Next Wednesdays meeting has been moved forward two days – when will the meeting now be held? Monday, or Friday?
If you answer Monday, then you are someone who supposes time to be moving towards you, forward = sooner, if you chose Friday, then time is something through which you pass during the week, thus forward = later, not sooner.
Actually the fault is with the English language, its ambiguous, and can easily be interpreted in either way!
Maybe it’s a divisive question and rather silly? Time is an interesting phenomena though, it’s not really stationary is it, we all move through it wether we like it or not, it’s foolish to think we have control. Scientists tell us it’s all relative or whatever – I’m not sure I understand that fully, or even if they do yet.
So, we went for this walk round a park and garden, and it was very nice and all that, but because of the covid restrictions parts of the garden were closed, and the queues were long if you wanted to do anything, everyone was socially distancing, so on the way out of there I was thinking back to better times, and I thought of something I don’t often think back to. It took me a moment to link the feeling to the place, then it flooded back to me.
When I turned 18, I was old enough to go to the pub and legally buy alcohol, so that soon became a regular habit. The pub had 3 bars, the lounge bar was populated by families, but we weren’t really welcome in there, and the middle bar, or smoking room was for old men, they played dominoes and read the paper, they certainly didn’t want us, then there was the public bar, which was packed with young men, all swearing and getting drunk, and swearing! Did I mention the swearing? All you heard was fucking hell, Jesus, bastards, cunt, wanker this and fucking that!
I liked the Juke box, Madness were in the charts, and in the air too!
Madness – House of Fun
Looking back, I now suspect that many of the guys weren’t so dedicated to the lifestyle as they made out, I mean, they were doing the swearing part, but not so much the drinking – a lot of guys said they’d had 8 pints, when really they’d only have 3 or 4, I myself was quite competitive, and very often I would drink and drink until I puked! Oh the puking! The vomit that never ended! And yet, as I look back on it now, in these days of covid and I recall the warmth and joy of 30 guys shoulder to shoulder – drinking, swearing, and just being quite moronicly happy!
When you walked down the pub, it was cold and dark outside, but the pub was all warm and fuzzy, with the light at the windows, and all the guys inside going, oh yeah, the cunt was a fucking blah blah bollocks this and that the fucking bell end etc!
Anyhow, I was just thinking how funny and strange we all were with our fowl grown up language, and the way we all agreed that swearing profusely was the way forward, and it was! It really was! You could go pretty far like that in a night, you could walk in and just start with the swearing, and before long you’d forgot whatever the fuck was on your tiny mind, cos you were drunk, and you were swearing with the other guys down the pub! Baby you arrived, you got it man, you fucking got it! No cunts going to stop you swearing your fucking dumb bastard bollocks off your ball sack!
Well that was all quite uncalled for, I mean really, I was hardly going to be working on my sensitive side in a place like that. It was the most outrageous place in the village, it was the only outrageous place really.We sure had some fun.
Every new year, we’d do auld Lang syne across the road, the pub was located on a Y junction, so everyone would pile outside, link up hands and sing, blocking any traffic, then we’d all run into a bunch group & run back out, drunk as a bunch of lunatics! Very convivial, especially if there were no fights!
Sometimes a female would come in, but then they’d soon realise it wasn’t for them, usually after about 30 seconds or a minute, I don’t really remember any women coming in or actually making the mistake of buying a drink, it was pretty obviously a bear pit. Some guys brought their girlfriends into the pub, it seemed to me to have the same effect on them that it did on me, it was a fun place, but for every girl there were 10 guys, so God knows their experience can hardly have been the same as ours.
I don’t think we swore so much when the girls were in, swearing wasn’t all that really, just that as I recall, the pub was mostly about swearing & getting hammered! Lol
Every few months the Juke box would be updated with new songs, there were loads of old country songs on there the older guys would put on, as the years went by it seemed to me the new music wasn’t so good as it had been. Perhaps that’s just something to do with growing up and nostalgia, but plundering the older section I found the song Race with the Devil by Gun , I gave that a few spins – seemed to go good with a forth or fifth pint of best slosh!
I just finished reading my WP friends book, she has it for free download on her page, so I would definitely say check it out! It’s titled “The Quarter Percent” by Lily Nicole – I found it to be a most excellent & extraordinary read.
