It is estimated there are 7 Billion people alive on earth, I would like to think there is only one of me. Alas if only that were true. I think we are not unique and whilst we are products of our DNA, it does not make me the only one of me. For all my belief that I have something new and unique to say by blogging, I am not unique and my words are not new......they are just the random words mixed up in my head and then re-arranged into sentences posted on to this blog to make it sound like me.
...more than enough has been written about the passing of Lou Reed, that I am not sure there is anything wondrous I can say, for which anyone would gue... oh I hadn't thought of that....
But as a fan of Bowie/Iggy/Byrne et al, how could I not be a fan of Lou Reed. In days before MP3's and online ripping of music, we had the wonder of modern science..... the cassette tape....
So in 1980 as a just turned 18 year old, enjoying the sights of Singpore I didn't need to worry about waiting 30 years for digital pirates to rip my music for me..... the locals were doing it with 50p tapes....
All the latest European and USA artists and Albums, and some prior ones too..... and so it was I topped up my collection [yep guilty as charged] and one of those albums..... Lou Reed and Transformer..... from 1972. Not sure if as 9 year old rather than a 18 year old I would have been into the music of Lou Reed, but I sure was in 1980......
and so the storm is over and it's all beautiful nature......
I remember life at sea and some storms left you wondering if the roller coaster would ever stop......
Regardless of the size of vessel, the seas can be unforgiving...... seeing this picture reminded me of many a storm I encountered when at sea.....
but when the thunder and lightning stops, you are left with this view.......
This was the scene over looking the Indian Ocean from the beach in Perth, WA at 5am on the morning of my dad's funeral......
I suppose that is what you call
beautiful nature*....
*[I do confess to only have one album by Finley Quaye..... the album from which this song is taken and it's highly recommended if you like today's SoD... not sure why he's not more of a household name but he has one of those voices, whereby if your brian is being turned to mush by the storms of life...... calm can soon be restored......]
.... For some people F1 may be considered boring, and even some sports fans consider F1 is not a proper sport....but for me, who has always loved sport, watching and participating, and also daydreamed about cars since a young age, admiring a Ford Consul before I could reach the door handle...then F1 cars reach the pinnacle.
Not only do they make a wonderous noise, but an F1 car from any era....... are simply works of art.
During one of my many trips to Essen Techno classica car show, I purchased for a modest price, a signed original photograph of a John Surtees Ferrari.
When I got home, more out of curiosity, I wrote to John Surtees with a copy of the picture, just out of interest like....what a fab bloke. He wrote back within a week, confirmed the signature was his, and despite the photo being taken some 40 years previously he told me all about the car, and even to the fact that the picture was taken in the team garage at Monza. Funny enough john Surtees does not appear in the photograph, but what a top bloke...... the only man to win a world championship on two wheels and fours wheels.... and he was gracious to reply promptly to my letter.....
So as beautiful as John Surtees Ferrari from the 1960's was/is [he said it drove like a pig, and not the one he won the F1 championship a year earlier] for me an F1 car from any era is a work of art.
Regardless of whether you think F1 is boring, I defy anyone to go to a Formula One Grand Prix, and not come home full of the joys of these cars. I was 42 years old before I had my induction to my first F1....... and where else, but the spiritual home of sports cars, the Italian Grand Prix in Monza.
My best mate and I drove through the sunflower drenched fields of France [not literally through the fields] and then through [or more like around] the mountains of Switzerland to arrive in Monza late on a sunny summer/autumn friday afternoon. The 3 days we allowed ourselves for the drive there were fantastic, we admired the view, laughed at the inanity of life and listened to a fantastic sound track. One of those drives you don't want to end....but when it did end what a place to end up at.....on a green field park, across the road from the Monza circuit.
€uro 45 the bloke said in his italianglish..... each ? per night ?.... I asked....no, €uro 45 for 2 people 2 tents [we might be best mates but we do need our private sleep, Morecambe and Wise we are not] and the car, for 3 nights..... a bargain we thought...... after 3 nights we soon realised why it was so cheap. If you can imagine camping on a 24 hour fairground site and then you will know.
