youth hostel for a very memorable and enjoyable holiday, my first away from my parents. This blogger describes herself as “Blogger, fictional heroine, fledgling psychotherapist, trying author, slattern, sloth and demi-mondaine Twitterer! I enjoy crying into strawberry beer and helping old ladies reach stuff off the top shelves in supermarkets... I'm the Queen of All Chaos.” Her informative and entertaining blog can be found by clicking here.
Well the day started well; I got out of bed okay, navigated through the bathroom, kitchen, urban roads through the fog and to work and from then on – it went downhill.
The Christmas tree lights in the office don’t work and the canteen only offered all day breakfasts so no decent dinner. I volunteered before Christmas to help a colleague clean the two fridges in the little kitchen we have for making hot drinks and microwaving meals. Just after the meagre lunch of quiche, bacon and mushrooms, Tammy cleaned the shelves and trays and I scrubbed the insides of the fridges which in the main were fairly disgusting after people who had spilt milk had not cleaned up after them. Sundry items of mouldy food and out of date milk were thrown away – gently!
Tammy provided me with a bucket of hot water and disinfectant which I started to scrub away with. Only, as I bent down to plunge the cloth into the water, my mobile phone slipped out of my shirt breast pocket and PLOP! It disappeared into (admittedly clean and hot) water. Despite it being fished out in about three seconds flat, it died on me.
I’ve been drying it out on a hot radiator and getting as much water out of the accessible nooks and crannies, but it is now doing stupid things and the display is hardly readable through mist hidden behind the screen.
The hardest thing has been trying to extract my contact lists – nightmare! Ah well it’ll be alright on the night.
Never mind – the fridges are now spotless!
One of the treats of this time of year is the roasted chestnut and unlike the Christmas song, they are done in a hot oven (220 degrees) for 20 minutes rather than on an open fire. When I was a kid, however, the chestnuts were roasted on a shovel under the dog grate upon which sat the roaring coal fire, probably only taking five minutes in that massive heat. Black fingernails from peeling the brittle skin and burning fingers revealing the nut inside is still a pain in the neck – but the taste is worth it.
Chestnuts can be bought at our Hull Fair in an October – a few nuts in a small cone for a couple of quid – not good value for money, but a sort of tradition. The picture above shows a serving for three by the way – not all for me!
The weather by the way is relatively balmy at an incredible 5 degrees plus today, but the thaw and moisture in the air has bought all day and all night fogs.
All the turkey has gone, the last of which we had with a salad (the first of LOTS of salads) but there are still chocolates, nuts and savouries left to nibble on. Still, there are some consolations to being stuffed through food, England are stuffing Australia in the fourth Ashes test in Melbourne. I’ve been staying up until the early hours watching play until lunch time.
It’s time to be a little more profound. There’s a vexed question that’s been baffling mankind for centuries: Are zebra’s white horses with black stripes or black horses with white stripes?
Well, scientists have apparently come up with the answer. New evidence suggests now that the animals are in fact black with white stripes. I just thought you ought to know. Zebra is a translation of ‘wild ass,’ and exclusively an African animal, there are many varieties apparently.
Less profound is the weather which reached the dizzying heights of plus two degrees today with some light wet snow and sleet which means, thankfully, the snow is on its way out, no doubt for the time being at least.
However the eastern seaboard of the USA has now had their dumping of snow causing travel chaos and disappointing retailers who may well miss out on important post Christmas sales. Even southern states of Georgia and South Carolina have been affected with their first white Christmas in over 100 years. With winds reported up to 62 miles per hour, blizzards have brought misery to many.
Still at least there’s a happy ending for Moroccan born grandfather Mohammed Bellazrak who got lost in the snow in Wiltshire (UK) after dropping his wife off at an airport. He was eventually stopped by police in Oxfordshire after going missing for three days when his registration plate was recognised by cameras. According to the BBC News Online service, “Analysis from number-plate recognition systems showed he had driven around various towns in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire and on the M4.
“Mr Bellazrak had no mobile phone with him, and he told newspaper reporters that his sat-nav was not working.” Lucky man, he’s none the worse for his ordeal.
I don’t normally watch much television, but with not a lot else to do and being so cold and icy out, I’ve managed a few hours in front of the box. Television hasn’t been too bad, some reasonable choice if you have satellite, but no real highlights for me. I got three books for Christmas, Simon Pegg’s autobiography ‘Nerd do Well’, Michael Caine’s autobiography ‘The Elephant to Hollywood’ and Tim Vines ‘The Biggest Ever’ joke book.
I’ve enjoyed sitting this afternoon just reading Pegg’s book which is both entertaining and a testament to his memory of his very formative childhood. This sci-fi nut tells a very interesting story although sometimes you feel he’s a bit over analytical about what has influenced his career as an entertainer.
One more day off tomorrow (Tuesday) before a short three day return to work. I hope you’ve had a good holiday so far if you have been fortunate enough to have it away from work.
The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged, it’s time to dance. No more work for four days, time to relax and enjoy time with the family. It’s Christmas Eve afternoon with a cold snowy landscape in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
I sit writing this with a small dish of mixed peanuts, a cup of tea and a couple of Euro-Millions lottery tickets freshly purchased from the newsagents (who are open Christmas Day from 10 am to 2 pm – the newsagent told me he does a roaring trade in batteries and people topping up!)
