Canals... but no martians....

So, today while travelling between Ashby and market Bosworth we decided to have dinner by the canal.. I mean, why sit in some awful car park or main road lay by if there's somewhere better, that's even on a quicker route! So, while my oppo was phoning his mrs, I had a nice stroll while munching on cake baked to a milk free recipe by a certain young lady... which was lovely... the sunny towpath was soon shaded with dappled green light throughh the trees, and Ipaused, watching the dragonflies, whirligigs, and moorhens... In the peace and quiet I found a wrens nest, and surprised a brown sort-of stripy bird with a fairly long beak.. no idea what it was, but my friend at Polyolbion is looking into it... I seem to have been within nature a lot these days.. on saturday night I waas sitting aone in a field, waiting for parties of girl guides to come along.. I hasten to add I was manning a checkpoint for a night hike!! the most often asked question was whether I was afraid, all alone in the dark.. my reply was that i was not at all scared.. when asked to expand on my answer I replied that I was not scared for the simple reason that I was alone.....therefor ethere was no one about to harm me... also, as i mentioned a couple of times, i couldn't think of anything that could be in the fields that was scarier than me.. but i digress.... the main thing missing today was a canoe.... but i'm working on it!!reminds me of yet another anecdote.. while caoeing along the Wye many years ago, as a scout, one of our patrol leaders decided he was a bit cold in his canoe... so he lit his camp stove, and placed it in the bows.... unfortunately it melted through the hull, and he sank.. which just proves the old adage... you can't have you're kayak and heat it.. and with that, I think I'd better go... until we all paddle our own, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Closing Down...

So, today we went to Shirley in the West Midlands, to pick up a load of stuff destined for Ilkeston... the Shop and Save in Shirley has shut its doors for the last time, leaving a hole in the high street, and a hole in the Co-op.... Shirley's not a bad place, but it has a lot in common with Coalville.... lots of charity shops, and lots of places shutting down... which is a shame... and the Co-op.... its come to something when a store in kettering is so strapped for staff that they request a sales person from Coalville to help them out on members day... but there youi go...its probably trite to say that business is down everywhere... but it seems particularly slow in our sector... which got me thinking... maybe we'd all be better off without money.. I mean, when it gets down to it, money's a prety artificial thing.. who originally thought of it? someone must have... man has always been a trader, and perhaps greed is useful in certain survival situations... but why did one person deep in prehistory suddenly decide he wanted a sheep and three quarters, plus a pretty rock in exchange for his cow, when previously a sheep and a half would have done... who knows, but i suppose while our government works as it does, we're probably stuck with it.. now we all know communism was flawed, never leaving the rule by soviet stage due to the self interest of the rulers, but surely there is merit in the Marxist ideal, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs..." or her needs of course.... but then I also believe that the good end justifies the means, and that the element of surprise is wrth ten armies, and that the first humans were carved from driftwood... as I'm sure Travis would agree... that is the Scottish musical group, not the blakes seven baddie.... which is another program they never seem to repeat.. unless i'm just looking in the wrong place.... and on the subject, what about All Quiet on the Preston Front.... the wedding do scene at the very end was pure tv genius... not to mention the line "I was the best chinese lancastrian Elvis impersonator in all of Blackburn..." and the leeches.. but I digress.... life can sometimes seem like a series of repeats, but one day transmission will cease.... maybe we should all try a different channel... preferably one that doesn't show Sex and the City... anyway, until we all get the tv we deserve, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As Promised Earlier....

