There's one little room...

There's one little room that is quiet,
When the rest of the house is a riot,
Reading books on the loo,
While you're having a poo,
Is really quite good, you should try it!

"Does anyone remember laughter..."

It's a long time ago that I laughed like that. Every time my children can't control themselves and crack up and fall to the floor in hysterics I must confess a little jealousy. I laughed like that once; Watching TV with my dad, or in school at Chapel Practice with friends, where we acted like five-year-olds but were really just enjoying the stupidity of being. Once for a month or two while working as a lifeguard at an outdoor pool in Denmark during their coldest summer ever; bored but with people of a similar age, being silly but laughing and laughing every day, to the point of tears, and going home with exhausted stomach muscles, back to the reality of my life back then. I laughed watching 'Sleepers' and watching 'Fawlty Towers' and watching other things that I can't even remember anymore...

When I laugh now it's almost impossible to let go, and what comes from me is little more than a sardonic chuckle...

"See that little child a laughing

In the shade of that golden tree

He laughed so much he started crying

I wish that little child was me..."

(Silver Moon https://soundcloud.com/stream by me!)

Brownsville Girl...

Hard to begin on this. Where to start. Something about a mixture of the past and present. Something about a record shop and tears, hearing it and bowing. Something about times when it's all there is and all there is to aspire to. Something about rumours of him writing lyrics, those lyrics, there in the studio, not all of them but always changing. Something about "You can please some of the people part of the time and part of the people all of the time..." and "I'll see him in anything, so I'll stand in line." But it's even deeper really, there's a woman and freedom and a painted desert and "...people who suffered together having stronger connections than those who are most content." and other things dropped effortlessly from a talking tongue that sings. And the rising background and the "Oh, yeah...???" And fame and dreams again, and fame and the gunfighter and defeat and the inevitability and the forever and ever of both those things and Gregory Peck quoting slightly wrong, and another singer's mistake "is... was..." "and forgetfulness at lyrics and the backing ladies getting it right but all wonderfully, so he, and so meant to be wrong and perfect. Like all the other mistakes and moments of clarity. Sometimes this is all there is and all there needs to be... this is truth and truth is this...

Wordle, Wordle.

Wordle, wordle
Scrabble too
Make my brains
All turn to glue
Make my heart
Run hot and cold
And make all sounds
Seem new and old

For what's the use
in being nerds
And getting points
For making words
Tripple letter,
Double third,
Xi for thirty
Zoo absurd!

Yes what's the point
It's all just crap
A waste of time
Delete that App
I hurl my phone
Out in the bin...

Then blame my wife
'Cause I can't win...

This thing that I am not.

There will always be this thing, that I am not but that others are. As I struggle unnoticed, with children and am passed, going the other way, by two men in a Porsche, speeding their own way up a slippery, snow-clad hill. Yet I will also be he who is watched as he drives off, or around another, different, corner.

I will never be he who steps over the winning line having done 10K in under thirty minutes or who scores the winning English try. Yet I will grow old as these others do, and pass along in their fashion too, filled to the brim with me, me, me.

I will never, again, be the person forced to be part of me through blood. To be proud and yet at times doubtful of that father’s sanity, watching myself in the mirror as one and another in line, step over and into life. Never will I be he, bound in snow and ice, who stands waiting for the next rain.

Stand on that position now, neither here nor there nor gone. Turning again in my mind to the day’s mistakes, the lack of judgment, the pointless anger, the tired impatience, the idiot lack of understanding, the bullying that size too often brings, the guilt at huge gaunt clumsiness, the sorrow at stupidity.

Just try to be better, let tomorrow start another attempt, be Groundhog Day again, get some exercise, eat well, drink plenty of water, work hard, strive to be happy, bring happiness to others, forgive yourself your imperfections, accept and understand…

Or do not do so and try to sort it out…

Snowman

I am just a snowman
Standing in the snow,
Reminding all the parents
Of the things they used to know.

I'm just an ugly little chap
'Cause it takes time to create
And everyone was hurrying
Because the day was getting late

I'm just a lonely snowman
And soon it will be night
I hope the weather's cold and that
The foxes they don't bite

I'm just a little snowman
And I'm glad you had some fun
Come and get your hat back
When I've melted in the sun

Primitive man.

Can we ever imagine now, what it was like to be closer to the start of this?
To wake up in the cold, on an English plain, walk to France over a year and then come back again? To wear the fur of an animal that you yourself killed? To know your first few children would probably not survive, or it would be a miracle if they did?
Primitive man is standing behind us, looking over our shoulders at our electronic keyboards, staring in wonder at our mobile phones, touching a radiator and getting burned.
Not even Primitive man though, even me from my childhood. A teenage Tony Peek sits in the chair beside me wondering what a DVD player is, or how Sky+ can go back in time, or where things go when I make the arrow on this screen move to the word "Publish" and click...

Where's the snow?

Where's the snow?

Well the teachers in my school they’ve all

Got restless itchy feet,

They’re staring out the window,

Hoping it don’t sleet.

Because snow is what we need you see

To fall like fluffy foam,

And an email from the Head to say

That we can all go home!

Lions and Tigers and Tygones...

