Belle du semaine .........

.... posting the icicle works last week..... I was reminded just how many songs there are with girls names..... The list is quite large but my first encounter with such songs was Tom Jones and Delilah..... as a child of the 60's my parents were fans of Tom..... there are lot's of other obvious ones, but hopefully not so obvious...

So this week is a week of girls names..... the choice is not every song there is, because simply they are my choice of names, and my choice of songs...... but click away and if you like my SoD's I bet you find a song or two you might like......

Pick a name.... any name

             Christine                    
                                                                                             Ingrid                 
                  Jenny      
                                                       Joanna                                                      Grace
                                                                           Hermoine

                          Sarah                                                                        Patsy
                                                            Jane

Emma                                                                                            Mary

                                            Jude                       
                                                                                Karen                         Diana
    Alice
                                                 Melody

                                    Matilda                                                                           Valerie

                   Cecilia                                               Sarah [redux]             

Gloria                                                                                                    Jane [redux]

                                       Alison                               Maggie

        Suzanne                                       Angie                                       Grace [redux] 

Do you like what you are doing ?   

                       Would you do it some more ?                            

                                           

Completely barking mad .......

driving into work this morning listening to radio 4, turns out that the Deputy Assistant Commission of the Metropolitan Police Helen Ball was getting a grilling ..... as an aside..... is she the assistant to the deputy ? ..... or the deputy of the assistant ?....

Anyway turns out that the bullshit brigade metropolitan police are today rolling out a new initiative to persuade Muslim women to ring the Police's 101 help number and tell them of their anxiety about anyone of their muslim men folk going to fight in Syria... and then some specially trained PC Plod will go round to the muslim menfolk and say..... hey fella , your mum/wife/sister/daughter {delete as appropriate} reckons ya guin off to syria to get ya sen shot.......

Helen Ball is completely barking mad ! .... and apparently she is the country's most senior anti terrorist officer ..... lord help us

Is this really what the Police are there to do ? If Helen Ball thinks they are, she is delusional.....

The Police are there to up hold the rule of law in the UK, they are not there to play political agony aunt to one element of our misguided society. Does she really believe that the antidote to this sort of behaviour is a UK policing issue ?...... and the first line of contact for these Muslim woman being some script driven 101 call handler ........

I am not a fool, I know we live in complex times, and I do not jump on the band wagon of saying we need more bobbies on the beat, and heaven forbid we should arm our policemen...... The days of Dixon of Dock Green died with Jack Warner..... evein all.....

But seriously, is this new intitiave what our Police force are reduced to doing....

What next ? stopping pastie lovers moving to Cornwall to fight for homeland rule ?  They can keep their hands off the pasties..... I love pies... and I love pasties..... [they are just Cornish pies]....

But listening to the grilling that Dame Helen got this morning, being challenged as to how exactly the initiative would work in practice, and you just knew she was bullshitting her way through the interview..... you can hear her brand of bullshit here.....

Here also is the analysis from the BBC's expert politic bod Dominic Casciani:

Just a few months ago, police chiefs said that anyone returning from fighting in Syria could be stopped, arrested and charged.

This new appeal marks a huge shift in tone and it immediately raises three questions.

Firstly, how will the police actually get their message out if they don't have strong bonds with the women they are trying to reach?

Secondly, do many mothers actually know what their grown-up sons are planning?

However, the third question is perhaps the most important. Do the communities at the heart of the appeal trust the police?

There is no doubt that many Muslim families don't want their sons to go to Syria. But they also fear that if they go to the police their young men will be marked forever as terrorists - no matter what their intentions were when they left or when they returned.

I can think of a more succinct analysis:

Why are we fooking wasting tax payers money on this shit idea ?

This looks like a case for Dept S......

Jason king would get these knobs soon sorted

Happy crucifixion .......

.... I am somewhat ambivilent over matters of religion, but I was a bit perplexed by a comment made to me as I left the greatest toy shop in the world ......... Machine Mart......

Happy Easter....... the smiling assistant promoted...... he was only being nice and polite, but I was a bit mean when I said..... but I am Jewish ...... I am not Jewish, I was just being mean.....

Now, I am no great theologian, but at the time he made his comment, I just thought it odd to wish me happy Easter..... wasn't that when Jesus was crucified ? Why would I consider that a happy occasion.... sure the story goes that he rose from the dead... but he didn't actually, I mean we talk about the second coming of christ..... and let's face it David Moyes was another false alarm....

I did once see the face of christ in a cup of coffee......

