God bless you my son.... it's Friday once more.....

on any desert island, 

even on a Friday 

it pays to have a little faith

.... so how about the gospel

 according to the.....

Grey Reverend

A naked lady for my Friday desert island .....

..... disc

...... now I must stress....... it has nothing what so ever to do with the fact that she is naked..... but not heard this song for ages..... but what a great rousing Friday desert island disc.....

So if you are out there

Thank you....
yes you...

...... and Alanis.... put some clothes on me duck
before ya catch ya death of cold....

Absolutely bloody marvellous......

.... it's bit of a cliché to say there's always shite on the telly, but in truth there is....and then just very occassionally.... only once in a blue moon...... and a program comes on and you think......

Marvellous....... 

absolutely bloody marvellous......

Well that happened last night BB2 9pm. In the dirge of current news, up pops a real life, truely true story about a man.... an ordinary man.... but actually Neil Baldwin is no ordinary man.....

Nello is a legend 

in his own lifetime

The program was done in the form of a Biopic......  but with real life interjects...... Toby Jones portrays the man wonderfully but without self indulgence.....

As I was watching, I kept getting a flash of Forrest Gump, but every time kept telling my self in my head........ no no noooooo he's not Forrest Gump............ he is real and he just came across as a wonderful human being...... Then you kept getting this hint of 'learning difficulties' and you had to keep stopping yourself..... this guy does not have learning difficulties.... this guy has worked it all out....whilst the rest of us fumble around in the dark.....

The great Manchester United star player, Lou Macari.......  

why are you always so happy Nello ? ......

because I tell myself to be happy.....came the honest reply..... 

This is not a story about football, this is a marvellous story about a man who loves football.

Why the BBC put this out at 9pm in the garden shed of BBC2 is beyond me..... this should be prime time viewing and I defy anyone to watch it and not admit what a marvellous human being Neil Baldwin is.

As at the time of this posting, it is still available on iPlayer and you could do a lot worse than invest 90 minutes of your life and watch it.... you'll be sick as a parrot if you don't and over the moon if you did......

All good things are wild, and free

Following the theme of what's between your legs......

well men have outies.....

women have innies.....

and the cyclist

Robert Forstermann

one can only guess .....

maybe he has a ding-a-ling ?

Grammar can be quite important I suppose.....[postscript]

... I never really see myself as a skilled wordsmith..... my tiping is shut.... my spilling is rubesh and I reelly mist learn to porff read much butter..... but there are times when it is important to get the right words perfect.....

Imagine a woman had a board man between her legs...... this would conjure up a whole host of notions, not least of which she would be thinking that she had lost her mojo.....

If it was man who had a board man between his legs...... well I know we live in enlightened liberal times, but you would still be thinking.....erm erm ..... things in the down stairs dept not all that they should be.....

So when I say I have a board man between my legs I need to make sure I get it right and put in the right words and meaning..... so when I say I have a board man between my legs* .... it's not so much as a man who is board but a boardman..... a team carbon boardman that is ..... and I am chuffed to buggery I have a boardman between my legs.....

 

I don't claim to be a great officinado on bikes and there are many out there who will tell you there are much better bikes than a Carbon Fibre Boardman racing bike, but for a variety of reasons this bike is a perfect choice to make.

For a starters, it is cheaper than cheese. Per kilogram it is 1/7th the price of donkey cheese plus you can buy it on the Halfords ride to work scheme at the maximum limit of £1,000 for the scheme. There are other R2W schemes other than Halfords.

But what other product do you know, [leaving all promotional discounts aside] that you walk into a shop and the assistance says yes sir that will cost £1,000 and then when you get to the checkout you only have have to give him £680. [It doesn't quite work like that, but it's the same effect]

Essentially that's how the R2W scheme works and it is brill. You need your employer to agree to sign up first, but as I own the company that was a piece of piss.

I had already planned to buy a Carbon Boardman second hand via ebay, and I was amazed how many new unused ones there were for around £800. 1 seller had claimed he had gone into halfords and bought a £1,000 bike on a whim and the next day decided he wouldn't ride it so was looking to sell it for £800..... yeah right.... who buys a £1,000 bike on a whim !

But when I looked into the R2W scheme operated by Halfords it was simple. The Company registers for the scheme. The employee applies to the employer for a bike. The company buys the bike and the employee buys it from the company out of his wages over a 12 month period.

