Merry Christmas!

I'll be off to spend the festive season with my Mum in Somerset tomorrow, so I'm taking this opportunity to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas!

The last time I looked, I had

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readers, so I hope that you all have a wonderful time while I'm away!

Missing you already!

Guitar Maintenance

Looking after your guitar is well worth the effort. When, in my late teens, I was presented with my first acoustic guitar one of the first things I did was to cover it with stickers and use the soundhole as an ashtray.
Needless to say, that guitar never sounded right again.
But, over the long years since then, I gradually realised that looking after my guitar was a much better bet.

And in recent years I have found a few inexpensive accessories in my local HobGoblin music shop to help me keep my instruments in good order:

Lemon oil is good for cleaning the fingerboard; it treats the wood and gets the muck off that invariably builds up during use of the guitar.

Guitar polish is well worth the price; it keeps the body of the instrument looking good and, when rubbed into the neck of the guitar helps your chord hand move freely back & forth.

Fast Fret is another equally inexpensive product for cleaning the strings after playing. Not only does it clean the strings but it also, along with the other products, keeps your guitar playing well - just like it did when you first fell in love with it in the shop that day you decided that it was now worth your while to spend a few bob on a good quality instrument.

These things really take a lot of the hard work out of playing your guitar - leaving you free to concentrate on being creative.

For a demonstration of how to use these products - and how to restring your guitar - check out the video on guitarmaintenance.

Horror Story

It's really spooky.

Every time I go online I get the same picture appear over & over again. It's scary, it's frightening and I'm finding it hard to sleep at night as a result of it.

I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but the picture is of a woman who stares calmly into the camera as she pulls the skin from her face in one big, huge ghastly piece. It's horrible.

How can anyone, in their right mind, put this kind of thing on the internet? It's sick.

Where All The Money Went

Here is something to consider:

In this age of "amazingly advanced scientific technology" everything has become so quick that if a thing does not happen instantaneously there is a public outcry. Messages arrive moments after they've been sent. It is now possible to buy things - online - from the comfort of your own home, almost before you're aware of it.

In order to facilitate this process money is converted into numbers - in the case of a computer into zeros and ones - and, as your money gaily disappears into the ether, what becomes of it then? Answer: someone else converts those numbers either back into cash or they, in turn, buy something online using those numbers.

Fact: The whole world is in the grip of a recession. All the money seems to have disappeared somewhere.

Are you still with me?

Fact: This online internet world is constantly being hacked into by people. If you do not pay these people lots of money they will turn your computer - you know, the one you worked long hours of your life for and saved up for for ages - into an incredibly thin & lightweight piece of shit.

Never mind that it's costing you a lot of hard-earned cash to run your computer anyway - these greedy, worthless people are more than happy to bleed you dry.

Look out for these people. Listen carefully to how they justify their crimes. See if they can look you in the eye. Ask them where all the money went. Listen carefully to their answers.

That Was Then - This Is Now

I've just noticed that my recent posts are getting older & older & older. I'm going to take this recently discovered gem of knowledge to be a prompt for writing something else.
And this seems to be an ideal opportunity to perform a practical, scientific experiment in the process.

If I type this out fast enough will it still be the 'Present Time' when I've finished? Or will the text be doomed to be almost instantaneously consigned to 'The Past'? There's only one way to find out!

The timer is set on my mobile phone; my fingers (both of them) are feeling up to the task; neurons & little bits of chemically-electrical string are humming away at the ready in my head as I try to decide what I'll write.

Here we go!

Hmm. Not bad. Only 5 seconds - but is this still in the 'Present Time'?

It is!

Well. It was.

I'm not so sure now.

There it goes again!

Too late - it's gone...

