Lest I Forget

2008-05-18T15:41:00.003Z

The leisure principal

I spent this morning doing chores - nothing unusual in that but instead of little DIY fix arounds, or cutting the grass or checking email/finances etc - these were 'proper' chores.
The kind my grandparents (and my parents when they were younger ) would have done. Hand washing socks and pants, wringing them out after a lot of rinsing - thats sort of chore. And washing a load of dirty dishes and cups and cutlery - in a small bowl, leaning over the bath.
These proper chores are necessitated by the fact we don't currently have a functioning kitchen. Within a few days and after 5 weeks we'll be back to dishwasher and washing machine and less back breaking manual washing in awkward spaces (and I don't mean of me, from a personal hygiene point of view) .
Which will be very welcome, but I have (on a well suppressed and not to be encouraged level) enjoyed these chores and the resonance I sense re: the ancestors (what with still pursuing the family tree and all that).
But give me plumbed in ease and more leisure time any day.

2008-03-22T12:52:00.002Z

Easter Weekend

Overheard as I stood in Thornton's getting a nice (ok, very nearly forgotten) chocolate egg inscribed for Anita:
[choclatier ]- (it's an Art you know, capital_A_Art) "right love what can I get you?"
older_Lady_probably_grandma] "can I have these eggs written on please? "
[Ch] "of course lovey, just give me the names whilst I unwrap them and get ready"
[O_L] "Paul ... Clare - with no "i" .. Anatasia, ooh , thats a bit long that one? " (apologising for her son or daughters wild flight of fancy with one of their offspring)
[Ch] "well I'm sure we can do that lovey, one 'n' and 'Sia" at the end?"

And she did , it sort of curled round the egg but Anatasia will have got her egg just like her siblings (old name, newly popular again?).
Choclatiers of Thorntons with your bag- of- icing-cream stuff-that-you-have-to-let-go-hard-for-two-hours-so-keep-the-box-safe : I salute you!

Smoking Man

2008-03-09T16:49:00.001Z

Smoking Man
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

Part of our recent (wedding anniversary) weekender to Amsterdam:
The old Brown bars in Amsterdam are full of character - and quite a few smokers. I really don't like the smell of smoke (brought up by one to two packs a day parents all my childhood - you either love it or hate it after that) - but it adds to the olde worlde dark and atmospheric feel of these places. Long may they continue and not be cleaned up or sanitised by any pub chains.
We went in an other one of these bars the night before this photo and I didn't quite close the door properly behind me, the locals (about 20 people squashed into a really tiny bar) couldn't get to the door quick enough to keep the fresh air out. heehee. All very friendly though - these bars are all 'gezellig', which means 'cosy' or 'home-like' I think. Certainly like the home of my youth anyway (though we had a 1970's upwardly mobile drinks cabinet not beer on tap).

2008-03-06T14:26:00.002Z

Time flies

We were out last night celebrating 20 years of marriage (and it being 20 years, were more practical than romantic and had the boys with us also) and I remarked that the last few years had gone really quickly.
Joe (nearly 18) said he thought his life was speeding up compared to his perception as a child.
It is a phenomenon that seems to be universal.. the older you get the quicker it appears to zoom along. We were watching a programme about Stephen Hawkins the other night and there was something on it about time being distorted around planetary masses.. maybe time also distorts (accelerates) around the accumulation of memories and experiences we gather as we age? Or - maybe the older you get , the fatter you get and therefore more your mass distorts time and space – haha.
Anyway – it is genuinely surprising to a part of me to be at my 20th anniversary, about to celebrate my toddler son’s 18th birthday and late-twenties-early-thirties-world-view-me’s 44th Birthday. Blimey. Gosh golly. Oo er.

We're off to Amsterdam (not with the boys though) for an anniversary weekend ater today. I've never been but Anita has and I'm really looking forward to it.

