All That Jazz

It's that time of the year again - the countdown to the Marsden Jazz Festival. What is strange is the way in which a regular involvement in an annual event comes to establish seasonal markers which co-exist with the more normal markers such as Christmas, Easter and Holiday-time. Thus, July normally means sending out the Festival leaflets (we are a little late this year), August means starting to sell tickets, September means getting the final publications together and October means ... the Festival (this year it is the weekend of the 10th to 12th October.

And so the other evening, a handful of us gathered together to stuff leaflets in envelopes at the Annual Stuffing Evening. The leaflet this year maintains the sheep theme, although we move away from the usual swinging sheep and feature a photograph of jazz saxophonist, Rod Mason, wearing a sheep's outfit on the moors above Marsden. When I took the photographs a few weeks ago, the vision of a very substantial, bearded, jazz musician, holding a soprano sax, and dressed in a sheep's outfit, stood alongside the main A62 road nearly caused one of two accidents.

This week I will be concentrating on getting all the various gigs up on the Festival website. For full details of who is appearing where and when go to www.marsdenjazzfestival.com (but leave it until later in the week so I can get all the latest news uploaded).

Making Light Of Madness

Fight as I might against the desire to repeat endless "health and safety madness" stories, I cannot resist it and I have set up a new Delicious tag ("madness") to file them under. My first gut instinct on coming across another example of some ridiculous new ruling is to see it as an attack on health and safety culture in general. I was a firm supporter of the 1978 Health and Safety at Work Act and spent many years teaching courses about the Act and the changes it would (and did) bring in British industry. But to equate the recent trend which wants to see cups of tea given a "Caution -Hot Drink" warning label or insists on signs in public parks warning of the danger of falling trees in high winds, is to do a disservice to the serious problems the 1978 Act was introduced to combat. The Act always had at its core the concept of "reasonableness", a concept many of today's petty rule-makers have clearly never come across.

Today's madness story illustrates that such nonsense is not just a British failing. According to a piece in the Guardian, the German Parliament is proposing that Kinder Surprise eggs constitute a danger to children in that the kids might mistake the little toys they contain for something they should be eating! A member of the Commission which has come up with the ruling stated that "children are unable to differentiate between toys and nutritional items". And just in case the little fellows can differentiate, the Commission states that the toys should be banned anyway as they act as a reward for potentially poor nutrition. In another ruling, the same Commission is calling for lighter paper to be used in all German school exercise books in order to combat the health risk of heavy school bags. Classics.

Arresting News .... As It Happens

I have just had the somewhat unsettling experience of listening to the BBC News Channel only to hear an item of "Breaking News" announced which said that "Alan Burnett is to be arrested and charged with offences by the Office of Fair Trading in relation to alleged price fixing". I think this is just another example of there being too many Alan Burnett's around, but in these days of instant 24 hour news, you can never be too sure. Must go now as there is someone knocking at the door....

Scrap Book

I have always liked cutting out pictures and sticking them in books. One of my earliest memories is of being taken into travel agents by my parents to collect travel brochures advertising holidays in exotic parts of the world. The purpose of this exercise was not to research possible holiday destinations, but to obtain a free supply of pictures which I could then cut and paste in albums. In later life I would keep extensive press cutting collections and scrap books full of pictures clipped from newspapers and magazines.

In terms of my clipping activities, the transition from actual to digital has been a long and complex one. But at long last I am now happy with my digital press cutting system (Delicious - which can be accessed via the link in the sidebar) which underwent a new systems update at the beginning of this month which has improved the functionality immeasurably). So I am now free to experiment with my picture-clipping system and for that I am currently using a public Google Notebook album which can be accessed by following this link. Into it goes all those third party images which seem to either say something or are just nice to look at.

Newspaper Of The Week : Pravda

This is the first in what will be an occasional series which looks at some of the more interesting on-line world newspaper resources. And where better to start than with that paragon of heavy journalism - Pravda : a paragon which appears to have fallen on hard times.

The Russian word "pravda" means "the truth" : and makes a suitably Orwellian title for what was the official organ of the Soviet Communist Party between 1912 and 1991. In August 1991, President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree shutting down the Communist Party and seizing all of its property. For a short period a number of ex-Pravda journalists continued to run the paper until the name and familiar Order of Lenin medals trademark were sold to a family of Greek entrepreneurs. There followed a series of splits and splinters which the original Russian Communist Party members would have been proud of, until the present time when Pravda exists in two quite separate manifestations.

First there is Pravda the traditional newspaper which continues as a voice of the Communist left in Russia. It looks not too dissimilar to what it looked like in the Soviet era (see the illustration above) and if you are desperate to read it, you can obtain a full digital copy via PressDisplay.com (but beware, at just four pages, it is an expensive buy) although you will need a decent knowledge of Russian as a translation is not available.

