Introspection

Just posted this. Multiply seems to arrange my nloggage easier so will probably be posting more there from now on. Will link here if/when I do.

As a general update freshers week is over, was class and now settling into term. Fun times all round.

Got myself a break, jackpot. Will write up the weekend's jaunt over the next couple of days, but... London was epic. Met up with M & L in Oxford for a drink on the way down, both of whom decided I was younger and leaner. Bastard Landlord gave me the wrong keys which wasn't too epic as I had to dump my stuff at a mate's and kip there Sunday night. Moved my stuff round during yesterday and then collapsed pretty much. Woke up today and the girls arrived. My bastard Landlord somewhat becamse less of a bastard when I heard I was landing 3 girls, although, no doubt it will be interesting.

Anyroad, they moved in today. O, A and I. Latino, American and native American. First impressions is they are nice, two could be worth some work as they are only here for 3 months. Anyway, they just nipped out for a meeting so I got some downtime and thought I would check in.

Off to l'Uni tomorrow, via a weekend in London to see some friends. Who knows if this blog will last through now the hustle and bustle of student life kicks off again? Either way, a few closing thoughts, or not so much thoughts as a few whimsical musical reflections.

And two fingers back to those happy to see the back of me... I'll miss you too.

Spoke to a friend of a friend last night, one I hadn't seen in a while and not regularly for a really long time. In the space of about 10 minutes she'd invited herself round next week, 'reminded' me she used to like me, tried to set me up with a friend of hers, told me I'd like her more now and demanded to know exactly when I was back in town. Bit of a bolt from the blue, but could be interesting.

The stream. Or some of it. Motorbike Tree on the left.

The gentle slope where I learned to run quietly. The scene of my transfer from clumsy plod to deliberate foot placement.

Mudslide on left. Another view of Faceplant Bog alluded to before.

Up the mudslide. A lot rootier than it was...

The launch point of the Little Slide.

Come down from the right, bear off to the left...

And the view from behind me as I took the above... A good section of stream to clamber down. Used to be a wasps nest down there, which my little brother found out generally don't respond well to being poked...

Looking down from the ridge on the right of the stream. Former coal mine. People died there from black damp, but long before my time...

Kid brother. Hairs down the hill with no brakes. Hits this headfirst at the bottom. Knocked out some baby teeth, emptied some claret.

Used to be minus the tree and collapsed section of walkboard. Those things got unbelievably slippy when it rained. Skidded off many a time on my bike into the ditch...

The Conker Place. Needs no other words.

The ramp, and some limestone. Good for bike stunts.

Jen's field. and Jen.

Cowfield. Cows used to follow the dog all the time. Their tongues were hooge too. Tickle a cow's nose and watch...

Why the Piglet Walk was called the Piglet Walk. Tis is where Piglet lived.

A couple of views from the railtrack.

and this is me, just letting them go.

Yes. Don Henley. Ruined. Believe it or not that, I'm probably coming to the end of my last serious stint in the area I was born and grew up in. I look at the world and I notice it's turning, while my guitar gently weeps. And so on.

I've also had a song cycling through my mind most of summer, not sure why as I've barely listened to it. It has also seemed remarkably irrelevent.

As a bit of background, the song is Robbie's tribute to him of the Blue Suede Shoes. The man that was and the legend that still is Elvis Presley. I'm not sure if this explains anything though - just a fact of the day for you...

Everybody knows Elvis. Iconic rock star cut down just after his prime. Akin to Norma Jean Davis - more commonly known as Marilyn Monroe. Not quite James Dean or JFK as they were hauled down in their prime. And to add another few more recent examples, Heath Ledger and Ayrton Senna. But I'm massively digressing, or could do if I keep namedropping. So it goes. My bad, Vonnegut on the brain too. He died recently as well, but he'd had his time, so it goes.

So, I'm thinking my childhood is Elvis. I'm slightly older than the 'prime' age for a child, but I can happily sack off the last few years, go back to the good old days when I was a pocket rocket.

If this was a movie, the image of grumpy grey-haired Giles would blur out, the reminiscent patter would fade into quiet, and with a crack of thunder the camera would pan from the flash of lightning across the stormy sky, down over the treetops, focus through the rain and gloom to a 5 year old, face down in a puddle. Saving Private Ryan esque, minus the beach. And the tanks. Drama!