I guess Christmas is not too difficult for me these days; my wife doesn’t celebrate Christmas so I only buy gifts for my boys and parents. They know what they want so I don’t have to go hunting. Christmas décor is simple, the meal straightforward, and we’ll play card games and board games on Christmas Day evening and have a giggle - no television. A few drinks and some nibbles in convivial company will help to pass a pleasant day.
Washington Irving, an 18th/19th century American author famous for writing the short stories ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’ once said of Christmas, “Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.”
I had an interesting chat with a colleague today in the corridor about a perceptible changing face of Christmas, the cost of it, what it means to people, the difficult times and the influence of their being less money about in the economy now and particularly next year. People donate to charity instead of sending cards for example and we have a generation of schoolchildren who are now more aware of what Christmas is really celebrating.
My thoughts very much are with people whose life is not as straightforward as mine is. It is brought to us in stark reality when friends post on Facebook that relatives and children are not well; then there’s the Homeless (for those who don’t have a real choice) who are struggling with life and the weather, the bereaved both recently and those whose beloved passed at Christmas time, those in abusive relationships, the vulnerable, the lonely and the ill.
Some work on Christmas Day because they have no choice, some volunteers work because they want to and feel the need to – well done to you. Some will still be caring for others as they do every other day of the year - thank you to you.
To all readers of my blog, be you a regular or an itinerant browser, whether you are a Christian or not, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope that this time at Christmas is full of compassion, hope and love and that the forthcoming New Year of 2011 is a safe, successful, happy and a prosperous year for you.
Heads Lane Hessle, East Yorkshire 3.40 pm today, 20 December 2010. Typical of the hoar frost across the county today
Everybody is talking about the weather and although there are other things in the news, why not - it's an extraordinary event in most of our lives. Serious news stories sometimes don't touch us directly and we may take fleeting notice and move on, but no matter who you are, the extreme cold weather affects our ability to get out of the house, get to work, get to the shops, keep warm, and all the costs both monetary and personal that comes with it.
The temperature in East Yorkshire today has not risen above minus 5 degrees Celsius where I've been and there is the most beautiful hoar frost around and although I tried to capture it and the lovely full moon that's rising, I haven't done it justice. In fact on the way home today there was a magnificent sunset, so I thought I'd get myself to the Humber Bridge to get a view across the river, but when I got there - the fog had come down and I couldn't see a thing.
I don't remember much about 1963 and the bad weather we had; I remember still having a pile of snow that was once a snowman in the back garden still there in May. Someone wrote in the paper today 'It's nice for a couple of days - looks great - but I'm fed up with it now!' I'm not sure I echo those sentiments exactly albeit people would say that it's selfish to be enjoying it while so many are suffering.
Humber Bridge and the Humber Lifeboat Station shrouded in freezing fog, 3.30 pm today, 20th December 2010.
I guess the one thing I will remember about the winter thus far and that's the number of people who have lost their guttering to tons of snow on their roofs. The old wooden guttering of yesteryear (that I remember my dad tarring out each summer to stop them from rotting) would have coped better than the plastic ones we have today.
We can complain about the councils, the footpaths, the trains, the motorways, the car parks but at the end of the day why don't we just face up to the fact that we don't cope with bad weather and just be more relaxed about it - our pace of life is so fast these days that we have to be there yesterday. Let's face it, until the Government realise that the economy is being damaged to the tune of billions of pounds, only then they'll decide not to decimate this particular public service and spend some money on additional grit and lorries and some of these small machines for footpaths but more important, the staff to use them!
So wrap up warm... stay in and enjoy some home entertainment and if you are lucky, some company.
Not a very good picture, I couldn't get it sharp enough hand held, but the large, orange full moon rising about 4.00 pm today 20th December 2010.
Why is Christmas Day like a day at the office? Because you do all the work and the fat guy in the suit gets all the credit.
It's been a busy old time in the last week with evenings out, some for work, some for leisure, some for pleasure leaving not a lot of time for me to sit and relax. The Christmas cards are arriving thick and fast from friends and relatives, some whom I haven't seen for donkey's years, but with whom friendship is never the less still valuable.
My youngest son is back from University for the Christmas break - welcome home. He has his budgies to take to the vets to get their nails clipped and the Christmas tree to put up tomorrow. I just wonder how the cats will cope with it? (Or rather, how we'll cope with them not coping with it!)
I wondered when a card popped through the post from the Royal Mail saying I had to pick up this letter from the sorting office what was so valuable that they couldn't deliver it when no-one was in.
Needless to say, my good friend will get a ribbing that I had to pay £1.19 because of the peculiar size of the envelope, I had to pay extra because he hadn't paid enough - for his Christmas card stamp. It was lovely to hear from him and his dear wife.
I thought I'd look up the history of Christmas cards and was not surprised that it's western society and in Asia that cards are sent, even by those who are not Christians. Surprisingly however, the tradition only goes back to 1843 when the first commercial Christmas card was commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London, and courtesy of Wikipedia - here it is:
This was illustrated by John Callcott Horsley and they printed over 2,000 cards selling at one shilling each (today - 5 pence). At auction in 2001, one of these cards fetched over £22,000.
Ironically, the card drew some controversy for showing a child drinking wine and some of the early English cards depicted fairies and flowers depicting the oncoming Spring rather than a celebration of Christianity and the birth of Christ.
Although I haven't got any statistics for the UK, in the USA, in 2005, it is estimated that 1.9 billion cards were sent! There is a decline in sending cards as e-cards are becoming more popular.
