Thunder!

Yesterday afternoon we had here in this little patch of the Midlands, one of the most impressive summer storms I have seen in the UK for a long time! Save for the fact that it knocked out the power and caused the rabbit some consternation it was incredible, it just went on......and on......and on.

Absolutely torrential rain, stunning fork lightening and house shaking claps of thunder directly overhead for something approaching two hours and all accompanied by an unusually strong wind for even a summer storm here.

By the time it passed, the roads were flooded and littered with vehicles that weren't enamoured of that level of engine/moisture content and my walk into town would have been better served had I used a small boat!

The video does it absolutely no justice but it's the best I could do without rendering my camera subsequently useless!

Watch out there's a poet about - Guest Post

As if it's not enough that I peddle my doggerel to captive audiences and the unwary shoppers of Milton Keynes I now swoop onto Gemmak's blog and spill it out here too. Thanks to her for giving me the space.

Two poems; slightly bizarre ones I'm afraid but a lot of what I write seemed inappropriate for this blog.

The first is a bit more accessible and resulted from me thinking about the number of words Eskimos/Inuits etc are supposed to have for snow and then I realised we have just as many for the word "time". Interesting how it features so heavily in our lexicography.

The second is far more obscure and was written when I was playing around with the idea of Jack Kerouac's stream of consciousness style and is really about the representation of deities and how every culture I know of has at least one "god". I know they are both not what you would consider 'poems' in the traditional sense as they are written in free or blank verse - I do write "proper poems" too like villanelles and sonnets but hey, something different is fun too.

If you have a passion to read more of my poems (or even hear my voice - eek) then you can click here.

IanB (a.k.a. Alex Sykie, a.k.a. Punctuation on Wordpress).


Time
----------------------
Time kills.
So we kill time.
Time heals.
Does everything heal with time?
Time is made of some sort of plastic
because Dr Who and Einstein can bend time.
Although it’s quite small since it’s
so easy to lose track of time.
Time can be stolen.
We steal time.
We take a minute,
snatch a second.
Time has wings,
time flies.
Time deceives,
time can play tricks.
Time changes everything.
Everything changes with time.
Time passes and,
once it’s gone
it never comes back.
You can’t own time though,
we never “have” time.
Time is addictive nowadays
because we never seem to have
enough time.
Unless you’re in prison;
then you can’t get rid of it,
you have time on your hands,
you’re doing time,
your own time not anyone
else’s, just yours. The judge
gave you time as your master
and now you serve time.
Until it’s finished with you
or, like money, you’ve spent all your time on nothing,
wasted your time and now you’ve had it,
you’ve run out of…time.

Friend
----------------------
This is the spirit of Kerouac. Chelsea Hotel
spirit, English-style.

I mean it though. To you:

I used to call you friend.

I cried and you listened to my sobbing.
I laughed and the laughter bounced back.

And we lied about understanding.
It was the easy thing to do.
It tussled with my rational side.

You were my morning friend. My good-time
friend. My comfort.

I used to call you friend.

Do you remember the songs?

Happy, clappy songs.
It tussled with my rational side.

We were wreathed in sweet-smelling smoke
and chimes. A childhood duty,
kissing feet, wiping cloth, reading
what we couldn't do and never what we could.

Authorised words. Approved and translated.

Then songs about being happy to die because
there would be something there. A song relying
on trust. A tussle with my rational side.

You were never my rock standing in a sand-filled
desert, filled with emptiness. You were never
the hand that guided the art.

White man. White woman. Nails in the wrong places.

Olive in the skin. Oil on the hair. Painted
by the gentiles.

Words that banned things. Stipulations,
prostrations by action and abstention,
by observance in reverence. Until the difference
between the free and those who still listened
grew greater in my mind.

And the difference between the free and me
became so paper-thin you could rub your
fingers through it and they would touch.

Such a fine gap. It tussled with my
rational side.

Move on move on. More wraiths of smoke.
Breath in for peace, hold and release.
Breath in for solace, for solace, for solace.

Mind walks, takes a run up and jumps into the
dream sky of possibilities.

Made our friendship look very different.
Less rules, more creativity. More of
everything: colours, creeds, good and bad.

I used to call you my friend.

Breathed in, moved to the jungle beat.
Made our friendship look very very very different.
Gave you a new face, a new size.