When I get back I'm going to get back in touch with some newly-found Kelly family members I managed to uncover recently and who have also been looking at genealogy stuff - very exciting and also satisfying in that it opens up my sense of heritage/clan-ship (if that makes sense) knowing I have an extended family that until recently consisted (of those alive of course) of just my bother, my dad and my auntie (from the kelly side). Now I have a couple of 2nd cousins, some twice removed (I think thats the right term) and a whole set of new (for me) family anecdotes and historical memories. A lovely thing.

2008-01-31T19:47:00.000Z

Where to start after so long off the blog?

I am writing this in the bar at a gig and realised I had been day dreaming about where exactly a shed could fit at the top of the garden. This, whilst watching the very loud yet melodic biffy clyro (who are supporting linkin park at the somewhat soulless Manchester Arena.)
Good a place as any to hanker after a shed and testament to my inbetweeny age?
A headbanging horticulturist. Even the word headbanging carbon dates me.

And now I am (now being next day) sat in departures at Manchester airport waiting for the flight to Milan.. Heading off to a euro and middle east group digital jamboree (all part of the same marcomms (marcomms also probably carbon dates and industry tags me) empire). 'Learn new skills and service offerings, start a new biz fire with just two sticks!' etc. You know, jamboree stuff.
The flight is delayed so I can spend time musing and conclude that the Milan business traveler genuinely does look a little more chic than his or her warsaw-bound colleague last week.
Only a little bit but the Warsaw travellers favoured the big coat more and the jaunty multi striped scarf and business jeans less.
Get me, name checking cities I have recently been to in the pursuit of multinational partner agency collaboration opportunities. Indeed.

And now I am writing this in my hotel room after an hour of work email catchups, a quite nice room service meal of posh sounding stuff which was essentially chicken and chips and an hour of TV channel hopping. And a few minutes looking out of the very wide open window (no safety catch! On the 14th floor! Haven't these guys heard of health and safety cosseting?) at a really lovely view of religious monuments and grand buildings. I will have to find out what they are.
This was one of them I could see:

Speaking of religious, I had a moment of the soul on the flight as we crossed the Alps at sunset. The pinks and degrees of gold playing over the blue shadowed, snow dusted crags and peaks was beautiful. Dusting may be too sparse a word but the mountains didn't look totally snow and ice encrusted.. Should they, in January? Have the years of business trips like this contributed to the amount of rock on display through global warming?
Very possibly. Oh crap, my moment of the soul has ended in a guilt trip.

2007-12-12T23:47:00.000Z

Doris Lessing announced this week that she found the blogging
phenomenon to be banal and a barrier to creative writing and it
essentially watered down the value of words ..
is that because the thoughts shared come wrapped not in paper and illustrated tactile form (so having a 'weighty' value, but in 'transient' pixel form perhaps?
That came out a bit gibberish-like but I'm too tired to retype.

I get some of that and agree to an extent but witness my friend mr
Augarde and his ability to write both great engaging books and a
great, engaging blog.

Nothing banal about the insight provided in his blog on his views and recollections.
Banal better describes my ramblings perhaps ;)

I haven't (again) written for sometime, due to workload and
distraction of family tree research and a general running out of
observational steam.

It might be better to really, truly pack it in perhaps blog a niche
area such as 'art work or installations I may someday make' , complete
with drawings to illustrate the various things that occasionally occur
to me - that I then drop based on the fact I have no time, little talent, no
team of do-ers to make my ideas happen.
And you do need a team I think, a la Hirst. Not for me the fine art
approach, but instead, the project manager artist approach, where doodle (and I
don't mean that pejoratively) becomes 7 foot high vinyl illuminated
sculpture. Or something.
hmm, is a bit banal isn't it ? .... [cough] .... goodnight.