I've copied this paragraph from the Wikipedia site which illustrates how important recycling cards is in the UK.
"All recycled cards help raise money to plant more trees. In the 12 years that the Woodland Trust Christmas Card Recycling Scheme has been running, more than 600 million cards have been recycled. This has enabled the Woodland Trust to plant more than 141,000 trees, save over 12,000 tonnes of paper from landfill and stop over 16,000 tonnes of CO2 from going into the atmosphere – the equivalent to taking more than 5,000 cars off the road for a year."
Well, there's an incentive for us to recycle paper and cards.
The snow is flirting with us, a few flakes today and now a bitterly cold northerly wind and ice and frost. No snow for us until Saturday and this time the west of the country, who escaped the previous snow will now get their share.
Next week I'll be dusting off my copy of the Christmas Carol by Dickens that I've read every year (without missing a year) for the last 35 odd years at this time of the year finishing it off usually on Christmas Eve. Apparently a famous BBC Radio breakfast presenter does the same - copy-cat!
Keep warm and safe wherever you are in this wonderful world of ours.
Tonight - I've been to the theatre to see Christmas Office Party by John Godber at the Hull Truck Theatre. It might be worth knowing a little of the history of the theatre, something of which Hull is very proud.
The Hull Truck Theatre was born back in 1971 when a man called Mike Bradwell set up his own theatre company because he couldn't find employment. He moved to Hull and their first play was in 1972. In 1983 they moved to their own theatre in Spring Street in Hull (opposite the mortuary - nice!) and John Godber joined as their artistic director.
Godber's written many good and well renown plays one of which I have seen tonight, Christmas Office Party. In 2009 they moved to their new premises in Ferensway in Hull - a lovely and intimate theatre auditorium with three sides of the stage surrounded by the audience.
Apart from some dizzy bitch walking in front of the stage (not actually on it, but she may have just as well been) to get out in clumpy shoes about 5 minutes before the end, this was a great fun play well received by a switched on and responsive audience.
I went with a number of colleagues for our social evening and this was the first time I'd seen a Godber play and the first time I've been to this lovely theatre, I was impressed on the whole. The art display of paintings in the foyer was not very good art and the atmosphere in the upper floor bar, one of my colleagues said, was like being on the London Underground waiting for a train. She was right. Other than that and the obscure location for the toilets, it was good.
The play, set in a Yorkshire city, "up north," as one character put it, had lots of fun, pathos, dramatic swings of mood and atmosphere and plenty of great characters. The set was good - the inside of a relatively modern office and lots of retro music from the 1990s which was enjoyable nostalgia.
There are no spoilers here, but this play is simply about an advertising company having a Christmas party at the premises after last year's Christmas bash at the pub ended with the police being called. This is a closer look at relationships and office politics, personal differences, professional disappointments and the need to win a £3 million pound contract for survival. All sounds complex? Not really, don't let the plot put you off, it's almost a sub plot. This is about people. Their desires, their private lives, their relationship with one another as workers and their personal home relationships all put into the mix, with both hilarious and sad consequences.
The characters are entirely believable and the office politics, (with their political correctness - or not - possibly more suited to the 1990s) soon gives way to the characters revealing a lot about themselves.
If you ever get chance to see this, please do so - it's fun and entertaining - albeit with a bit of bad language thrown in, but this is not gratuitous and is entirely in context.
I can't tell you who the actors were, I didn't buy a programme for a change, but they were all very good indeed.
The cat - chasing the cursor, also making it difficult to type at the same time.
Those of you from outside the UK must be having a giggle at us and the way we cope with (or don't cope with) the snow. Day time temperatures today didn't rise above minus 5 degrees Celsius where I was and the car clock this morning at 7 am said 'minus 9.' Several weather records have been broken this last week.
The main urban roads here are passable with care and the minor estate roads are hopelessly dangerous. The local authorities never get round to the side roads because they have other priorities, i.e., strategic routes and bus routes. If you think it's bad now in the UK and think the councils have been poor (I think they've worked very hard), it's going to be even worse as councils prepare for up to a 25% cut in expenditure for the next four years.
We even had mail delivered on Sunday (5th December!) That's because our postie had fallen behind with his work have fallen (literally) several times and hurt his back, he decided to come out on Sunday morning to catch up - off his own bat. Well done him!
This wonderful Government will slash spending on clearing our roads, our public servants that operate the gritters will be reduced along with everyone else, there will be fewer nurses and doctors to mend the broken bones, fewer ambulances to take you to hospital in a timely way so if you think it will get any better after all the 'constructive criticism' our wonderful public give the public sector - blimey, you ain't seen nothing yet!
Tonight is my first attempt to start writing my Christmas cards, well to be accurate, at least printing out some fancy address labels. I have wondered whether or not I should put a note inside the cards to say that I'll donate the £60 it costs me in cards and stamps every year to a charity next year. I haven't decided yet. I've given myself three or four days to make my mind up. The dilemma I guess is that I like to receive cards from friends and relatives. I find it comforting that you are thought of, if only for a few seconds a year while they write the card.
It's my dad's 74th birthday tomorrow and I have committed sacrilege. I was in Sainsburys tonight and bought him a bottle of Scotch. As I was paying for my lottery tickets on my way out I dropped the bag with the Scotch in and it smashed on the floor. OMG. The smell of spirits pervaded the kiosk area and a golden liquid started spreading across the floor. I was hugely embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I was surprised when I realised that they were going to replace the smashed bottle and the two boxes of chocolates that I had consequently ruined in the same bag - no charge! Well done Sainsburys!