I danced in the warehouse. I danced in the street.
Everybody was there but I was on my own.

Then I hugged the trees. I squeezed their bark
and ran my hands up and down them; my connectors
to the Earth, a divination of you. Stroking them
with my palms and hugging the hard woody trunk like
a lover come back from a long journey and you don't
want to let them go.

Your face looked so very very different and you
lived everywhere and you were truly beautiful.

It tussled with my rational side.

'Heroes'..... A guest post

For reasons that I don't think I need to explain I seem unable to string together more than a few coherent sentences lately and it was thus that late last night I put a shout out on Twitter for anyone who fancied guesting here. 'Alex' (@redalexred), a fellow blogger and twitterer offered to help me out almost immediately. For those of you who don't know Alex, he is a serving RAF officer with more than a few exciting tales to tell on his own blog Balderdash and Piffle, so, I will duly instruct you to take a trip over there sometime and let him take over here for today!

Oh...and if anyone else would like to guest post here just drop me a mail or a comment, subject your choice!

Over to you Alex....

Heroes.

My first hero would have had to have been Trevor Francis. The first million pound footballer (well almost his transfer fee was £999,999 but it’s close enough!). He came from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest and became my hero when he scored the goal to win the European Cup in 1979. He dived into the box in front of the goal to head in a cross by John Robertson, landing on a concrete “shot put” circle by the goal. I was allowed to stay up late and watch the game (which was very dull) but the goal got me bouncing around the room. MY club had won the European Cup! And the player that did won it…well he became my first real hero. I was 10. But footballers retire. They disappear and new ones replace them…Stuart Pearce, Stan Collymore, but they weren’t the same. They weren’t real heroes to me. Just other players

Since then I have had a couple…in the 1980’s and early 90’s Bruce Springsteen was a bit of a hero to me. He just made this excellent music that spoke to me. Talked to me. Took me out of a crappy, cold council house bedroom in the Uttoxeter and off to a place in the sun with cars, and guitars, and girls, and beer and music, and soft, soft summer rain, with barefoot girls sitting on the hoods of cars. It was like a new world to me. I slowly built up a collection of everything he had put onto vinyl . I made tapes. I would have weekends where I would play his music song by song, album by album, in consecutive order from first to last. I had a wall with posters of him, books on him…looking back, it’s probably a bit obsessive compulsive to be honest. But HEY! I was 14-16. It’s the age to get obsessive.

But for some reason he stopped being my hero. He stopped speaking to me and his music went off in a direction I disliked. All this fake folk stuff, a devotion to Pete Seeger he suddenly found. When everything he had said before was about his devotion to Phil Spektor! It was like he had turned his back on me…and so I turned my back on him…I can’t listen to anything he has produced since The Ghost of Tom Joad. I still listen to the earlier stuff. When he was raw, and, to me, true.

But one day I was idly watching a bit of TV and found a real hero.

I had got into the outdoors and was interesting in watching anything with mountains and hills in, and there was a programme about South Georgia. And the name Ernest Shackleton was mentioned.

Now I’d heard of him, he was some explorer dude. Went to the South Pole? Yeah that was it.

But I watched and heard his story. And was captivated. This man, he failed at getting to the Pole. He’d fallen out with Scott…but he did this amazing thing.

He took a ship to the Antarctic with the aim of walking a team across the whole continent. But the ship he was on had gotten stuck in the ice. The ship was stuck fast and then it was crushed by the ice!

He led his crew through almost 2 years of privations and hardships and discomforts, living on the ice-floes, watching their ship be crushed and sink. Transferring to three life boats, they lived on the ice until the ice broke up enough to sail the boats to the nearby Elephant Island. From here he took 5 others across the South Atlantic sea, in an open boat for over 800miles…aiming for the island of South Georgia. This he did, but managed to land on the wrong side of it, and then be unable to relaunch the boat. So he and 2 others walked across the island. Over mountains 4000foot high. Over glaciers, and through deep deep snow. With just a carpenters adze as an ice ax.

Once over the mountains – something that has only been repeated once by modern mountaineers with modern kit, he organised a rescue party and returned to Elephant Island to rescue his crew. NOT ONE PERSON DIED.

And Shackleton led this party. He was the one who made sure that all his crew made it home from an ordeal that must have been completely unimaginable.