And his image did once appear on the arse of a dog.... [listen to the Paul Buchanan SoD... you will not be disappointed.... although it is PB how could he ever disappoint]

But why would I think of the crucifixion as a joyous time to celebrate..... So to the assistant at Machine Mart, my apologies for being cheap in my reply.... but next time ..... how about trying....... enjoy your easter break from the daily grind at the prison of work..... or something along those lines perhaps.....

Time for a SoD

A fab track from 

the great man himself

And how could it not
be easter
without a bunny or two
a seminal track
from their seminal album
Ocean Rain.... 
not a single crap track



[assuming you like this style of music of course....]


[postscript: how did i miss this one off ??]

Heart Breaking ....... Mv Sewol

When we reflect upon news items, many times our empathy is driven by our own life experiences ......

I was born on a piece of land that could not have been much further from the sea than anywhere else in England, but from the age of 16.5 years of age my adult life has been dominated by ships and the sea ......

We may well see a ship in port and wonder how it's huge mass of steel could ever come to harm..... but in the middle of the Indian ocean as a navigating officer, on a ship a quarter of a mile long, and there were times I wondered if we might need to man the life boats ......

In more recent times, I only have to look at the vessel the MoL Comfort to see the power of the waves .......

Closer to home, it was the Herald of Free Enterprise, The Derbyshire perhaps ? - lost with all hands on deck, or what about the  Titanic ? the list could go on.... it is countless.... the Costa Concordia was but a gnats breath away from the coast line.....

But to see the reports coming in yesterday about the enormous loss of such young lives on the Korean Ferry MV Sewol..... when I think back to my own experiences at sea, I was fortunate ..... the worst I ever encountered was being on a ship hit by lightening..... which on an oil tanker can be a risky affair .......

But the sadness of tales of those lives lost, perhaps one may say needlessly lost ..... Those told to stay put inside the ship, seemingly trapped.... all they did wrong was to do as they were told.....

But what ever turns out to be the reasons, one thing is for sure......... it is heart breaking.......

Modern technology is a blessing and a curse ...... mum this might be the last chance I have to tell you I love you .......

How painful for the mum ..... why ? I love you anyway ...... she has been reunited with him .... but for other parents .......

Not a day for any music..... a poem perhaps ......

When soft the sea breeze blows, my voice will sound,
When soft the rain falls, my tears will cry,
When shadows dance upon spring tides,
You know i am here - i did not die.

When ships sail with the morning tide,
And gulls fish near our sun-kissed shore,
When the air falls with summer breeze,
You'll know i am with you - forevermore.

When the sky is yellow with the setting sun,
And horses gallop upon the noon ebb flow,
When you hear the sea whispering our names against sand,,
You will hear my voice and feel our spirits grow.

So no,my love, come rest upon rocky sands,
Feel the sea breeze caress your sullen mind,
Then will you hear my voice and see me hide,
upon the noon, upon the sea - upon the tide.

You will hear my voice and feel our spirits grow.

So no,my love, come rest upon rocky sands,
Feel the sea breeze caress your sullen mind,
Then will you hear my voice and see me hide,
upon the noon, upon the sea - upon the tide.

[source: .....]

copulating flies......

... pointing the cement to the edges of roof tiles is  nearly as boring as air travel.....

so there I was, on a sunny sunday afternoon, pondering the banality of life [and in this case death].

I could have concerned my self with the latest bullshit report on the use of dirty fossil fuels and how instead we should spend more money on windmills.... but no.... it was copulating flies that caught my attention......

I was mixing up the next batch of cement and as I reached for the water bucket, there on the surface of the water was 2 copulating flies..... not blue bottles.... [that would be too obvious] more like fruit flies, but I don't think they were even that type.... but for sure whatever they were they were copulating flies.....

So did I leave the flies in the bucket to drown in their ecstasy ? or did I pour them into the cement mix, immortalised in stone for ever ? ........ did the earth move for you dear ? .....

I say ecstasy because of course who is not to know that such flies do enjoy an orgasm when they copulate.... they were pretty well engrossed in their conduct, so much so they did not realise that they were at risk of drowning.....

Not sure I would ever risk drowning for a leg over.......

It's funny how we can become pre-occupied by the banality of life.... but of course for the flies, they wouldn't consider their life in the least bit banal..... for them, they are at the epicenter of their universe .....

It would have been easy to pour the copulating flies into the cement mix and point them into the roof for ever...... but........ in the sand I was mixing into the cement, I had earlier seen lots of ants..... trouble was, I couldn't pick out everyone of the ants..... there were hundreds of them..... I'd have been there all day just ant picking.....

So instead...... I saved the copulating flies..... it was then easier to assuage my guilt over the ants.... and with my trowel I lifted the still copulating flies onto the ground .......