To a valued colleague and wonderful person 'J,' an old friend who is having treatment for an illness right now - thinking of you and your family too - best wishes and positive thoughts coming your way.
Hope you all have a safe, warm and successful week!
It is my pleasure today to host 'Night Crawler', a debut novel by fellow blogger Diane Parkin on her blog tour.
It is Easter 1996, and a young homosexual junkie has been murdered. His boyfriend is arrested and charged. Marcie Craig, local DJ and good friend of the prime suspect, knows he didn’t do it and sets out to find out who did. Along the way Marcie is beaten up, another friend is murdered, and another is questioned until, in the end, Marcie’s own life is threatened.
Night Crawler was originally a song recorded by Birmingham rockers Judas Priest and can be found on their 1990 Painkiller album. The novel is a story about someone that crawls around at night killing people to cover up his or her own secret. The story opens in April 1996 and runs for just a few months. It introduces Birmingham, the rock club and pub scene that once was there, and of course Marcie Craig.
Diane Parkin started writing short stories for magazines in 1985 when the writers’ group to which she belonged advised her not to waste her time and get a proper job. She went on to sell commissioned articles to magazines for many years. She qualified as a broadcast journalist with BBC Radio WM in 1997, took over one of the classes on the course the following year, and continued as a full time freelance photo-journalist for ten years altogether. She joined an international steel company in 2005 as editor of one of their in-house magazines.
Diane has also edited education trade magazines and journals, text books, non-fiction books, and photocopiable classroom resources, and has taught adults creative writing and computer literacy. More recently she has started to produce activity and sticker annuals for children aged 3 – 6.
Diane gives us a little more insight into the main character. Marcie Craig (real name Marcella) is a 32 year old female rock DJ that makes a perfectly adequate living from her first love, rock music. She lives in a caravan (trailer) in Meriden, a small town that lies between Birmingham and Coventry, England, on the A45 – although the caravan site (trailer park) is fictitious. She rides a Harley Davidson, drives a Jeep, and has a pet cat called Sylvester and two mice called Thomas and Jeremy. She is 5’ 7”, with long brown naturally curly hair, is quite physically attractive with an athletic body, but she’s a bit immature and can be sarcastic.
Diane explains how the novel came about. “I knew I wanted to write a mystery novel set in Birmingham but I didn’t know where to start. Everyone told me to write what I know but I didn’t think I knew enough about anything interesting. The only thing I did was work or go out to rock pubs and clubs, so I settled on the local music scene. I needed a protagonist and came up with an amalgamation of all the rock DJs I had ever known, then I made her a female and put her on a motorbike. Marcella was a favourite name and Craig was the professional surname of one of my DJ friends.
“The milieu gave me my scene of crime and it was easy enough to place a victim there, but I needed a reason for Marcie Craig to get involved, I needed her to care. So I had an old friend of hers falsely arrested and charged.
“I wrote copious character notes for all of the main players, I wrote a detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown, I made timeline notes as I went along. I drew a map of the murder scene and I made a detailed timeline for the actual murder so I knew where everybody was.
“I wrote the first draft by hand, every day, making notes of things I didn’t know, and then I carried out my research interviews. The second draft was also in longhand but this took into account what I had learned. The first typo-free typed draft went out to my “experts” for checking, and all of my factual errors were corrected, most of the feedback was also incorporated. Then the second type-written draft was produced and the polishing process begun.
“I did two more handwritten drafts before the final print-ready version. Then years of submissions began.”
This is a self publish novel and for the uninitiated (like me) this is how self publishing helps budding authors get their book out there.
The book was completed by the end of 1996 and in 1997 it started to do the rounds. Diane hawked her manuscript around publishers and agents for more than ten years, building in many of the suggestions they made. While many were genuinely interested, the only company that offered to publish her book ran out of money. Spurred on by mostly positive feedback, Diane decided to have a go herself and “get it out there”.
Lulu is a print-on-demand self-publishing organisation that offers authors various levels of support. With so much editing experience, however, Diane decided to do everything herself. She did all of the editorial and technical work and even sourced her own artist for the cover. Lulu is available to anyone with Internet access and offers various distribution services and packages. Every book gets an ISBN.
Night Crawler by Diane Parkin was published on 12 November 2010 and is available from Lulu. It can currently be purchased in hardback or as a download.
I've decided to batten down the hatches and take cover this weekend. I've managed to get through shitty roads every day, cope with idiots who don't know how to drive in the snow (or don't care) and not have to dig myself out (just) of anywhere.
We don't need to venture abroad to the shops or look after relatives who are all nicely catered for. So perhaps apart from some drive clearing in the morning after tonight's predicted snow, the warm fire and a couple of good books await my undivided attention.
The snow today however, ignoring the negatives, has been nothing short of spectacular with Christmas card scenes everywhere and the car clock on the way home at 3 pm today showed it to be minus 5 degrees Celsius.
Cars are still covered in more than a foot of snow and all the main urban roads despite gritting and snow ploughing have packed ice on surfaces.
If you have seven minutes to spare (what else have you got to do this weekend?) enjoy this brilliant piece of film about the old fashioned way of getting trains through adverse weather conditions, from 1963. Remember British Rail?
As promised I thought I'd post a picture of my two older kids and their cousin from next door, who, with a little help from brother in law next door, build a six foot igloo in the back garden yesterday afternoon.