Mikron Film Moment

2007-10-26T20:56:00.001Z

Mikron Film Moment
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

So, this was the scene just before I pulled myself out of the cold autumnal waters of the river Colne (or is it Redbrook Clough at this part?) above Marsden,. I was there with (luckily), my old, not-so-great camera in hand to document Mikron Theatre Company's new project - an interactive CD/DVD for schools related to life as it used to be on the canals .. including how the horses would cross the moors to rejoin the boats once they had gone through standedge tunnel.
Anyway - I took some photos of the crew and actors who were around for this particular scene (inclluding son Ronan who has a mani part). Then I crossd the old packhorse bridge (at Easter gate for the locals out there) , then I saw the chance to get a great shot up the valley with the crew in the foreground.
Then I stepped across the top of the little weir and crouched down, then I slipped on the frictionless algae that covers all the stones that span the river, then I found myself up to my chest in the surprisingly deep, unsurprisingly cold, rusty coloured water.
oh crap. add this moment to the other oh-crap-I'm-falling moments I have had over the years. Out of trees (documented by blog and flickr as the quest to get a really great shot of the dog amongst woodland bluebells), off a quayside wall in Cornwall (up to neck depth in briny water that time), down 900 feet (yep, tis true) of icy mountainside when I was a teen.

The camera is dead (except for the memory card thankfully) , the clothes now washed and dried and the little finger on my left hand really hurts. I'm only annoyed I couldn't get more photos. The actual watery mishap was really funny, I wouldn't recommend it, but it was funny.

check out Mikron here : www.mikron.org.uk/index.php

Curry Constituents for a Jazz Jury

2007-10-15T19:54:00.001Z

Curry Constituents for a Jazz Jury
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

I have been making curry (in its loosest sense, not a specific type you would recognise) for the local, annual jazz festival for the last 3 years.
This entails buying (actually, Anita buying, as I got out of it - pleading overwork and stuck in the office excuses) VAST amounts of vegetables, lentils and tinned (sorry, bit lazy) tomatoes.
Then adding spices and even pesto (oh yes) and magicking up enough spicey niceness for 40+ jazz enthusiasts who saw bands over saturday evening and sunday at Marsden's (http://www.flickr.com/groups/marsden_west_yorkshire/) 13th (I think) Jazz festival.

I'm not a massive jazz fan.. I was brought up on it so rebelled and went down the diverging paths of celtic/folksy and guitary-loud-rockness, but I really enjoy the live music and party atmosphere in all the pubs and clubs.

The canvas bag, whist a useful backdrop prop was actually used to carry the veg and does come from India. Unlike most of the things it carried , that went in the pot for cooking up.

self portrait with relatives

2007-10-06T22:24:00.001Z

self portrait with relatives
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

I was given a photo recently of my granddad and it had a profound affect on me in that I never thought i really looked like anyone in my family on the male side. My brother, Dad and Granddad all looked similar with their architectural dimensioned noses and brows. But this photo of my granddad (on the right on the piano) from his late teens/early twenties does look kind of like me at that age. I'm a lot older now so not a great comparison but it still is similar I think?
I look a bit serious because, I felt a bit serious I also wanted to get a look a bit like his in the Photo. Also my wife and oldest boy are away for the weekend (he's looking at possible university places) so the house was too quiet and that made me a bit low this weekend. I did up my top button to emulate granddad's outfit, I'm a bit more relaxed around the house usually ;-)
Straight after this my youngest son (who stayed at home) came downstairs and and we messed about trying to sort out the ethernet link and sharing files between the eMac and PC upstairs. Being geeky cheered me up. =)

2007-09-18T20:28:00.000Z

India Business Trip

What do you write about your first trip to India that won’t have been said in a thousand other blogs, travel sites, books, films and TV series?

My abiding impression: it’s a complex, confusing, dense (air, scents, bodies, noise, traffic) wonderful place.

It would be lazy and simplistic to talk in terms of haves and have-nots, corporate affluence and street poverty. Yes, that is there on a stark surface level. But something our host for most of the week, ( the very interesting and also himself complex, in what I think is a typically modern Indian way?) Chetan, was keen to point out; was that the slums are not the end of the line but the beginning for some and to others an acceptable , not hopeless way of life.