Fun Things You Can Do With A Bad Back

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Modern Acronyms Explained

HTML - This is one that your partner may well be nagging you to read up on. How To Make Love.
LOL - This can mean many things, but I have it on good authority that it stands for Leg Of Liver.
OMG - Most people are familiar with this one. Obviously it stands for Outrageously Mental Goat.
SEO - Very popular with people who like the water. Sexually Enticing Oceanarium.
USA - Lots of people get this one wrong. Unrealistic Space Adventures.
EU - Politicians use this a lot. Expenses Unlimited.
FTSE - Some folk think this is something you play under the table. Finances Taken Somewhere Else.
BP - Despite everything you may think, this means Best Pal.
BAA - Doesn't actually stand for anything - it's just a sound that a sheep makes.
TV - No. Not that at all. Originated during the Grocers' Riots of 1898. Troublesome Vegetables.
IMF - No prizes for guessing this one. Improper Maid Fondling.
BBC - Coined at a recent party-poopers convention. Balloon Bursting Ceremony.
OTT - Another one invented during the Grocers' Riots of 1898. Obliterate The Tomatoes.
UK - Again, not an acronym. This one is used to describe the sound you make just prior to vomiting.
UKBA - Used to describe the sound that a sheep makes just before it vomits.
FCUK - The sound that a football club makes just before it collectively vomits.
WWW - Used to denote marsupial-friendly territory in Australia. We Welcome Wallabies.
MOD - Someone likely to have been a smartly dressed, scooter riding Who fanatic in the 1960s.
APR - No. Nothing to do with loan companies. Aardvarks Prefer Redheads.
ITV - Those Grocers' Riots again! Intolerably Troublesome Vegetables.
FX - Frantic Xylophonists. Used to denote percussion players who are late for a rehearsal or concert.
FIFA - The sound made by a high-flying executive when he is caught redhanded in a compromising situation.

BLOG - Used instead of RSVP on Rastafarian party invites. Bring Lots Of Ganja.

2011 BC (Roxy Music - Strictly Confidential, For Your Pleasure)

The wind howled as the last of the thin, watery daylight drained away towards night. It was growing colder; the rain returning time and again like a predator - coming back to see if its prey had stopped moving.
Having reached the top of the ridge alongside the west side of the valley - not far above where a colossal outline of a horse had been carved down to the chalk below, the boy and his father had been ambushed by a group of six warriors from the enemy tribe and, although they had successfully driven them off, his father had received a deep wound from a thrown spear. When he tugged the crude iron tip from his abdomen the blood had gushed forth in a torrent.
The boy, only 15 years old, had fought valiantly alongside his father as they battled the group and, having seen the last of them run helter-skelter down the slope in retreat, he turned to grin at his father. His grin of victory, however, quickly changed to one of fear as he saw his father's expression. Though still tender of years, he had the presence of mind to help him stagger across to where a small outcrop of rock formed a natural windbreak before his legs gave out from under him.
Fraught with indecision, the youngster sat next to his father, giving him what body heat he had as the older man grew colder.
Slicing off a length of his animal skin tunic, he held it against the hole, but the blood still seeped steadily through. He gazed into his father's eyes - alarmed to see them glazing over; unable to help him himself, he stared around the uninhabited wilderness for aid.
But the wind continued to blow with a frustrating indifference; the night dropped steadily, robbing the boy of the last sight of his living father's face.
They had set off from their village at dawn, armed with spears and crude swords as they walked off to join with the warriors of their own tribe a few miles beyond this valley. Skirmishes with their neighbouring tribe had been common for as long as anyone could remember, but there had been an outrage committed, and the call had gone out for a massing of able-bodied men.
Despite his father's insistence that he was still too young for fighting, the boy had kept on until his father reluctantly armed him and gave him a rudimentary lesson in hand-to-hand combat the night before. Had they not been ambushed by the small force of enemy warriors they would have reached the rest of their own before nightfall.
Not knowing what to do, he huddled closer to his father as the rain came back for another foray. It was getting colder now and, although the outcrop sheltered them from the worst of the wind, the cold rain found them all too easily. Tears spilled helplessly from his eyes as the severity of the situation came back to him with increasing rapidity.
The melancholy sound of a horn made him cast his gaze around feverishly but, although it rang out several times, he could neither make out whether it was blown by friendly lips nor discern from which direction it came from.
Sleep came to him intermittently, occasionally disturbed by the calling of another distant horn; it's note in a slightly different pitch to the first - sometimes overlapping to form a strange, otherwordly melody - colouring his troubled dreams and reminding him of how cold he was.

The Mystery

A moment in the forest
takes on the faded image of a face
a quality of shadow
rewinding to a long-forgotten place
where locked in an enchantment
her body frozen by a magic spell
lay sleeping there a damsel

more beautiful than mortal tongue can tell

You stumble on a clearing
not far from where you hear the traffic roar
to find an ancient tower
and marvel how it was not seen before
though smothered all in ivy
for nigh-on almost forty thousand weeks
rising higher than the trees
a legend of which no one ever speaks

And from the highest window
the lilting of an unfamiliar tune
comes down to draw you closer
as you become the tide before her moon
beside an oaken doorway
a rusted nail supports a silver key
and as you reach to take it
you hear her call: "To me, my love! To me!"

