Death - The Final Role

Like most people around the world, I read about the death of Paul Newman yesterday with a degree of sadness. In an age when 'personalities' with only a fraction of his talent can get hours of air time on tv and thousands of words in newspapers and magazines, Paul Newman was different class.

The tributes from those who knew him best are coming in thick and fast and as I didn't know him at all, I can only add that I feel the same way I do when any legend of stage and screen passes away. If they've played strong memorable roles that made an impression on me, I feel worse.  I remember the roles and how I felt at the time and somehow feel that I knew the person a little, but of course I don't.  A great actor does that to you.  You sometimes feel you know them when all you know is the character they played, and even then, only for a few fleeting moments. But what they did, their acting, can affect the way we feel about them, and our own lives.

           ***************** ER SPOILER ALERT *********************

Then last night I watched the first episode of the new series of ER.  The cliffhanger storyline from last season was that an ambulance had blown up and as well as not knowing which of the cast was inside it, another cast member had been walking past it at the time.  So several main cast members could have been seriously injured or killed - or none at all.  It was a great cliffhanger and must've helped with the process of contract negotiations during the summer break.  

"Oh you want more money, do you ?  Well it seems you WERE in the ambulance after all.  Go figure"

I won't name names but as the show developed, it became clear that one of the lead actors HAD been seriously injured in the blast (what caused the explosion was never explained and was obviously of no importance) and in time honoured fashion, his eventual death was still a surprise as it had initially seemed that his injuries hadn't been life threatening.  

ER does that very well.  Better than any other drama series in fact.  With a combination of great acting, strong storylines and fantastically emotive music, it often takes the viewer on a journey. The journey I went on yesterday had me in tears.  I admit it.  As the group of characters I felt I knew so well collected around the death bed, I was a mess.  Suddenly I was standing in a hospital ward beside my fathers body. Then, more recently, I was holding my mothers hand as she passed away. The tears hurt. The memories hurt.

I told myself it wasn't real.  It was acting.  No one was dying.  But as often happens, it was too late.  I'd given myself to the story.  The music had got to me again.  

And so an actor playing a role that I was watching on a laptop screen had reduced me to tears and brought back memories that I'd not recalled for some time. Yet the death of a real actor had barely affected me at all.  A decent, humanitarian man who will be missed by his many friends and family.

The famous monologue from Shakespeare's As You Like It sums it up best......................

All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts.

I'd never rate an actor in ER over Paul Newman but as can happen, we can all be affected by people and events depending on our situation at the time. Hearing about a real person dying is always sad but the acted death of a tv drama cast member can affect us much more if the scenes trigger personal memories that will remain powerful and emotive as long as we live.

Rest In Peace, Paul.

Don't Rain On My Parade

This time next week I'll be throwing a few items into a suitcase and 7 hours later the generous Daphne will be arriving to take me to Leeds/Bradfort airport.  Well she will if she manages to wake up in time but I'm not worried.  Not much anyway.  

I'll have the local taxi number handy just in case.

It was on 25th September last year that I first met Daphne.  It was a day I will never forget. But that aside, it was also the day I first met Daphne !

She'd commented on my blog about a year earlier and then me on hers and, well you know how it goes. It now seems like I've known her all my life - oh dear God but it does seem so - and what a wonderful friend she has become.

Ok enough head swelling words already.

So I'm off to Florida again a week tomorrow and I can't wait.  Sea, sand and sunshine for 6 months.

(loud sounds of tyres screeching and brake pads smoking)

But hang on a minute.  Back up there buddy.  Sunshine ?  Well sure, it's the sunshine state after all.  It's on their licence plates and everything.

Well I've just looked at the 10 day weather forecast for Sebring and on the day I arrive it shows scattered thunder storms and a 60% chance of rain.  Never mind eh.  That's a sort of frebee day as I'll be travelling from Miami and then very tired so who cares if it rains ?  Fair enough.

Next day, Friday, how does it look ?  Whoa, hang on, there is a pattern developing here.  Not to mention a spot of deja vu.  Scattered t-storms and a 60% chance of rain AGAIN.  WTF ?

Actually it's fine.  It's ok, it really is.  This is just October in Florida.  Rains a lot.  I know that from previous trips.  And after all, I've been acclimatising myself for it over the past 6 months. I'm ready for rain.  We've had a bit of it here this summer after all.  

What we've not had much of is heat.  Heat is what I'm not been used to since I left Florida last March.  It's been sadly missing here this summer.

On those two first days in Sebring the temperature will be 88F (31C).  

Ahhhh now that I can take.  Bring it on.

I'll try not to mention the weather too many times over the next 6 months.

I'll try not to post too many photos of palm trees and white sandy beaches.

I'l try not to write about lying on top of the bed at night as it's so warm.

I'll try not to mention ice cream melting before you can get it to the car.

I'll try not to post about swimming in the pool on Christmas Day.

I'm not promising anything.  But I'll try.

I Expect To Be Arrested Any Time Now.

I thought that title might get your attention.

I've often wondered what I'd do if I was asked to prove my whereabouts on a particular date and time in relation to a crime.  My memory is so bad that I'm quite happy if I can work out what I've left the house to do, never mind remember what I've done in the past.  Like 20 minute ago !!

I think I'd be relying on friends to come to my aid with an alibi if the rozzers ever came to my door with their truncheons slapping in their hands. 

And no, that's not a some sort of sexual inneundo for you 'Carry On' fans out there. Perverts.

Anyway this potential inability to keep myself out of a police lineup was highlighted today when I read an article in our local paper, the Yorkshire Evening Post.  

It recounted the awful story of a Leeds driver being dragged from his car by 2 masked men at about 10pm last night (Sunday).  He was basically mugged and left slightly injured by the attack but thankfully he didn't need hospital treatment.  I'd better point out at this point that the car was not in motion at the time but I have to admit that two masked men running along side a moving car attempting to get at the driver would be something worth seeing.

So what makes me think I might be 'in the frame' for this particular crime ?   See, all that cops and robbers tv watching has given me the parlance if nothing else.  

Well the article says that anyone who witnessed the crime or may be able to identify the offenders should contact their local police station.  Oh and what about the description of these offenders ?

Well to quote the article again, "both raiders are described as white men wearing dark clothing and balaclavas"  

I think we could be looking at a Guinness World Record for the longest police lineup in history.

And while I think about it, last night at 10pm I was in my house with Fr. Murphy and 7 of the boys from the local choir looking for swimwear on the internet.

I guess I've absolutely nothing to worry about then !!

 

It Doesn't Take Much..................

...............to put a smile on my face.

I was nearing the end of my 5 mile walk today when someone coming the other way, on the other side of the road, caught my eye.  I was wearing my usual t-shirt, scruffy jeans and a baseball cap to save my head from the blistering sun.  

No ?  Ok to retain the heat then.  But it was a lovely sunny day at least.

This other person cut quite a dash.  Even for Leeds 17.  Facially he was a bit like a young Colonel Sanders with a very well trimmed white goatee beard.  He was wearing an immaculate cream suit and a similar coloured panama hat.  

As we passed each other, he looked across at me.  I was so taken with his appearance I found myself touching the peak of my baseball cap and he smiled and did the same with his much more classy hat.  We never broke stride and the moment was over.

I had a smile on my face for quite a while afterwards as, for a few seconds at least, I felt I'd gone back to a previous age when men wore hats and would acknowledge one another by touching their brims in passing.