When I was a kid aged about 9 or 10, I was walking down this street towards a little dark lane, its got high garden fences on either side which it passes between – so its narrow and dark, anyhow, just as I was about to trot through there, this other kid was coming the other way, but it wasn’t just any kid, this guy was blowing a giant bubble gum ballon as he casually passed by! This bubble was so big you could only really see his face when it burst – he seemed to have ultimate control over this bubble, it was truly amazing an propitious moment in life! Well we went on to become friends, and spent a lot of time together over the next years of school, I would say that from that moment on, teachers, priests, parents and other influential persons had no further influence over me, my development, or my person in general. Well, that’s childhood education down the plug hole! 😀
Anyhow, today is my birthday, I’m 56, (going on 9) so as I had the day off, we went to a nearby garden, it was raining, so everything is a bit wet – first, here’s a picture of a Goldfinch I took the other week.
R.E.M. stands for Rapid Eye Movement, which is what your eye does when you’re in deep sleep. I knew that after someone told me at some point or other, and I knew about the group REM from quite a few years before they were popular, but I didn’t really actually know anything about them, just that they existed from quite a way back in the 80s.
Well these guys moved into my flat, using the room next door for sleeping, there were three of them, when they first came and knocked on the door there were 2, I’d only expected one, since there was only one bed, but 2 turned up. There was a knock at the door, and there were these 2 guys, with eyes like saucers looking back at me, it made me laugh, cos they were obviously high on something as if I wouldn’t guess.
SO anyhow, they moved in, and this other guy just showed up at some point after that, so there were 3 in there, when they were home, which wasn’t that often. They were getting through an awful lot of ganja these guys, so much of it, I was higher than I’d been for a while just by knowing them – I guess they kept me sweet that way. So of course I was curious as to what made them tick, I liked music, and got chatting to one of the guys about that, he liked REM, he told me it stood for Rapid Eye Movement, and about how he liked these songs they do. So we got like really stoned, and he told me about how he’d been in this car accident, the car had rolled on this road I know quite well, and how he’d had to have a false heel done in an operation, around which point I just fell asleep for a bit, it was probably 4 am or something, those guys used to come into the flat at way past 2, and doss down – 3 of them in a room meant for one, so I’m meeting my neighbors, and I’m trying to stay awake, and when I wake up he’s showing me his foot, he’s got his sock off and his heel is like white, cos its some sort of plastic insert, pretty freaky, – then I wake up again, and I’m like fuck this I got to go to bed, and he’s like “you want it don’t you?” I’m thinking WTAF? Its another misunderstanding, I completely forgot whatever the subject was. He said well that’s where I want to be – I liked him, he knew where he wanted to be. Maybe this song was in my mind? I have no idea, I was totally confused! Don’t Go Back to Rockville,
I really can’t remember – they all thought I hated them for a while, and I did off and on, cos of course you do when you live with someone, there was another couple of guys living in the flat at the time, quite a few people came and went, it would have been more fun if they’d paid the bills and contributed to the running of things a bit more, know what I mean?
I quite like this one about Wild Heaven
Fucking beatniks! LOL I do remember this one – Pop Song 89
Could be from years later for all I’d know, I don’t really remember that much from that time, things got a bit frustrating, there were some other guys sleeping in the front room, this guy had such cheesy feet, I have no idea where he came from, but he drove me nearly insane – I don’t need some guy with stinky feet in my kitchen every morning for weeks on end, it don’t matter how high one is, that just doesn’t work for me – no way!
Looking at the dates, I’m talking about the 80s, but I’m thinking more like the mid to late 90s, so maybe I got it all wrong, could have easily been a throwback. I remember this one – Radio Song
I’m just wondering what REM songs I knew at that time when I told that guy I quite liked REM? I have no real idea what was going on at that time, I’d lost my mind in an incident involving magic mushrooms a year or 2 before, anyway, I liked this guy, he knew what he wanted, or where he wanted to be or whatever. Anyhow, they all moved out, in a bit of a hurry to do with cops and the law or whatever. Love this song, it definitley wasn’t out at that time, cos I remember hearing it later – (I think) – such a classic! What’s the Frequency Kenneth!
There was a knock at the door, and there were these 2 guys, with eyes like saucers looking back at me, it made me laugh, cos they were obviously high on something as if I wouldn’t guess. SO anyhow, they moved in . . .
[Edit] – I just want to add, R.E.M. are such an amazing band! I went into my collection and found so many good songs on this various collection I’d got. Its just got me floored how good they were – I added a few tracks, check it out,
I only really play them from time to time, its not really my thing, and yet when I do, I go nuts! Its brilliant!! I’m only really interested in the hits, but there’s so many, writing this blog reminded me of the missing songs I needed – its just refreshed my admiration all over again! 😀
This was a good film I saw on TV a while ago, its not really just like the trailer, which makes it look like a Bonnie & Clyde thing, which it is in a way, but not at all really, its one of those you have to see to get it. One of the things I liked most about it was it captured something about youths and growing up, at that stage where its all out there for you, just waiting for you to discover it, but then you soon begin to find out about the details, and the real nature of what you’re up against.
