From The Kinks in 1968 to Kate Rusby 40 years later, used in the TV series Jam and Jerusalem, The Village Green Preservation Society is an English classic. I have never been a mad keen folk music fan but Kate Rusby has just got the most perfect voice.
Find her work, buy it, love it. Enjoy…and comment please!
This is a public service announcement, with guitars…
Know your rights, all three of them:
Right number 1 – You have the right not to be killed….
Right number 2 – You have the right to food money….
Right number 3 – You have the right to free speech, as long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it,
Know your rights, these are your rights.
I used to do Tai Chi some years ago, but after a couple of years of it I got all tied up in work, and let it lapse. This week Ruth and I decided to give it a go together. Ruth had never been before. It was a less formal group than the one I had previously belonged to. Instead of the strict adherence to 48 forms that I had been used to this version was only doing 18 forms, and may extend to 24 in time. It was so good to be back doing it again.
What was really interesting to me, was how quickly the bug sets in again. In a busy busy life Tai Chi gives a complete exercise system, but perhaps far more importantly a quiet place during the week. There are lots of ways to get exercise but this always seems to quiet the mind as well as moving all the muscles around. The constant surprise with Tai Chi is how such slow movements can be so tiring. At the end of the session I was absolutely exhausted, but glowing.
My fascination with Tai Chi started many years ago on a business trip to Tel Aviv. I looked out of my hotel room window and saw someone doing Tai Chi (at least I think it was Tai Chi) in the early morning light, in the waves, on the beach. Apart from the fact that they were probably just a poser, it looked incredibly cool and stressfree. It only took me five years after seeing that to muster up the courage to go along and try.
Anyway, I thought it might be worth sharing a picture of where I see myself in many years time. I will be that small man in the park, probably dressed in blue, doing Tai Chi with a bunch of equally elderly people, who will be smiling and amazingly supple.
If you haven’t tried it, seek out a class and give it a go.
I think I have found a new game :). Here is what you do, buy MacSpeech Dictate for your MAC, install and train it – and it has to be said it works astonishingly well when the headset is on, and the microphone positioned correctly.
Then forget to turn it off whilst having Word open, take the headset off and put it on your desk, then have a normal conversation with someone. MacSpeech Dictate will then partly pick up what you are saying, partly miss it, and partly get it completely wrong.
What you get is a stream of consciousness page of text in Word, containing best interpretations by the application. Take a look at this:
"My wife is attacking my left foot with instruments of torture roll with just two very very gently and that when you brush down over it then you moved it back on putting pressure on the not right when you rub it at the same point in every streak of rubbing press harder and it hurts now there rightly described over something very likely there that would see that it was touching it all will obviously I am because it hurt although she won't die before the end of the day there they were set up a full code to do than to an income and white white downwards slightly now know again but that's my molten metal there is actually there are now dancing I say yeah.
The home built likewise down slightly on the now again this hotel is it really comes I might publish this to the well I didn't say anything and we saw the stream of consciousness blogging into shiny."
There will be a prize of some sort for the best (clean) interpretation of that by comment. Weird or what?
So that is the challenge I gave to the team at work when we got back after Christmas and that’s the kind of year it’s a gonna be!
This isn’t a work blog, its a me blog, but as I don’t really do long lists of New Year resolutions I thought it was worth saying what is going on and what is going to be going on this year – it is a big big year this year.
We have two companies which grew 50% in the last financial year. That is great but not enough. The challenge to the team in the companies is to keep up with me during this year whilst we transform the companies and achieve a multiple of that growth rate this time around.
The family is likely to be starting a new business this year – not me so much as the rest of them, so watch this space! Looking for a Wales based cartoonist to help out.
I’m writing a book in my (yeah I know) spare time – does anyone know of a fledgling graphics person who might like to get involved?
I have a list of things that are not resolutions but are more things I would like to fit in this year:
Restart Tai Chi (lessons already booked)
Do more Paying it Forward
Do lots more Guerrilla Gardening
Try wild swimming
Get a tattoo
Drop a belt size
Have a really good holiday this summer
Lullabies from the Axis of Evil is a 2004 CD containing traditional lullabies sung by women from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea (the axis of evil), as well as Syria, Libya, and, Cuba (beyond the axis of evil), plus Afghanistan and Palestine, supprted by Western performers. Lullabies connect us to the most basic, childlike parts of ourselves and this CD is beautiful.
Listen to the featured clip “Ya Lel Ma Atwalak (This Never Ending Night)” by Rim Banna (Palestine) and Kari Bremnes (Norway):
Find it, buy it, love it Enjoy…and comment please!
I heard a story yesterday about a family with a husky that went out in the snow, dug a shelter for itself and refused to come back in. Well Gizmo our Cairn is a rufty tufty sort of dog and also had to be persuaded to come back in yesterday, but after a walk had to be put in a sink of luke warm water to defrost himself – why? Take a look below & you will see that he had been collecting snowballs!
Happy New Year to you all, stay warm!
It's true, that you, are blessed and lucky.
It's true, that you, are touched by something,
That will grow and bloom, in you.
2009 does 1979 in the style of 1943. That's right, a swing version of Blondie's Heart of Glass, by the great Puppini Sisters, listen to this:
Find it, buy it, love it, – can you listen to this and not tap your feet? Enjoy…and comment please!
I can never remember the word hypnagogia, partly because I don't speak Greek and partly because the only time I think of it is when I wake up after being in the state when I went to sleep the night before.
Hypnagogia is that warm fuzzy state you can be in when you are half awake and half asleep, where dreams are more vivid and all is calm. If it sounds like it is induced by something, it isn't – most lucky-sleep people go straight to sleep when their head hits the pillow, missing out the in between bit, most unlucky-sleep people never get there.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to visit regularly? For me a short hypnagogic episode leads to a really deep and satisfying sleep and a feeling of well being, ideas and energy the following morning. Trouble is, I'm so knackered most evenings that the head hitting the pillow is an off switch.
Hypnagogia: A Bridge to Other Realities by Yun-Wen Shaw:
"To dream and altogether not to dream. This synthesis is the operation of genius, by which both activities are mutually reinforced."
The more I read about hypnagogia the more the idea grows on me,
naturally altered realities, Jungian Active Imagination, and theta
waves (which are neither Mexican , nor did they sing 'Walking on
Sunshine').
What's next? Sarawadgi – now there's a word to play with.
Copernican inversions and other engaging nonsense 