So, I did say more of Sex and the city later... and as a beard always keeps his word, here we are... now some of you out there are big fans of the Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle, and what I'd like to know is .. why? Why can otherwise intelligent, discerning women not see what a dreadful programme it is??? I mean, far from being this wonderful, liberating treatise on the empowerment of women, it seems to me to be merely a crassly commercial paean to commercialism and consumerism, full of the worst kind of cynical product placement.. and can someone please explain why we are supposed to find the characters attractive?? I mean, Kim Catrall has had her moments (Two Golden Balls springs to mind...) but SJP??? She has that craggy prune like skin usually only seen in Australians of a certain age... now looks aren't everything, hear you cry.. and I agree.. but the SITC girls al seem shallow, grasping bitches.. if this is what women are supposed to aspire to being, I think I'll turn gay.... and what of this preoccupation with the search for Mr Big in his suit and with his good salary.. surely an unrealistic aim, considering what most rich attractive guys in this country are like... I was unfortunately accused of liking SITC yesterday, a comment which almost resulted in a semi-well-known editor and poet taking a tumble from the Wrekin.... but I digress.... he apologised, realising himself that he was confusing it with Ally McBeal, a truly empowering show, of which I am unashamedly a fan.. despite the dancing babbies and huge tongues, Ally is firmly rooted in realism.... where the SITC girls are all well off, successful and just need to find the perfect man to gain eteernal happiness, the lesson being that if you're a wealthy columnist you'll do it easily, Ally shows us a different side to success.. that money isn't everything.. not fro nothing was the original tagline Single, Successful and Falling Apart... Ally gets many chances for happiness, all ruined by her SITC-like insistence on waiting for the perfect man, who unfortunately is an idealised version of her childhood sweetheart who is now marrieed to someone else, and isn't the guy Ally wants him to be anyway.. she flits from relationship to relationship, and we the viewer can see, as outsiders, that she could be perfectly happy with the Dr, or the Plumber, or even the man who wants to fly... but as they are not ur-Billy, she can't.... her own search for an artificial happiness is what keeps her from happiness.. and who says the yanks don't do irony! No happy endings for Miss McBeal.. none of her affairs are enriching or trouble free... plus, despite the main cast being lawyers, the characters, unlike those in SITC, are recognisable.. and they are not even all well off... Elaine the receptionist is probably one of the most important characters in the show.. the least well paid, the lowest on the social ladder, she has dreams and happiness... having decided to aim for the stars yet be contented with her lot... she gains pleasure from the simple things in life... such as gossip, easy sex, and her face bra... Its a truly empowering program.. without being too obvious it allows us to see ourselves, and helps us avoid making the same mistakes of Miss McBeal and her friends... its genuinely funny, moving and poignant, reaching genuine depths... and I think Emmeline Pankhurst would have loved its portrayal of a woman in a responsible job but who is still a woman, struggling not against men's arrogance but her own feelings as a woman, struggling to be what she has been conned into believing she should be... despite realising that it is a con.. the opposite in fact to the SITc girls, who have fallen for the con hook line and sinker, and are now seeking to perpetuate it to a new generation.. is SITC really a male supremacist ploy to undermine years of womens lib?? Who knows.. but please please please, stop the endless repeats of SITC and lets have some more Ally...and until we can all be The Biscuit, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!

One of those days.....

no van...
no date.....
no petrol...
no fun....
ah well... used to it by now.... theres always tomorrow... whether it comes or not, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Panic buying.... possibly...

Well, I spent a great deal of today avoiding people panic buying fuel.. not sure why...why they do it, that is, not why i was avoiding them!! I mean, ok, the tanker drivers from one company are striking... but the others aren't.... and there should be plenty of fuel in ther tanks to last till tuesday, unless of course some panicky individuals rush out to the petrol stations and unnecessarily fill up their cars... oh dear..... I remember in my youth it was bread... the slightest sproinkling of snow, and all the bread was off the shelves.. the Beard would queue behind trlloey loads of bread... and strangely enough, five days later when the snow was gone (for we had real snow back then.....it really did block roads... nowadays it's the drivers who don't know what they're doing that block the roads by smoothing it into ice driving too slowly.. but I digress( and in parentheses too...)) the bread would end up in dustbins... fewer of us had the luxury of a freezer back then.... so why did wew do it.. I know it dates back to the food hoarding prehistory of our race, when the only supermarkets ran very fast and had big claws, but why bread?? why not target tinned goods, or dried.. corned beef, beans, rice.. at least they almost never go off.. where is the sense in hoarding perishables..... ?? But there we are.... on thesubject of food (again) I'm thinking of embracing Freganism, and going on a food liberation spree.... lets be honest, the idea of picking up wasted (but perfectly good) foods frommthe supermarket bins is nothing new for me.... I used some perfectly good but past sell by date carrots and potatoes to good effect a few years back...lets be honest, if I'd bought them on the last day, they'd have been alright a week after.... I'm even guilty of eating one day out of date pork chops... I figure that for their own safety supermarkets must program in some degree of latitude in order to avoid lawsuits.... and I do like them well done... cooking destroys germs, and I have it good authority that week old roadkill is perfectly edible if boiled long enough... although it lacks appeal to an aesthetic gourmand like myself... but I digress.... personally i didn't go hunting for fuel. .. my MOT runs out tomorrow midnight, and I'm shopping for a new vehile all being well.... so no point putting in more fuel than i need.. at most I'm going into Coalville, and then Hinckley later on.. although I may be borrowing the Purple Bunny (a Ford Fiesta owned by my dad....) for the latter... unless of course I actually get a van in the morning.. which would be nice....so, with my son safely ensconsed in a b+b in Blackpool with his mother, and some pallets to move tomorrow, I leave you with this thought.. what happens if so much fuel is panic bought that the tankers are unable to refuel, leaving them unable to reach their depots to bring the fuel out to replenish what was panic bought.. now that would be a story.... so, with bed beckoning, and a day to look forward to tomorrow (and not just because of the van!!) Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well.. what do I say..????