Myself and one of the other guys from our agency (Richard) were out there to talk about partnering (‘off shore’ is so Financial Services, 5 years ago you know) – I was uncomfortable with the term ‘outsourcing’ not so much for the implications for our place as all businesses have to adapt in changing markets - but more because it implies a one way, imposing approach to collaboration. What we were there to discuss was, to my mind, genuine partnership - in that a lot, if not all the skills sets my team have in web site design, programming, animation etc were available in greater depth than we have in our office.

That doesn’t mean ‘right sizing’ within the UK team, it means a real chance to expand the throughput of work, cost effectively for us and with people who have the same approach to client service and professional results. With the chance to work with intelligent, urbane, educated skilled guys; to boot.

This cocooned middle class white man felt relieved to discover there was no place for the talk-a-bit-louder-about-what-we-expect-from-you post colonial nonsense that I guess may have prevailed up to the least few years (I would never have done that anyway, I love meeting people form different backgrounds and cultures but I’m sure that parochial view did exist in the spearheading UK brigade initially?).
Anything like that approach would have been a source of both irritation and amusement to the skilled professional in India already collaborating with Australia, Asia Pacific region and the USA. Another cliché but to my mind , increasingly and where they are placed on the world stage - ‘They don’t need us, we need them’.

Things that delighted me:

- The friendliness of the drivers we were provided with, with a real pride in showing us all the monuments and parks we went past.

- The hopitality of the guys in the various offices we visited – they shared their time and enthusiasm for their work with real pleasure

- The sheer joyous, encouraging, random craziness of a thousand vehicles within earshot; all constantly beeping their horns to ensure 6 and half widths of traffic fitted through 3 lanes of road. Aural lubricant that actually seems to work. And works even better if you accept your vehicle will always be forever scratched and multi-dented.

Things that perturbed me :

- Peeing in an office toilet about 3 inches below what I think was a rats nest in the ceiling space, complete with loud scratchings..

- looking to my left and right in the constant traffic jams and seeing spumes of Beetel nut (I think?) spit flobbed out of taxis, motor bikes and rickshaws.

- opening a packet of (what I thought) was after dinner (chocolate) mints and finding an assortment of nuts and seeds collectively called ‘after mint’.
Actually really nice and I’ve bene eating it at home snce ;-)

So .. India (okay, city centre Delhi and Mumbai) : loved it and would go back again tomorrow.

2007-08-31T20:09:00.001Z

If this works - and it should - then I will moblog happily from now on
Random photo of Ronan added as test

2007-08-30T23:00:00.000Z

Blog is Back

After the summer (defined by the calendar not the weather) I think its time to blog again.

I have missed narrating my way through 40-dom.
Also , having spent quite a bit of time continuing to build the family tree it struck me that I would love to get an insight in to the lives behind the old photos, birth certificates and the decade-wide scant info of the census returns. Fr example, knowing how my great great grandad felt at opening a fishmongers or why my great granddad went into running cinemas would be just great.
Sadly I don't have journals or letters from them to enrich the facts and figures, which are pretty dry.

So maybe future generations would like to know that I'm sat on the 09.52 from wakefield to London kings cross and I am going to meet a client to talk about rebuilding their web site to increase sales of the (very good actually) range of kitchens and bathrooms.
And that I have a slight headache but am also hungry as the trolley attendant took my order for a ham and cheese toastie, then forgot to bring it.
And that (to name check the family for future readers) - we are going to Chester zoo on Saturday as Joe remembered enjoying it as a toddler and Ronan was aggrieved as we had never taken him. I think that is true though my memory is blurred over 19 years of outings with ever changing age combinations of children.
I do like zoos, now they preserve species you can feel good whilst laughing at a chimp fiddlling with itself hanging upside down from a tyre.
Marvelous.

2007-05-10T23:37:00.000Z

And so to bed.

I’m stopping the blog on what are approximately a full five years of sporadic and spurious alliteration moments like this. Work occupies much of my headspace of late and when there is room in there, it has to contend with my latest interests: genealogy (online of course) and photography, a clutch of partially grown short stories, one malnourished fledgling novel, a technology/digital blog and of course family life to contend with.

