Every time I kiss you girl, you taste like pork and beans

My last post sparked a couple of comments, to which I'll say that the answer to Dan's first question is, err, kinda. I don't particularly feel that the chapters of my life are in anyway fluid, or overlap. If I look back in a strictly chronological manner, I find, like Hazel, simple convenient blocks that stack up individually and I don't feel that these blocks have shifted at all over the years.

But then again, that's less a set of memories and more a timeline. Within each block are multiple unique memories at which point I'd agree with the comment that: "memories are not something we have, so much as remembering being something we do; it's an active process." As I see it, the way we experience each moment in our lives is determined by where and who we are, an ever changing process, interdependent on all other experiences; as diverse as the sum total of all our knowledge to date to how much we had to drink the night before. Each moment we recall is then in itself, written by not only those events around it, but a myriad of other factors that may be vastly different from those we experienced when we were in the moment itself. The ultimate truth of our recall is inevitably utterly unique and unquestionably questionable.

It's illustrated quite nicely by a scene in a Robin Williams movie I watched recently. The basic premise for The Final Cut, is that at some point in the future we'll be able to graft organic cameras to our retinas that record our every experience. When we die, 'cutters' (Robin Williams) go through the tapes, cutting together a montage for family and friends to be played at a remembering ceremony (essentially the funeral). After one such screening, the deceased's brother questions a boat they used to play in thinking that it was a different colour from the one he saw. Where the images may reveal the ultimate truth of the event, they can't recreate the experience, devoid of the emotions behind the eyes. It's not a bad movie, flawed, but worth a look.

I spent the weekend away with the family and so missed the last night of drinking on the tube. Thankfully. Sounded like the party pretty much played in to the hands of the naysayers, no matter how badly organised the mechanics of the ban may have been. Never let it be said that we don't have the propensity to turn ourselves into a bunch of useless fuckwits given half an opportunity.

Talking of useless fuckwits, whoever decided to use graphic images of violence to deter young kids from stabbing each other somehow managed to miss the point that images of violence and bloodshed are often quite appealing to teenagers (boys especially), be it Friday 13th or GTA 4.

Anyway, here's a picture of chicken



Sampling the music of Old Crow Medicine Show

And I was thinking I'll never get older

My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday; coincidentally, the fourth anniversary of my moving on to Chuffy. Not that the two are related in any way other than without the one, there would not have been the other. It was a good day.

I can't yet imagine 40 years on the planet, let alone 40 years of marriage. It's been 20 years since I left school, so I multiply that and it still seems a way off. The population of the earth has maybe doubled during this short time.

Whilst home, I found myself flicking through some old photo albums, inspired perhaps, by a photograph my aunt had of my Mum holding me as a small baby. I was struck by how pretty she was and how happy she looked, holding this small fleshy creature that turned into me.

I don't think back much to my earlier days, I'm content with my place in the world, an whatever paths I took to get here. What did strike me was how broken up my past feels, as if each section is a separate chapter, each one a new story in its own right, and somehow not much flow between them. Is it like that for everyone?

The rapid pace of change in the last 37 years has no doubt rent asunder whatever specific hopes and dreams my Mum may have had for me on that day as the sun shone down on her smile. Other than perhaps to live a good life and be happy. I'm willing to argue the meaning of 'good' in this case...

Someone once old me that there was no real secret to bringing a child into the world: "love them unconditionally and let them be who they're meant to be". I wonder if these thoughts will ever be shared by the man mentioned in an email I was sent today.

"oh Jesus I'm so depressed - there's a guy on our teleconference who's wife had a baby a couple of hours ago and he's apologising for not being able to connect his laptop and view the powerpoint from the hospital!!!"


Listening to XV by Kings X

I have a bad feeling about this

This had me in stitches

Good morning, good afternoon

I'm told I don't blog enough these days.

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the death of Sandy Denny, once a citizen of these parts, and, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest, if not the greatest female singers this country has ever produced.

I didn't come to her music until last year, although unknowingly, I'd first heard her voice in my early teens on Led Zeppelin's The Battle of Evermore, and her songs covered by others. I blame Dan, who sent me a copy of Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief, for a rapid spending spree on her four solo albums, two Fairport albums, and the very beautiful Live at the BBC boxed set.

