Well… what now?

I received an email saying that someone had commented on something I had written many moons ago. It turned out to be useless so it was consigned to Spam. This explains my presence here.

What now? Refers to the on going saga of our youngest son who suffered a cardiac arrest back on January 10th this year.

He is out of his coma, bored and itching to go home. Today he is having a little electronic “gizmo” fitted to monitor his heart and shock it into action if it decides to arrest again. I say today… If they cannot do it today he will have to wait until the end of next week.

As a result of all this he will have to abandon his plans to become a Merchant naval Grease Monkey.

Stop Press.. the gizmo is being fitted as I type.

The question remains : What now for our youngest?

 

Just had a reminder….

Someone posted a picture of a coffee percolator on Facebook  and asked if anyone recognised it.
Of course I did….. and then recalled the immortal words “Waiter, Waiter, Percolater” and listening to Javav Jave on the wind up Gramophone:

So click and listen

If you enjoyed that then Click again for lots more

They were recording in the 1930s and 40s…. I listened as a kid on a windup gramophone here in the UK through the late 40s, the 50s and into the 60s.
Those were (for me) innocent days as I didn’t know that they along with  Ellington, Armstrong, Ella Basie and others were black musicians… and I didn’t know that Venuti and Laing, Deanna Durbin , Goodman, Miller, The Quintet of the Hot Club were white….. why would I? From age about 3 onward I just loved listening to the music……

Betty Boop?

On my journey of rediscovery I found a pencil (icon wise top right) and clicked it… before I arrived here i got a message that went “beep beep Boop” and gyrated… I wonder whose idea that was?

On the way……

Well, If any one is bothering to read me… I’m beginning to work out how to carry on if I want to… I’ve changed my password: AGAIN…. and I have mde a note of it with a cryptic clue to remind me which one it is. I find I’m having to do this more and more.

My poor stomach is still churning with the stress this has caused….. andI fell particularly stupid.

I am having all sorts of problems with this damned Windows machine… they no longer support XP and I cannot afford to replace that operating system either in terms of cash or interms of stress.

The whole concept of Windows as an Operating System seem to me to be flawed….  I think that I will investigate exactly what is still around in terms of RISC OS….

What has happened to Wordress?

Well, here I go…. i tried to comment on a blog that I follow only to find that it disappeared and on repeating the attempt the same thing happened again. This tiem I noticed that I was not loggged in. Me being me I could not remember my password. However, I “googled” and found a site where , lo anfd behold all my details were stored…. I logged on only to find that nothing is the same.
I found this and am now going to try and publish this cry for help.

How do I relearn how to use the site? Is this a result of the whole WordPress thing growing beyond all recognition… in my searching just now I saw that WordPress is responsble for 23% of the Web…. what is that about?

David

Autumn:

It’s Autumn or, if you live in some parts of the world, Fall. I have said elsewhere that I love the wonderful Chrysanthemum blooms that we can sometimes find in the florists’ emporia  at this time of year. I say sometimes because they are increasingly rare in these times of all year round carnations and freesias, not to mention roses, alstromeria and gerberas.

Tonight is our annual celebration of Bonfire or Guy Fawkes Night. In reality this is a celebration of an old fire festival called Samhain that has been transferred from the eve of November 1st, now overtaken by Hallowe’en shenanigans.

As kids we never had bonfires as we always seemed to live too close to farmyards and hay ricks but  Fireworks Night was always opened with a salvo of a “penny banger” and jumping jacks, neither of which are available today. A variety of explosive devices followed: Roman Candles, Golden Rain, Volcanoes, Traffic Lights and Catherine Wheels (a gruesome thought). Always we ended up with an expensive rocket. Sparklers always featured (which reminds me: I have forgotten to buy some this year).
Sometimes we were treated to Bonfire Toffee, a particularly hard and tooth breaking version of Treacle Toffee.

It seems to me that I recall these essentially fun filled times, for that was my father’s intention, being spoiled quite often by my mother’s comments. “There goes another half crown” or perhaps it was a shilling or even five shillings. Something of this ilk was always muttered, sotto voce, as my father, pyrotechnician in chief, sey off another device. Eventually the chief firework-lighter himself would blow up in his own inimitable and frightening way and bellow at us all.

One thing I wil say for him: I never heard any of the vile language one hears too often today. He did not need it.

In those post war days of posterity we  were content with what we had. We never dreamed of having any more but today it seems that fireworks have to be large enough to propel a wartime high explosive shell and make just as much noise thus frightening the local animal population out of their wits. Feeding the cats tonight is going to be difficult to say the least.

Mind you. I do love the spectacle.

Back again: For how long I do not know

A couple of people on Fb… suggested that I write down my anecdotes or write a blog…. so I’m tryingt o open up this one again so that they can find out why it’s not a good idea.

Observation

I have unlocke things just to say:

How interesting it is that so many of those who protest (undying?) friendship do not maintian contact once one withdraws from this means of communication.

Decision time…….