Why did he become a hero? Simply because it takes a real hero to do this stuff. He got the right people, and he organised them, led them, motivated them…inspired them.

And this is what a real hero should do. He (or she!) should inspire us. They should make us want to be something better than we are. Do more than we are doing. Reach further than we are reaching. Yes heroes have their faults – Shackleton was a bit of a ladies man – but that’s what makes them more inspirational to me.

If these real people can have faults like the rest of us, but still do so much – then there is hope for me. Maybe I can be a better person if I do a little bit like they do.

If I push myself diving into the box like Francis did, knowing that I might land badly but still score the goal. If I can take people’s minds away from the boredom and drudgery of life like Springsteen did and open their eyes to a whole new world. If I can motivate people like Shackleton to overcome terrible cold and fear…well I might just be a bit of a better person…if I can use a little bit from each person maybe I’ll grow and change. And maybe that’ll make me be a bit of a hero to the people in my life that I want to be a hero for. My children.

Alex.

Ice music

I had never heard of 'Ice Music' until yesterday but now I have, as a lover of all things snow and winter-wonderlandish THIS seems like the perfect, if very chilly, orchestra! :o)

The 'Dogloo'!

Meet Molly!

Molly is a friend's dog, who in the recent snowfall and after much hard work, became the proud owner of her very own 'Dogloo'.......


.......however, the principles were a little lost on her from time to time!

Call me nuts....

....but I couldn't resist going for a walk on my own in the snowy darkness last night!

The snow began falling again in the mid afternoon and by evening everything was transformed back to the beautiful pristine whiteness of earlier in the week. As I ate dinner I pondered that the forecast suggested it would begin to thaw again almost immediately, and by morning there would remain again only a slushy mess. Something had to be done!

So do something I did, I scrambled into my boots and jacket and headed out of the warmth of the flat and into the dark and still heavily falling snow and went for a walk! It was fabulous, while the few people around were scuttling about grumbling and trying to get indoors as fast as possible I was wandering around finding virgin snow to make footprints in and loving every moment!

I walked into town and watched the snowfall under the street lamps, I walked along the quay with a swan slipping and sliding just ahead of me, I sat watching the flakes disappear into the river and I turned my face to the sky and felt the snow landing gently and silently on my skin. It was amazing, peaceful and beautiful and the perfect antidote to a horrible week.

Eventually the cold began seeping through and reluctantly I began pottering slowly back through the silence, headed for home again all the while trying to commit to memory the feeling of pure white tranquility against the darkness and choosing an untrodden path to hear the 'scrunching' sound of new fallen snow under my feet.

I arrived home, pink cheeked, covered in snow and wet. I made a cup of hot chocolate and sat by the window watching the snow continue to fall. Perfect.

Flooded!

Remember the snow pictures of a few days back? Well these images are all taken in the same places as those were. What a difference a few days make!

In actual fact it's not quite as serious as it might appear, we have a pretty funky flood control system going on in this little part of the world and when the water levels get too high all the fields are purposely flooded to save the nearby towns suffering. It is controlled to within an inch or two by a complex system of sluice gates and other paraphernalia that I have absolutely no understanding of! It works though, the water gets to within inches of us a few times a year and is then backed off. Pretty amazing stuff.

....and though I don't like to blow my own trumpet too much, I can't help but show off just a little that some of these pictures made it onto the local BBC website yesterday! Hey, it might not be Getty Images but beggars can't be choosers and all that! :o)






(Clickable)

It's not only me who likes snow....

...though I'm never as effusive in my appreciation or as energetic about it as THIS little guy/guy-ess!

A stoat loving the snow and caught on video last week in a back garden somewhere in Wiltshire.

Love it!

SNOW....I got SNOW!!!!

Happy, happy, happy!

So my Tesco delivery has been cancelled, do I care? Nope! I have chocolate, coffee and snow, what more could I want! :o)

(Images clickable)

Snowless and sulking!

Really, I am beginning to suffer a serious case of snow paranoia!

Whilst most of southern England ground to a halt under up to a foot of snow yesterday, here, nowt, well almost nowt! Ten miles away in any direction they were up to their knees in the stuff but my little patch of the UK? Well, see for yourself, This was as good as it got, most unimpressive!