Five years is a pretty good run at capturing the arc of 40-dom and perhaps Moor’s law will prove true and in just a handful of years the blog-captured imprint of my personality can be uploaded to a super fast AI environment and digital-me will float alone for future family members or be added to a swarm of other 40-somethings to create the DAD_Oracle.. To be consulted by all who want dubious wisdom and lame puns served in equal measure.

Final capture of events (working backwards): I have been at a media Industry conference for 2 days; we are debating ‘what will digital channels mean to advertisers in 5 or 10 years’ type o stuff. Actually interesting but the long view voice for me says ‘ who knows’ and also looking back in 20 years it will be as quaint as the radio industry asking itself questions when TV appeared.

Topically, we had John Culshaw the mimic as after dinner entertainer doing Tony Blair, William Hague et al on the day that Blair officially resigned his premiership. Very topical and added to the evening in some way. I fled from the bar at a decent time as wine+me=definite hangover on a 4 hour drive home tomorrow. No thanks. I have mostly accepted (except when I forget) that I and alcohol are not good together... my liver hates the stuff it seems... My brain is ever the optimist though and I will insist on having the extra cheeky glass and that 40-something journey still hasn’t provided an abstemious approach as yet.

Anyway, okay, it’s been good to write however sporadic but I’m switching off, the little white dot is appearing on the screen around noww…. Be good, be happy.

2007-03-27T19:18:00.000Z

first of the summer wine

I'm sitting out in the back garden with an amount of sunshine on my face which is definitely warm. Blackberries are good for moments like this, maybe I can spend all summer at home ;-)
Sunshine.. This is a very pleasant thing, perhaps common in other climes in late March, but not around here. Wet and grey snow is still apt to call this time of the year. I just have left the pasta to boil, purloined some of the White wine I was cooking with and snuck up to the garden to spend a few minutes looking at the daffodils and the big bumble bee mooching about around my feet where I sit on the much repaired old park bench my grandad nicked from his days as a municipal park keeper. Garden blogging, very nice. The sun just ducked behind the chimney pots of nearish neighbours, boo -- the slight breeze certainly feels early spring not lazy summer now. And the traffic from the Manchester road sounds like traffic again, not the White noise of a beach within walkable distance.
So, a couple more minutes to reflect on a relaxing weekend and a rewarding one in helping my friend Richard refine his (very good) new play more Mikron Theatre Co. They asked me to be on the council of management recently, not sure what I need to do yet but have always enjoyed the ethos of theatre for all. If I can ensure that plays like Richard's continue to have the funding to be shown nationwide then I'll be happy.
Richards play is excellent - I don't see how it can be refined but the purpose of gilly, mark fuggle, vashti and I reading through as a half dozen or so characters each, yesterday morning, was for Richard to go from final final draft to rehearsable piece. It was a privilege to be asked to help him out, a well written compelling play thats 'educational' and entertaining to boot is difficult ( I imagine) and he's a real professional as well as decent blokey. My Swedish accent lent a bit welsh-wards though and I don't think Brunel was a cornishman , oh well, my take on him had him as a pasty chomping cider swigging cliche. Sorry Richard. Go see the real thing where a proper actor will rescue the character.
Mrs is ready to nip to neighbours for a glass of wine. Cool. getting chilly out here anyway.

2007-03-24T16:17:00.000Z

reasonably old actually

We went away to York last week .. Mrs K and myself by way of celebrating our 19th anniversary and my 43rd year on the planet. The former more cause for celebration than the latter. It's not that I'm uncomfortable getting older (and I think wiser, as it happens) it's just that it heralds one step closer to infirm mind, loose sphincters and lost memories.. a dissolving of self. Yeah yeah.. shut up, I know - that's all years and years away but it is still there, standing off in the shadows awaiting the moment to nudge me off the dance floor and take over. is that from the Seven ages of man - who did that series of paintings? Could Google it now I suppose.
So, (have you noticed how lots of conversations start with 'So..' at the moment .. at least in the media / professional circles I inhabit). I for one have started to do it.. I never got the Australia question_at_end_of_sentence high pitch inflection verbal tick.. but the "so,.." American_prefix has got me. Doh.
So, we went to York without the kids and had a great time eating and shopping and doing the other stuff you do in hotels without kids or every routines getting in the way in the day time. hell yeah, whoo hoo.
On the same day as my 43rd I got my eyes tested - de-rigour black framed digital marketeer glasses are now on their way. Vari-focals to allow for the degradation of both near and long distance focus. oh man. First the hair now the eyes, lucky I still have my figure [cough] .