It dawned on me that way back in 1988, 22 years ago, another igloo was built in the garden of my former home and although I can't find it, I have a picture of my older son playing in it. Nothing changes - they're all big daft kids - thank goodness!
Keep warm and safe this weekend and enjoy the views outside (preferably from your living room).
How boring can this be, but the weather dominates our lives here in the UK at the moment. We're just not used to dealing with extremes of weather.
I spotted the lead picture first thing this morning (10.00 hours) out of my office window. There had been a brief thaw and the snow had started to move off the roof before refreezing. As a consequence, the icicles had moved inward making an interesting spectacle - horizontal icicles!
People are digging their cars and themselves away from their drives, car parks, kerb sides, interchanges and anywhere else cars can get stuck. It's great to see people walking. I saw a bus this afternoon pull into a bus stop to drop off and when I passed again ten minutes later, the driver and passengers were digging it out. Instead of staying on the road which was clear and stopping, the driver pulled into a foot of snow at the kerbside adjacent to the bus stop and got stuck!
The second shot was of the River Humber about 12.45 hours today (Thursday). You may see a similarity with my blog opening title photograph; it was taken from exactly the same place on St Andrew's Quay in Hull.
My goodness these birds are tough. Most of them live on chips thrown to them by customers from the local fast food outlet (I'm loving it!) who park up here to get the often spectacular views across the Humber.
My two older sons, their cousin from next door and my brother in law are building an igloo in my back garden! I'll post the picture when they've finished.
Hello from a wintry, cold, white North Eastern England in the UK. This is the first time in their lives our young cats have experienced the snow. Curious, they dashed straight into it without thinking of course and sank up to their bellies which was a bit of a shock. Jill wasn't too fussed and found high ground on the back of the garden seat which had no snow. Jack however was a little more adventurous leaping from footprint to footprint that I had left.
Within a few minutes Jill had had enough and came in to watch procedings from the warmth of the house. Jack however thoroughly enjoyed the experience and stayed out for ages. Needless to say, they both spend the next hour asleep curled up in front of the fire!
Above is the view from my office window at daybreak this morning.
I kept my eye on the forecast as I always do but with extra interest. I've got up an hour and a half earlier than I normally do for the last three days (for me that's a big deal - I hate getting out of bed too early) and set off for work early hoping to get there for 7 am before the rush hour. The roads had been cleared and gritted and no-one else has been venturing out much at that time so I got to work really early and was equally home early too!
Lots of good people turned out for work - many walked (in some cases about four miles) others sat on buses for two hours, queued at bus stops, sat in rush hour traffic jams to get to work. Well done them for committment and dedication. A selected handful perhaps open the curtains, see the white stuff and roll over back to sleep. For goodness sake, at least people should make the effort and if they can't get off the drive, or off the estate, then that's fine, but at least try. The world goes on despite the snow.
My son drove from East Yorkshire to York to work as he does everyday and it took him three hours and today was the worst trip - he doesn't know how he got there, however others, including those who live in York didn't turn up! Makes me angry and I hope that at least they made the effort!
The garden looks the tidiest it's ever looked, mainly because all I can see is white - suits me - no leaves to pick up. Today the wind has arrived with a vengence so not only is it drifting out there, it's now colder than it's been all week with snow falling almost horizontally.
The late Sammy Cahn penned the lyrics:
Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we've no place to go,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
I had a brief sojourn into the old town of Hull this morning to meet an old friend who showed me round an old building which goes back to 1698. I am going to lead a paranormal investigation there in January and it gave me a chance to have a look round to get my bearings and soak in a bit of the atmosphere. It promises to be a good one. The picture above shows the church this morning bathed in winter sunlight in the reflection of the bank windows on Market Place.
While there, I decided to have a short wander around, not dwelling too long because of the freezing weather - the only advantage of which was the fact that there was no-one around. I used to work in the old town centered by Holy Trinity Church in the mid to late 1970s and some of my ancestors were baptised and married in the magnificent church, originally built in 1285, just down the road from St Marys which featured on a blog a few weeks ago.
The statue of King William lll sits, unceremoniously in some ways, next to a public toilet in Market Place, just a few yards from Holy Trinity. This is a remarkable statue of a king who was relatively unloved and unmourned. Were it not for his missus, Mary, who was indeed loved at the time, he would be William the Obscure. The statue of him was erected in 1734, and apart from the war years, his gilded figure has remained there ever since, vigilant and proud. It is said that the sculptor committed suicide after realising, following his completion of the statue that he had not included any stirrups for the King's royal tootsies. The truth is that the Sculptor, Dutchman Peter Scheemaker died in 1781 at the grand old age of 90. The statue was probably designed that way to represent a 'classic' style of bareback horsemanship.
I haven't walked down Prince Street opposite Holy Trinity for 30 years plus and although there is a lot of restoration down there, the cobbled streets, the curved nature of the building line, the arched entrance and the old shuttered buildings takes you back centuries; I guess it hasn't changed massively - ghosts from yesteryear would recognise the scene.
On the way home, thankful for a warm car, the Humber Bridge presented a fascinating vista being half covered in a fog bank. Fog of course is no stranger to the Humber basin and with a still cold morning, there were attractive wisps of vapour all over the place as the water was considerably warmer than the air! The only problem was that the main A63, Clive Sullivan Way provides nowhere safe to stop and get a good photo.
From a bland chill morning with minus 5 on the car clock and no overnight snow, at the time of writing, an hours continual snow has now turned my village into a winter wonderland. This picture was taken at 12.35 today.