So on the night of our arrival, after some hearty beers we settled in for sleep [in our separate tents]. Given this was our first F1, we did not appreciate just how fanatical some F1 fans can be, especially Austrian fans of Juan Pablo Montoya. These Austrians were parked behind our tent[s]. My mate and I had small tents side by side.....
.......and so to Saturday morning...... what in fook's name is that loud noise ripping out my ear drums...... It seems the Austrians had switched on their music full throttle and in effect converted mine and my mates tents into sub-woofers..... clearly these fanatical Austrian start each day with their F1 rally cry, which is now today's SoD.......
So as we were awoken with our ear drums stripped bare, the sun was shinning, we got the bacon sizzling and with the sound track of F1 cars hurtling around Monza, had one of the most fantastic weekends of my life...... as for the Austrians....they may have got me from my slumber in a most un expected way, but whenever I hear this song, I am always minded of that great weekend.
....and as for the race, well on race day the Austrians had lager for breakfast, and as we bumped into them on the way out of the circuit, it seems they had had lager for lunch and tea and had been snacking on it all day as well. Worse still Juan Pablo Montoya had won the race and they were in sparkling form.
So on return to the fair grou....ach erm...camp site, which was now emptying, as we were staying one more night, we lifted our tents and carried them to the other side of the field..... that night we could still hear the Austrians celebrating...... we smiled very loudly......
....from the heat of the blue nile with their downtown lights we go to the cold of snow patrol and the brightness of 100 million suns....
I did once read that Snow Patrols - Chasing Cars was the most played sound track in movies/tv/adverts, not sure if that is correct but it certainly put Snow Patrol on the map.
Snow Patrol hit my radar with a late night niche TV program Nylon ~ New York/London. The usual rules.... you hear a song and wonder wow... but Nylon was before the days of Shazam....but after a little bit of research and low and behold I was hooked.
And so for my 46th birthday I was given a copy of 100 Million Suns and the following day 10th January 2009, I slipped the DvD into the car radio and on a long drive home after a fab night out...up popped this song.... it is in fact 3 songs wrapped into one....
Petula Clarks downtown gives me the link for song number 2, in other words any excuse to listen to the Blue Nile.....
This came from their second album, Hats... it took at least 5 years to wait for this album to appear, after A walk across the roof tops..... but like any Blue Nile/Paul Buchanan album worth waiting a life time for, as they never disappoint.
From the intensity of two 18+hr working days in Warsaw to a Suffolk village hall......
One minute I am absorbing huge amounts of data, trying to analyse the where fores and why fores of who knicked a full truck load of TV's and it's financial implications and then on my return home, I am press ganged into attending my local village hall fashion show.
To be a fair a lot of effort was put into this show and the money raised helps pay for the up keep of things such as the village hall, which to many in my village [including me] is seen as one of the building blocks of community life. We can have all the trappings of modern living, plentiful food, gadgets and their constant upgrades on demand, wall to wall reality shows but you can never ignore the simplicity of human spirit joined by a simple goal like raising a few quid for the village amenities.
There I sat towards the back of the room, watching the audience [mainly ladies] and oh how they laughed and smiled at the banter of the compères..... then there was the models..... not stick thin expressionless no marks..... but village members....Queenie.....oh gosh how she milked the lime light..... she looked a million dollars and boy did she know it.....
And so there I sat, the juxtaposition of my life..... one minute stuck in a Warsaw board room for 2 days as we trawled through reams of documents and emails analysing every word, every detail, as though it was the most important thing in the world.....and yet the following day the most important thing was that no one tripped up or missed their cue.
And so at the end of the fashion show, we CvL [clapped very loudly] and SvL [smiled very loudly] and we congratulated the participants and the organisers for a wonderful evening.........