But it's all good. Said 5 year old raises his head and you see the biggest grin in the world emerge over his mud-streaked, rain-soaked face. I'd just fallen over. My wellies were too big, it was late Autumn and so insanely muddy, the current downpour only one of many responsible. I got up, clutching a stick I had conveniently fallen next too. Nearly slipped again before I ran in the way only kids in wellies too big can to catch up my mother. Needless to say, she wasn't impressed. Told me to put down the stick, which the dog, also soaked and smelling gloriously of wet-dog, instantly picked up. Apparently I wasn't meant to go anywhere but the kitchen when I got back but who cares?

Some things never change, I nearly went arse over tip in the same place the other day when I went on a run.

Those woods were unbelievably fun. That particular puddle of mud is at the bottom of 'The MudSlide' In fact, if you get a good run on The Mudslide you go flying through the puddle of mud over the short ridge into a lower puddle of mudd. If you get a bad run, you go over that and into the stream, which is not good...

Anyway. Mudslide. When I was a little kid, I'd scramble halfway up and then slide down. When I got bigger I'd scramble to the top, and fly all the way down. And when I get to the bottom I'd go back to the top of the slide, where I'd stop and I'd turn and I'd go for a ride. Till I get to the bottom and I see you again. Ruined so many pairs of jeans that way. It's a good job we had 'nasty clothes' - the stuff we would go for walks in or had to wear when we went outside. They always had patches or holes in, and I always got them second generation, via my older brother. I think by the time our kid brother got them there was very little of the original item left, was just a patchwork. What I will say though, is never do it in shorts. World of pain. Grazes, and wedgie. You're never too young for a wedgie to hurt, a lot. Either way in between little kid and bigger kid I was medium kid. I wanted to do the 'Big Slide' but I was a bit wary. So of course, my inner engineer came out.

I wound up tying a truck wheelarch to a tree with a long rubber line. I don't know where either came from, but my reasoning, I presume, was that the wheelarch would stop me shredding myself and uber wedgies, and the rubber line would slow my descent.

Needless to say, I was wrong. The rubber line did not slow my descent. In fact, the lower friction coefficient of the wheelarch made it rather faster. Being pre-school I was not familiar with friction coefficients or indeed Hookes' Law. I didn't realise that the line would stretch and then snap back. So imagine my surprise when all of a sudden I was airbourne. I was without my wheelarch and I was gently arking through the air. Shoulder plant, barrel rolls. All shook up, bit dizzy. Shook myself down. Moral of the story? When you have two choices - you have to man up (definition 4). No pussyfooting about. You do either one or the other, don't try and go half and half - it never works.

So on down to The Motorbike Tree. Was actually probably younger here. Bit of an odd tree though? I don't even know why we called it The Motorbike Tree because it looks distinctly more helicopter like. Not that I would have said that, helicopters were still called wellyboppers back in those days. I don't know, maybe this tree was the reason chopper means both helicopter and Harley? Anyway, you can guess how it works... Humans of infant size can just about sit in the loop and drive the tree. Fun times.

I love the smell of morning in the morning. For some reason despite getting to bed (couch) after 3 I was wide awake at 6.44. Got up, had coffee and had a good old wander round outside. No sun, in fact slightly overcast. Autumnal equinox. To be honest, I could write forever and a day but in doing so would run the risk of diving into an all-encompassing sentimentality as it was so eloquently put to me. So, instead, pictures can do that for me, with some 'brief' annotation.

Mein sister favourited this video earlier today. Seems a good idea doesn't it? Prisoner's out of cell time is spent dancing? Keep fit, focussed, force people to work together? Stll, couldn't help but think something fishy was going on, backed up by the Channel 4 documentary. Ok it's only C4, but they put out some stirling documentaries even if the rest of their lineup is gash. Needless to say the lingering point of the documentary, summed up by Wiki is thus:

"The British Channel 4 Documentary "Murderers on the Dancefloor" broadcast in January 2008 portrayed life in the prison. The program showed various inmates praising Byron Garcia, the founder of the initiative - many of whom had tattoos praising Mr Garcia. However, it also featured an anonymous ex-inmate who claimed Mr Garcia employs certain prisoners to beat prisoners who refuse to dance. Garcia was filmed in the documentary holding an American M4 Carbine, saying, "This is an M16 M4 rifle, and it can make people dance", before aiming the gun at the cameraman. This statement was acknowledged as a joke by the narrator. His Youtube account, however, states any accusation that any form of abuse goes on as part of the program is false, and the program serves the purpose of reforming the inmates."