A few minutes later a young lad in his 20's came along on the other side of the road again.  He'd just bought a pack of cigarettes and in true British style, he removed the wrapping, peeled off the silver 'foil' and threw both on the ground before tipping out a cigarette.

The smile was wiped off my face.  

I so wanted The Colonel to come back and smack him with a cream coloured glove.

It would've been the classy thing to do.

Home Movie Memories

Don't worry.......I'm not going to show you any !

Last night Daphne came round for a visit and as a captive audience, I prised her eyes open with cocktail sticks and showed her some home video I'd taken of my first trip to America in 1989. This was because I'd gone to Florida and by going down the East coast and then up the West coast, I was showing her what she and Stephen could expect to see when they go over for their first US trip at the end of November.

Of course many things have changed in those intervening 19 years - and I don't only mean with my hair and body mass !!   Funny how one has shrunk to almost nothing while the other has grown just as alarmingly. Speaking of size, it was noticable watching the video just how much gas prices have influenced the US car market over the years.  They were well behind Europe in switching to smaller cars as gas prices were still relatively low until just a couple of years ago. Now it's very different and although truck sales still outnumber cars, fuel efficiency is much more of a buying criteria than it was back in 1989.

It was fun to see again the footage I took in a Ft. Myers gun store - something I mentioned in a long blog post last year. I'm still not sure why there wasn't a SWAT team waiting for me outside the store resulting in my first visit to America being my last.

It was also amusing to see the footage and hear my comments about sights that I now take for granted.  Everything was so new to me back then.  I took video of fast food outlets, shopping malls, road signs, police on bikes, white sand beaches, pelicans, motel rooms, palm trees, sun kissed bikini babes and basically anything different from what I was used to in the UK.

Little did I know back in 1989 that within a few years I'd have visited every state except Alaska and that going to America would be as normal for me as going to Scotland or Wales. In fact I'm off again in 2 weeks time and when I return to the UK at the end of March next year, I'll have spent 51 of the last 107 months in America.  

No wonder I have trouble with immigration every time I go !

It was strange to see that 37 yr old looking out at me from the tv screen.  Pre heart attacks.  Pre middle age spread.  Pre severe hair loss.  Pre beard.

Most important......pre retirement.  Of all the things that have happened to me, I'd have to put that at the top.  Even the heart attacks haven't changed my life as much as being able to retire at 49.  I'm not sure I'd still be here if I was still a working man as I never handled stress very well and that contributed to the main attack in 1992.  Retirement has brought me a pretty much stress free life and when you add to that the opportunity to spend the winter months in Florida, then I think it becomes my top life changing event.

Wow, that was a lot of heavy stuff to come out of a little home video. I promise I won't watch any more for a while.

A Trip To The Seaside

Last Thursday I went to Barrow. Oh nooooo, titter ye not.

Barrow is THE place to go to y'know. All the best people can be seen there.

Anyway it was my first time and I loved the place.

Ok I'd better qualify that surprising statement. I loved the beaches around Barrow. The town itself I could take or leave. It had once been the iron and steelmaking centre of the world and was a major UK ship building town for many decades. It had been building surface ships and submarines for over 100 years when the contracts for surface ships ran out and the town could easily have fallen on hard times.

But it concentrated on submarines and now builds the largest nuclear submarines in the UK. The very impressive Devonshire Dock Hall, where submarine modules are put together in the way that NASA uses it's Vertical Assembly Building to attach the shuttle to it's external fuel tanks, dominates the town in a way that is almost unique in this country.

I rarely post photos on this blog that weren't taken by me but in this case, Jonathan Webb has taken a view of the Devonshire Dock Hall that I'd be hard pushed to better ! Impressive building eh ?

I'll take that as a load of yesses as it bloody well IS.

But before this turns into a potted history of Barrow that you can get in much better form over on Wikipedia - I'll move on to a rather more personal view and get back to those beaches.

If you think the Devonshire thingamay building is impressive, well you'll be blown away by the Barrow beaches. I certainly was and I've been on some impressive beaches in my time, I can tell you. Well I guess I just did. So that was unnecessary. And so was that. And that.

Ok moving on.................

Where was I ? Barrow beaches. Thank you.

Until about 5pm last Thursday, I'd thought that Daytona Beach in Florida was the 'largest' beach I'd ever been on.  Well it was.  As I'd not been to Barrow till then.  I mean cars drive on Daytona Beach for goodness sake !  It's famous for it.  When the tide goes out you feel like you could walk to Europe and only get your ankles wet. It's fucking HUGE, as the French would say. Well with a bit more style and a few more accents, but they'd still say it.

As you can see, this Barrow beach was packed on Thursday. Well at least the sand was and it begged the question - why did wannabe world land speed record holders go all the way to the dry salt flats at Bonneville in the US of A when we had a beach like this all the time ?

You could've raced Jumbo jets on this beach, side by side, and still had room for all the Chariots Of Fire extras - and their chariots. And the film crew. And the studio. And, well you get the picture. No not THAT picture. This picture.

When I started walking along it, it was a mini Chariots Of Fire moment actually. The wind was blowing my hair over my face (shut it, you), my cheeks were glowing a healthy red (shouldn't have worn the kilt) and I could hear the waves breaking on the shoreline, about 12 miles away !
I was all for settling off at a gallop but you know how it is.

I'm an unfit, fat bastard and anyway, I'd have dropped my chips.

If you click on the photo and look wayyyyyyyy off in the distance, you may see 2 parachutists landing in the water. Nooooo not really. They were kitesurfers who use a special surf board and a large kite/parachute to skim across the water using only the power of the wind and a meal of baked beans.

I never got close enough to them to get a decent photo so you'll have to make do with these distant views - but you get the idea.

Every time I'd get a bit closer, they seemed to just zoom off as if camera shy.

There was also someone doing a similar thing on the beach but of course using a wheeled vehicle. It was like a large surfboard on wheels and at first I thought it was called beach yachting but I think that's when the vehicle has a sail attached.

This chap was using a kite/parachute just like his watery friend so I've no idea what that would be called. In any case I can't see either becoming an Olympic sport as it would all end in tears when the lines became entangled and 20 competitors were lifted off en masse to be dumped in a soggy heap 5 miles away.

But it was certainly spectacular to watch and I'm sure it provided a hell of a buzz for the people concerned.

I like this shot even though the chute isn't in the picture. I wanted to show the way the surfer churned up the water and I think this shows it very well.

The idea was to search for the larger waves and then ride them or even take off for a few seconds - not that they did this much so I think the two were fairly new to the sport. I've seen shots of participants really flying up quite a distance, safe in the knowledge that the pull of the chute will save them from a wipe out back in the water. Much better than normal surfing I'd have to think.

By now it was getting late and we had to leave the beach for a restaurant date.

I looked out into the sun and saw a shot worth taking. The surfer had started out on the sand and been dragged by his chute back into the water. You can see the trail he left behind him.

The sun was trying to break through the cloudy skies and this left enough light to just about see the colours in the chute but I decided to switch to the black & white setting for this shot.

I felt it added to the dramatic view and helps to take your eye down from the chute to the surfer sitting waiting to be taken up onto his feet and off along the water line again.

We left and had a lovely meal nearby (thank you Amy) and then back for an evening of chat and looking at photos well into the night (thank you Lesley and Frank).

Next day we went to another beach which was just as impressive in it's size and also that we had it pretty much to ourselves again. This one had classic dunes with that lovely soft sand that just begs to be walked on.