Its a slow time at work at the minute.. with the house prices depressed, no one wants furniture and white goods.. which to me just serves to illustrate the whole interconnectedness of reality... which in itself shows me to have too much time on my hands.... which is always a problem. as Douglas Adam's points out in his Hitch Hikers Guide books, human's talk a lot.... Ford prefect is originally convinced that we do this for fear that our jaws will sieze up, but later evidence shows him that actually we do it because if our jaws stop moving our brains start working.. and I must admit I'm inclined to agree.... I do most of my least productive thinking in the quiet periods of the evening or mid afternoon, and to be honest if some of these thoughts were ever translated into action we'd all have problems.. especially the ones about gas powered toasted sandwich makers... its getting round Breville's patent for the cut and seal action that's causing me the most problems.. but I digress...I often wonder if we'd all have been better of without the capacity for abstract thought, but then I also think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge.... and that again is a big human problem that only abstract thought could create.. the terrible "what if" syndrome.. many of us (too many) spend our lives wondering "what if...?" what if I hadn't married john... what if I'd not had that affair.. what if I'd told the boss where to go.. what if I'd listened at school... and some of us spend so much time on what ifs that we miss out on what's happening now.... unfortunately we can only travel in time in one direction, at the rate of 24 hours per day... so we can't go back and cange anything.. which is possibly a good thing... as my dad used to say, there's ten miles between should and is.... and toi be honest I think we'd all be beter off concentrating on the is.... which brings me to Wisebeard's tip of the year, a method of living that those such as L Ron Hubbard, et al, would make a 500 page book and loads of money out of, but I'll let you have for free.. its not the easiest advice to follow, despie its simplicity, but my mate Joe reckons its made his life better, and thats good enough for me.... so here it is.... in words of one syllable and more.... put simply, instead of worrying about something that has happened, or how you could have avoided it if only you'd etc etc, ask yourself this.... Is there anything I can do about it now? if there is, then stop worrying and do it.. if there isn't, stop worrying and get on with something else.... as i may have said before, we as a race, especially in the civilised west, tend to treat emotions as an end in themselves, rather than as signals... which causes a lot of problems... not to say that these emotions of hate, fear, love and the rest aren't useful, but they are there to tell us things.. fear is saying "get outta here..." love means "stay here.. this is a good one...." but they are just signals, and our inability to remember this leads to phobias, and in some cases divorce.....but I'm getting maudlin.... I think waht I'm trying to say is that in our attention deficit mtv world we tend to be disappointed when "love" doesn't last... we don't realise that love is just a pointer to something more important and ultimately more rewarding..... a relationship...... and i'm still using far too many punctuation marks..... so unil commas grow on trees like semi-colons already do, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two in one day....