In stark contrast to the seriously heavy Pravda newspaper there is Pravda online (Pravda.ru) which is a very different kettle of fish. With a content and style which makes an English tabloid look staid and restrained, Pravda.ru is the face of modern, brash, cheap and cheerful Russia. Today's headlines included such gems as "Man who decapitated and ate his fellow traveler in packed passenger bus due in court" and "Nude blond visits petrol station creating public disturbance (PHOTOS)" (their upper case emphasis, not mine). Lenin would have blushed, but you might want to pay it a visit.

Development or Devastation?

There it was, a pefectly good 1936 house, and now (left) the back-addition kitchen is gone, the upstairs has no partition walls (centre) and it's all the work of builder Alan (right.)

The house also now has new water supplies (two because there are going to be two flats,) new electric supplies and the beginnings of new gas supplies. There are huge inspected trenches at the rear (below centre) awaiting concrete for the foundations of the new back (large) extensions. The huge muddy trench shown in an earlier posting is filled in (new service pipes etc. below,) and now there are no ceilings (below left) or partition walls nearly anywhere.

Huge steel girders lurk in the garden, waiting to be fitted to hold the house together properly again and support the chimney above the demolished fireplaces..... the garden is full of a mountain of rubble and mud (below right.)

Ah well, this is progress... should look nice eventually!

(Help, I can't get the photos in quite the right places..!)

No Mission, Just Pointless Wanderlust.

"So, what is the point of your Blog?", someone asked me recently. I have been asked this question a few times over the years and I never know how to answer. I normally come out with phrases like "it's Sudoku for the innumerate" or "it's better than dying", but this time I was tempted to be honest. "There is no point", I replied, "It's pointless, and that is its true beauty". Later I thought about having a Mission Statement and incorporating it into the new Header, but I am not on a mission. A mission implies that you know where you are going, that you are travelling in order to get somewhere. If my Blog travels, it travels for the sheer joy of travelling. It has a serious case of wanderlust : pointless wanderlust. And that is how I found "Pencils of Light". As I have said all too often, one of the great joys of being around at the moment is that more and more digital content is becoming available. For the digital wanderers amongst us, the sun is always shining and the fields are always green. Like the traveller of old who would send back postcards telling of the exotic and wondrous places they had visited, these Postcards From Nowhere can occasionally tell of some of the fascinating digital destinations waiting to be discovered. The "Pencils of Light" website is hosted by the National Library of Scotland and Edinburgh Library and consists of a digital reproduction of two albums of the Edinburgh Calotype Club, the first photographic club in the world. As such, they are among the earliest photograph albums ever assembled. They contain over 300 images by a group of pioneering Scottish photographers working in Edinburgh and St. Andrews. The photographs, taken in the 1840s, provide a marvellous insight into life 165 years ago. It is not a vast resource, nor is it the kind of thing that will keep you absorbed for days. But, for a gentle browse on a quiet, grey, Wednesday morning, it is ideal.

In Cannes Last Week

Returning from holiday is a bit like starting a new year - if you will excuse the twisted metaphor - it's time for Spring Cleaning. So over the coming days I will be trying to re-organise, restructure and reconstitute my many blogs. A spirit of consolidation is in the air. I will illustrate the process with this picture of three heads taken - as far as I remember - last week in Cannes. The reason I am using this image is simply that I have always wanted to type the phrase "taken - as far as I remember - last week in Cannes". What a supreme phrase this is : illustrating that I am a fully-fledged international playboy whilst at the same time suggesting that continental travel is such a normal part of my lifestyle that I can't really remember whether I took it in Cannes or Florence, or Portofino, or ... Actually it might have been in Brighouse.

Five Went Mad In The Mediterranean

Back safe and sound, a little bit more relaxed and a little bit more sunburned, from our Mediterranean cruise on board the wonderful Ventura. An excellent time was had by all five of us as we sailed from sun-soaked resort to sun-soaked resort via some of the greatest buildings in Europe. My pictures from the trip are available on-line in a Picasa Web Album : just follow this link and choose "slideshow". The shots should also be streaming in the mini-slideshow in the side-panel. There are other photos from the trip and I might add some of these to the blog over the coming days.

Feedback .... And Out

It is that glorious time of the year when I need to take my leave of the Blog for a couple of weeks and head in search of the sun. As I think I mentioned some time ago, this year the Famous Five will be going mad in the Mediterranean. Based on my experience of snail-speed internet connections on board cruise ships, this year I will probably avoid logging-in to update the Blog whilst I am away and save an extended posting for when I return. But who knows : perhaps the craving to compose will set in and I will head for the Communications Room in order to get my regular fix.