The tide was going out and when we eventually did turn around and walk back, we had a fun time examining the area that had been under water just a few minutes earlier.

Many amazing rocks were now exposed and Amy seemed to know the composition of them all.

We picked several each and they are now in the back of my car here in Leeds ready to be washed and placed somewhere in our respective houses.

I've not been a rock collector before but I may have caught the bug now. I'll have to look out for some distinctive ones when in Florida although they'll need to be small light ones as luggage weight is always an issue when flying these days. I'd better not try and take them in my carry on bag in case I'd done for carrying weapons. 

"This is a hijack. Do what I tell you or I'll fill your pockets with pebbles"

Serious terrorism for sure. 

After a lovely pub lunch at noon (thank you Daffy) we went to visit the nearby Furness Abbey which has been photographed by better people than myself so I'll not post any of mine - except for this one.

This was taken in the small graveyard area which we passed at the end of our tour around the abbey grounds.

Now I'm no archaeologist, even though I'm incredibly old myself, so I donno what this was exactly but in my amateur way, I'd have to think it was a very shallow grave for a single monk.  And a naughty monk at that.

I mean it's monk shaped and even has a place for the head to be laid just so we'd know which end was which.

And speaking of such thing, it also lends some credence to the belief that viagra was available long before this century as this grave was clearly designed so that the monk could be buried face down !!

Maybe he was the cassanova of the monk world and I'll leave you to make up your own jokes incorporating 'bad habits'.

After this we left and went back to pick up Amy and we all set off back to Leeds after a fun time in Barrow and the surrounding area.

Given its location right on the end of a peninsula on the extreme west coast of England, Barrow is not a place you'd tend to visit on the way to somewhere else.  But it IS worth a visit if only for those stunning beaches and after all, it's only 100 miles from Leeds and lies at the bottom of the scenic Lake District - an area of England that is always worth visiting even though it can seem like half the country goes there in high summer.

Just leave your motorhome somewhere else.  Maybe in Barrow.

No Need To Be ConCERNed.....It's French !!

As it seems every man and his blog are (or is) writing about this Large Hadron Collider gizmo, I thought I'd better get my two cents worth in before they flick the switch or pull the plug or put a couple of Euros into the meter sometime tomorrow.   

Believe it or not, I usually do some research before spouting about things on here as my mind is like a one photo camera card - each new photo, or in my case each new piece of information, simply overwrites the previous one. I suspect I was dropped on my head a lot as a baby.

So I go the the CERN site, which as everyone knows stands for Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (add your own accents to make it look more Frenchy) but it's as dull and uninteresting as one of my home made omelettes. I mean wouldn't you think, with all this talk about the end of the world, that they'd at least have a countdown clock on the site ?  

Don't you just hate a scientist without a sence of humour ?

So I donno when this event is due to take place tomorrow but as long at it's not during the England game in Croatia, I don't care.  Well unless we're losing at about 9:40pm and then by all means send a few little black holes towards the stadium and wipe out a few of their players. They're foreign so it won't matter.

So what's it all about then ?   What does this LHC thingymagig do ?  In an effort to get up to speed (ha-ha), I went to the font of all knowledge.  Wikipedia !  

I'm none the wiser.

I never did physics at school.  Or chemistry.  Or biology.  I know the last 2 have nothing to do with CERN but I'm trying to paint you a picture here.  I'm no scientist.  I know a bit about rocketry and 'space' in a sort of NASAesque way, but that's it.  The only particles I know about are the ones that always end up on my t-shirt when I eat my supper in front of the tv.  A bad habit but at least I'm not likely to bring about Armageddon if I do it again tomorrow.

I think they've built a very long tube thing 100 meters underground somewhere on the French/Swiss border and at some time tomorrow, they'll send a light beam down it.  I'm not impressed.  I did something similar with a torch and an empty loo roll when I was a kid.  If I'd been better funded (more pocket money) I could've lit up half the street.  That's all they're doing tomorrow so don't expect anything spectacular. If the man wearing goggles at the other end raises his thumb to say he's seen the light, we can all rest easy that the world hasn't ended.

Of course if said man lowers his thumb in classic Nero style, then bend over, grab your legs and wait for the big bang.  Yes I realise for some of you this won't be your first time !  TMI.

Speaking of funding, I'm sure squillions of Euros have gone the way of these light particles over the years, namely into a large black hole.  Wikipedia reports that $1billion was spent this year alone. And what have we, the European taxpayer got for OUR money ?   A chance to forget our financial woes it seems.

Yes it's such a clever idea.  Build some doomsday machine costing the proverbial arm and a leg and then when the highly accelerated shit hits the fan and it all goes belly up, there is a good chance that no one will be around to say "well what a fucking waste of money THAT was !!"

And even if it all goes swimmingly and we see lots of white coated boffins jumping around and hugging each other like they're at a cricket umpires convention, what will we actually see ?  

Bugger all I should think.  It's just not that sort of event.  Even the Chinese would be hard pushed to make it exciting.  No fireworks.  No men suspended from wires.  No cute little schoolgirl miming La Marseillaise.

See if we (being the British) had this LHC device, we'd put on a bit of a show tomorrow.  We'd put on a 'bit of a do' for the millions who are sure to be tuned in for the event.  There would be a cock-a-knee street party with a pearly King and Queen (oh go google it !), lots of iron brew and jaffa cakes for the assembled celebs that aren't currently in Celebair and when Gordon Brown (oh google him too !) flicked the switch, he'd be the first to be vapourised and a loud cheer would go up.......and then we'd all follow him.  

Cut to the Queen standing unsteadily on the balcony of Buck Palace with her crown looking a bit sku wiff and holding onto a couple of slightly smouldering corgis.  We'd hear the unmistakable sounds of the national anthem coming from a lone piper off to one side and the image would slowly fade out with the voice of a BBC announcer telling us that we'll all try and meet up in 4 years time to do it all over again.

Oh shit, that's the Olympics.  

Oh and we'd have a bleedin' countdown clock on OUR web site.

"Houston, The Turkey Has Landed !"

We all remember Apollo 11 and those famous words uttered by Neil Armstrong when he placed his size nines onto the studio set floor, I mean the surface of the Moon back in 1969.

"That's One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind"

Stirring stuff indeed and I've never had a problem with it. It seems people say he made a mistake and should've said "A Man" instead of just "Man" as otherwise it just makes no sense. Basically both halves of the sentence mean the same the way Neil said it.

What-evv-ahhhhh. He probably thought no one would remember it anyway !! My theory is that he felt the "A" was implied.

There.

Sorted.

But it got me thinking. Did he spend weeks and months thinking what to say ? I mean, despite what I just said, he had to have known that his words would go down in history forever. But what if those carefully planned words had been screwed up by some unexpected action or sight just as he climbed down the Lunar Module ladder.

So lets see what my blog readers can come up with as -

Things you didn't expect Neil Armstrong to have said when stepping onto the Moon.

And under the generally accepted Laws Of Blogging ( Law 25a, subsection 13 ), I get to go first and here are my 10 to get you going :

"Houston, I see a Russian flag !!! "

" Awww shit, Buzz has just jumped out the window and got down first."

"Fuck me Buzz, there's a bucket and spade down here."

" I CAN smell cheese."

" Damn it Houston, my pee bag just burst."

"Turn off those spotlights, guys, I can't see a thing."

"Collins, how did you get here ?"