2007-03-09T10:49:00.001Z

RedMoonTree
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

The lunar eclipse last week just didn't capture well on my non_SLR, but in trying to make sense of the digital information in low light, the camera picked up little light anomolies. water drops or dust or some long gone family members enjoying it with me.. who knows ;-)
Maybe it was actually some older relatives , we had spent the evening discovering previously unknown branches of the familiy tree with anita's Mum and Dad .. both mesmerised by seeing census data (some going back 160 years) and family sibling groups appear in rapid scuccession on the computer via Ancestry UK site. A nice night to round off with a lunar event. And some wine.

Happy Birthday Boy

2007-02-27T21:49:00.001Z

Window-Monsters
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

Amazingly (to me) , my youngest turned 13 today. Thirteen .. TEEN .. my youngest. And me just over adolescence myself (mostly).
This dawned on me and the current (for last 19 years) Mrs Kelly as we lay talking in bed a couple of nights back, we joked as people do, around the fact that the years are going quicker, that it seems only yesterday that they were all toddlers, then junior scholl kids etc.. then we both kind of fell silent and both obviously had the same melancholic thought of 'shit, they really ARE getting older and time really IS accelerating'.
Here he is looking cool and kindly indulging my photographer pretensions..
I'm really happy and proud to say he's a top boy and will make a decent man when he's (all too soon) at that stage.
Happy Birthday Ronan.

2007-02-21T21:00:00.000Z

Day Dream Rock Balance
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

I had tiring week last week , ill for much of it with a throat and chest infection, aching limbs but in work for all but one day doing pretty frantic 12 hour stints. And then I got stuck in traffic on Friday night after a long client meeting, got home quite late with a headache and woke up saturday morning feeling really crap. ho hum. I took the dog out the same day and the sun came out through the clouds so I perched myself up high above one the rivers that flows through Marsden.. and made this small but quite tricky (I promise) to balance pile of rocks.
Actually, some of the rocks are old degraded bits of brick and ceramic from when there were railway sidings and buildings in what is now woodland.
The dog chased rabbit scents, (she's down below in this shot) and I sat crossed legged and forgot about work for a while. And the headache mostly cleared as well :-)

2007-02-11T21:31:00.000Z

Turbulence

I've been wrestling with how to cover off / discuss or detail recent events at work which essentially meant that two of the team sat opposite me a couple of Fridays back and were given their marching orders. A really unexpected bad experience for them (I've sat that side of the desk in the past and its a shocker, no doubt), for which I'm really personally sorry. An unsettling time for me (its not about me I know, I still have a job, but it is my blog, be fair) and a confusing and demotivating period for their friends and colleagues at work. This is a personal blog not a work / corporate vehicle so I'm going to wish them both the best for the new path before them and leave it at that, other than to quote what Si emailed as a goodbye on Friday just gone: "Guys, It’s been emotional, but I’m a glass-half-full kind of a guy. I hope the next few months are less turbulent and more exciting than ever before."
Si's sanguine take on that does him credit and for all kinds of reasons : amen to that.

2007-01-15T22:20:00.000Z

skywatching

Son Joe and I went out looking for comet McNaught around dusk tonight, It was the clearest / last night for us to see this ball of rock and ice cutting through the inner solar system. We have a horseshoe of hills around the village and I had checked out a couple of websites to get some rough idea of where / when to see it best.
We did get one shot but I'm not sure it isn't one of the half a dozen or so airplane trails you see at any one time, circling for landing over the hills at Manchester Airport..
Despite lack of a definitive comet shot I enjoyed the slight sense of occasion at driving up on the tops and braving the wind (a jet stream in itself) with the most outdoors and nature-inspired of the kids. Over the years we have hit the hills to see comet hale-bop, an eclipse (perhaps partial), a lunar eclipse (mostly seen from the back of the house with a glass of whiskey, very nice) and some mother of pearl weirdness clouds one summer. Good fun and quiet moments of shared intrigue at that that lies outside of the (often cloudy) atmosphere that enshrouds us.