Two days in Poland may pay the bills, but two hours in my village hall rewards the soul.....
One of the songs that accompanied the strutting models was a song I've not heard for years but always love it...... then it gave me the idea for this weeks themed SoD's..... to be loosely linked by the title...
.... after listening to Echo & the Bunnymen yesterday I had forgotten just how good this band is....
Sadly they are a man down from the original line up, after Pete De Freitas was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1989. Plus the Bunnymen had been through bit of an hiatus during this time.... but having seen them at the height of their popularity in the early 80's and more recently since their reformation.... they loose nothing of their appeal.
I love some of the current bands and music, as I think my SoD's can testify.... but there is still some great music since the 70's & particularly 80's. It is true that some 80's pop sync has not lasted well, but you only have to look at the likes of David Byrne and his ilk to know that some music can be played and replayed in any era and still sound good.
... and I was going to prattle on about how it was only a jooooke.... not a very funny one but a joke never the less....but instead of commenting about Adrian Chiles jokes about poles, it seems later this week I'm off to Poland* instead, so may be I'll get the joke there..... so instead of prattling on, I was minded of this song....so I am listening to the whole album whilst I do proper work [as opposed to improper work .... like say a pole dance].....
This album, probably their most seminal work, takes me back to my formative years studying to be a ship's officer....
Hit it Ian...
and some 27 minutes or so
into the album and I remember
I love this song....
almost as much as pies
*[Once more I take to the air with Wizz Air....... I do so hope it's not another case of Whiff Air ! ]
So it's Friday morning, and desert Island disc time again, and this time instead of my doctor being the reason for me listening....it was Jewsons fault this time....
And so I am listening to Carolyn McCall, the very intelligent and articulate CEO of Easyjet. But I did start to wonder if really Desert Island Discs is merely a narcissist charter. Truthfully, we are all narcissists to a greater or lesser extent, even blogging lends it's self very well to those of us suitably afflicted...... but on DiD the interviewees talk about their lives whilst the divine Kirsty blows smoke up their arses and then we get to listen to the personal taste of the interviewees music and if it matches ours...we gue.... oh yeah I agree, I like you...... and if it don't, our mind switches off....
Carolyn McCall is a very successful person and I like how she de-genders men by calling them blokes, she doesn't have to prove she is any male equal in the boardroom, she is clearly the boss.
There is no doubt that when her DNA was put into the blending tub, she got a very healthy smattering of cleverness [with only a teenie weenie dash of smugness that she got the xx chromosomes]..... you cannot but admire both her wit and wisdom and what she has made of her life..... she has many admirable traits.... but I was listening against the back drop of the just announced death of Maria de Villota.
You may not have heard of Maria but she offered up, and I think delivered many of the admirable traits that are exhibited by Carolyn McCall.........Maria was intelligent, smart, winning in a man's world, attractive, successful..... so listening to how successful Carolyn McCall was/is and yet Maria de Villota's life ended today at a mere 33 years old without the chance for her to achieve her full potential. On Monday she was due to promote her autobiography...... Life is a gift.
Now don't get me wrong, not for one second do I in any way denigrate Carolyn McCall for there is much to admire about her, but it's the contrast of 1 life good -vs- 1 life lost.
2 comparable women slightly overlapping generations, but for Maria De Villota it seems like there was her 360 degree sliding door moment last year.
She was on the cusp of breaking onto the front row grid of Formula One, a very male dominated world and then one day during a test drive at Duxford Airport, at the end of her run, for reasons which have never been identified her car ran straight into a stationery equipment truck.
She was lucky to survive, but she lost her right eye and with it her hopes of making big time in F1. I for one would have loved to have seen her race with the big boys and show them a thing or two.....but here we are little over a year later and she has left this world.... the cause of her death far too early for us observers to know.
I would have liked to think that Maria De Villota in some years to come, could have been on Desert Island Disc's telling us [in a narcissistic way] all the wondrous things in her life.....like the time she became the first woman world F1 champion in the bloke dominated world.