"Ewwwwww it's true what they said about a fart in a spacesuit."

"That's one small step for man, one giant.....no wait........ aww shit I've fucked it up."

"Ahhhh Houston.........what-y-mean one way ?"

There Be Sick People Here.........................

Thanks to the invention of the V-box (a gizmo like a US TiVo) and downloading tv shows and movies from the internet, I manage to pretty much miss out on adverts. Even when watching live tv, I usually still zone them out by a process of Zen self hypnosis and humming popular Tibetan chants. Mind you, I've not quite mastered the art of coming out of this state in time to catch the restart of the show........but of course that's where the V-box again comes to my aid.

So having said that, it takes a lot for an advert to grab my attention, here is one that recently managed to do just that. It grabbed me even though I wasn't looking at the tv at the time and why ? Well because of the annoying little bastard making all the noise. It went right through me and I just HAD to see what was going on and why it was on my tv set.

I've seen it a few times since then and until yesterday I wasn't quite fed up with it. I felt like a couple more viewings and maybe it'd make the smooth transition to being a really annoying advert that pisses me off as the noise being made by the kid would finally overcome the joy of the guy putting him to sleep. But not yet.

Then yesterday afternoon I gave a friend of mine a lift to see her doctor. While she was in the office, I sat reading a magazine in the waiting room. In came a woman with her little boy who went straight for the box of toys in the corner. Within seconds, every toy was on the floor and he was in his element. Bless.

But things soon changed. He'd tried to put two huge lego type blocks together and they didn't fit. He wasn't going to give up and picked up a hard plastic hammer and started smacking the top block with all the force he could muster and suddenly I was in the nightmare world of Kwik-Fit. Except these blocks weren't fitting quickly or any other way.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Mommy dearest was really into HER magazine and seemingly oblivious to these blows. I looked at the receptionist for some sort of help. Her head was down and she might as well have been wearing headphones for all the use she was. If I'd had the Kwit-Fit number on speed dial I'd have been calling in the troops.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Inside my head a voice was screaming "why in Gods name would anyone put a hammer, albeit it a plastic one, into a toy box in a doctors waiting room ?" Holy crap, people are there because they are sick and not because they are waiting for a number 93 to Roundhay Park. Thankfully I wasn't in need of medical attention but that kid was in serious danger of needing that hammer surgically removed from deep within his preteen butt cheeks.

Thankfully my friend came out just before I could make a move and that kid will never know how close he came to becoming a tripod.

I'm keeping a supply of bubble wrap next to my chair because the next time that advert comes onto my tv, I'm going to throw SOMETHING and it better not be solid.

When Mr. Kwik-Fit puts that kid to sleep next time, it better be permanent.

In A World Where......................

These were the initial words most often used by the voice over artist Don LaFontaine to introduce us to the latest Hollywood Blockbuster as he was rightly regarded as 'The King.' He was so well used and respected that he could work from his home studio and have the voice over scripts faxed to him.

"What a life that must be" I said in a blog post exactly 2 years ago this month. Get up in the morning, have a coffee to wet your whistle, pick up the latest scripts from the fax machine and simply talk for a few minutes to earn several thousand dollars.

Nice work if you can get it. My accent has been commented upon in the US so maybe I should give voice over a try. The trouble is, they want the voice to be a good mix of the clarity that allows the audience to actually hear what's being said and the deep bass tones that almost shake you out of your seat. Maybe my surround sound subwoofer is set too high, but he sure rocked my world.

I say rocked, past tense, because sadly 'The Don' died today, aged 68.

There are other voice over artists out there and life for them and the industry they serve will go on. But for a man who had a voice that we heard on our tv and movie screens more that any other, I'm sure he would be pleased to know that for a few days at least, people might actually look for the face behind that voice.

In a world where.........your voice can help sell a movie, that world is eerily silent tonight.

10 Items, More Or Less

I'm all for correct spelling and good grammar - both of which are sadly in decline thanks, in many cases, to mobile phone texting and internet chatting in general.

I make lots of mistakes of course, but hopefully know when to use they're, there and their for example. Simple stuff but it's so annoying how many get it wrong.

So what about good old plain English ? You know. Lets not use lots of big words when simple ones will do.

At least that's what I always thought was meant by plain English.

Clearly the 'experts' at the Plain English Campaign have a different agenda.

Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK, have a few checkouts in each store for those customers who only have a few items in their baskets. And as a single person often buying a few basic items, God bless them for it.

How many items ? Well about 10 items, since you ask.

Therefore the signs over these checkouts have stated "10 Items Or Less" for years now and I wasn't aware this was a particularly complicated or confusing request.

We've all been behind people with a lot more than 10 items in their baskets but these people are only making use of the great British attitude to such violations as they know they'll get a few tuts at best and a long stare or glare at worst.

But that's not to say these selfish bastards have misunderstood the sign or reckon that it can't possibly apply as it's patently ambiguous. No, they're (not their or there) just selfish bastards.

Enter The Plain English Campaign. This august body has decided that the word 'less' should not be used in this instance. According to them, 'less' is correct only when quantities cannot be individually counted - as in "I would like less water". When quantities CAN be counted, then 'fewer' should be used - as in "fewer than 10 apples".

Oh please.

I'm not sure what is more amazing here. That this bunch of nothing-better-to-do experts have complained about this to Tesco or that Tesco have taken heed of them and are going to change all their (not they're or there) signs. Yes they are.

The best part is that Tesco are going one step further, or is that backwards, by making the signs even more precise, if that was needed.

Not for them a sign stating "10 Items Or Fewer" or even "Fewer Than 10 Items." Oh no, that would be too easy. And maybe confusing. Or controvertial. Or something.

The new signs, being phased in at a Tesco store near you (well in the UK at least) will state.......

............drum roll please....................

"Up To 10 Items. Selfish Bastards Please Use Other Checkouts."

Well no, I added that last bit. I know. You guessed that already.

The Plain English Campaign are known as language watchdogs. Well watch this then : sod off you bunch of hairy assed fuckwits.

There. I've insulted them in less than 10 words. Or fewer. Well up to 10 anyway.

When Is A Celebrity Not A Celebrity ?

.........when they agree to appear on a celebrity reality show !!

Not so long ago, a celebrity WAS someone. Simple as that. Usually a film star or a tv star; someone you'd probably go to the end of the street to see. On a wet day. In winter. In Normanton.

Then we got divisions. Levels of celebrity. As well as the big names we got the expression, minor celebrity. Even B-list celebrity. And that was about the lot.

Now though, loads of tv shows and magazines have made a mockery of the word celebrity.

As an aside, I've never understood why groups like the paparazzi even exist. They spend their nasty intrusive lives trying to get photos of celebrities going about their daily business. Why ? They'd say it's because WE want it. WE buy the magazines that contain the photos. Photos of Britney in her car at an LA fast food outlet. Photos of Madonna pushing a pram in a London park. Photos of Brad Pitt or George Clooney arriving in Venice for a film festival. Whoop di do. Who gives a damn ?

But at least these people could be classed as celebrities, A-list ones if you like. But what about these sad, sad people who pop up on the ridiculous reality shows that fill our screen these days ?
It's got beyond a joke and I thank God (and Virgin Media - oh a bit of a dubious connection there !!) ) that I've still got sport and movies and the occasional soap to watch as the rest is celebrity crap.