2006-12-31T12:44:00.000Z

2007 - oh crap

To paraphrase JL (as I liked to call him) : ‘so what have you done,
another year over, a new one just begun.. have a Happy New Year -
lets hope it's a good one without any fear.’ Bit admonishing and preachy, bit sing-songy but fair enough on the desire for world peace, I will be drinking to that tonight.

2007 and is upon us, that’s SEVEN, not thousand or 01, or the millennium.. oh crap its all going far far too fast.
I remember sitting in church (my brief enforced spell in Scotland as an observing catholic) aged about ten and working out that I’d be around 36 when the millennium came. Sitting in a catholic church with all the woe-faced statues (except Mary, I always liked her statues, very reassuring and peaceful to look at) looking down at you and thinking about the year 2000 was a scary place to be as a child..
All that dark clouds and lightning and raising of souls and giant bats and zombie armies (I was reading a lot of comics and the Thunder Annual then I think).. brrrr, creepy stuff but VERY DISTANT. The millennium remained VERY DISTANT up until about 1998 and then I hit some kind of life stage oil slick and skidded through the early 2000’s and we are at 2007, NOW. Oh crap.

I do know that I’m in the privileged position historically and geographically to be aged 42 and healthy and with hopefully (family genetics to one side) as many years again to go but I am hung up on the speed of it all. It is my major preoccupation (has been for a year or so), up there with winning the lottery and being able to stop working.. I think the two are linked of course, the ability to stop the grind and actually spend time doing what I enjoy and with the people I care for.. Pretty universal I know.

Enough blah blah bleating.. time for a coffee and a list of things to get done this year (previously has been about writing, acting, painting - ‘targets for the year’ etc) so perhaps it should be ‘introspect less and help others more’ this time.
Here’s to you humanity - a happy new year to us all - play nice or I will wish JL’s berating ghost, poe-faced saints (or whatever your religion uses as non-creator displaced conscience avatars) and giant bats upon you.

2006-11-20T22:00:00.000Z

puncture repair man

My car got a puncture on Thursday, a bit of shrapnel picked up near the house.. I only got about 5 yards down the road and the thunp gudump thump gudump thump of the flat tyre pulled me up short. Now, I can change a tyre of course blah blah manly pride blah blah BUT I had to get some work done and before that get to the consultants for him to check out the neck and a new achey lump under the scar line (see previous posts on brush with tumour, lump-odectomy etc). The lump is just new (strangely) scar tissue he says, phew so leave that to one side.

This post is really to say, the guy who came out to swap off the tyre, go order a new one and fit it later that day was a really decent asian guy called (for short anyway) Izzy.
Why blog that? Because I rarely get to meet and chat with Asian origin (of any generation) , working class (or any class) people and as we swapped anecdotes of cars we have had, of fire festivals in Huddersfield, of how he had returned a dropped handbag to a lady's house and she had closed the door in fear or ignorance on him, it sort of dawned on me that , well .. not sure.. Insert some platitude about peace and understanding in these troubled times here... but I mean it.
We're all the same, he wasn't a muslim or a 2nd or 3rd generation asian and I wasn't a white man (or a 3rd generation Irish immigrant or 2nd generation scot or a lapsed - to the point of amnesia - catholic). We were, standing on a cold street kicking a tyre and chewing the fat, just two blokes who seemed to have the same values and outlook.
Peace y'all.