But and this is the brill bit....... the employee buys it income tax and NI tax free. So instead of spending £1,000 out of his wages on a bike the government allows him to keep the tax on that amount and he only has to pay £680 for the bike...... so actually the bike was cheaper new....... than me buying off some ebay knob and now it is only 9.67% the price of donkey cheese.....

And it is a fab bike on which to ride to work to...... added to which I get this sort of scenery on my drive ride to work.

but remember

if you are going to have a board man

make sure you get the right sort of 

boardman

always use the right grammar

today I am using

London

* they really are my Dorothy shoes

[postscript.... a few days after posting this I thought of course...... 

another great SoD to accompany this post]

who else but the great Iggy

I bet he likes cycling

It is a kind of saying good-bye I suppose.......

.... I posted before about saying good bye to someone you know you will  never see again.... even though you and they will still continue to walk the same earth....

But funerals are different..... you are sort of saying good-bye....... but in a way it's too late.

So there I sat...... this time last week, in Mansfield.......listening to a saddened brother giving a very moving tribute to his older sister, given in Mandarin.... I didn't have a clue what he said, but like listening to a sad song, sung in a foreign language, you [I] just seem to understand.

As her brother gave his address...... I was sat square in front of him, and at the end he just stood there not knowing what to do next, I looked at him and he looked at me...... there was an acknowledgment.... and you could sense he didn't want to be saying this goodbye, not in Mandarin, not in English, not in any language....

Afterwards, as I left the funeral, I gave him my support for the way he spoke movingly about his sister..... I don't think he had a clue what I was saying.... but his other elder sister translated for me.

Of course we should never have met at all, he lives in China and I in Suffolk and yet 2 strangers brought together in Mansfield..... I say we should never have met, simply because his sister should never have died.... she was but a couple of months away from her 52nd birthday.... but she didn't die at god's hands..... she died because in a moment of madness, some evil fuckwit stabbed her but once and that is all it took to take away that life....

She was beautiful.... a kind caring, intelligent wonderful human being.......who has left this life far too soon.

But it was not just her brother and sister left bereft, there was/is my cousin, her husband..... who not only lost his wife to this terrible act but it was he who discovered her body..... what do you say to a man who has suffered this loss ?...... I didn't know what to say..... so as 2 middle aged men, I hugged him and beckoned him to stay strong.....

But it was not just her husband who suffered this loss too...... there was/is her 2 teenage daughters.... this is not what they should have to remember for the rest of their lives..... It is bad enough them losing their mum so prematurely....but in this manner...... what do you say to them ?

I was honest, I said to them I didn't know what to say for their loss..... it is never right for a middle aged man to hug a teenage girl....not these days...... I hugged them both and told them they had our love.

That's the thing with funeral's you are never sure what you should say.... for my dad's it was easier.... the words were etched in my heart.... I just had to find the courage to get them out in front of his family and friends.... it was not easy but as I stood next to his coffin I am glad I did......

And so after the funeral I said my good byes to the people there, many of whom were strangers to me.... thinking this was likely the last time I would speak/see many of them again..... I had almost completed the drive to my home in suffolk.....when up flashed my cousins name on the mobile.....

I stopped the car and as we spoke, he told me how when he had got home from his wife's funeral, the hospital had rung him.... to tell him his mother had died in the past hour.......

So it is, I find my self heading back for the funeral of my Auntie..... 

my god mother..... 

my cousins mum, 2 teenage girls grandmother....... 

I am sure I will still not know what to say to them when I get there....

fighting to keep him alive....... fighting to take his life......

Cancer is shit.......... and IS is shit......

What a contrast in yesterday's news...... the parents of Aysha King put in a Spanish jail....simply because they want to keep their son alive....

I am no doctor, and I know nothing of the family, so I hold no qualification to say whether one treatment or the other is appropriate for this young boy...... but what is appropriate is that his parents are fighting to keep him alive and still some fookwit[s] thought that the best way to handle this situation was to create fugitives out of them.

This world is without doubt as fooked up as it can be.....

We have 2 ordinary people fighting for the sanctity of life for their son........

And then juxtaposed in the same news we have once more, the brutal ending of yet another life.

The sympathy we have for the King family is matched by the frustration we must feel at seeing Steven Sotloff at the end of his short life.

In much that same way as Aysha Kings parents were put in jail, then no doubt Steven Sotloff's parents are now in jail too.....but theirs is a life sentence.

The murder of Steven Sotloff will achieve nothing but misery..... in much the same way as any other murder does....