Have a look at the UK line up at the moment :

Celebrity MasterChef
Cash In The Celebrity Attic
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ? Celebrity Special
Celebrity Entourage : The Powder Room
Extreme: Skinny Celebrities
Extreme: Skinny Celebrity Mums
Celebrity Deathmatch
Alan Carr's Celebrity Ding Dong
Celebrity Weakest Link
Celebrity Ready Steady Cook
Celebrity Swaps
Celebrity Slimming
Celebrity Kitchen

And there are also at least a dozen one off shows like :

Shortest Celebrity Marraiges
Celebrity Diet Secrets Revealed
Celebrity Near Death Experiences
Celebrity Plastic Surgery
30 Most Outrageous Celebrity Feuds
Sexiest Celebrity Brunettes

I kid you not. All these shows are currently being shown here in the UK and I can guarantee you that, apart from the one off shows where the 'celebrity' has no say in being a part of it, all the rest of the shows contain celebrities you have to Google to find out who the hell they are, or were, or want to be.

And remember these are just the shows with the word 'celebrity' in them. There are others.

'Celebrity' has become as debased a concept as 'hero' in modern terms. Anyone can be one. You don't have to do much.

And flying along in a few days time we have a new one. Oh God help us all.

Celebair

Yes it promises to be as bad as it sounds and the first indication of this is that it's going straight to the B-channel, ITV2. No mainstream prime time spot for this one.

The idea is that a bunch of has beens or wanna bees or who the fuck are yous are given airline jobs on the ground or in the air and the ones that piss us off the least get to stay each week. Now hasn't that got ratings winner all over it ?? I'm just worried that our love of all shows airline-y might overcome our loathing of giving these Z-list celebrities any of our valuable viewing time.

And don't expect Clint or Brad, Harrison or Leonardo to be taking part. And Angelina and Julia, Natalie and Cameron won't be on board either. And there is the point. We know THEM by first name alone. These Z-listers we don't even know with their surnames and DNA.

In true celeb style, they threatened a revolt when they were asked to resit some Civil Aviation exams due to overdoing it on the alcohol and were only placated when promised a day trip to a spa for their troubles. Can you see Brad or George settling for a trip to a spa ? They have those in their limos !!

I'd like to think I'm not on my own here but then again, enough people must be buying the magazines and watching the shows to make them worth producing. I suppose if this new airline show just had a bunch of average John and Jane Does as contestants, it would never get off the ground, so to speak.

After all it would just be what happens in real life. The ultimate reality show.

And no one wants that on their tv screens.

Love It, Love It Not

Like most people, I have a love/hate relationship with computers. Personal computers that is.

Mainframes (big boxy computers with lots of flashing lights) gave me my 30 year career, of course, and so it's mostly a love thang with them.

But a PC is a very different box of bytes and quite often it's a hate relationship between us.

Late last night and most of this morning, it was lots of hate, frustration and bewilderment and even a red mist of annoyance.

Things had been fine until, out of the blue, I got a virus alert with a program file that had been minding it's own business ever since I got this laptop in March. Suddenly F-Secure, my virus package, said it had a suspect utorrent.exe file and promptly renamed it to utorrent.oxe and so now it didn't work. Wonderful.

I removed the whole folder just to be sure and as I had a few other minor problems with my BBC and Yahoo home pages (more later), I decided to do a full system restore. I'll spare you the details but lets just say no restore worked (I tried 3) as I kept getting a message about this utorrent.exe file just before the laptop rebooted to try and come up from a previous version.

Why ? I'd deleted the folder. There was no reference to it anywhere that I could see, even in the registry. So why was Windows still finding it AND still saying it was a potential virus issue ?

So I gave up on the restore and am just moving on with things. I've downloaded and installed utorrent again and it works fine - as of course it did before this stupid virus msg came up last night. I've run a full scan and my hard drive is as clean as a very clean thing indeed.

So what about the BBC and Yahoo sites then ? Well both of these sites allow you to build up a lovely page with the layout, colours and content you want. Want 6 items of news ? You've got it. Want 3 items of sports ? Go for it. Want to get the weather from the next street ? It's all there. White text on black background ? Yes please.

So I spent ages setting it all up months ago and saved it and it's been fine ever since. Well until a few days ago anyway and then it reverted to the crappy default page. I sighed, as you do, and spent ages recreating my beloved page again. Saved it and did a page refresh and......crappy default again.

Something that had been working fine for ages was suddenly pouting and stamping it's foot like a petulant child.

"No, you're not having your flashy page with excellent content. No, no, no. It's crappy default page for you, pal."

Same with Yahoo. I'd built it up like the BBC page to be how I wanted it. Looked grand, it did.
A few days ago it went petulant too. Crappy default page again. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

At least my years working with computers has given me a bit of knowledge and I found the cookies file, deleted the ones relating to both the BBC and Yahoo sites and all is ok now. Well FOR now I should say.

Over the years I think that's the biggest complaint people have about computers. One day they work fine and the next day something goes belly up. Of course I know only too well that if you're connected to the internet, there is hardly a second where 'nothing' is going on somewhere in the background. I can accept that. And the things we can do and the places we can 'go to' using a PC would be astonishing to someone even a decade ago.

But some simple issues remain and this rant gives me the chance to get one such niggle out of my system - pardon the pun.

I'm always connecting external units to my laptop from my hard drives to my mp3, from my camera to my memory sticks. I never like just pulling them out, or their cables if they need those and so I use the 'safely remove hardware' option whenever possible. I think you know where I'm going with this.

"The device cannot be removed because it is in use by another application. Please close this application and retry" Or words to that effect.

Hello, nothing is running. Nothing I can see. Nothing task manager can see.

If Windows knows something, why can't it tell me what it is ? Why the secrecy ?

Tell me the application, you useless pile of circuits. I bought you. I am your master !!!

Sadly we both know that's not true.

Aptly Named

The Leeds and Reading (Music) Festivals are on this weekend and I'm staying 'safe' indoors. The roads to the East of Leeds were in chaos on Thursday with 100,000 or so fans converging onto the muddy fields that always seem to go with music festivals in this country. I'm not sure when the festival ends tonight (Sunday) but it'll be more chaos when those same fans leave the area and a huge sigh of relief will go up from affected residents who can then reclaim their roads and streets.

During the traffic jams on Thursday, car occupants got out and played impromptu footy games using empty beer cans and when it was time for a restroom break, local gardens served as toilets.

All good dirty fun I'm sure. There have been no reports from the police of any serious trouble but there is still time.

And then there is the music. Nearly 100 bands on various stages and I've heard of about 4 of them, like Metallica. Just heard of them mind you. Not my sort of music, you see.

One of the bands playing today was called "Fucked Up." Lovely. A sort of New Seekers for this modern generation I'm sure. Swinging arms and close harmony accompanied by cans of coke no doubt.

Well yes lots of doubt actually. The coke might be there though not in cans.

The "Fucked Up" lead singer (if sing he does) is called Pink Eyes. Think we're back to the coke again ! Then again who did we have in my concert going days ? Well WE had "Bad Manners" and their frontman, Buster Bloodvessel so I'd better not go down that path. I remember he liked to show us his very long tongue and would shake it around like he was auctioning off a slice of rare porterhouse.

But for all his showmanship, Buster at least kept his snake in his pants. Yes I know I'm still keeping THAT smutty idea going in this post too but this time it's relevant.

