some grandads slip away

As I close down for the night, the sad news of Ray Harryhausen's passing has just come through.

I had thought recently that I was in danger of writing a series of obituaries and needed to be careful about it. However, I really think that this guy was a hero. As was Carmine Infantino who passed on last week.

I grew up* reading American comics and watching films like Jason and the Argonauts - I learnt to draw and got to understand storytelling from such people. More on these another time but it's interesting that whilst friends and colleagues are bemoaning the various paedophiles and celebrity rapists as the "loss of their childhoods" (sic) some of us really are losing our heroes who genuinely fuelled our fantasies and taught us so much that we can't learn in school.

*yes, alright . . .

walk my way

did I hear you call me brother?
did I hear you say
all we have is one another?
won't you walk my way?

roll on silver lining roll along
back on the streets where we belong

An interesting few weeks . . .

Nothing quite as drastic as February half term but busy, busy, busy. According to our management, OFSTED are in the car park and about to enter the building any moment. Honest. But that's been going on for weeks now. Mind you, Mrs Dave is so busy she hardly ever gets home. I'm thinking of parking Harvey in the car park, let her live there and have done with it.

Still, what can I tell you? Oh yes, an amazing Martin Simpson gig last Monday at the Colchester Arts Theatre. However, I have never been at a gig before where the act has to leave because his "body has rejected something I've taken in". Several false starts and a fair amount of time spent calling god on the great white telephone still lead to a wonderful few hours (with breaks) of fine guitar wizardry and poignant songs. Happy 60th birthday, Mr S and I look forward to Cambridge Folk Festival in the summer.

Mrs Dave and I travelled down to Wales on Friday evening with some friends to join a larger group of like-minded fellow travellers. A fine time was had by all generally, although those damned bottles of Talisker catch you out, don't they? We climbed Cadair Idris on Saturday which ended up a scramble up a very steep incline in a howling wind. After all the hard work the Blind Watchmaker opened the curtains briefly through sheer vanity to show us the most glorious sight of the west coast of Wales and its beautiful beaches. Oh that's why we spent all that time crawling up there on hands and knees.

The pub at the foot of the mountain had the best beer I've tasted for years - Butty Bach (Martyn?) - which was a fruity mouthful that slipped down very easily. Too easily. Later as 28 of us sat around a (very) primitive bunkhouse. We ate chicken curry, drank that Talisker and sang old campfire songs. Sunday was gentler. A quiet walk down a closed rail track (an early Beeching closure - 1964) towards the coast and a virtually Temperance* town still created a thirst. Back to the bunkhouse, then to drink whatever was available. A lovely part of Wales but not a great sleeping experience. We live and learn.

After a farewell to friends old and new, we travelled back home via the old home town to drop off some friends and back to reality. This really was a way of recharging batteries and reminding ourselves what life is really all about.

Oh, and I had left my phone at home (by accident) but between Friday evening and Monday evening, not a single call or text. There wasn't any service down there anyway. As I've said before, the phone has become so much more than simply a phone - a camera for a start. So, no photos of the fantastic scenery. I saw a jay, though!

Right, back on your heads then (surely everyone knows the joke?). Work as usual and then the weekend. Mrs Dave is doing the Moon Walk again this weekend, so if anyone fancies sponsoring her . . ?

*Possibly

a brother slips away

and a brother slips away
like a ship at dawn of day
a brother slips away
another brother gone

Amongst the hand-wringing, sword clashing, celebration and general brouhaha clamouring for people's attention this week, a quieter death was announced.

Whilst not as well known perhaps as his older brother Glyn, Andy Johns did work on many seminal releases. Whilst the list of albums he produced and/or engineered is impressive and is probably the soundtrack to someone's life. He engineered Joni's Shadows and Light which remains one of the great live albums. Anyway, he's presumably finished climbing the stairway to heaven now.

As the obituaries pile up for those we admire (as well as those we didn't) it gets more and more uncomfortable to realise that those fellow travellers moving on are of a similar age to ourselves.

That's quite a sobering thought.

rise above

We set off to France on Good Friday for a long coach journey and arrived very early on Saturday morning, tired and sore of limb. It was probably one of the most uncomfortable coach journeys I've ever suffered and I've endured plenty over the past thirty years.

Mont Blanc, I believe!

A skiing trip is always undertaken with some trepidation but this one was, on the whole, a joy. The weather was pretty good generally and the conditions were mostly excellent. We were at Les Arcs and it was probably the best resort we've ever been to. The food was excellent but the doors left something to be desired.