On this coming Friday, I am due to attend the funeral of my cousins wife....she was brutally murdered.... she was not beheaded but she died at the hand of a knife..... she was 49 years old with 2 teenage daughters....... what does murder ever achieve ?

For all the emotional effort to keep Aysha King alive and yet life can so easily be taken away....

One thing is for me, quite clear..... 

IS will not stop this murderous campaign.... 

but how will it be stopped ? who knows..... 

but whilst there are Kings on this earth at least there is hope.

Steven Sotloff

...and talking of Jesus....

by the christ.... 

was this guy funny or what...

God moves in mysterious ways.... there's an app for everything.....

At the weekend, out of the window I caught sight of a prim and proper lady walking onto our driveway, but before I had chance to intercept her, she had come through the back gate and was standing at the back door...... but my problem was simple....

I had just stepped out of the shower, and not only was I naked from the waist up, I was also naked from the waist down.......

I looked down at her through the bedroom window, but doing my best to disguise my nakedness.... erm hello can I help you ? I asked ....

Good Morning she replied..... have you found god yet ?

Me [neé naked man] ..... erm no... still looking for me deodorant ....

Prim lady: .... Oh.... perhaps I could help you find him ?

Me: Actually, I would like to ask you to help me find the deodorant, but as I am sans clothes, I am not sure it would be appropriate...... [ trust me I am no Adam and she was certainly no Eve...and there are no apple trees in my garden....]

Me: I would love to talk, but it's not convenient right now... I am between clothes so as to speak.... do you have a leaflet you could put in the post box or something ?

Prim lady: Sorry, yes of course I do. Thank you and if you get time to read the leaflet we'd love to hear from you.

Sometime later and fully dressed, I emptied the post box, and sure enough there was her leaflet.... but what struck me most was the biblical image of a smart-phone on the front.....no longer can we just use the phrase bible pushers..... now it seems we have QRreader pushers.....

of course what this now means is....

I now have.....

my own personal.....

James Foley

...... how in god's name do we once again find ourselves questioning the morality in life ......

Of course James Foley is not the first person to be brutally murdered in this way, and throughout the history of man's time on this planet there are countless examples of this brutality whether in warfare, or just plain evil.... not that many days ago I reflected upon the image of a child said to be holding a severed head.

Even my favourite artist Caravaggio saw the potence of the image in his painting of David with the head of Goliath in 1610.

If you read E B Sledge With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa you will read one man's sometimes moving but always candid observations on man's brutality to man during warfare..... and I don't mean just firing bullets at each other....and worse still it was not unilateral in it's brutality....

But James Foley wasn't a soldier.... he was just an ordinary bloke trying to find his way through the shit of life... but beyond that ordinariness, with a camera instead of a gun, he took aim and sought to make the world a better place..... sadly he was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time..... in much the same way as the passengers on the malaysia airlines flight MH17 [and sadly they were not the first to ever suffer this fate], but those passengers were in the wrong place at the wrong time.... and all for what ?

What makes James Foley's execution stand out more than any other [do you remember Ken Bigley ?] .......I suppose it is because his seems to be the first YouTube beheading execution....

I wonder if now on the twittersphere we will have the celebrity hashtag selfies holding up their signs pleading for beheadings to be banned ?

What is interesting is the amount of vacuous debate surrounding the video released.... with many of the main news outlets with their feigned protection of our virtues..... oh it is just too shocking for us to show you the video.... seemingly we even have the Metropolitan Police suggesting that anyone who views the video is committing an offence....... what utter crap....

There is no doubt, the video is shocking and it is painful to see.... but it does not actually show the act of killing James Foley, it shows that sad moment but a breath before..... and then the image of the aftermath of such a brutal act......

Viewing the video is not going to change events, it will not turn back time, nor is it supporting or advocating extremism..... but what is interesting is we look at Caravagio's painting without flinching..... we see adverts on the TV for so called entertainment games... we look at the violence it portrays without flinching..... ah but it's not real..... people cry.....

"There is a soldier in all of us"......... no there fucking isn't !

Maybe that's it........maybe the world does need to see the video of James Foley....

maybe then people can see just how evil this is..... 

to see just how wrong his death is...... 

to see what a waste of his life it was/is..... 

who knows then maybe we will wake up to this madness

We can only but hope his death means something........

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

WH Auden

Red and yellow, and pink and green.....

just when you haven't seen a rainbow for ages and then 2 come along at once....

God knows how the world was created, it is one of those mysteries of life, and yeah yeah scientist tell you they know how it was done.......... religionist will swear blind they know how it was created....but sometimes you see things in this world and think....fook how ? why ?