So, another post in the same day as the first.. and possibly even less coherent.... I did have something important to say, but as is usual with these things, it has gone completely.... so all I will say is that a lack of communication had caused me to become worried about a good friend of mine in the RAF, but fortunately he's ok.. to paraphrase Gene Hackman's character in Unforgiven.. "Heck,.. even I thought I was dead... turns out i was just in Cornwall..." And in case anyone out there from good old Kernow thinks I have something against Cornwall, remember I once sang the praises of Bude... although some strangely believe Bude to be in Devon... but then, some people think Castle donington and its adjoining airport are in Derbyshire.... fraid not guys.. they're on our side of the Trent.... and we get their Council Tax!! But then a lot of people get confused nowadays.. mainly due to post codes, which are based solely on proximity to a sorting office, and have nothing to do with local council boundaries... or Hinckley and Bosworth district council would be forever struggling with whether to blame Leicestershire or Warwickshire for various problems.... or possibly even Derbyshire... the point is, as Russel was once told, "no matter how far you go, and how fast you run, you're always in the space that you are..." but I digress.... until we all know where we are, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Strange things on my mind....

So, last night i was wondering about chips.. not whether or not to get some, but rather what it is in the human psyche that makes one person suddenly think "I know.. I'll slice up a potato and deep fry it in oil, just to see what happens..." once there were no chips... once there was no bread... once there was no fire... now some of these things we can explain by happenstance and serendipity.. a lightning strike sets the forest on fire, people notice that its warm, and someone takes a bit home as a souvenir.... and roast meat... some lucky guy or girl finds the smel of burnt animal strangely attractive, and takes a bite....pretty soon they're doing it deliberately.. but what about bread or beer? What sort of accident ends up with a mix of grain, water, yeast and sugar all coming together and fermenting or baking... that seems like deliberate experimentation to me... but why? What would make someone look at a small, undistinguished fungus and think, "I wonder if that will make my floury paste stuff more interesting... whoops, I've dropped it into that strange rockbox thing that dom left by the fire..." Most religions are so worried about the whole thing that they bring in divine intervention, Prometheus and Loki and Saturn, giving us agriculture, fire and beer... but not necessarily in that order.... and of course, being gods (and a ttan!) there's no need to ask where they got it all from... to me, its interesting, but ultimately unimportant.. all it really illustrates is that we are now so used to thinking and so ill supplied with things to think about that we'll think about all sorts of rubbish... unless of course you are James Dyson.... but i digress... in a world full of serious problems to think of, why do we sit and think of rubbish... is it because we don't really care? Or is it that we just don't enjoy it? Or possibly the fault lies with the fact that we are constantly having a lot of our thinking done for us by that evil entity the media and its illegitimate child the government... and strangely enough I'm having trouble... not only has this strange machine just sent me to a rail timetable without my express wish (pun intended...) but it as also wiped out half of the post, and I am now trying to replicate it from memory.. despite having been told that it has been saved.... strange.... basically, I was trying to get across that we are, when it gets down to it thinking engines, and one day we will all stop thinking about the unimportant things in life, like gilette razors and that Sex and the City film (about which more at a later date...) and begin to concentrate on something important.. and then we will be doomed... so until the thought begins to contemplate the notion of crossing our minds, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!

Maybe I just didn't like to hear.....