Before setting sail, however, I would like to take this opportunity to thank people for their feedback. One of the great pleasures of a Blog is that most people do not approach the blog from a sequential or episodic standpoint, they discover random postings whilst doing a Google search for "fried halibut" or some such piece of exotica. Thus the feedback, when it does arrive, can be in relation to postings that were launched on the wide world months or even years ago. For such reasons the feedback can be even more welcome as it drags me back to a subject which was once dear to my heart. Anyway, here are a few messages of thanks. My apologies, as ever, if you have sent me messages and I haven't replied.

* To Kamel from North Africa : Thanks for your message, I am glad to hear that you bought the Crypto Peerless O'Matic Pie Moulder I mentioned in the Blog earlier this year. However, I regret that I am not conversant with the detailed operation of the machine, although inserting the pie steak into the mobile cylinder - as you describe in your message - seems the right approach. Good luck, and by all means feel free to send me one of the pies once you get the mechanics sorted.

* To Paul : Thanks for responding to my final plea in the "Connect Me To A Brewery" posting. It is excellent news that Barnard's momentous work is now available on CD, I will be sending for a copy as soon as I return from holidays.

* To (another) Paul : Thanks for the updated information about motorcycle funerals and for the latest images of the various hearses. You are quite right, it is as dignified a way of leaving this world as any other and I will ask my nearest and dearest to give it serious consideration when my time comes.

* To Jill : Thanks for updating my story about the Winstanley Babes. Although our own Babe has now passed away, it is good to hear that there are still many out there. Long may they tap and twirl.

So that's it .... I will be back in August.

Activating My DNA

It is 5.00am on a Sunday morning and I am feeling empty, lethargic and under the weather. The weather in question is a most unseasonable heavy cloud cover and being under it is enough to depress anyone's spirits. I need something to perk me up, something to regenerate me. I need my DNA activating!

I discovered DNA Activation whilst reading an article on "Selling Yourself Short" on a jolly little website called "Clover Coaching". The article was so tedious that I was tempted into following one of the links in the side-panel which took me to a section on DNA Activation (The motive power of boredom is mighty powerful and this is probably why side-panel links are so successful as I am sure you will discover shortly when you go off on your own trip down my side-panel). Anyway, back to DNA Activation : here was the therapy I had been searching for, the solution to all my cares, the salve for my troubled soul. But let me share this simple explanation of DNA Activation taken from the website in question.

DNA Activation
There are 12 strands of DNA. Each strand has layers that have different functions both in the body and in the quantum field. The average person has approximately 8-9% of their DNA activated; 2 strands instead of 12. DNA activation enhances your intuition and your capacity to connect at deeper levels. I activate DNA in a simple and elegant process, which can be done in person or by telephone. Changes in vibration and frequency levels will continue to occur for approximately 30 days after activation. Further activations and capacities are also enabled as you grow and evolve. This is like having further software updates automatically installed when the system is ready or as new capacities are enabled.

Here was a stunningly simple explanation of all my problems. Why had I not been able to update the Blog as frequently as I would like? Why had I been waking up at five in the morning suffering from negative thoughts? Why had the middle toenail on my left foot started to attack my own flesh with the forcefulness of a religious fundamentalist? Quite simple : I was not making use of the full potential of my DNA. I needed a new set of software updates installing and the good news was that this could be achieved by a "simple and elegant process" via the telephone. I am desperate to give it a try, but I it is still only 5.30am on a Sunday morning. Assuming that the therapist in question has fully activated their own DNA, I suppose that they are not suffering from early-morning wakening and therefore they would not welcome my early morning cry from the soul.

All I can do to pass the time before I can get my human software upgrade is to tell you why I was in search of articles on "selling short". The answer is Ira Gershwin and Vernon Duke's splendid little song "I Can't Get Started". I am sure you remember the lyrics:

I've flown around the world in a plane

I've settled revolutions in Spain

The North Pole I have charted,

but I can't get started with you

Around the golf course I'm under par

And all the movies want me to star

I've got a house, a show place,

but I get no place with you

You're so supreme, lyrics I write of you

Scheme, just for a sight of you

Dream, both day and night of you

And what good does it do?

In 1929 I sold short

In England I'm presented at court

But you've got me downhearted,

cause I can't get started with you

It is that final verse which caught my eye (or to be exact, caught my ear). "In 1929 I sold short" is a peach of a line. Selling short is a clever little speculative devise used by traders who believe the market is heading for a fall. If you are selling short you sell a stock you don't actually own. The strategy is based on the belief that in a falling market you will be able to actually buy the stock at an even lower price before you have to actually deliver it (there, I said it was clever didn't I). The genius of Gershwin is the ability to take a somewhat complex economic concept and blend it perfectly into the song.

If you read the financial pages at the moment you will be aware that people are once again "selling short". The markets are falling and economic confidence is in retreat. We are undoubtedly heading for hard times. It's worrying, so worrying that I woke up at 5.00am this morning. Which is why I need my DNA activating.