2006-11-07T20:37:00.000Z

We're just outside of Peterborough and the loud precise voice of the hotel owner two seats behind me is explaining for the 3rd time to someone at the end of his phone how those that want a cheap deal should go into the smallest single bedrooms. This on the back of a carriage-disturbing call to his personal banker to extend his overdraft as he has at least £30k coming in, in the next 3 weeks.. That'll be from the poor saps who pay over the odds for your shoe box accommodation then?

The hotel is part of (I quote, not as loud as he did..) "the smartest conference centre in the uk - no, put plushest - in the uk. Do you think country, or uk? Put uk. Check it out. No, I mean don't check out if it is, I know it is, just put ‘check it out’ on the bottom. Get it printed"
Said overbearing pink be-tied, receding silver mullet haired gent in long navy blue cashmere city gun slinger slicker coat just departed the train, noise pollution and corporate discretion flapping behind him along the platform.

I haven't (again) blogged for a while.

I have found it hard to both steer around and indeed detail in this public vehicle the very tragic death of charlotte and guy’s baby girl a couple of weeks back. I wanted to chronicle something as a respectful marking of their loss as I did for diver-chris when he died but I am not sure if it is right to include within what is essentially usually a self-reflective whimsical outlet for my ramblings.
Suffice then to say I continue to feel terribly sad for them and the fork in the road that isla's short life brought them to and I wish them fortitude and nothing but happier times for the journey ahead.

Back to my usual drivel... My flickr ocd is moving on apace, I do try to have some discretionary eye on what I snap and post and I'm actually looking forward to the marsden group social (yikes) in a week or so.

Moss Coverered Stone

2006-10-11T20:54:00.000Z

Moss Coverered Stone
Originally uploaded by :mrMark:.

A quick 'snap' on a walk with the dog last weekend.. the timing was great though in that the sun came out and streamed through the trees and it picked out this moss covered stone I must have walked past so many times over the past few months with Brodie.

2006-10-06T21:04:00.000Z

Oh, you guys

all your kind comments to my threat of abstinence (Yes, it says '3' in the comments count but I know there were 100's of lurkers who decided not to comment) persuaded me to continue my 4 year blart-fest, my burble-blasts.

Things I have been up to :

> conversing with a nice Scottish couple who have a dog that looks just like ours, is a female rescue mutt and is also called brodie - Doggie_dopplegangers:

> Working very silly hours at ad agency central, mostly for a big American global shipping company. Nice folk, short deadlines, too many decision makers, too many individual country requirements (which is good, who wants bland same-size-fits-all, one language version monoculture) = no home life. booh.
I am essentially happy to be helping on the big stuff and feeling useful though.

> Missing my daughter, who is now at Coventry uni and with 2 weeks in on stage one of empty-nester-ness, the house is still oddly quiet.
We go to see her on Sunday as current mrs Kelly has a birthday and we wanted to have lunch as a family. It will be cool for the boys, as they didn't get to see the halls of residence or the campus (such as it is) when we dropped Lian off.

> Taking lots of photos, most quite bad, seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/what_i_see/

I am enjoying taking photos though. It makes you attend to the surroundings you pass through, I've actually stopped a couple of times and backed-up (on foot) to look at the angles of a building or the grouping of some people and think 'damn I wish I had my camera with me". The reality is it is probably best I don’t have it with me all the time, what you imagine with your fleeting glance is often mediocre with the lens. But sometimes I get what I think are quirky or memorable shots.

> Not listening to much music... and that is because of work, I'm spending way too much time (when commuting) running through to-do's in my head then phoning myself (sad git) on my desk phone to remind myself of things I won't get done during office hours for the day ahead ;-)
If I was listening to music, I think it would be the mp3 player on shuffle so I could flit about a bit.. I have a flitty brain at present.

> Updating a web site
I'm not the slickest of web site builders I know (it's my day job to inform rather than build and you can tell) but I just updated the site for my friend Steve.
Steve is a top-notch author and musician and illustrator and boy I loathe him for all of that.
Marvel at his genius here: http://www.steveaugarde.com/ you can link to his very good blog through that.

I will be updating my own site and adding some new links (including to your blog Alex) when I get chance.