All the pictures were taken today - I love the immediacy of blogs.
Let no-one say that JK Rowling has no talent as a story teller. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is the coming of age of Harry James Potter now aged 17 years at the beginning of the end. This much anticipated film (there are no spoilers here) panned by critics who frankly know nothing about what audiences want or like was a wake up call for those who think Potter is just a pink and fluffy children's fantasy dream. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I guess Harry Potter is a bit like Marmite, you hate it, you love it or frankly you don't care about it. There are shades of Lord of the Rings, where Ronald Weasley, played by Rupert Grint is given a light device in the will of Albus Dumbledore (his deceased headmaster) to show him the way in times of darkness. There are clear references to the rise of the Nazi empire in the way those destructive and dark forces are trying to seize control. The propaganda machine, brainwashing and subjugation of the citizenry by any means fair or foul - usually foul, the grey, dank stench of death in the air makes this film one to sit up and take notice.
This is a film about three children growing up in a changing world, changing toward something they passionately don't believe in and they are prepared to go the extra mile, make sacrifices, take difficult courageous decisions to fight for what they believe, and yet they are children, and this is what the critics don't understand. This is life from their point of view - young people growing up, not the authors and not the viewer.
We've been on a journey through the fairy tales, fantasy scenes of a gentler time, humour, fluffy magic, weird creatures, great characters to the dark realism of the need to survive. The classic good versus the evil and at the end of the film, we are left with the stark reality that the dark side is defintely ready to triumph; the wait for the conclusion is unbearable and therein lies the success of the transformation from book to film. The characters are now well known; we, as the audience can relate to them as they feel emotion at every level, experience personal loss, despair, love, a glimpse of hope in the gloom. Our favourite characters are at the final cross roads. Who will survive, who will succumb to the power of the dark lord.
There has been a transformation to the real world by quality acting from the young cast, Radcliffe, Grint and the excellent Emma Watson supported by stunningly talented actors and actresses. The sets and scenery are now almost monotone and sparse adding to the tone and despair; the special effects continue to be special; the evil one is becoming more powerful, the good - on their knees.
Who will triumph?
This is a quality film by Warner Bros, rated at 12A, a measure of the emotion generated by this excellent production. Highly recommended.
The weather on the other hand is a bleak as the film, minus 3 degrees Celsius on the way home at dusk, snow laying on the ground, the roads icy.
I hope my colleague and her partner managed to get to Pickering in North Yorkshire this weekend for a long weekend break in a log cabin with real fire and a hot tub which I hope they enjoy along with the bottle of Champagne they've taken with them.
Another colleague flies out to Spain to be with her parents for a week today or tomorrow from Manchester and although I guess she wont be sunbathing, it won't be minus 3 either!
I hope you've had a good weekend so far. Keep warm
Is this what to expect in the morning (Thursday) - it is if you believe the BBC weather forecast?
Student riots (my son couldn't get into the Uni library today to study because they were occupying it), Comprehensive Spending Review, North Korea fires on South Korea and the talking point at work today? It's going to snow.
Let's get life into context. I'll have to get up early in the morning although I only live five miles from where I work because the roads are traditionally quite poor in bad weather. Generally, I don't do mornings much although I rarely sleep in because I think the day is wasted if I do. The car I have, a diesel, takes ages to warm up unlike my old version which was petrol and the screen on this one takes forever to clear. Since losing weight, the cold affects me more so it gets very uncomfortable sometimes when I'm clearing ice and frost.
A very good friend has bronchitis, another has his version of man flu and there are sniffles and sneezes all over my workplace. My son has a cough. Woe is me - how long before I submit to man flu?I've stopped feeding the fish in the ponds now, they can't digest food in cold weather and to feed them does more damage than good. The warmth of the living room this weekend is very attractive as opposed to my usual enthusiasm to get outside at every opportunity when the sun shines bright and warm.
I posted the following warning on Facebook a couple of nights ago...
WARNING, PLEASE READ. If someone comes to your front door and asks you to remove
your clothes and dance with your arms in the air, DO NOT do this, it is
a SCAM, they just want to see you naked. please copy and paste this to
your status, I wish I had received this yesterday, I feel stupid now :(
Enjoy the rest of the week and take care in the cold!
This the Cottingham Railway station on the Hull to Scarborough line. A steam train is just about to come in from the Beverley direction - well it did in 1908.
Listening to the rain on the windows this quiet Sunday morning took me into a reflective mood. A trip to Cottingham in East Yorkshire yesterday (Saturday) to take some photographs for our latest hobby assignment brought back some memories of the village where I was brought up. I even parked outside the house I lived in for the first half of my life as my middle son and I wandered around with a book of old photographs of the village.
We took some photographs from the exact position that the original photographer used and my son merged the old with the new, a couple of which I've put on here. You should be able to click on any of them to enlarge them.
This is the shopping street in Hallgate, Cottingham. The ghostly images of horses pulling tree trunks transforms this scene. Cottingham was once said to have every species of European tree within the village boundaries due to having some keen collectors as residents. Those horses would have been heard clip clopping down the street about 1912.
The memories came back more so when we went to the railway station. I spend many happy pre-teen years hanging around the station watching the trains and at one point can clearly remember standing on the bridge over the lines being covered in smoke from the steam trains passing underneath on the Scarborough to Hull line. The line escaped the Beeching cuts of the late 1960s and I remember doing a petition in my school to save the line.