Since then, they've been on near constant repetition, the good and the not so good, spread out amongst them, some of the loveliest music I've heard. And although who Knows Where The Time Goes is considered to be her best tune, Like An Old Fashioned Waltz is the song that melts me every single time.

There's been a recent batch of retrospectives, and Bob Harris' Radio2 documentary I'm listening to at the moment, remembering her career. Wikipedia sketches out the basics of her fairly tumultuous and ultimately tragic life.

But you'd be better off just listening to her songs instead.

The good life...

...is surely not measured by its length in years, but by the intensity of the joy and good consequences of existence.

James Lovelock

I'm a fond believer in the idea that our lives are stories briefly scratched in time. Most chapters are merely ebbs and flows in the storyline, with only occasional plot twists that change your very direction both inside and out. If this is the case then one chapter has ended, another begun, and in between has been one of those inter-chapter bits usually written in italics.

What follows is the italics bit, written from the balcony of our room at the Hotel Kapetanios, Limassol, Cyprus on Saturday 6th April, although I've edited my notes to clean them up slightly.

I left BMC the way I guess most people leave jobs like mine; in a final flurry of trying to do everything, and in the end settling for whatever you've done being enough. After having had two months to think about my leaving speech, I managed to miss most of what I wanted to say. Not a bad metaphor for the weeks of (no doubt self-induced) stress that consumed me in the run up to day 0. And then, like that, it was done. The door closed, the chapter ended, the final full stop was placed.

I stand by my assertions that as a species, we're mainly solar powered. So a week in the sun seemed like a great idea to fill in the gap between chapters. Not least to recharge a few batteries. I have one of my oldest, dearest and best of friends and travelling companion to thank for that. That and a list of numbers off Teletext and a couple of hours on the phone.

The 3 hour delay leaving Gatwick was annoying at the time, but paltry compared to the Hellmouth unleashed upon travellers by BA that has been named Terminal 5. It was 6am when we finally climbed in to our room, and at 7 we were woken by thunder, lightning and torrential rain. 5 hours later when we woke again, there wasn't a cloud to be seen.

The hotel is situated off the main coast road, at the far end of Limassol's tourist drag of 4 and 5* chains that litter the grey sandy beaches, and close to the old town. Perfect for the slow, ambling walks we took in either direction. It would be a churlish fellow indeed, who might complain about our neat and tidy compound, where the 3*s on the box were raised an extra point by the staff and service.

Other than the aforementioned walks, our days have consisted of sitting in the sunshine, a cooling breeze keeping the clouds at bay, reading, sleeping and taking the occasional lunch in a local cafe where the free glasses of wine may have been taken as an apology for the hair in the food. For my part, I've tried to spend as much time as I can immersed in water: the bath, the sea, or dutifully plowing up and down the hotel swimming pool for an hour or so each day in the shadow of the palm trees.

The evenings are spent in conversation, sipping cocktails and playing backgammon at the bar, watching the dining room slowly fill up with the steady flow of new arrivals we otherwise never see.

Cyprus has been a welcoming host this past week, the people friendly, the weather perfect, finches, martins and sparrows chattering over the almost continuous hum of traffic along the coast road, whilst splashes of colour litter the trees and hedgerows. Whatever the doctor may have ordered, this has been perfect. I certainly never needed the hot stone massage I treated myself to, although I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Since that time we suffered at the hands of the April snow, adding 5 hours to the journey. With tiredness and frustration boiling over, looking back it was but another annoyance (funny how they all happen UK side), and from some of the stories I heard, we got of lightly.

It was more frustrating trying to get my pictures up on flickr.

I was asked before I left my old job, if anything would bring me back. After 3 days at TNA, I would say that I'd need to royally fuck things up to want to leave there for anywhere else right now. I haven't yet started work proper, we're in an intensive week of introductions, inductions and training, but it's like a dream come true...

Reading: Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Life In The Emerald City
James Lovelock's The Revenge Of Gaia
Stephen King's Duma Key