At once your blood - it quickens
the handle, under protest, starts to turn
and so, inside the tower
to gain the stairs is your one true concern
but here the light is golden
while outside tumbled foul acid rain
entranced, you hardly notice
for such is the enchantment on your brain

The steps go on forever
as you begin to lose track of the time
and onward, ever onward
her lovely voice still beckons you to climb
until you reach a landing
all bathed within the same unearthly glow
before another doorway
this way, it seems, the only way to go

But when this door is opened
and unseen hands have led you then inside
you realise with horror
that long ago this fair young maiden died
and, kneeling by her deathbed
alongside others drawn through history
you join a row of statues
forever twined within the mystery

The Crumbling and the Crack

When another day draws to a close;
when the centuries seem even further back -
in the blink of the eye of the memory
the failing light hints at the morose;
seemingly the unlikely future will lack -
all the wonderful things from a memory
And we search through the night for the ghost;
in every empty room and corner black -
the spirit to recreate the memory
Yet we scheme and then we just suppose;
that the coming days' happy fulfilment lack -
the vibrant jewels of golden memory
Passing over a once-perfect rose;
oblivious to the crumbling and the crack -
blind to the genesis of new memory
Time marches ever onward with those;
forgetting to recall or just losing track -
neglecting to maintain precious memory
When another life draws to a close;
and there seems no way to ever bring it back -
rapidly blinking your eyes at the memory
too late to act or so it goes;
unable to protect them from Time's attack -

in the blink of an eye just a memory

Elixir of Miracles

There is a liquid available which, when consumed, has truly miraculous effects on the imbiber. This liquid has the ability to transform the entire planet into whatever you want it to be - instantly!
This liquid, called alcohol, can turn your neighbourhood into anything from a urinal to a giant rubbish bin. It also enables you to slip into a mode called 'Mind over matter'.
You don't mind, and no one else matters. Small wonder then that it's so popular - and so readily available!
This means that you can band together with other people and, in the middle of the night, you can shout, scream, vomit, distribute litter, vandalise & anything else you can think of, because suddenly, it doesn't matter!
In the unlikely event that you get arrested during the course of your 'harmless fun' you will probably get away without being punished because afterwards you will be able to laugh, shrug and say that you were intoxicated - so it really wasn't your fault at all!
And if you drink this draught for long enough you will successfully transform yourself into two completely separate people. Even if, when you are not drinking, your behaviour is normal & law-abiding, when you do drink you will suddenly become someone who almost everyone else avoids out of embarrassment. When this happens you will have no recollection of what you have done while being this other person. When this happens you will stand an extremely good chance of losing everything you hold dear - because the thing that suddenly takes priority above everything & everyone else is this marvellous liquid.
Goodbye job. Goodbye friends. Goodbye employment. Goodbye social life. Goodbye last vestiges of sanity. Goodbye family. Goodbye ability to make sound judgements. Hallelujah! Praise the brew!
Yet another bonus of this magical fluid is it's ability to make you speak in a language that no one else can understand.
Dribble! Wet yourself! Smell like a cross between a brewery and a public convenience!
As the Central Scrutinizer himself once said (admittedly about something entirely different):

"You'll love it - it's a way of life!"

Teck nollo gee

Latest figures reveal that people using computers spend an average of 12 years of their lifetimes staring at a small representation of an egg timer, praying for their laptop to do what it's supposed to do, threatening their computer with actual physical violence, and going grey with electronically-generated anguish.
Thanks to this marvellous new technology, perfectly normal people can be reduced to a nervous, gibbering wreck by those three little words:
Programme.                                           Not.                                                   Responding.
Computers, we are told, are amazing things. They enable us to send messages instantly to any part of the world - unless, of course, those amazing little problems rear their amazing little heads. Then they amazingly enable us to become enormously enraged to the extent that we are enabled into having amazingly fatal heart attacks & sensational seizures.
I'm not sure, but I can't recall a piece of paper having this effect on anyone. Your biro runs out of ink - ho hum. 4 pence for a new one. Your printer runs out of ink - scarey interview & much pleading with your bank manager.
Is it just me - or is the internet just a cunning way of cutting down the burgeoning elderly population by presenting them with problems that not even a rocket scientist could solve - thus driving them headlong to an earlier grave with despair?
Answers on a postcard - or else!