So, not all singing all dancing. More Old West "Dance cowboy" whereby you're hopping bullets. Aye well, at least the thought was there. Still, was it ever realistic that a group of rapists, murderers and paedophiles would just do the YMCA?

On a cheeky note... could be an amusing opening ceremony for 2012...

I read it. I didn't find it as easy to read as some reviews declare, but I read it. In fact, as far as reading goes I found it pretty awkward. I'm normally a speedy reader... but maybe that's only because generally I've read things that flow. Chronologically, progressively, evolving. Not surprising, as I have a logical mind - I like things to make sense. So when I've read 10 pages and I'm caught with a "Hold on a minute - what the fuck just happened?" I was intrigued enough to start again. I know it wasn't boring me or else I would have canned it, but I had to turn my music off, shake my head a bit and focus a bit more.

And it was odd. It made bugger all sense when I was reading it because it was flitting from image to image, event to event. The more you read, the more related events appeared and you could revert them back to earlier references. Trying to order them was yet more fun and games.

But having digested it - great washed down with coffee - I was left with a couple of... well impulses and feelings really. One is an urge to look deeper into the Bombing of Dresden. Another is to read the other two Vonnegut books I have. The last one is, I'm not going to come close to appreciating this until I've read it at least once more.

Perusing the FT, I came across this. Here be the pertinent excerpt:

Donna, an HBOS employee writing on an internet message board, accused alarmist journalists as well as traders of driving down bank stocks: “I will probably be out of a job now. Thank you, media and speculators, for ruining my life! How am I going to pay my mortgage?”

Just how much control do journos have nowadays? They control the celebrities, they make and break events - if you have the journos on your side, then it's all gravy. If not, then you're up the proverbial waterway without the proverbial control system. So is it any wonder that when news of a collapsing housing market starting to stagnate reaches the newspapers that pretty much a year later the world markets are in turmoil?

It goes like this. Journo sees what happens. Gleefully predicts doom and gloom. Papers get read. People think "Ah bollocks." They read the housing markets are collapsing, so they get wary. They don't gleefully bound in without a care in the world. I mean, why sell a house if the price is a lot less than what it has been or could be? Why buy a house if prices could get a lot lower, like the papers are saying? Ergo, market stagnates. It might have done anyway, it probably would have. Journo's pick up on it with articles such as this. Seems to be no appreciation that the media-effect could have had some say in the faster then expected decline.

So, are alarmist journos being irresponsible in the way they report on events like this? Do they exactly know how much hinges on their words? Obviously, stories such as "Ending In Sight", "Economy showing signs of railing" are irresponsible, but are they any more irresponsible than Doomsday predictions? I'm of the belief that if the media found something else to bitch about for a while, or y'know, just stopped focussing on it, then the situation would at least stop getting worse and maybe improve. No news is good news, right?

But this is dangerous territory now. You could conclude from this that Government controlled media would fix a lot of problems. Maybe it might, but it would be the dawn of an Orwellian era, the start of a Distopia. Surely though, a modicum of common sense needs applying to alarmist propaganda? With the wide-range of media nowadays, everyone is a jack-of-all-trades. Everyone knows a little of everything, which is a dangerous thing.

edit: it is worth noting, that media speculation of the impending American government intervention has at least short-term, plugged the drains. Here.

Well, they arrived. Slaughterhouse 5, Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions. Three books by Kurt Vonnegut suggested by a friend. I haven't read any of his material before so F - my reading any more of him after these is entirely based on your suggestions.

From the look of them I could have read all 3 by the end of the day, but that would leave me in the same position as before - postponing packing, though with a day less to do it. There is also that I probably won't have done them justice anyway. It would however, make a change from my recent booklist of Fluid Dynamics, Motor Racing Autobiographies and various interpretations and commentaries on Formula 1. Who knows, maybe could stack them alongside the Shute - make myself appear somewhat of a literary connoisseur... Yeah, who am I kidding - I'd need the Complete Works of Shakespeare and a bookshelf dedicated to some classic novels. Bronte who?

So, I will endeavour to pack,  will read them at a more leisurely pace. Maybe accompanied by some of the product of this £40 wine voucher that Amazon sent with the books.  From my reckoning, a 12 bottle case costing £126... special offer for £99, minus £40 is £59. Or under £5 a bottle for an £11 wine... Bargain much?