We have more forecast for Friday, theoretically even more than should have been yesterday but from now I am ignoring all things snow.... and sulking! ;o)

Sod it!

As ever it seems, sods law has prevailed and the promised heavy snowfall is yet to be seen here! We have a light dusting, pathetically light and that's it, nothing worthy of boots or a sledge. Pah.

It's a funny thing me and snow, when I lived in London, it snowed in Scotland, when I lived in Scotland it snowed in London, when I lived back near London, the significant snowfall was back in Scotland and now, having moved to Cambridge, the snow is in London! I'm beginning to think sod's law is gunning for me!

That said, the snow has given me much entertanment over the last twenty four hours, if you are a snow-a-holic like me and you Twitter (surely you Twitter?!)check out the thread #uksnow, moment by moment snow reports, news and images from likeminded mad people snowlovers around the UK. :o)

So, it's back to hoping, the forecast still promises more today, though less than it did and again a very significant fall for Friday......maybe sod's law will sod off just this once in my area!

Just maybe....

.....this time the forecasters have got it right and the predicted significant snowfall may actually materialise! I am waiting with breath suitably bated, the temperature is good, the pressure is good, the wind is picking up and the clouds are forming suitably.

Midday is the approximated time for the commencement of the first 'delivery', I've been chart watching for days (yes, I know that's a little suspect) and unusually, those who purport to know about this stuff appear to be pretty close to the mark for once. Everything is set, it's all looking good to go!

So, whilst I get back to charts and gazing out of the window for the first flake I'll leave you with a probability chart and a few words on the snow subject courtesy of one of my favourite shows, Northern Exposure.

"Oh the snow the beautiful snow filling the sky and earth below. Over the house tops and over the streets, over the heads of people you meet. Dancing flirting skimming along. Oh the snow the beautiful snow how the flakes gather and laugh as they go. Whirling about in their maddening fun it plays in its glee with everyone. Chasing laughing hurrying by it lights on the face and sparkles the eye. And even the dogs with a bark and a bound snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive and its heart in a glow to welcome the coming of beautiful snow. Bon Hiver."

*UPDATE - Bang on midday and the first few flakes have started to fall! :o)

That's it!

Ok...enough already!...the phone is going in the post today and winging it's sad way back to it's originator, I've had enough, life is too short to spend two days fighting a crap operating system!

I'm confounded really as to how an apparently high end piece of kit could have such basic flaws. Ok, I know the more the dev. guys cram into any piece of equipment the morel likelihood there is of problems... but to miss out such basic things as the ability to name a folder strikes me as pretty poor. Yup, it's a fact. The software version in the 6220 allows one to create folders for images, documents etc. but not to name them, in fact not to identify them in any way, the result of which is that one ends up with any number of folders, all completely unidentifiable! Useful eh? I thought it was me but many calls later, some internet research and a visit to a phone geek chap proved it not to be me but the software.

And that was just the start. I won't bore you with the other specifics but suffice to say, I got more than an acceptable number of 'blue screen of death'(ok, they were grey but you know where I'm coming from on this) appearances, it crashed completely more times than anyone could find remotely acceptable and wouldn't restart without much poking and prodding among stuff that Jane Doe shouldn't be expected to have to poke and prod at!

So, I don't know what next, I'm tempted by an iPhone, if for no other reason than it's just so sexy but the decision is on hold for a few days, I'm all phoned out!

On a happier note tho....we have BIG snow forecast as a 93% possibility for Monday so fingers crossed please! :o)

Snow fight

I'm poorly and I have the definite hump, I don't know what ails me but all of me hurts, I feel sick, I have the tummy and head ache from hell and I don't like it....but this video clip in my mailbox this morning cheered me up so I will share it with you coz I'm nice like that! ;o)


Sound on

A little bit of SNOW!!!!

This morning I woke to snow!!!....I'll grant you only a tiny bit but snow nonetheless and I'm grateful for what I can get! :o)

Apologies for the picture quality, too dark and too lazy to go down three floors this early to get closer!

The sum total...

...of the snow I saw was this meagre offering (sorry, appalling photo taken on my phone through the van's window) and to make matters worse, having lain awake from midnight until 4am barely daring to move for fear of waking the other camper inhabitants with my loudly 'rustling' rip stop sleeping bag, I fell asleep for two hours between 5 and 7 and missed a more significant fall which had melted by the time I woke up! No-one woke me! Can you believe it??!!