There’s views of the real America, unlike the Hollywood version, where they go to housing estates filming the characters working, larking about, and all this stuff that happens, you have to see it –but they also go to some really stunning places and have experiences they’ll remember forever kind of things. Its a real good one to watch, cos weeks or a month or 2 later, you might think what was that bit where . . . and there was this . . . and then . . .
That’s how it was for me, cos I was watching something on TV tonight, and it reminded me of American Honey – and how good that film was, something about it. I hate Bonnie and Clyde BTW, so its really not like that!
I looked the film up after I saw it and it turned out that the cast weren’t actors, the director just went out spotting kids for the roles in car parks and beaches and stuff – the group seems to gel together really well, there’s parts where they’re all singing their favourite pop songs together, its quite touching.
Here’s Mark Kermode doing a review of the film better than I can do 🙂
I’m on a bit of a downer and probably shouldn’t be typing – I had a couple of drinks, the cat brought a bat into the house, yes a bat, she caught it in the garden, its spring, and she’s top of the food chain round here. The bat has been mauled rather badly, but its survived over 24 hours in a box, so its going to a bat friendly person tomorrow if it lives. It seems strange to think about things, when there’s an injured bat in a box upstairs. Its been eating some cat food if there’s some irony in that perhaps?
[updated with photos!]
Look at that cute thing hanging upside down! (Thats not batshit – its cat food!)
Tiny – but plucky! His wing is a wreck, but hopefully it can be healed.
I watched some stuff on TV, then I popped onto instagram and heard this:
Mariana and the Diamonds – Gold
Sort of quite like the sound of it, Colorado? Is that like Kempston? I used to live there, off my tits smoking cannabis, we had this place with 6 or 8 windows, on a curved wall overlooking the river, it was wonderful, strange times, there was this hole in the ozone causing this incredibly hot weather, it was like they fucked the weather up, so WTF? Were we meant to care, or just get blasted?
REM – Orange Crush
REM were in the charts around that time with this sort of thing, so looking at google, it must have been late 80s, I lost perhaps between 2 years and a decade around then – god, I sound like Keith Richards! Nearly everyone wound up dead, or fled the scene, hard drugs you know, I just drifted around thinking WTF Now? People floated in and out of my life like it was some surreal story book, and REM in the background, what brought it on? How in the living fuck did that come to make sense? And now – look at us now, its a global pandemic, its not just some minority group of losers, its everyone! Its happened to all of us, and its worse! Far worse! How is this going to effect our consciousness – will they even allow us to feel it.
OMD Joan of Arc
OMD Maid of Orleans
Yah, been playing a bit of OMD, they had a live thing during the lockdown, weird music, from a different time. Did people care more in the 80s? Had we all gone surreal by the 90s? Thatcherism + Reganism were a big mistake perhaps? A bit like everything else since then?
OMD Messages
Or maybe OMD were just bonkers? Is that it? Could be!
The pop videos I posted all got messed up, so I just embedded them, don’t know what happened there!
I watched the final Star Wars film tonight, not bad at all really – yesterday I re-watched the previous one, just to remind me what was meant to be going on in that Star Wars universe. Its all bollocks of course – but what an impact the series has had on cinema – or cinematic culture, for what its worth? Not much perhaps, or maybe it really IS important? I don’t know, does anyone?
The way I see it, the original Star Wars film is the pinnacle of trashy time wasting bullshit, but its flawless in its perfection! Perfect crap! Well, its all harmless, you’d have to be a bit of a grinch (or whatever) to complain, and yet people do! Some people don’t even like McDonalds and Coke! Well we all know the arguments, perhaps one day we’ll all realise how right those people were – but for now, in these last days of the old order, lets just enjoy it before its gone – or not?
Maybe one day, in a better world, we’ll look back on the horror that was – and think about how glad we are to have evolved beyond those times when heroic suicide missions were the stuff of entertaining fantasy fiction. Could that happen? Where are we as a species? Are we meant to think that after watching the 9th Star Wars film over a spread of what? 40+ years?
Well we’ve been on this lockdown now for what? 7 weeks? At least! And what have I done? Well, Ive eaten a lot of chocolate I can tell you that! Its easing off a little now, so I went out for a motorbike ride, its pretty, but in a sad and sombre way – every village you go through there’s kids drawings of rainbows & NHS support posters, all the little shops have queues outside, socially distanced spacing, its like driving through a weird post apocalypse movie scene. Of course lockdown might have been less long and severe if the country hadn’t been run by a bunch of lunatics, letting it come to this in the first place, and where do we go next? How much more of it?