I saw the BBC headline for this link .......... Print your own bladder ....and my only reaction was.... why ? ...... why the hell would I want to print a 3d version of my own bladder ?
But who knows...... maybe this bloke had and he was testing it out ? Maybe he is a waterboy.....it looks like he was ready to exhibit the whole of his moon......
Since first posting this, I then saw this with my next click on BBC dot com......
This headline caught my eye, because one of my top 10 is a drink of water. Reading the article I did think...blimey I'd have never worked that out ...... drink more water and you pee more....
But no matter how isotonic I make my body by my water intake it will never make me a finely tuned athlete but it still tastes good. I recall working in the Middle East in the height of their summer in my younger days. Walking around the deck of a ship on cargo duty under the Dubai midday sun and then tasting that first sip of ice cold water mixed with the first gasp of air conditioned air and there was nothing on the planet that could beat it.
For sure, fast cars, pretty women, sex, money all can bring a sense of euphoria to the party but at that second of consumption in that heat I would take the glass of water any time. Of course in the less warmer climes of good ole blimey, water still tastes good...but 8 glasses a day ? I might be a waterboy but I am definitely only a 1-a-day man....and I have no intention of getting my ars....ach erm moon out to flash anyone.......
.... I see that John McCririck seems to be making bit of a horse of him sen.....
Every time you hear him wittering on these last couple of days, he keeps banging on about how channel 4 fired him because of his age.... and that it is outrageous and he will fight on behalf of all those who are targeted by this particular .... ism
I'd like to think the BBC report was spot on [but who can tell these days] but assuming accuracy in the reporting of JM's comment:
McCririck admitted there had been plenty of complaints to Channel 4 about his behaviour, and accepted descriptions of him as "nasty, revolting, rude", "boorish", and "obnoxious and sexist".
But he added: "I was fully aware that Channel 4 approved of it because they kept on having me on their programmes."
So what JM hasn't yet worked out, is that by taking him off their programmes they no longer approved [tacitly or otherwise] of his "nasty, revolting, rude", "boorish", and "obnoxious and sexist" behaviour.
So McCririck was fired not because of his....... age......... but because ......by his own admission..... he was/is {delete as appropriate} ..... nasty, revolting, rude, boorish, obnoxious and sexist in his behaviour.
I reckon John McCririck is odds on favorite to lose his case against Channel 4 et al. When will so called celebs learn..... control your behaviour .... it's not big and it's not clever....
Cue 2 great SoD
and they're under starters orders
it's neck and neck
oooh dear McCririck has fallen at the first hurdle
... we are a funny breed.... maybe it's because of the wide access to stories across the internet and it's somewhat instantaneous nature that we see so much, that at times can be ...... is there a truely a parallel universe ?
There you are, seeing the reported suffering of children in Syria, brutality in Keyna, financial mismanagement by governments all around the globe, the frustrations of Mark Neary [and he's not alone it seems], and then with the next click you are greeted with this......
I looked at this and thought are these people really serious, they have gone to all this trouble, with Big Freedia organising it........ just looking at some of the people, it's like nothing else matters in the world but they must writhe their arses in a rhythmic manner, one women is damn near orgasmic when the GWR bloke confirms the WORLD record for twerking.......
But hey hang on a minute..... when I thunked about it some more, perhaps I am the dumb ass.... here I sit bashing away at the keyboard bleating about the things in life that make me bleat [not all the time though] and here I sat looking at all those asses being twerked....... maybe I'm the dumbass. They are out there smiling and doing something that makes them feel good.
I agree, it's not much good to the children of Syria or those who suffered in Keyna, not much chance of bailing governments out with a twerk [its the twats in government we need to worry about] and I'm sure that twerking is not the answer to Mark Neary's challenges..... but looking at those faces [yes I did look at the faces and not the asses ....or should that be butts, as corrected by one interviewee] and gosh they were all smiling.... may be I am a dumbass after all.....