The flower beds were tended, coal fires raged in the waiting rooms, one for ladies and one for the gentlemen. Linoleum covered the floors producing squeaks from your shoes. As diesel trains took over from steam, the pervading smell of oil from the tracks would fill the air most days. I recall one porter, Ernie, a small rotund man who used to disappear down the lines every afternoon to replace the oil lamps on the signals, so the train drivers could see whether the signal was a go or stop after dark. Red fire buckets with sand lined the platform in the case of fire and wooden trolleys for luggage stood idly about.
This is St Mary's Church in Hallgate, where I was married 31 and a half years ago. This is a really spooky photograph in so many ways and I guess that none of the boys in the photograph from 1906 are alive today.
Racing pigeons would arrive at the station in lorries once a week and dozens of baskets of birds would be off loaded, fitted with rings and they would be let loose from the platform and dozens of birds would fly up, circle the station a couple of times and head off for home - a miracle of nature.
Porters would signal to the train guards with green flags when the train was safe to set off and off loaded passengers would wend their weary way home.
I used to help the porters when it became time to turn on the gas lamps on the platform and over the bridge on darker nights. The hiss of gas and bright flame on the mantels comes back to me as clear now as it was then.
Fun to look back over more innocent and simpler times.
My sincere thanks to John who put these photographs together for me. It's been a real pleasure to bring these photographs to life - enjoy.
You may remember in my blog earlier in the week, I told you I had to do an end of course presentation? Well that happened first thing this morning.
Four groups of five or six people had to present a high level strategic plan of an imaginary major change within a community.This used all the learning from the course and the previous weeks course earlier in the year and it took us all week to prepare it in our own time. It taught me a lot about teamwork, research, creating presentations, presenting, with a tight time scale to a high powered individual who asked some very pertinent questions, and us responding without using bullshit.
I have to say, the feedback was sensational for all the groups who presented. There was no prizes - that wasn't the point, but all the presentations were different, exciting, imaginative and hit the button. What a great end to the week. I have a lot of people to thank for cajoling me and encouraging me, including some fellow bloggers.
The third and final week of this course will be next year in late winter when all the elements of what we've learned so far will come together in what they call a 'Hydra' style scenario. This appears to be a real time playing of an exercise over a few days where we will have to be part of a management team using leadership skills to manage a difficult and challenging developing situation. Excited and terrified are the two words that come to mind.
The journey home was mainly at 50 or 60 miles per hour on the motorways due to the patchy and often thick fog. Boy am I glad to be home. Unpacked, had tea and watched a film with the family (Dead Poet's Society with Robin Williams - never seen it before) and just getting paperwork up to date so I can enjoy my weekend off.
I'm still waiting for the EuroMillions ticket to come my way!I haven't seen anything of Children in Need this year on the TV, I'm trying not to watch too much TV, but the radio in the car on the way home today was brilliantly entertaining. Rolf Harris was a guest on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 and he was superb followed by the smooth and funny Richard Allinson supported by Amanda Holden They raised a huge amount - well done you as well as Radio 2.
The picture above is the last of the flowers, a rudbeckia amongst a sedum, fairly well protected from the frost by the pergola.
It's grey and dull, dull, dull in Warwickshire today, damp and chill is all around. There are some beautiful spots still with rich brown fallen leaf, bright pink late afternoon skies, interesting lights on an evening but unlike some supporters in the crowd at Wembley last night, this is not shirt-off weather.
I won't bore my non-football readers, but the England footballers underperformed last night against a young and inexperienced French side. Were it not for the underrated Peter Crouch scoring one minute after he came on as a substitute, it would have been a whitewash. Therefore my prediction that there may be something to cheer about today was woefully misguided.
There are times in every course where the day seems long and irrelevant. Today was close to one of those days. A visiting speaker got a difficult time because he represents a dysfunctional government quango who was trying ever so hard to justify their existence and purports them to be perfect and value for money - whilst treated with respect, he got the message that they ain't!
We also talked about 'futures,' which is about what's coming round the corner in the short and longer term and how to 'Scenario Plan.' That's thinking about and anticipating the unknown future through analysis, trends, statistics, history etc., what will be coming and allows the organisation to adapt and change in readiness using experts and imagination to get ahead of the game. The official phrase used is "The philosophy is to proactively think and plan for future developments instead of being a passive victim of change."
The lack of imagination was demonstrated by the following famous quotes:
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" HM Warner, 1927.
"Space travel is utter bilge." Woolley, 1956, Space Advisor to HM Government.
"Atomic energy might be as good as present day explosives, but it's unlikely to produce anything more dangerous." Churchill, 1939.
"The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." Western Union, 1876.
"X-rays are a hoax." Lord Kelvin, 1900.
"640k ought to be enough for anyone." Bill Gates 1981.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Commissioner of Patents, 1900.
Following the theme of 'business' while I am on a course this week, I've taken time out to go the Cinema for some leisure business.
In fact, I took a trip to the Showcase Cinema in Coventry last night to get away from my residential course and saw Burke and Hare starring Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis ('Gollum' in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.)
Despite critics not giving it a very complimentary review, I found it entertaining and funny in places with Pegg on top form. Yes it is a little predictable, but I've always said, if done with style and class, it's fine by me.
1820s Edinburgh sees two famous surgeons struggling to find bodies for dissection to educate medical students. By accident, Burke and Hare deliver a body to the surgeon and they earn the princely sum of £5 and there starts a business that proves profitable if not somewhat dangerous and in the end fatal for one of them. There were some great ham cameo performances from Christopher Lee, Jenny Agutter and Michael Winner the latter of which is an uncredited role.