Ok, so this camper van malarkey, what can I say save for 'give me back my tent please'. All of the inconvenience of camping with none of the fun or the feeling of communing with nature, too hot, too stuffy and it felt like being in a car park...though I accept there are much nicer sites and this one was chosen for it's convenience alone on this occasion.

All that said, we had a lovely evening with the outlaws, all the usual eating, drinking and hilarity and the company of a noisy owl and I think the entire countries population of Moorhens....but really, it's just not camping!

Posh camping!

Contrary to our usual camping carrying-ons which involves a four seasons tent that restricts even sitting up, cooking on one burner and nil sanitary provision, this weekend we are off to do a little camping the posh way!

Fletch's parents own a camper van, well it seems a little inappropriate to call it just that, this monster vehicle is all shiny, almost new and boasts just about every domestic necessity and luxury known to mankind...it is also barely smaller than our flat!

So, we are off to a place called Grafham Water to spend the weekend with the outlaws in this mobile palace and whilst it's not really our style of camping, I'm not even sure it qualifies as 'camping', it should be fun and it does have it's benefits on a night when the temperatures are set to go well below zero and snow is forecast....heating and apparently efficient heating to boot are of course part of this home from home-mobile. No need for our minus 20 sleeping bags there then!

We have even been promised the sleeping quarters with the skylight so that if the miracle occurs and the snow falls overnight I can lay there and watch it....assuming of course that as is my norm, I don't sleep.

So that's our weekend, two days of camping the posh way, I'll be taking my camera in case of magnificent snowfall but don't expect me to be taking part in any of the water sporting activities on offer, I have my book, t'internet via my phone and good company, I intend to stay huddled inside making the most of the luxury, unless of course a foot of snow materialises, in which case I might just be prised outside to make the very most of it!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

My annual snow watching activities have begun again in earnest, last months unusually early snowfall managed to skirt around the edge of gemmak's-ville and miss us completely.... and last year the single day of snow we did have, I managed to be away elsewhere for and there was not a sign of it left when we returned back home!

My obsession with love of the white stuff is well documented here over the years though what usually happens as the norm is that I watch all the weather models avidly, get thoroughly excited and then it doesn't....snow that is. Just one year surely we must have some proper, decent, impressive snowfall, I can't remember the last time I saw more than a dusting....well actually I can, it was thirteen years ago. Too long, too long!

So, this weekend the models and charts are looking good, a 40-60% likelihood of snowfall is forecast here and some right into next week, the temperature and pressure trends are all doing the right thing (ok, yes, I am a weather anorak) and it's looking like snow is a real possibility .... and guess what, we are going away again!

If it happens and I miss it I won't be a happy blogger...that's much worse than it not happening at all...that said we aren't going far so fingers and toes remain firmly crossed.

Please let it snow! :o)

Europe part 3 - The Swiss Alps

This takes us into the second week and aside from the wedding itself probably my favourite part of the holiday, the Swiss Alps, glaciers, snow capped mountains and all things green and beautiful...though my desperation to escape the heat of the previous week seemed a little odd even to myself when on arriving it became apparent that the temperature was almost at that of a UK winter and at night hovered at something around 3 degrees! A far cry from the 40's of Southern Italy and making my still rampant heat rash look amusingly out of place!

This journey was only a little over 200 miles but it took 7 hours and was the most beautiful!!

At each turn in the road we were presented with yet another breathtaking speactacle of nature, tree covered mountain sides, blue-green glacial rivers and lakes, amazing cloud formations, snow, sunshine, massive crags of mountains and the greenest green hillsides you ever saw. They (whoever 'they' are, say England is green, England has nothing on Switzerland)


If you ask Fletch why it should take so long to cover such a small distance he will tell you it was because I kept asking him to stop the car so I could take photographs...I reason however that it was as a result of the entire route being on winding Alpine roads! ;o)

Our destination on this occasion was a little town in central Switzerland called Engelberg, chosen because it is home not only to the only glacier in central switzerland, the Titlis Glacier but also because it boasts a campsite directly at the foot of said glacier!