But i still can't believe Speed Racer is dead,.... or so Tori Amos attests in her excellent "Cooling," one of my absolute favourite Tori songs (along with Honey, Almost Rosey, Silent All These Years, Yes Anastasia, and many many more....) And cooling has been on my mind for a while.. firstly, the line "this is cooling faster than I can" reminds me far too much of my last relationship, and secondly due to the continuing realisation and acceptance that we are still leaving an ice age.... and that therefore global Warming may just be a normal, expected, necessary thing.... remember the Jurassic period? Well we had real summers then... nowhere near as cold as now.. then we cool a bit into the cretaceous, but still hot compared to today...then the ice ages come along, and everything chills.... now, correct me if I'm wrong, but surerly on average the earth's dominant temperature is higher than it is curently.. so global warming could just be the planet getting back to normal..... aahhh! I hear yu say.. but global warming seems to be unnatural, man made, artificial.... to which i say, why does man made mean unnatural? We are just as natural as a grass snake, our skyscrapers just as natural as a birds nest.. not as pretty possibly... but we are part of nature... but we have grown so used to thinking of ourselves as being apart from nature, that we have no problem in thinking of ourselves as something different, strange, destructive, unnatural.... well, let me publicise some theories held by scientists who don't get the airtime.... firstly the idea that global warming is a good thing... most models show that the temperatur increase will lead to greater evaporation of sea water, and lots more rain in Africa... this coupled with the higher temps would lead to the tropical and equatorial regions being able to support two or three harvests a year... and europe could manage three every two years.... helping solve the food shortage.. true, there would be casualties... the gulf stream would possibly switch off, leaving us Brits with the climate we should have.. similar to southern alaska.... but thats no hardship... and as for the ice caps.. well, if the northern one melts, the sea level will drop... ice, being less dense than water, takes up more space... work it out... and if we get the thirty or forty degree rise it would take to melt the southern one, then the 70 degree celsius summers around the equator, with all the petrol nearly boiling, will probably cause more trouble than a twenty foot rise in the sea level.... which brings me to the most controversial of the theories.... to illustarte we need to go back millions of years to when the CO2 levels were much higher... (now what does that remind me of...).. we had back then many mat-like organisms that inhaled CO2 and excreted oxygen.. they became so successful that they spread and spread, and produced so much oxygenthat they poisoned their own atmosphere.... and died off, leaving the path open for things that had adapted to the oxygen rich atmosphere... now, couple this with a version of Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, that the earth is a self regulating organism, and instead of jumping on the "man is a cancer" bandwagon, start thinking logically... warm planet... planet cools... for next stage of development planet need to warm up.... best way to do this is increase CO2.. so allow development of creatures best able to produce CO2 in large quantities.. true, that very thing will destroy the creatures that produce the CO2, but hey, thats life for self regulating organisms the size of planets... look at the mats... so the theory says, in brief, that we have sprung up so that the warming of the planet is ensured, and our efforts towards this will lead to our extinction, and open the way for the next wave of development... just as the mats, the dinosaurs, et al moved aside.... in other words, global warming is our purpose, and by attempting to save our race, we may also be attempting to doom our planet... but i digress..... the truth is we don't know one way or the other... lets be honest, we're still divided over whether cancer is a nasty disease or evolution at work... so what chance do we have.... and, asa Tori said, "if that doesn't impress you much, come board this lunatic express..." until we all chin up, put on a pair of rosies and raise those blinds, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So.. spent last night poaching sausages in goose stock... home made goose stock, made from the remnants of the yule feast.. all the bones, giblets, bits of left over meat and skin, with herbs from my garden, home grown onions, all boiled up, then simmered for three hours... lovely.. then frozen, and used now.. which made me wonder.. I've always made stock like this... using the old veggie wateer (but not from spuds...) but it seems I'm in th eminority.. I suppose oxo cubes are just easier... but as those who know me will attest, I don't enjoy throwing stuff away.... even to the extent that once i made a necklace of old chicken bones... but I digress... saving food should, I feel, be a priority.. when you realise that in this country we throw away a third of all the food we buy.... which is not good.. the worst thing about it is not the waste though.. its that we just don't think about it.. what sort of society do we have if it doesn't think waste is even worth noticing?? No wonder we have problems.. but then, I blame the flush toilet... why??!!, I hear you ask... and like a good wisebeard I respond.... there is no such thing as "human waste".... centuries ago, you did your business in the fields, it rotted down, and stuff grw... even up to a hundred years ago, the earth closet was king... drop it in the bucket, cover it with soil, and when the bucket was ull, it went on the compost heap, or the nightsoil men would take t away and sell it to the farmers... how much better though, to pull a handle and watch a few gallons of clean water wash the problem downstream.. why deal with the stuff when yo can shove it elsewhere... and the attitude spread.. which is why we have landfill, when the better answer is make stuff that lasts, can be repaired, and so on.. and get rid of useless packaging... how on earth did I manage in the days before shrink wrap... oh, I remember.. we used paper.. you know, the stuff that comes from a renewable resource, and can be remade or biodegrade into compost.... but i digress again... one of my pe rants....until we decide whether we want an environment or an economy, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!