Yesterday I was thinking about Lizzie Siddall, why was that I ask myself? Well, I forgot, but I looked her up for some reason, something on TV or whatever prompted me, she was the girl in the painting of Ophelia, it was something to do with that.
Anyhow, she was from a fairly working class background, and met up with painter Rossetti, had an affair with him and eventually they got married, but supposedly Rossetti’s sisters didn’t like her much, cos they were more classy, knew what spoons to use at dinner and so on, so the whole thing didn’t work out that well, or it did, but Rossetti liked to shaft other women, being a bit of a rogue and all that – anyhow, she died of a laudanum overdose, and Rossetti put a book of his unpublished poems in the coffin with her, then years later had her dug up to retrieve and publish the poems, but the public didn’t like them so much, perhaps because of the morbid connotations. Anyhow, Siddall had support from art bigwig John Ruskin, he liked her poems and pictures, which is quite interesting, cos Ruskin himself was also an interesting Victorian character, always opinionated and a bit odd in this day and age perhaps, but there you go.
Following links from that info + more about Rossetti’s life (which was interesting too) I read about John William Pollidori, who was Rossetti’s uncle, he used to hang out with Byron & Shelly and was at the famous mansion at Lake Geneva, out of which came the book Frankenstien, (Mary Shelly) and his own book “The Vampyre” (first ever published book in that genre). Ken Russel made a bonkers film about it!
I got the film Maleficent to watch, I bought it before lockdown, but haven’t watched it yet cos it seems frivolous to sit and watch when the older generation are all locked up in this dreadful situation, now its easing off a little, I might finally watch it. I watched Star Wars the other night, not bad, not good, just trash! LOL Enjoyable I guess, bit silly, bit pointless. Its all based on War really isn’t it? Hardly progressive, but when did Disney ever care about anything? They tell it like it is, shit, with good bits, there’s a piece of brain missing in Disneys ethos non?
This morning, they were playing some reggae song and it reminded me of this phrase that goes “Its a long long way” – similar vibe, so wondering what song it was I was thinking about. So I googled the lyrics, and I don’t know if its this song or not, cos clearly its not reggae, but it may have been this one by OMD. Once I hear an OMD song, I can’t think outside of the OMD box, cos its so distinctive.
– anyhow, its not a bad song or owt, and I got informed about the actress Louise Brooks by it, so I googled her, and it seems that she was quite an interesting character – That guy out of OMD is quite good at finding heroines to write songs about (RE Joan of Arc) I found this quote about Louise Brooks
“…the eminent Herr Pabst described it to me over a cocktail in the Bristol Bar, Berlin. ‘Louise,’ said Herr Pabst, ‘has a European soul. You can’t get away from it. When she described Hollywood to me—I have never been there—I cry out against the absurd fate that ever put her there at all. She belongs to Europe and to Europeans. She has been a sensational hit in her German pictures. I do not have her play silly little cuties. She plays real women, and plays them marvelously.'”[69]
Well, what does he mean by that? You may ask? There’s something weird about that – Hitler banned the film because he didn’t like her, or that sort of woman I suspect, you don’t want to mess with right wingers, not if you’ve got a brain worth using!
Everyone here has been watching this TV drama called Normal People, it’s from a book, anyhow, because everyone is at home bored, they been contacting old boyfriends & girlfriends, (according to the radio), cos the show is about young love & how you don’t know what they might have been going through back then & now your thinking oh, maybe that wasn’t what I thought it was? It could apply to anyone really couldn’t it, cos you never do know.
I’m just a skeleton with flesh & skin & stuff that does things, I have got freewill, but it only goes so far.
I been working on the motorbike & I’m absolutely bloody nackered! I’m getting a bit old to be ripping half a big old motorbike apart just to replace some part that’s due to be done instead of just taking it to a shop. I used to enjoy a pint after a day like this, but this time it was more like a resuscitation I needed.
Anyway, why are women so clueless? Why is it always up to men to come leaping through the bedroom window singing hallelujah, I love you so much? That shit never happens to me the other way round, believe me, if it did I’d soon send her packing! Or maybe I’d just say, oh, what took you so long?
We’re not conscious of much when we’re younger, and when we’re older, we’re still not conscious of much either, or in the middle part for that matter, it’s hopeless, we know how to get from A to B, and that’s about it. Why are people so dumb? Correction, why is everyone so dumb? Is that god’s inner plan? Look at all them dumb bastards down there, messing everything up! Ha ha ha, but how do we know God finds it funny? What seems amusing to us feeble brained humans, might just be some bullshit God doesn’t pay any attention to, like the primitive behavior of an ape, it’s funny at the zoo, mocking the animals, but do we know something they don’t, or is it in fact, the other way around! Aha! I rest my case!
exacticablog 