On the border between Mercia & Wessex

Bristol, Spring 2011

All roads lead to more roads

Is there anything beyond the lateral, horizontal free-fall?
Is there anywhere left to see that hasn't already been obliterated
to make way for the human racetrack?
Thick clouds
omens unheeded and unseen above your artificial canopy
drawing down to claim and smother
in the name
of another game
yet more of the same
Constant rover
Land's End to Dover
God send
God send
God send
God's end

Game over

The Great Awakening

Night falls, but dawn breaks
the wind calls, the leaf shakes
the snow smothers the frozen lakes
the faults of others for your mistakes
The Earth gives, the Earth takes
the soil lives, for all our sakes
hunger fill, thirst slakes
until, the Earth quakes
drink deep, yearning aches

from her sleep the Earth awakes

Magpie

Magpies playing in the trees
firing their toy machine guns at all & sundry
Two for joy & all for one
Airborne and portly relics
of when the world was still
only available

in black & white

Dream landscape

For most of my adult life (from the age of 15) I've worked backstage in the theatre. In the summer of '98 my back was badly injured in an accident during the get-out of WNO's la Traviata. By the autumn of 2000 I was in an awful lot of pain and was no longer able to work at all.
I still suffer from chronic lower backpain, and can still no longer work.
But I still dream that I am working backstage and building sets that are sometimes even more bizarre & unlikely than the ones I used to help build when I was still touring with the aforementioned opera company!
On the few occasions when I am not being a stagehand in my sleep I quite often go to a place that has a (for me) instantly recognisable topography.
Sometimes I am travelling on a train, and the train goes across a large area of fields among some hills before crossing a gorge (not unlike the Avon Gorge) on a high bridge.
There is also a fantastically tall building which I have ascended in a terrifying transparent lift - right to the top. I don't know how high it is, but it is always quite daunting. There was another time that I was dreaming of travelling on a train and, looking out of the carriage window, I could see the tower in the distance.
Another feature is a huge rock - a bit like a small mountain. In yet another dream I was wandering through a valley road with someone and, stopping to indicate a large rock to my companion, I can recall telling him that I often dreamed of a rock similar to this one, adding: "Of course, the rock in my dream is much larger than this." When I awoke after this dream I did think it funny.
Some years ago I dreamed that I was in a hospital - as a patient. The truly strange thing about it was the fact that I woke up twice during the dream, and both times I returned to the same dream. I wasn't scared by the dream while I was experiencing it, but when I thought back to it afterwards I realised that it had been quite an awful nightmare. I won't describe it here, but if we ever meet ask me to relate it to you.

A minor key drone

It's almost bedtime. Listening to some extremely chilled Miles Davis on headphones (thanks, Derek). Another friend of mine (Tony) told me a story that he heard some time ago about some people excavating the remains of an old Roman road somewhere in the north of England and, while one of them was alone at the underground site he was suddenly able to hear a minor key drone. Thinking that some of his colleagues were listening to a tape or the radio in another part of the dig, he was astonished to see the hoof & foreleg of a horse step through the stone and, cowering in fear, he watched the rest of the horse come into view.
He was able to see an extremely weary rider slouched in the saddle, dressed in early Roman attire; followed by several other figures on foot. After a few minutes they had all disappeared into the far wall.
The experience so rattled the witness that he said nothing about it until eventually pressed into doing so by friends a few weeks later who wanted to know what was wrong.
Describing the clothing & the weaponry that the figures had been carrying they were able to ascertain that the vision had emanated from sometime in the 3rd or 4th century when the Romans still ruled in England.
What struck me about this was the sound of the minor drone that seemed to herald the vision. Being something of a musician myself, I am always transported somehow into the distant past when I hear a song in a minor key; and a minor key drone really seems to contain an air of mystery & magic.
Could this be an element of time travel?