Lochie was at the day-carer's today. It was fine, he likes it there, he is usually happy and smiling, and happy to go in and happy when he comes home again.
We got a picture sent to us during the day, they'd been face painting and he'd been made up to look like a Lion.
That was the idea at least... he was meant to be a lion and the photograph that the day-carer sent to our phones looked pretty lion-like. I got the picture in the middle of an English lesson, and my wife got hers in the middle of a council meeting about expected redundancies during the next round of pay cuts.
The pictures were fine but neither my wife nor I realized what the face painted Lochie-Lion had turned into during the day. He'd wanted to be a tiger you see, but the other children, who'd been painted before him since they were younger, had all wanted to be tigers as well and the bright orange face paint had all been used up. The day-carer, clever in psycology as these ladies need to be, had painted him as a Lion but said that he was Lochie-Lion, King of the jungle.
But that wasn't enough, sadly, he wanted to be a tiger, you see, and tiger he would most definitely become. He had announced for the other four children that, actually, he wasn't just Lochie-Lion-King-of-the-Jungle but was in actual fact, actually, really, now to be known as, and called by forever, for all eternity and forever and ever: Lochie-the-Tygone-King-of-all-the-animals-everywhere-including-Tigers. The other children didn't argue, because he's the oldest, and the morning passed peacefully with Lochie-the-Tygone firmly in control of proceedings at the day carer's.
As I'm writing this, he is still Lochie-the-Tygone-King-of-all-the-animals-everywhere-including-Tigers, having refused to allow the face paint to be washed off and absolutely refused to let slip the new, tougher, and all powerful personality that he has become during the day.

Now my three-year-old son is asleep in bed as a half painted lion/tiger mix and only time will tell if the Lochie of old will be permitted to return to us in the morning when I try, once again to wash his face.
Wish me luck...

After creativity, what next?

The next new video is done and uploaded and parts of me are waiting for time to pass so that I can understand it: Was it worthwhile? Is it good? Was it a waste of time? Is it bad? Was it just practice...  just a lesson in editing? Only time will tell whether this newest and, for the moment, most important thing is good or bad.

If I'd been more professional I would probably have waited a month before uploading it but I was too excited last night and my trigger-happy-click-finger got the better of me.

Some things that I've done during my life I am still very pleased about. Some actions I've performed I'm still disturbed by.
And now it's true, I'm a bit nervous... I wonder how I'll feel in ten year's time about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqn2GTa7TaI

Guitar strings and nappies...(diapers)

Just in the middle of changing my guitar strings I was interrupted by my 20-month-old daughter. She came waddling through the door, looking up at me with innocent eyes and demanded a cuddle. I stopped what I was doing, of course, not wishing her to be blinded by the waving and flicking of my sharp, metal guitar strings.

I put my guitar down (or up as I should say to avoid the tramping feet of the other children) and reaching down lifted Isla up onto my knee.

I could smell it straight away of course but just to confirm my suspicions I asked her, "Have you had a poo?"
"Poo-bum, poo-bum," was her innocent enough reply so I put her down and, getting a nappy and wipes from the other room, came back to find her lying on the floor next to my old guitar strings waiting for me to change her.
I did it. I've had a few children and have changed a nappy or two so it wasn't difficult but, since I was distracted by her from my original task of changing my guitar strings I was a little thoughtless and un-noticing as I changed her. She was happy, but I was thinking about my strings and looking forward to playing my newly strung guitar and didn't notice as her happy young hands managed to get hold of one of the discarded strings that lay beside her.
She shook it.
Luckily I noticed in time, pulled my head up and the sharp end only cut my lip. Anger flashed through me for an instant. Anger at myself and my distracted and complacency.
The guitar string cut my lip, but it could have been my eye quite easily. And obviously, as everyone knows "...it's all fun and games until someone loses and eye..."

Silent Witness and the DeLonghi Perfecta

They’ve got one now. When the camera takes us into Leo’s office. There it is in the far corner waiting to have its buttons pressed and to spout out its delicious loveliness.

However, there is the problem of noise. When I make a coffee early in the morning it’s hard not to wake the children, which sort of ruins the point of waking up early to attempt something creative. For example this is being written upstairs in bed, where I can turn on my computer and write in relative silence.

If I had ventured downstairs and turned on ‘the machine’,  first of all there’s the huge clacking and whirring of it starting up and then there’s the grinding howl of its actual coffee making.

It’s a lovely machine; we got it as a combined Christmas present from both of our families four years ago (and even then we had saved up half the money, so for us it was not inexpensive).

Yes, it’s a wonder of nature and thoughts of it even now fill me with joyous expectation. It’s really good, but it’s really, really noisy.

In Silent Witness, in Leo’s office, they’ve added a coffee jug, which they walk over and pour coffee from. There’s no heater to the side of ‘the machine’ so their all drinking cold coffee, but then again they’re actors so that’s what they do.

I guess they added the coffee jug due to the fact that if they actually pressed the buttons they’d have to stop filming for three minutes while everyone watched the coffee being made and listened to the cacophony of noise that this action entails.

PS: Maybe the newer one (which they have) is quieter?

PPS: Is their coffee drinking a homage to Scandinavian Crime TV and Books?

Bye for now.