Funny how ..... the ants got cemented and the copulating flies lived another day.... to colour once more......

We can't save everyone..... but we can save someone....... 

Makes you wonder who is/was more important ....... the ants ? the copulating flies ? me ?

Well as I had 3 gable ends to cement in, then at that moment in time..... it was me ........

But as the saying goes there are dogs and lamposts.... so should the ants ever take over the universe.... fook I hope they never have any gable roof ends to cement up.... other wise I am done for.......

That's what boring cementing jobs do to you

.... makes you think lots of shit..... 

at least I had 

Richard Ashcroft on the iPod 

to keep me sane....

Human Conditions

and to provide a trilogy of great RA tracks
a bonus from Alone with Everybody

[Postscript: before I went to bed, I watched the movie ....... no country for old men.... a movie I have seen countless times, but a great movie each time I have watched it ..... it is a work of fiction based on a book of the same name ...... but it seems that Anton Chigurh and real life people such as whom he portrays ..... seem to make the same choices about ants and flies.... but make those choices upon us..... the movie/book {delete as appropriate or not as the case may be} is a wonderful observational piece on the fragility of life......]

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

[Yeats]

Change every password.....you mean like everyone ?

.... what stupid fuckwit issued the press release to the BBC yesterday suggesting that we should all change everyone of our passwords because of a so called security breach in SSL code used by popular websites........

But it wasn't just the BBC, the Guardian warn us that the heart-bleed bug is a catastrophe for us all...... last night on the BBC news Rory Cellan-Jones was presenting it to us..... as if it were some government sponsored information broadcast implying you had no choice...... and this from an organisation that has wasted £100 million of license payers money on it's own IT fookup ......

Rory [if you are reading this.... and I know you do, so don't deny it] take off those stupid glasses stop looking like a twat, and get some clarity of vision please.....

I have at least 40 plus online passwords of one sort or another, which I would add, are retained in a 'secret' file, such file protected with a password ...... held on a tablet which is also password protected !!

I consider my self an atypical internet user, so say I did change each internet password I hold..... if it took on average 5 mins per password to change, and imagine there are say 10 million atypical internet users in just the UK alone, and we all followed the scare monger shite that is peddled to us [each day] that means today there would be somewhere in the region of 1 million 388 thousand 888 man days .... yes that's right man days [or women days if you prefer] ...and when I say days I mean a full 24 hour day not some poxy 7 hour working day......... all fooking about changing passwords....

no doubt to be told at some stage in the future of another internet security scare.... remember the millennium bug that wasn't...

So instead of wasting my time pissing about changing passwords...

I instead will ......

spend my time listening to great music..... 

so today I choose this one......

only because it is a great song

from a great band

and an extra bonus track.....

and finally this is a repeat
but one of my favourites.....
full volume please

Dog gone it.....

...... some days you wake up
and there are not sufficient words available
to comment ......

[perhaps other than to say........ oh my gosh just how divine is Ms Welch]

Stone Letters.......

For the weekend before last, I was in Essen Germany for a fab car show..... now if you love cars, old and new.... which I do, then you can do a lot worse than visit the Essen Techno Classica....

It has become an annual event for me and my best mate, and this year for the princely sum of £100 each, we had managed to transport ourselves by road/ferry/road, accommodate ourselves, and get our entry to the show [bear in mind the show entry fee is €uro 20 each].

So for this modest sum, we were treated [as ever] to some of the most beautiful cars ever made..... now at this point if you think cars are simply a tool for getting from A2B, then this is not the page for you..... but any way, some of the cars at the show were/are quite frankly works of art......

Modern French cars are somewhat seen as practical rather than beautiful, but one of my all time favourites has to be this..... a Facel Vega.... never heard of them ?

Well the original company went bust, but today the demand for restored cars is as strong as ever with concourse examples fetching easily in excess of £ 250,000.

Or what about this for a Citroen DS.....

I think when God invented people, he started with French and Italian women, and then next came French and Italian car designers.......

This for me, was my car of the show.... and would you believe it ... a Lancia..... how many would turn their noses up at this Lancia..... not me for sure

But then it came to a car that is in my all time top 10 of everything.......... as I say a car so beautiful it melts your retina's just to look at it......

What is interesting about this car, is that when it first went on sale it sold for around 

£ 5,500 which at the time was a lot of money for a car, but was always seen as a poor man's Ferrari..... my first introduction to the car was seeing Danny Wilde drive one on the Persuaders ...... and that was it, I was in love for ever..... despite the fact that I was only 8 years old ......