Mr Eyes, on the other hand, had no such scruples and decided that the audience needed to see his party favours, so to speak, and the family jewels were on display to all who cared to lo0k at them. Well to be fair, the NME report suggests he tucked them between his legs before turning to the crowd so they ONLY had to put up with his fat arse while this delicate act was performed.
What a disappointment, I'm sure.

If you look at the photo of Pink Eyes, you'll see why I have mentioned Buster in the same post. They could be twins. Or triplets !

Speaking of Eyes, I just can't imagine ol' Blue Eyes doing anything like that in his heyday. Maybe he should have, I hear a few female fans say. Maybe so. It would've been quite a performance to get out of a tuxedo though and I'm not sure what his orchestra would've made of it all as they'd have seen much more than they signed up for.

I think he should've done it while belting out "My Way" but that's just me.

Anyway back to perky Pinky and his tasteful tunesters. Can you imagine if both bands merged.
"Bad Fucked Up Manners" with Pink Bloodvessel as the lead singer. Catchy.

I think I need to stop snorting the coke myself !!

I'm off to listen to Matt Munro. I've got my lighter at the ready.

Ohh Errr Missus

My last post was understandably sombre and serious and that's not me at all. I can be serious when needs must, and it 'musted' then - but I think the time has come for a death post on a lighter note.

Yes is IS possible. And this one is all Daffys fault.

You see, yesterday she told me that hubby Stephen was going to bury the snake this weekend.

"Bury the snake !" I said. "That sounds a bit like......bury the snake !!"

Phanrr phanrr.

I'm not usually privy to such news and quite frankly it was more information than I needed to know.

When she added that her mother might be involved, I almost lost it.

Then she told me about the death of Kelloggs and it all made sense. Phew.

Our friendship is back on a secure, normal level and what goes on behind those closed doors will remain a mystery to me. All is well with the world.

Just not in the world of Kelloggs.

We're All The Same.

On Sunday night my next door neighbour had a massive heart attack and died immediately. He was alone in his living room and never had time to shout out for help.

It really shook me up. I've had 2 heart attacks myself and so having someone I know die from one made me think.

It reminded me that I've twice been given a chance to do some things differently. I'd been fixing my supper when the ambulance pulled up and when I found out what had happened, I cut my supper portion in half ! I know it was a knee jerk reaction but once again, I'm determined to eat more healthily and exercise more too.

As if having had my own heart attacks wasn't enough of an incentive !!

Ikram, my neighbour, was a lovely man. A family man with 3 kids who are a credit to him. The oldest is 22 and just finished at University. He'll now be the man of the house.

The boys are quiet, polite and the family have been wonderful neighbours. They cut my lawn and look after my mail when I go to America for 6 months every year. We've never been "pop in for a coffee type" neighbours but we've known each other for about 15 years so I've seen the boys grow up and they've never caused me any concern. Far from it.

This afternoon I went to see Ikram for the last time. He was a Muslim and so to see him and say goodbye, I went to his mosque. This was a first for me and originally I hadn't planned on going in - just being outside to pay my respects.

But when the family were told I was there, I was asked in. There was a long line of people slowly passing the open coffin with the family members standing at it's head. I made my way to join the line but my name was called out and I was asked to stand with the family. People spread out to let me get to the coffin and I was able to say my goodbyes to Ikram.

I was just a neighbour. I was a Christian. But I was treated as someone special at a time when I could easily have been overlooked and left as an outsider in this Muslim world. Everyone who spoke to me was kind, polite and hospitable. It was an occasion I will never forget.

With the funeral over, there now begins a period of mourning. Gradually the friends and extended family members will leave. On Monday morning, when the body was taken to the hospital for a post mortem, the boys and their mother left to stay a few streets away with Ikram's brother and they've not all been back to the house since then. When they do and are once again surrounded by tangable and atmospheric memories, I think it will finally hit them that a husband and father has gone forever.

We all have our own attitudes about other nationalities, cultures and religions and these can be influenced by what we read in newspapers or see on tv and the headlines are always made by extremists.

Extremists are just that, extreme. Even though, by their dramatic actions, they can lead us to think they represent much more than they really do, we should always remember that the vast majority of people everywhere are not like that.

Ikram raised his family to be decent, honest and hard working. And Muslim. I admit I'd been swayed by the media and numerous news reports into having a negative attitude towards Muslims and it has taken his passing to redress that attitude.

I feel that's a legacy worthy of the man himself.

More Spurn Pointers

Ok now where were we......oh yeah. I'd just burst through the vegetation at the very end of Spurn Point and was finally on the beach.

Oh in case you need to catch up, go to my blog post from Saturday and have a read.

But if not, here is a brief synopsis : sunny day, drove to Spurn Point, saw a lighthouse, walked through a maze and got to the beach.

Right, off we go again.

This is that beach.

No, I'd not gone to Normandy or travelled back in time to 1944 either but I could understand it if you thought both.

It wasn't much of a beach but then it wasn't really supposed to be. It was just the end of the land and as such, there was sand.

Poetic.

You see Spurn Point is a constantly moving peninsula. The waters on the North Sea side wear away the land and deposits on the Humber Estuary build it up again and this effectively 'moves' everything, slowly, over the decades. Actually the waters can wash completely over the land in places and a 'new' point is created and then built up again but this is done over a period of centuries.

"Ok enough of the serious geography stuff already." Righty o.

There is also a lifeboat station at the Point. Built in 1810.

And here is the lifeboat. All ready for action. Isn't it nice ? Isn't it very orange ? Yes it is.

Not sure how they get out to it when it's needed for that action but I'm sure they can.

Interesting fact ("about bloody time too") - this is the only lifeboat station in the UK with full time paid staff.

Not a lot of people know that.

So Spurn Point has a lifeboat, a lighthouse, a beach of sorts and lots of birds.

It's famous for it's birds. Bit of a bird sanctuary actually.
Twitchers, sorry bird watchers, flock there (sorry again) to look for rare species that sometimes rest there on their way to nicer places. South of France maybe. North Africa. Places with decent weather anyway.

But I hardly saw a single bird. Oh I saw birds, yes, but no more than I'd see at home or at the seaside anywhere. Didn't see any twitchers either so maybe it was off season. Maybe the credit crunch was hitting bird vacations too and they were staying home and improving their nests.

There were quite a few people fishing and with expensive setups too. I didn't see any of them catching anything fishy but one had his line caught up in a ship propeller and he was last seen on his way to Amsterdam. Har har.

It was quite a busy channel and large tankers and ore carriers were passing by every few minutes.

Nobody was IN the water as, although it was a suuny day, it wasn't all that warm and the water temperature certainly wasn't conducive to swimming.

Not sure I'd want to ever swim in North Sea waters but that's another story.

I was walking back along the beach to the car park area and came upon this odd looking tower.

It used to be a munitions store during the war as Spurn Point was a key fortified outpost back then.

There was a military railway line that ran the length of the peninsula and due to the constant shifting that I mentioned earlier, the tracks criss cross the road and go off into the vegetation in places as it has stayed static while the land it was built on has moved. Bizarre.

There were also several wartime bunkers and concrete fortifications at the end of the Point and they still remain in some form or other. Most are crumbling away but enough of the structures remain to give an idea of what things were like back in the early 1940's when invasion was always a threat. Now we let anyone in !

3 young kids had used a surf board to paddle out to the tower and were enjoying themselves climbing up the lower part of its base and going all the way around.

At times the tower is on the beach but when I was there, the tide had come in and it was well out into the channel.