Veteran actors Ronnie Corbett and John Woodvine support the rival surgeons Tim Curry and Tom Wilkinson and the sex interest is Pegg's girlfriend Isla Fisher. Comedian Bill Bailey makes a creditable hangman and narrator.
I guess dealing with dead bodies might be an uncomfortable subject and in all honesty, if you are sensitive to this for any reason, the film is probably best to be avoided - there is a certain degree of indelicacy about it.
The film moves along with pace and the story keeps you interested right to the very ironic end.
All in all, if you like Simon Pegg, you'll like this film with all the little extras waiting to be spotted by the sharp eyed cinema goer. Recommended.
Today's element of the course dealt with the 'fascinating' subject of finance management and people management including controversial topics such as annual appraisals and less meaty but equally as important employee engagement. The preparation for the presentation at the end of the course marches on despite some severe IT issues which are doing their best to scupper our attempts at producing a simple PowerPoint presentation.
England football on the television tonight, so hopefully, something to really cheer about tomorrow.
November fog and frost greeted me this morning in what turned out to be a sunny day in Warwickshire.
The course is not getting any easier and today's subjects were around performance management and resource and demand management. The days are so long and the content of the course is largely front loaded - lots of talking from the course tutors. We have exercises to do based on the day's subject and there is a big exercise which we are working on during the week which we have to present on Friday morning before we depart for home.
I've done my 'homework,' got changed and after tea, which is served at 6 pm., I'm going to toddle off into Coventry, well the outskirts anyway to watch a film, Burke & Hare with Simon Penn. Now this film has had some average or poor reviews, but having seen the trailers, I am really happy with obvious comedy when it's done well and the production values look good, so I'll report on the film tomorrow; I just need a break from the rigours of this ever so steep learning curve!
I'm not sleeping either at the moment and I'm not sure why, but I'm hoping that the venture out in the fresh air and change of scenery will help.
I was delighted with the announcement today that Prince William will marry Kate Middleton in 2011 and I wish them well. I hope dear readers you will forgive me for this comment, but I hope that the couple will learn from the mistakes that we made, as a nation, of how we handled Diana, Princess of Wales. Having Diana's ring on her finger will be a reminder what Kate must avoid in allowing the media to pry, magnify, dissect and analyse her life in minuscule detail. The country would never forgive the media for a repeat performance.
The final picture today greeted me as I left the classroom, and although you'll have to click on the picture to enlarge it, there was a line of dancing dolphins in the clouds, much clearer than the picture has turned out.
I've migrated to Warwickshire (south east of Coventry) for the second residential week of a three week course and this module is about strategic business, linked to the course theme of 'Strategic Leadership.' It's not as grand as it sounds, it's a foundation course. Other brighter, younger things do the full course.
It's at times like this that I realise my inadequacies and age (I'm the oldest on the course) whilst in amongst some incredibly bright cookies from around the UK, most with degrees of one sort or another and most of whom have done some of the techniques already. Ah well, the trick I guess is to get out of my comfort zone, grit my teeth and try to get as much out of it as possible, because believe it or not, it's a very interesting (if not incredibly difficult) subject particularly at this time of tremendous change in the public service.
Today's subjects were: organisational change which included models for change, organisational emotional intelligence and a few exercises to burn the lessons in. Before tea, I am now doing some reflection and analysis which involves completing a 'learning log' with what the most significant learning of the day was and how I can apply the new knowledge to the workplace.
Although it was forecast to be cold last night, imagine my surprise when I walked out of my room this morning to be confronted with a widespread and hard frost which has lingered until well after lunch; and, having disappeared, returned by the time we walked out of our delegate room at 4.30 pm tonight. The picture above was taken at 9 am.
I love the frost, but the shower in the room this morning was only lukewarm which I HATE! which did not prepare me well for the chill. However, most importantly, housekeeping have put new batteries in the television remote control!
A better day today, with wall to wall sun, little breeze to talk of and spent all of it indoors! Today was an auragraph course - learning to see people's aura and then creating a visual representation on paper (I could already see them, but had never created an auragraph before). More on what an auragraph is in a later blog.
I had seen an interesting photo set on the BBC website where old pictures of towns were superimposed on modern day pictures to represent of how it looks now and how it looked then on one photograph. So we (my son John and I) thought we would try to reproduce this effect and here are the results:
This is the original photograph taken just after 1900 of Queens Victoria's Square in Hull , so named because a statue of Her Majesty sits in the square - just to the left of the picture.
This is the modern day photograph, taken by me from, as far as we can tell from the various angles and positions of the buildings, the exact spot from where the original was taken. The difficulty is finding the right focal length of the original lens setting.
This is the fascinating result of putting the two pictures together showing John's skill using Adobe Photoshop CS4.
As you can see in comparing the pictures, there's very little left of that part of the city other than the buildings to the far right and Queen Victoria's statue to the left although the original building lines were retained. The change came not because of modern development, but because of the persistent and unremitting bombing of the city in World War ll by the Luftwaffe; 'that North Eastern town,' as the broadcasts and newspapers reported when the nation was told of the bombing, and so called to protect the identity of the strategic importance of the docks to the nation's survival.
My Grandfather was an auxiliary fireman in Hull during the war and he had some tales to tell, both harrowing and darkly funny. But that's for another day.