For some time  now I have been disatisfied with the “Blogo-Sphere”. Like the majority of users, I was seduced into it by my own vanity. That vanity having been massaged by some people.

I was happily oblivious of the existence of this sphere that seems to have been added to the already existing, bio, tropo, strato and other sphere’s surrounding our planet until I decided to search for the origins of a phrase my late granmother used: ‘Three jumps at the cupboard door’ was often her answer to the question, “What’s for dinner Grannie?”

The only reference I could find was by someone called Grannymar. I took to looking at her blog on  and off and even to commenting.

I found myself being asked why I didn’t blog? Something I would never have thought of before. I wrote peotry of dire quality in the past…in fact that has stopped since this Blogosphere adventure,,, but never anything to publish. I admit that at one time a young, happy clappy christian musician expressed a desire to put my words to music. I ran a mile.

In short. Like so many, my vanity got the better of me and I began to believe that I truly had things of import to say to people, to share. What nonsense.

I explored this sphere more and more and, as I became more familiar with itI found good people. I found truly clever people. I found nasty and vindictive people. I found that there were important people out there saying important things. I found hypocrites, racists and every type of personality you could think of, even would be terrorists.

I am reminded of something a Police Officer, whose sons I taught, said to me. This was back in the late 1970s and we were discussing police corruption (much in the news at the time), ” You must remember that a police force or any other group of public servants will reflect the society from which it is drawn.”

Well, I guess that is true of any group of people, including Bloggers.

Incidentally I liked and respected that police officer and his wife. They had been missionaries in Nepal and were very down to Earth. We became close acquaintances and our paths crossed several times in the course of my career and in the course of crime investigations down our road. The last I heard of this particular policeman was a press report that he had been found with  pictures of young boys on his computer. All sorts.

I have decided to withdraw from this particualr sphere of life. It is not for me.

I will not be any more specific. It is after all MY Blog.

Now, there have been some honest compliments paid to me in my time here and some genuinely meant friendly criticisms. So this is what I propose:

Should you wish to keep any of my writings, stories perhaps, then please let me know in the next week. Obviously, copyright exists in my “work”.
Once I have acknowledged this wish you can then copy and paste to elsewhere. This does not apply to Pictures and photgraphs as some of these are not my copyright.

Equally, if you wish to save some of your comments then please copy and paste them because I am assured by WordPress that when I finally switch off they will be permanently deleted.

There may well be some of your comments that I wish to keep for a while and I promise that I f I do I will not use them with out permission and I will remain aware of any copy rights……. and believe me ther are some priceless comments out there. If of course you do not wish me to keep copies of your comments please let me know.

Any one who seriously wishes to remain in touch with me can do so by email, or even good old steam telephone landline and pen and paper.

Time frame? Today is Friday 9th March 2012 so , all other things being equal,…like mother in law’s health, a week should suffice.

Here is a double offering.

I just could not decide between the almost laconic Leon or the swinging Billie so I offer you both.
I once shared a versionof this with an ex girlfriend when we met after a couple of years….we laughed and parted friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ReQSCi24S8                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ReQSCi24S8

“Here’s a kiss! I hope that this brings lots of luck to you.

Makes no difference how I carry on,
Remember, please don’t talk about me when I’m gone.”

Yes, some quotations say things in a much better manner than we can ourselves.

I want to swear…

Never have I felt more like swearing . Well, certainly not for a long time.

My reaction to comments on a previous post I used my usual search engine to research “the need for religion”.
The first word I saw on the results list was Auschwitz.

I did not even look at the article (though I suspect that it quotes Viktor Frankl) My  immediate thought was “Where does that and other attrocities fit with Conrad’s behavioural explanation?”

What is the  B****** difference between that and the destruction of  other species? Of course, we know the answer don’t we? The Nazis considered Jews and Gipsies as less than men…aka animals. As their tool they used the wilful blindness present within a group to carry out their wishes. The same at Srebrenica and in Ruanda.The same in the killing fields of Cambodia.

I remember my son sitting watching an historical documentary about the Holocaust and commenting, “This is part of what makes us human.” (OWTTE)  It must have been around the time of the Srebrenica massacre. How right he was.

No doubt these attrocities against humans can be explained on behavioural grounds…in fact they can be. They can even be understood but that does not mean thay are to be excused nor does it mean that there is anything “right” about them.

The nazis took dominion over the lives of millions, so did the Hutus over the Tutsis, so did General Ratko Mladić over the Bosniaks.

So do all we humans over “the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth”
And we exercise that dominion callously, with no thought to the consequences of what we do. And many humans use scripture and religious teaching as an excuse.

Religious teaching political teaching….whatever the creed it does not make it right.

I hold no torch for animal rights groups but give me their, sometimes twisted,  honesty over the religious caucus that hide behind “scripture” and “holy” books any day.

Me? Yes I eat meat and drink milk. I try my damndest not to consume over exploitative foodstuffs but I’m by no means a completely green person. Not in any sense of the word.