Before leaving Spurn Point, I went back to the vegetation for a last walk through part of it as I'd found it to be more interesting than the beach.

There were loads of butterflies and bees and I took photos of several of them and here is one of a cute little fluffy bee.

I know cute and fluffy aren't words that spring to mind when you talk about bees but enlarge this one and it's certainly fluffy. Maybe not cute.

I need a macro lens though.

And so it was back to the car and off back home.

On the way through the flat farmland East of Hull, I came upon a farmer on his combine harvester.

He stopped to do some maintenance and we had a chat before he set off again.

The weather has been so bad these last few weeks that he was taking this chance to get on with the harvesting and he said he'd be working all through the night to make the most of this dry spell.

I sped on as I wanted to get to the Humber Bridge for sunset to try and get some photos of it.

That meant going through Hull and I stopped briefly as the harbour also looked like a good location for some pics. It wasn't easy to find a parking place near the harbour but I could tell the evening light would be so good with the boats and water.

But there were really too many boats and they were tightly docked next to one another.

This made it a bit tricky and I almost left without getting anything worth saving.

Then I noticed a boat coming in from the sea and I positioned myself at the widest part of the harbour with a photogenic church tower in the background - and waited.

Thankfuly the boat came all the way across the harbour and I got this photo just before it disappeared to the left to dock. Nothing special but I liked the reflections and the light and if nothing else, it was a snap shot memory for me to enjoy later.

And then it was on to the bridge.

The 27 year old Humber Bridge held the record for the longest single span suspension bridge in the world for 16 years and it is currently the 5th longest. However it does still hold one world record. It is the longest bridge you can walk over. Good luck doing that. At 1.3 miles long, I decided to give it a miss.

Anyway, I got there at 8pm, just minutes before sunset. I drove down to its base where there is a swanky restaurant, parked up and got ready.

I'm not sure what happened but there was no sunset. Well not in a classic red sky way. It just went dark. And then, as is the way, it got bright for a while. I was bummed.

So as not to have totally wasted my time with this slight detour to the bridge, I decided to do something I do very rarely. I took a photo of myself.

It had been a lovely day out. The sun shone, I'd got lots of exercise and to end it all, here is that photo of me with the Humber Bridge behind me. Be nice now.

It's All Huff And Puff

I've been watching a bit of the Olympics and we've not been doing too bad really. As I type this, we're 3rd in the medal table (11 golds) and if you take away the genetically modified 'Dolphin Boy's' 8 personal golds, we'd be equal 2nd alongside the USA. Hurrah for us.

We seem to have got a crop of sportsmen and women who don't just want to take part but want to, and expect to, win gold.

How refreshing.

How un-British.

Of course this has coincided with our country being renamed and rebranded for the Olympics.

Great Britain is now Team Britain. Fab. I'll rush out and get my passport updated. Very trendy. Can we have a new National Anthem please ? I'm with Billy Connelly on this one. Ours is a dirge and we need a jolly upbeat one that Cliff can sing and get it to No.1. Oh and write one that doesn't mention The Queen and then she can sing along with it too and not feel silly having to sing her own name all the time !

And speaking of countries and passports, I was born in Northern Ireland and my passport says I'm a citizen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Fine.

So where are MY sportsmen at the Olympics ? We're not part of Team Britain after all. Can't be. Is there a separate Northern Ireland team then ? Nope. It's not a country on the Olympic list. There is Ireland of course but as we all know, Northern Ireland isn't Ireland. Oh no.

There is a North and South Korea after all. So what do MY people have to do to play at the Olympics ? Become Irish I guess and that must piss off a lot of them. And rightly so.

Oh a little bit political there, Ian.

Anyway the real reason for this post is to have a rant about the BBC interviewing technique again. Holy crap people, we don't need to listen to out of breath sportsmen/women seconds after their event has finished. I know they get whipped off to receive their medals or slash their wrists so there is only a small window of opportunity to find out what they thought of coming first or last but give them, and us, a break !

Until the early hours of this morning I'd thought sticking a mic in front of the rowers was the ultimate in hearing gasps and wheezes, grunts and groans instead of coherent English. But when poor Paula Radcliffe was interviewed almost before she crossed the Marathon finishing line, the BBC reached a new low.

The fact she got to Beijing was amazing enough, given her injuries. Then she almost stopped (again) part way round when, as she put it, it felt like one of her legs gave way. Only having one leg left, it made the rest of the race a bit of a struggle and she came into the stadium looking quite distressed and in a lot of pain. Showing typical British grit, sorry Team British grit, she made it to the line with the frustration and disappointment etched on her face. It was as if she had been told Leeds United had lost yesterday, such was the evident dispair !!

She hugged one of her fellow Team Brit runners, one who had fallen during the race and was covered with bruises and had a suspected broken rib. What a sight for the cameras. What guts. What pure Olympic spirit. What the fuck is that mic doing there ? Oh my God the BBC are straight in there asking inane questions of a woman who has given her all and clearly is so emotional that she can't put two words together.

We might as well have tried to listen to Amy Whitehouse or either Gallagher brother. It was incomprehensible. A hand went out from the interviewer to console her. Sod that, pal.

"Take the bloody mic away and leave her alone, you ass-hoooooole" I suggested to my tv set.

What next ? Will John Inverdale and Steve Redgrave climb into the boats to interview the rowers over the last 100 metres ? You can just imagine a GB (or TB) press launch gliding up and those two boarding the coxless fours (what is this, the Eunuch Olympics ??) complete with mic and camera crew.

"Shove over lads. Now then, what's it like to be leading at this stage ? Oh you're 2nd now.....hang on, 3rd. Ok what was it like to come last lads ?"

We're in an age of instant reactions and super slo-mo action replays on tv. The viewers, that's you and me, appear to want to see things over and over again - often missing something more exciting while watching the replay. Then we get a replay of what we missed and again risk missing somet.......well you get the point. They can position cameras everywhere to give us all possible viewing points. They're up in blimps and remote controlled balloons. They're on top of helmets. Inside and all over the outsides of race cars. On top of football crossbars and underwater in swimming pools. They're even inside tennis balls. Oh no that was Bee Movie !!

All this I can appreciate and actually like as it gets us more involved in the sport. But these instant and inane interviews get me going. What can someone possibly say of any interest when asked what it feels like to come 1st or 2nd or umpteenth ? I mean dismissing the fact that they are knackered and incoherent (and if a boxer, this incoherence comes BEFORE the fight), they are either so eleated at winning that they are crying or they are so pissed off by losing that they're crying. And what can they say anyway ?

"Well Gary/John/Steve/Brendan, I'm, pant, so, gasp, wheeze, cough, just so, puff, puff, gasp, happy to be, wheeze, here today and I'd, puff, puff, like to thank my.............."

"Ok sorry we have to leave it there and return you to Sue in the studio as Team Britain are going for 23rd place in the beach volleyball. As you know this would be our highest ever position as, of course, although being an island race, we only have 2 clean beaches to train on"

So BBC, save us a bucket load of licence money and recall all the interviewers. Keep the comentators as I've tried watching sports without them and it just doesn't work. But the interviewers are just on a foreigh jolly and we don't need them.

Strap a camera and mic to all 311 Team GB athletes and we can hear them whenever we want. And more to the point, when THEY want. Let us call them up on Skype or something so we can talk to them after every event too. That's the way forward.

And it's not just the Olympics. Oh don't get me going on footy interviewers.

Just don't.

