What to feed a poorly Viking:

It’s the Anniversary of ‘Custardgate’ It’s a year since I was an honoured guest of our NHS. I remember it like yesterday. I went in with the aid of a zimmer frame walking aid and walked steadily out of there ten days later without it. Better than some but not as well as others. The drugs worked. The memory lingers on, and it’s not generally a gloomy one. To get the nitty gritty out of the way I have a condition called polymyalgia. Not very pleasant, and I was a guest there to eliminate any other potential ‘nasties’. I’m a … Continue reading What to feed a poorly Viking:

Methinks you do laugh too loud.

Is that possible? I’m sorry but Americans do it far too much.We like to think we here in Britain have a brilliant sense of humour. You hear it about the regions. Liverpudlians? A breed apart, amazing sense of humour. Brummies? So dry, amazing, always get me going. The Scots, Billy Connolly? Say no more. Americans? Nah! No sense of irony? NO! Americans do comedy brilliantly. Saturday Night Live. A bedrock of some of the best in the world. A recent discovery is a stand up comedian Nate Baghatze. Dry deadpan delivery with no effingand blinding, nothing crude about him, no … Continue reading Methinks you do laugh too loud.

It’s like a cruise without the water, (actually there was quite a lot of water).

They have several ‘houses’ around the country, like big country houses in superb locations. These are the ships. They fill them with people all of at least bus pass age, then bring in the crew. The usual chefs, managers and serving staff but additionally a volunteer crew who are charged with leading these ‘passengers’ on a variety of walks in the neighbourhood. We joined the ‘ship’ in North Yorkshire for a weekend of walking and talking. Trained it up there, all quite straightforward, then the taxi from the station in Skipton, a town known for the invention of the skip, … Continue reading It’s like a cruise without the water, (actually there was quite a lot of water).

Productive days and non.

Watching most TV and scrolling is non. Productive is reading a book, almost any book that makes you think. Lying awake thinking can be both, it’s non if it’s negative going over stuff but productive if it’s determining to write something or even doing a drawing in your head. I’m sure most artists do that, if not all. They think drawings, at least I do, and I only get around to actually doing a few of those I think about.There’s a huge number of drawings in the head plans chest, but that’s about as far as they get. The journey … Continue reading Productive days and non.

Images in the memory bank

These are stored somewhere in my inbuilt memory, none exist as photos, they are sometimes life moments that you would expect to remember, like the birth of our son, being held up with his eyes open and looking all around him with no sound, and the moment we sorted out a problem with feed for our baby daughter and she was able to keep her food down. She looked like a very contented Buddha. Other moments were less life moments, just visual incidents that you might not expect to recall. Like the time I was driving out of Gloucester and … Continue reading Images in the memory bank

Before the rain

Three superb days with my very good friend Richard. Me showing off Gloucestershire to him, and him being his usual easy company as we invaded the places I like with an almost permanent commentary. There are talkers and listeners in this world and I’m one, Richard the other. He has a bone dry wit that is used to good effect as punctuation in my ramblers rambling. First day a quick tour of Leckie Hill. If you’re an Archers fan then the name might be familiar. Round here it should be called Leckhampton Hill and from it I could show him … Continue reading Before the rain

Non Runners

I’m a non runner. I’ve always been a non runner. I don’t even recall running for a bus and if I did it would be mercifully short before I gave up. Years ago at school I tried to avoid running, athletics being for the athletic, my PE reports a creative challenge for the retired prison guard who was our PE Master, the best being ” Tries hard, fails miserably”. He was wrong again there, I was not in the least bit miserable about not being interested in climbing a rope and witnessing a classmate go head first into a ‘horse’, … Continue reading Non Runners

RNsPG and Germaine Greer

It doesn’t make sense really but it stands for Random Non Specific Grumbling or Grumblers. It should be RNG but I like the small s and the extra letter. My idea? Not really it was what my good friend Robin Burton came upon with and he and I are exceedingly good RNsPGers. This means that we grumble about absolutely anything, generally in each other’s company. We’ve never been known to grumble about each other, other than in jest.That would be just too cruel. We’ve never been short of material. Who could be these days? Only today I heard Germaine Greer … Continue reading RNsPG and Germaine Greer

The Arlingham Curve

I used to hate walking as a child. Going on a nice healthy walk seemed pointless when I could be running around playing with my friends or trying to get the light to work on my Sturmey Archer powered bike. The light on the front seemed as big as a cars headlight and was powered by a small generator on the back wheel. When it was on a small wheel clicked against the rim of the back wheel and turned to generate the power. This also acted like a brake, so getting any sort of light out of the floodlight … Continue reading The Arlingham Curve

How did you get here?

Well, the original idea if you can grace it with that term, was a to find a career in advertising. It seemed glamorous and exciting and involved meeting loads of people, as a gregarious type it seemed to fit the bill. I’d been at art college for the allotted time, some of my fellow art students too were looking in the same place for work as I was, though all of them better qualified, they did better in the results than I had and consequently had much better quality portfolios to drag around the ad agencies. The portfolio was almost … Continue reading How did you get here?