Stunning....absolutely stunning, to wake up in the morning to the sight of our very own glacier, and see the sunrise lighting the early morning, dew drenched fields and hills was something else....if very cold!


We spent three days here just marvelling at the scenery and wandering around the pristine town set in the valley surrounded on all sides by mountains. The sun shone, and the clean fresh air gave everything an unsurpassed clarity.

The highlight however was my first ever cable car ride! These things are damned expensive as we were to discover, 80 Euros a hit for the most famous one!!....but as luck would have it a smaller and much steeper (hell, if you're gonna do it you might as well really do it)one, the Furenalp Gondola, was located right next to the camp site and at a more reasonable cost.

I don't 'do' heights but as with most things I don't do that very fact meant I had to do it, the view from the top and the experience had to be worth it...though it was with a degree of trepidation that I stepped into the not overly modern gondola and looked up at the mountain ahead of me and the almost vertical path of the cables!

Pah! What was there to be concerned about, the ride up the mountain side was fabulous, completely un-scary and utterly stunning! I seem to keep using the 'amazing/stunning/fabulous' kind of words in these posts but really, it was, it all was, without exageration all of those things

Once ontop of the mountain we stood almost level with the Titlis peak and the glacier, I don't have words to describe the sheer magnitude or beauty, nothing I say and no photograph could convey what being up there was like, just how truly amazing it is!




We walked a while and we just stood and looked and we walked some more to a place where we understood there should be wild Marmots (Murmeltier) in residence....and there were! Though it took a fair amount of time and patience (not my forte!) sitting in absolute silence (no mean feat for me I promise you) for them to appear.....and more time sat in silence to ensure they didn't detect us (luckily we were down wind of them) and scream there high decibel, high volume warning to one another and disappear again. We had seen them before in less 'natuaral' surroundings but seeing them in the wild going about their business was a whole different thing. We did take pictures but alas, short lenses don't really cut it for wildlife photography so if you want to see one go HERE.

There was however other 'wildlife' that made somewhat less demanding subjects!


Right then, that takes us to the last few days in Germany and Brussels (??) the question marks will be explained later....only one more holiday post I promise!

Just another day in gemmak's-ville

So, I woke to no water supply at 6am, that, it transpires, was the easy part of the day!

Midday the water was restored and we discover quite rapidly that some dipstick has left water running somewhere in his flat. He is of course not in residence. The building houses a fair number of 'elderly and infirm', there is much panic among said elderly and infirm as the water begins to flood the four floors below.

The floor immediately below houses a man who is almost 90 years of age and blind. His property is quickly 2 inches deep in water, he won't let anyone in to turn off his electrical supply and no-one can gain access to the flat above creating the problem.

I can't silence the fire alarm which is shrieking, I can't persuade the blind man to let me in but he tells me he is trying to locate his power to turn it off!!!! Whaattt??? Stood in water, blind and infirm???!!! Noooooo!!

I am now joined by various elderly souls issuing me with information that the flood is making it's way rapidly down the other four floors....and flapping.

Why has all this suddenly become my responsibility?

Ok....'firm words' issued to blind man about getting the hell out of his flat please and now, 999 call made, this may not be an emergency of enormous proportions but I don't have the local station number and I do have an old man trying his best to fry himself. E.S. operator wants to know everything but what colour my underwear is, strangely I don't have to hand contact numbers for a complete stranger in a building of 40 flats! Stopcock located but of course its too tight for me to shift, flats lower down checked for anyone else in distress and finally old man appears, wet and somewhat confused.

Boys in red appliance show up (sorry, the usual girly 'firemen' aspect is lost on me....I was married to one), narrowly beating the shame-faced owner of the offending flood, access is gained (damn, he deserved to have the fire brigade break down his door) and we discover he has left his power shower turned on and laying on the floor! WTF??

Daughter in law arrives shouting the odds, (hello?...how is this my fault exactly?) and takes charge of blind man, fire brigade 'make safe', owner paddles back into his flat to find insurance papers and finally I can go get a cup of coffee.....all this and did I forget to mention that I had Hammy in my handbag the whole time!!

Well, I didn't know it wasn't actually a fire when the alarm sounded did I??....and I sure as hell didn't get a chance to just 'pop' her back home for a while.

She is one very miffed hamster right now.

Really, I will get packed for this holiday!