Wind the clock forwards a couple of decades or so, and around 15-20 years ago you could pick up one of these cars for around £ 25,000 - £ 30,000 dependent on condition...... The example above was I must say just beautiful beyond words..... So fabulous, that if it came to choosing between this car and Salma Hayek ..... believe you me, it would be tough..... they are both beautiful beyond words.... but the only thing that I think would swing it, is that when they are both 75 years old [and bear in mind the Ferrari is already coming up for 45 years old...... whereas the divine Salma..... oh how I swooned.... is 47 years old] is Salma will be a tad wrinkly and yet the Ferrari will be as beautiful as ever...... Sorry Salma [and if you are reading.... and I know you do....]  I do love you sooooo much but...... I am a man after all and we can be sooooo shallow.....

And if I wanted to drive the above car away from the show ..... the price ?........ 

over £ 300,000 ..... If had £ 300,000 spare would I have brought it ? of course I would....

But the thing is, the more me and my mate looked adoringly at the cars, we realised there were many in our budget range, almost equally beautiful and almost equally pristine .... but and this is the big BUT ....... so pristine, it made them nearly un-drivable ..... cars are there to be driven and enjoyed but some are so pristine that everytime you took it out for a drive you risked knocking 10 grand off the value.... So it would be stuck there..... in your garage for no one else to appreciate .....

And that is the paradox, things that are so beautiful..... they should be enjoyed, not just by 1 person ..... if I relented and agreed to have dinner with Salma, would I keep her at home and not want to take her out ? of course I wouldn't keep her indoors ..........

Then at the weekend there was the story of the Faberge Egg brought at a US Flea Market..... although not the kind of flea market I go to, considering the bloke paid £ 8,000 for .... it's not the bullshit about how it was going to be melted for scrap that caught my eye.... it was the fact that someone paid £ 20,000,000 and it was suggested that it was then going to be put away and never seen in public again..... why ? what in fook's name is that all about...... something so beautiful and rare, [see Salma] and would never be seen in public again...... madness

God gave someone the talent to make something so beautiful as the egg, and then some other knob want's to hide it away from being seen again ? bizarre.....

Imagine other creative talent....... in say films and music, if they made them never to be seen by anyone ...... and the point is  ? I did see that Wu-Tang claim to have made an album with only 1 cd copy and hoping to sell it to the highest gullible bidder ..... gimmick or high art ? 

But generally, the good news is film makers and music makers ...... share their creative talent, of course for reward ...... but still their talent is shared for us to all enjoy ...... if they didn't then I would never have got to see a very touching Japanese movie..... Departures ..... for me essentially it is the story of redemption of a father in the eyes of his son..... I have noted before the bond of father and son ....... I have spoken of my own sadness at the passing of my dad ...... and so whether it is the love of Derek Redmonds father for his son, or my love for my dad lost ...... Departures is a beautiful drive, that costs nothing to enjoy .... but, just as is the music...... is there to be shared.... and finishes with the final stone letter ....... 

And were it not for that creativity... 

then I could not share this 

my Monday SoD

and finally to .......

......  end Daniel Johnston week, my final offering......

For the cover version there were many to choose, but I choose a self publicist..... usually on youtube, where someone posts their 'own' cover version I tend to steer well clear but this time.... I was quite taken aback by this girl..... she does a very credible effort. Listening to some other cover versions, especially of Noah and the whale... she is well worth a listen on a rainy day.....

If anyone is out there, is there ? who has followed these offerings.... if you hadn't heard of Daniel Johnston before, I am sure we can all agree he may not be the most accomplished singer there has been, but like Hector said in the History Boys  ..... it is as if a hand had come out and held yours....

It was certainly holding Elena's..... when she sang this song

this has a resonating theme for.....

... many I suspect.... and again lots of cover versions but a very commendable effort by the divine Andrea...

So for Daniel

and for Andrea

we have.....

there is an acoustic offering from Andrea here.... but for some reason it only last 1m 22sec..... not quite a long time !

It's that man Glen..... and Daniel again....

...for today's offering rather than the original and cover versions, we have the original and cover version mashed up as one.....

But to keep the theme of a daily double Daniel Johnston, there is also an interview he gave.... I love the bit where he talks about people writing to him..... he says write to me... then he quickly adds with some wit.... send me money and send me money...

So strap yourself in

for today's fantastic SoD

just what a performance from

the great man himself....

send him money
send him money......

A simple little ditty about an artist growing old.......

... For today's Daniel Johnston, I heard the Glen Hansard version first, and he does do it justice....but then listening to the original, there is something about the simplicity of the original song by DJ....

So here is my

Tuesday offering

for the equally great

Daniel & Glen....