Doors? Yes, we had lots of door malfunctions. The main door lock decided to break early in the week so we spent four days without a lock! Luckily the whole chalet seemed quite secure and the coach-load of us had taken it completely over. Then the bathroom door handle kept falling out every time the door was opened which woke up Mrs Dave every time I went to the loo in the early hours. Obviously, she was impressed with that.

The only real problem of the week other than the rather laissez-faire attitude towards door ironmongery was the day I chose to borrow some rather fancy new skis. The conditions were icy and Mrs Dave decided that we should go to another part of the mountain range we hadn't skied on before. As you can guess, gentle reader, this was never going to work out well. What could go wrong? Red runs, skis for experts and icy slopes. I'll leave it to your imaginations but there was much swearing echoing through the resort.

Usually whilst I'm out of the country, someone famous dies - Keith Moon and Jerry Garcia being prime examples - but thankfully, Thatcher waited until I was back to shuffle off her mortal coil. That meant that I could join in the festivities. The Twittersphere erupted with much joy and vitriol with Mark Steel being my personal favourite commentator ("87 years too late"). Some people seem to think that we shouldn't make negative comments and "not speak ill of the dead". Why not? Read this and remember! Best Tweet was Martin Simpson's simple "Ding Dong . . .". Subtle and worth a thousand words.

Anyway, let's just look forward to the funeral:

Well I hope you live long now, I pray the lord your soul to keep
I think I'll be going before we fold our arms and start to weep

I never thought for a moment that human life could be so cheap
'Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They'll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down

no man is an island

. . . except the Isle of Man, of course.

When the night shows
the signals grow on radios
All the strange things
they come and go, as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There's no point in direction we cannot
even choose a side.

I've been off ill for a couple of days and this morning spent a few minutes reading Tweets and checking emails. Nothing too strenuous as I feel quite grotty. However, I must admit that this Twitter stuff is a bit baffling.

I know I come across as a bit of a technophobe but I do struggle with some of the terminology and basics of the Digital World. Now, I assume that "following" suggests an action, you click on "following" to show that you are actively reading the tripe words of wisdom the person you are following has to say. When we need to see a rant from some misanthrope hiding behind a pseudonym and a picture of a Lego figure and actually read it we may want to read more of this twaddle interesting stuff.  We collect a few Tweeters we like to read and we click "follow" and avidly devour everything they have to enlighten us with. Or something like that.

So this morning I was delighted to find a rather attractive young singer-songwriter from Colorado had decided to "follow" me. Why? I haven't the faintest idea. There have been a few other fellow travellers who have decided to follow me too. When I checked on her Profile I discovered that she "follows" some 5,222 other Tweeters which might suggest why she hasn't got any gigs until later on in April. She will probably take that long to read them all and make sparkling and witty replies to. The truth is I'm guessing that there is probably some software that latches on to other people's profiles and automatically sends out a so-called "following" message as a form of self advertising. Thereby adding to the amount of junk and spam that seems to be a major feature of all this digital traffic. 

I could be wrong - I usually am when I try to get my head around all things digital - but there does seem to be more against using these ways of communicating than for. Still, it got me to write a song about it. Nothing special, certainly not an award winner. Well, unless there's a category for the least successful attempt to shoehorn the word "dichotomy" into a song, that is.

Talking of things digital doing my head in, this bloody laptop's keyboard is getting worse at doubling random letters and missing capitals out. All mistakes are obviously the laptop's doing and not my poor grammar - honestly. I actually can't bear writing on it any more.

hey lord, don't ask me questions

Why do we never get an answer
When we’re knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war.

I've never been a great church-goer. I remember being sent to Sunday school back in about 1965, running away from it and spending the afternoon hiding in a tree. Don't ask me why, maybe I was showing distinct pagan sympathies even then. Anyway, I found myself getting up early this morning to accompany Mrs Dave to her local church.

Notice I said "her" as she is a Catholic and I am not. Also, along with Father Dougal, I have a problem with all that "believing and stuff". However, despite not being a left-footer, I guess I felt guilty after spending most of dinner last night taking the mickey out of her. She had to read at church for the Palm Sunday service. There were to be three of them. Someone was reading the narrator, the Priest rather obviously, was reading the Big Fella's lines and she had to read all the other parts - Simon, the crowds, Pilate etc. I tried to get her to produce a range of different voices but mostly it tended to be of the Life of Brian variety along with John Wayne's "Awe, surely he was the son of God" ("A little more awe, John") from The Greatest Story Ever Told. So off to church we went this fine Spring morning after scraping the snow off the car.