Spurned Pointers

Don't panic, this isn't going to be a post about my sad love life. I don't do one sentence posts.

No, this is about my day out yesterday at Spurn Point, or Spurn Head as it's sometimes called.

First, lets have a little map.

The picture-in-picture shows England. Bet you didn't know it was THAT small ? And empty !

Anyway, as in the case with these sorts of map thingies, the circled bit is expanded to show the details - but you knew that already.

Sorry.

Being a clever sod, I've added Leeds myself as the map didn't show it and it's kind of crucial to my story, being my starting point an' all.

"Well children, do you see Spurn Head ? Hands up. Yes, Timmy, we all know it looks like a willy but thank you for saying it out loud."

Actually to be anatomically correct, it's a bit of a sad, limp willy and as usual the Americans have a much better one, a sort of viagra peninsula, called Cape Cod. Showoffs.

One reason for wanting to go there was because the drive would take me past The Humber Bridge which is a big, big, BIG bridge over, ah, well, The Humber. Google it. I'll get to it later.

I set off at 11am as, lets face it, I wasn't going to miss a lie-in. Sun or no sun.

So by the time I got to the end of the world and realised I'd better get some lunch before totally leaving civilisation, I came to a lovely pub.

This pub in fact.

As you can see, the road, although hardly a 4 lane highway, is at least paved and can take a car in either direction.

This view is looking back the way I'd come and you can just make out the water on the left. If we went up in a hot air balloon, we'd soon see water on the right side as well - as we're now at the start of the peninsula.

If anyone cares, I had a steak and ale pie, chips, peas and carrots. Yum.

A few hundred yards further along, I came to a sign. As it told me that there was an entrance fee, it wasn't a good sign. Literally.

I thought about it long and hard but as I'd driven for 2 hrs to get there, I wasn't going to go back now.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I HATE paying money for scenery. Well I don't mind too much if the money has obviously been ploughed back into the place to make it better for the paying customer - but this was not immediately obvious at Spurn Head. Or Point. Or Willy.

And the sign said "Private Road." Private it may have been, but road it certainly wasn't.

Oh before I go any further in this post, I think it would be a grand idea to show everyone what Spurn Head looks like.

As my hot air balloon never turned up, I've had to nick an aerial photo from Wikipedia and even then it's from 1978.

With erosion and other weathery technical stuff that I wouldn't expect you to understand, there isn't quite as much of it as we see in this image.

I've also cleaned up the photo and added a couple of arrows to make things easier to explain.

Right now we're at Point 1 with the sign and the handing over of money and the start of the private 'road'.

This road, nay track, led to Point 2 and lets just say that along the way, I lost a couple of fillings and my car now needs new shocks.

It was only wide enough for one car and when I held my hand out the windows I was able to high five the grass stalks. If you DID meet a car coming the other way, it was up to one of you to find a passing area and thankfully there were plenty of them. An SUV would've lost a coat of paint. A truck would've lost it's wing mirrors and an RV would've lost the V.

At the end of this 3.5 mile track, there is a simple black and white lighthouse which was built between 1893 and 1895. It's just a shell now as it closed in 1986.

Daphne had told me that when they went to this area some years ago, they were able to go up inside the lighthouse. No doubt some kill joy from Health & Safety came for a visit and said "oh no, no, no. This will never do. Someone could jump off the top and hurt themselves.
Whatever next ? Base jumping ?"

And so the doors are now firmly locked and no one can get a lovely view of the peninsula without renting a helicopter or a basketball player.

I left in a huff.

There was a car park area at Point 2 and although the 'road' went on for about two hundred more metres, only official coastguard vehicles could use it to get to their buildings.

I parked up and walked.

I could've headed right and onto the sandy area which goes all the way around the 'head' but I wanted to get to the VERY end of the peninsula. This involved following a convoluted path up and down through the vegetation and often this path, which was simply made by the footsteps of thousands of visitors over the years, split into more paths.

I couldn't see too far ahead and tried to pick any path that I hoped would take me to the end. On one occasion I managed to return to a place I'd passed before and I got a bit of a panic attack as I'm not at my best in a maze. I'd not brought any jaffa cakes.

Suddenly I heard the sound of waves breaking on the shore and I literally burst through the last of the vegetation and came out onto the very point of Spurn Point. Feeling like Dr. Livingston, I sank to my knees in the soft sand and thanked God for my safe deliverance !

Then I went back to the car and drove home.

The End.

Well no, but I know my travel posts can be a bit long at times so I'll leave the rest till tomorrow. It's late and I'm off to bed............

I Think I've Got A Tan !!!!

Yes folks, the sun showed itself this morning and so it's time to rejoice. Hurrah.

Like other UK bloggers, I've been moaning recently about the lack of global warming reaching our shores and to be honest, nothing much changed today as far as some decent summer temperatures are concerned.

But being part of a nation that generally regards a glass with a dribble of liquid in it as being half full, I need to give credit where it is due and for whatever reason, we got sunshine this morning.

So slapping on the sun cream and wearing my summer thong for the first time, I headed out for a long walk to make the most of the sunshine. By the time I got to the end of the drive I decided I'd been conned by that sunshine as it wasn't that warm at all. Mid 60's (18c) in fact.

So I came back inside and reappeared 5 minutes later wearing a much more sensible shell suit and my Hogwarts scarf and gloves set, a Christmas pressie from a distant relative. Well not quite but I did have a thick t-shirt on and went back to my jeans. Ah well. At least I was outside.

I went to my usual rural path, Manor House Lane, that leads past the local golf course and on out into the countryside.

Having been sat on my backside for the last few weeks, I didn't want to overdo it on my first walk outdoors - so I really just wanted to get out into the fresh air and any exercise I got from it would be a bonus.

I love this narrow road as it's so close to my house and yet it immediately takes me away into a world of peace and quiet, a world of simple but relaxing views.

Just a few hundred yards along the road, it bisects one of the holes on Alwoodley Golf Course as you can see from this link. I've placed a red circle just below a bunker/sand trap which is almost totally hidden by the trees in this aerial photo map.

This is because I took a photo of this gentleman playing out of that very bunker and both of us were glad he managed it at the first attempt.

Later, when we met as he crossed the road to get to the next hole, he said if he'd known I was taking photos, he'd have got a hole in one.

Bless.

I told him that next time he should just assume I'll be there - see if that helps his score !

It looked like he had the course to himself as not only was he a solo golfer but I never saw another golfer anywhere else. I guess the shock of dry weather had still to sink in with most golfers or else the wives had dragged them off shopping.

(Well, gotta get a sexist comment in somewhere.)

I was still just over a mile from my house and as the sun was still shining, on I went. I was intoxicated with the fresh air I think but after almost 2 miles, I decided enough was enough and turned around before I came to the main Harrogate Road.

On the way back I came across a line of huge sunflowers and as I'd never taken a photo of one before, I did this time as it seemed to sum up how I was feeling.

And here it is. Not exactly a Van Gogh effort but good enough for me today....and a lot cheaper.

Back home after my 4 mile walk I rested up and looked out the window.
The sun had gone and a huge black cloud was heading towards the house.

It must've veered off as the rain never came but once again I was back to looking at a dull, overcast sky.

But I'd seen the sun, albeit briefly. Long enough to get out and have a lovely walk.

Considering the crap summer we've had so far this year, never mind being half full, my cup had overflowed.

In the words of a hundred Elvis lookalikes, thank you very much.