Things that happen while you're asleep

A few nights ago I went to sleep and, at the beginning of my dream, I was in a large capsule with a number of other people. The capsule was about 50' long, mainly transparent, and travelled through a long tunnel that comprised a series of interesting, entertaining and exciting things for the benefit of the occupants of the capsule as they travelled through the tunnel. Unfortunately, I cannot recall any of the things we saw before the end of the ride.
However, when the ride came to a halt, I was one of the last to disembark and, before myself and another man could get off, the doors closed and the capsule began moving in the opposite direction. We could only watch as the capsule went through the wall at the back end of the 'station' and took us on a long, high-speed ride of terror that ended above ground in another part of the town which neither of us were familiar with.
Managing to climb out of the now stationary capsule, my companion went underneath the capsule and, to my horror, he metamorphosed into a steel strut or support for the rail system that the capsule travelled upon.
Although I managed to avoid a similar fate, I felt that I had fallen from the frying pan and into the fire because the next thing I knew was that I was one of a party of other humans that were now worker slaves to an army of frightening & inhuman creatures that were using us to construct more tunnels.
I remember that many of us were hoping to rebel & overthrow our cruel oppressors, but we were constantly observed & terrorised by the creatures. Eventually there was a form of rebellion, but the leader of the creatures, a tall, muscular, menacing, dark & horned figure escaped, running past me to freedom as it evaded capture.

The last thing I remember before waking up was the dreadful feeling that the danger was not over.

A Life Rewinding

Near the end of his life, the 89 year old Paul Davidson awoke one day to find on the right arm of his motorised wheelchair, instead of the normal lever for propelling himself in different directions, the control panel of a time machine.
It was set out much like the controls of a video or dvd player: Play, Pause, Fast Forward, Fast Rewind. Stop.
He had awoken a little earlier than he normally would, and decided to experiment with this curious adaptation to his wheelchair. Tentatively, he pressed the Play button.

When, after a while, nothing seemed to have happened, his finger hovered over the Fast Rewind symbol. A curious smile rearranging his wrinkled face, he pressed the button.
There was a strange, musical drone in a minor key and he was suddenly rushing backwards through time at several times the normal speed of his life. The careworker lady who looked after him flashed into existence, a blur as she attended to his needs in reverse. Days & nights strobed by as he felt his strength recover.
It wasn't long before he was out & about again - delighted to be able to see old friends again - friends who had recently passed away - though he was sad that he was going too fast to communicate with them again.
The minor key drone still in his ears, he was back working at the factory again, though his job had drastically changed; at a headlong speed he was now required to turn finished products back into raw materials.
Then he was rushing his dead wife from hospital back home where her health swiftly improved, and his children were suddenly back on the scene again.
What seemed like only moments later his children were going back through adolescence until he & his young wife were alone after getting wedded.
Disturbed by the fact that he no longer had any recollection of his wife or children, Paul was travelling back through his own youth - amazed to see his own parents not just alive again, but so much younger - and looking younger by the minute.

A feeling of panic made him look for the controls on the arm of his wheelchair, but the chair was no longer there. When he looked back up he was back at school, emptying his head of knowledge at such a rate that he became mystified by the sky & the rushing clouds above him.

Then he was too young for school and, still fast rewinding at a terrifying rate, he felt his body dwindle until his last memory was of his parents in old fashioned garb smiling at him as he lay in his pram.

When his carer found him lying on the floor he was dead. When she put his wheelchair back upright after his body had been taken away, she noticed that the control lever had snapped off the arm when he had taken his final tumble.

Time Travel Engine Build & Installation

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Build Your Own Time Machine

Simply follow these instructions:
1} Select a comfortable vehicle - ie a moderate sized garage or shed. (it is not mandatory
 that you utilise a police phone box or an aluminium motor car)

2} Select a hardwearing, sturdy seat (an armchair or similar)

3} Put the seat inside your chosen vehicle.

4} In a prominent position (close to the seat) place a list of all the timezones you wish to
 visit.

5} Select a small table. Place it next to the seat in your chosen vehicle.

6} Place a pen & paper on the table (for jotting down things like Lottery numbers or
 winners of horse races)

7} Install Time Travel apparatus (see Time Travel Engine Build & Installation post)

Dinosaurs - Like You've Never Seen Them Before!

Getting fed up with the present?
Wish you could go back and relive some of those more exciting moments?
Curious to see what the Lottery numbers will be this coming weekend?

Well, now's your chance!

For an absolutely free trial offer go to the BUILD YOUR OWN TIME MACHINE post
and if you're not COMPLETELY SATISFIED you're guaranteed a FULL REFUND!