Rainbows are quite wonderful things, but not a clue why the song talks about pink when pink is not in the rainbow....who knows maybe the lyricist was colour blind drunk... but they say at the end of a rainbow there is a pot of gold.....

So I stopped the car and blow me down......... I could see the end of the rainbow.....

And sure if enough if you take a step back this is what you see.......

a pot of .......

this is a great version too....

you can never cease to be amazed by the beauty of this world.....

Suicide is still an ugly beast.......

..... and I still know very little about it, nor what drives someone to take that ultimate step

I am not really sure why we see the death of a complete stranger as a conduit for our out pourings.... and truth be know,  I never knew the bloke.... no reason why I should...

But he entertained me, and to me that is a plus in anyone ......

Not only was he a fine comedian but he was a fine actor too.... some of his films were stinkers.... but there was the obvious wonderful movies too ..... but what ever character he played.... he made you believe in the character .... not the person playing the character.

The world according to Garp, is a book by John Irving and no matter how many times I have picked that book up it has defeated me, and that is rare for a book to do that....

But amongst a fine cast, I have seen the film version a countless times, and each time he brings the book alive ......

One other fine movie was/is  ...... What dreams may come .... not one of his most publicized films, albeit from 1998, and I don't think many commentators will reference it today.... but a film I tripped up over whilst remote control clicking...... and like the world according to garp, he played the part so well.

I am old enough to remember the TV - Mork & Mindy, which many have already spoken of, but it never did it for me..... but nevertheless this guy could read the telephone directory and make it sound funny.

It is speculated that he took his own life, 

and it seems most likely that will be given as the official reason....... 

I have no idea how many people take their own life each day, 

99.999999% of whom we will never hear about..... 

but it all goes to show just what complex people we are.....

Look ear........

What a stark contrast.....

One young boy....... so pleased to have ears to play with.....

And one young boy ......... so pleased to have someone else's ears to play with....

I think I prefer the image of Kieran Sorkin ...... his story is so much more endearing than that of Khaled Sharrouf’s son...... we are not told the name of the son.... but holding a severed head ..... definitely one for the family album......

Does this deserve a SoD..... honestly ? .....surely not.... we can only look at one and smile, and the other look and despair....

I blame the parent ......Khaled Sharrouf......

IF 

THERE IS 

ANYTHING 

THAT WILL 

ENDURE 

THE EYE OF 

GOD 

because 

it is pure 

IT IS 

THE SPIRIT 

of 

A LITTLE 

CHILD

what head are you wearing today.... ?

for my Friday desert Island SoD slot..... I am wearing a radio head...... 

and a triple header too

from  Rainbows to

Fake plastic trees*

whilst left high and dry inbetween...

* and so the story goes, that it was seeing My Elvis live that inspired them to get this song to it's finished format. You can easily see why that story may just well be the reflection of truth

When skies are blue, and fields are green....... on days like these....

Before I reached the grand old age of 8 years and I was in to Led Zeppelin and Bowie..... it was the music of my parents that I sort of remember.....

I remember the sound rather than particularly the songs or the singers..... some stick in the mind like ....how could you forget...... Lily the Pink..... what a song.....

I remember as a young child we had a radiogram, and I would spin the dial as fast as I could, and it would spin through the various radio stations..... I think I did it because I loved spinning the dial, not because my parents music taste was shite......

I don't recall Elvis being a big favourite in my house, although he did some great tracks... it was more like Tom Jones..... Roy The Big O Orbison.... god he was fantastic and taken too soon..... there was even some Mario Lanza.....and then there was my choice of Today's Friday Desert Island disc.....

Boy could this guy sing.... a voice like velvet... and whilst I have no visual recollection of him, countless times that velvet voice of his resonated from that radiogram....

Today's SoD is  one of my all time favorites of his, and sets the opening scene for one of the most iconic English movies of the 1960's [forget the shite of the 2003 remake, bloody dicks should have left well alone !].......

Francis Ford Coppola achieved the same great type of opening scene in Apocalypse Now ......

But how many times have you I seen that scene in the Italian job....... Lamborghini Miura .......and wanted to be that driver.......ach erm....... but only up to the point before he entered the tunnel......after that there was a digger in there !...and as the saying goes shit happens.... But if ever there was a voice..... a song.... to accompany that drive.... this is it....

don't touch that dial.....

on days like these
I hear sweet music float around my head

I wonder what became of you......