I have obviously never been to a Palm Sunday service before in my life, certainly not a Catholic one. It must have been the strangest service I have ever been to. Now, as I have mentioned, I've never been a great church-goer. The last proper C of E service I went to must have been my father's funeral back in 1989, although my mother's was a C of E one but it was at the Crematorium and I chose the music. Every other church service I have been to since the late 1970s has been a Catholic one. I'm not a believer but I have done the real stations of the cross, visited yer man's birthplace (banged my head going down to it as they've built a church on top of it), stood in his tomb and climbed to Golgotha. But the most mystical and spiritually uplifting place I've ever been in is the Dome of the Rock at Temple Mount. It was nice shuffling about in bare feet amongst so many genuinely devout believers. Anyway, finding myself in church this morning, I, mercifully with merino walking socks and Gore-Tex boots on,  realised that there's always something new to experience.

Firstly, all the crucifixes were covered over with shrouds, even the one on the stick at the front of the procession. It looked like they'd been spring cleaning and forgot to take them off. I think it's all the ceremony that I have a problem with. There was no music to guide our singing although a few people knew when to spontaneously start. Whenever I try singing in church I always think of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. That's me, that is. Evidently there was no music because of the weather - nobody had turned up. Palm Sunday is supposed to be one of the big services leading up to the Easter one but the church was fairly empty today. Still, we were given palms to wave about at the start, that was thoughtful as unlike the crowds waiting for Jesus, we didn't bring our own along.

So, whilst Mrs Dave was up on stage refusing to perform a range of  voices which might have relieved the boredom for the assembled (small) crowd. At one point nobody knew what to do so there was a bit of bobbing up and down. I was bobbed up when I should have been bobbing down. But no one really got it right and on it went. Meanwhile, I did what I usually do in these circumstances - I start thinking about the big questions in life. What if there really is a God? When will we have peace on Earth? What shall I cook for breakfast? Whatever happened to Dwight Yoakham? Then my eye was attracted to the stained glass windows. They are quite nice ones from 1906. Under some of the windows were names of what I took to be Saints: Mark, the patron saint of notaries, Anthony of which there are several (my favourite being the hermit) but St MacDonald? Perhaps he was a wandering Scot who managed to be there in Jerusalem for the Crucifixion. They all have their own symbols: Mark with a book, Anthony of Padua a donkey and MacDonald a pair of golden arches? 

After much speculation and deep thought, and a better look, I realised that it was probably the name of the artist who made the windows, Mark Anthony Macdonald. After a quick Google when I got home, I discovered this: The stained glass window depicts the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary and was donated by the widow of Mark Anthony MacDonnell, a former MP and a Medical Officer in Liverpool who died in 1906. So I guess it was someone trying to buy her husband's way into heaven. And these new glasses may not be right.

There was another slightly bizarre incident when a bunch of children came in with banners saying things like Hosanna and Yay! Jesus or something. Then they hung a naff drawing of Jesus on a donkey and lots of writing about people shouting "Crucify him!" over the front of the altar whilst the Priest prepared a quick breakfast. Obviously, I can't have any of that as I'm an infidel. We had to all shake hands and mumble, "Peace be with you" which is always nice and optimistic, especially with all the "King of Israel" stuff they sing about given the state of that strange country. The priest looked at a mother whose child had taken to screaming with gusto because of complete boredom with a look of benign contempt and then it was all over. After another hymn that seemed to start spontaneously sung a cappella we all trundled out into the snow. 

Once again, an opportunity for Enlightenment passed by.  No big questions answered, really. At home I decided to cook a full English breakfast and if I can be bothered later, I can always look up Dwight's fate. According to the news, there's no peace on Earth in the offing currently, I'm afraid.

howl on

I don’t like my voice

And my clothes don’t fit
And my gun belt hangs
On my skinny hips
And all I want to do
Is to be like you 

I have decided to dip my toes into the murky waters of the Twittersphere (?!). I'm not actually even sure if that's a correct term hence the interrobang.  A friend at work has been badgering me for months to get involved. I'm not really sure whether it was worth getting involved or not but there are a few interesting characters to follow.

The biggest problem when starting out, of course, is the fact that nobody knows who you are so it's a very daunting thing to take that first - and in my case, very - tentative step. Ah well, each journey has to start with a first step, I guess. I'll throw caution and natural reticence to the wind and off we go.

One of the problems with it is how daft it looks with zero followers but in truth, I'm mostly interested in following a particular few Tweeters (is one who Tweets a Twat?). If it all gets too embarrassing or addictive I can always just stop using it and delete myself, I suppose. Ah well. Any comments from those who have had a go or even do Tweet will be welcome.

Anyway, it's St Patrick's Day and Mrs Dave is half Irish, so we're mostly drinking Guinness. Sláinthe!