ambitions and direction....

well.. it seems that ambitions are being ambitted this year.. and all thanks to my force of will... instead of sitting there thinking.."wouldn't it be nice if.." i said, "this year i will.." and i have!!!!!!!!!!!!! so.. not only have i cleared out the attic, i have a van... i have onions, and i think i have direction.. for the first time in my life, i know where i'm going, and unfortunately its not all that exciting, unless you are me.... but there you are.. one ambition remains to be fulfilled... i will star in a musical.. i'm open to any role, but preferably one of the following....
Eponine in les mis...
Florence in Chess....
Fagin in Oliver!
The Narrator in Blood Brothers...
Frank in Rocky Horror...
Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie....

or anything else.... al roles considered... except ham and cheese... but thats another day.. till we all sing like we're winning, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!

Well, after nearly a month away, Wisebeard returns... with a tidier house, a nearly sorted attic, and dying rosebay willowherb.... the last of which is deliberate... much as ilike the old fireweed, it had replaced my lawn, and i felt it was time for it to wave bye bye... my onions and turnips seem to be growing well, the cabbages and lettuces seemingly luring the pests away... and my experiment in growing peppers in the windowsill seems to be a success, with five or six glossy green fruits already there.... and i have also managed to be brave, and clear out enough junk to hold my own boot sale... which is nice... so expect to see the beard at a football pitch near you... strange how life goes, isn't it... or not, as the case may be... but i'm tired, and trying to prepare for karate grading on wednesday(when i hope to gain my red belt..) and a short walk in the wilds of Snowdonia on saturday.... during which i hope to raise money for "charridee"... and i will be performing my first kata (pinan nidan) up a mountain, in order to raise even more.... never has the beard that is wise been so in demand, or had such a varied social life....which is slightly worrying... but i digress... so, until claimed by the mountain gods, Wisebeard Salutes you!!!!!

100 years....

Wisebeard returns from celebrating 100 years of possibly the most important event of the 20th century... the birth of Scouting.... yes, thats right, the Beard has been spending the last four days in a tent, in the rain, with nearly 700 people of varying descriptions (and i do mean varying!!!) getting wet, cold, and thoroughly enjoying himself... 1oo years ago Baden-Powell, war hero and free thinker, started what was to become the worldwide family of scouts... and look at us now... but there we are... i was privileged to appear on stage thrice, once with the thougt for the day (a passage from The Subtle Knife, and a short piece on Trust), again for the Beaver visit, again on the subject of Trust, and then at the closing ceremony, as part of the Comedic sketch "The Four Old Scouters," adapted from the python by yours truly... But the greatest honour of all was to be present at the award of the Queens Scout Award to one of my ex scouts, now a leader, Jim Muller... he's worked so hard for it, that Wisebeard will, for once, inject no levity into the mention, save to say that he didn't get his hair cut.. we could do with more young people like Jim... as Baden Powell said, if everyone inthe world were a Scout, there would be no war... there would also be no anti social behaviour, no famine, no environmental problems... and wouldn't that be wonderful... until we can all be Jim Mullers, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, the rain has set in, and Wisebeard personally is glad.... for lazy gardener that I am, I am happy to let nature water my onions.... and my lettuce, carrots and fennel... not to mention the savoy cabbage!! For wisebeard now has vegetables... and fruit, for the tomatoes are growing fine...and the peppers seem to be doing well... with the help of a certain young lady my beds are getting more prepared, and the herb garden is cleared and growing....oregano, chervil, sage, thyme, lemonbalm, rosemary... mmmmm.... nothing like home grown produce.... humans seem to love growing stuff... even if they're not much good at it sometimes....some say this is a throwback to the Judaeo Christian god telling Adam to look after stuff... some that it is due to Frey, or Buddha, or whoever, telling us to.... but i just think that it is something in us, something natural, just in the same way that some ants farm aphids... something we can't help, like building big nests and killing each other.... why is a mystery... probably we'll never solve it... but the point is that we like doing stuff for ourselves, and i think thats why we have a lot of antisocial behaviour.. because now more than ever we are discouraged from doing it ourselves.... we don't build our own houses, we don't grow our own food, we don't make our own clothes... we don't do much except cook, and we try to make that as easy as possible... no wonder people play up... frustration at not being able to do stuff, even if they don't realise this....people are made to feel useless... and why... well, my theory is that its because theres money in it... if we grew our own food, where would Mr Tesco be...??? if we made our own clothes, what would happen to poor Miss Selfridge???..... if we built our own houses, how would Mr Barratt survive?? but at least we would all be busy..... occupieed.. and content... lets be honest, mos people have jobs they dislike, and lives that are very samey... get drunk, watch telly, shout at a football.... and get frustrated and become antisocial... and its happened before.. the better off a society becomes, the more decadent it gets, and the greater the level of violence and antisocial behaviour... just look at rome!! but waht's the answer... even a wise beard does not know.....but until we find one... Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The devious Cows... and their wrong legs....

Cows.... bovine milk factories and leather sofas in waiting.. or evil alien creatures attempting to take over the world??? Easy question to answer, I hear you say... or is it??!!?? A friend of mine... well, more an aquaintance... well, someone I get paid to be near, to be totally accurate, is of the opinion that our beefy buddies are in fact more cunning than we give them credit for... the leather and burgers are just a distraction, to take our minds off their dastardly plotting to conquer humanity... And what first gave him this idea?? The fact that cows' legs are wrong... they are too spindly to hold them up.... they lie down funny.... they get up funny.... and cattle kill people.... about 20 a year in this country.... which brings me to the conclusion that we are at least winnin the war of attrition....but fear is a funny thing.... I once read an article in some sunday newspaper, that it could actually be beneficial to have an irrational fear and hatred of something... so from that moment I became afraid of Mrs Jenny Torrance of 18, Regent Terrace, Brighton.... who she is, I have no idea... and why I am afraid of her is a complete mystery.... and you don't get more irrational than that!! But I digress.... butthen, I have been ill.... tonsilitis wiped out my camping at Beaudesert, and my prebooked week off work was spent mainly in bed, watching Gorky Park... one of my favourite films.... partially because it's one of the few films that features a car chase with Ladas....and a couple of immortal lines....

Irina: The KGB have better cars....
Arkady: Yes, but they don't always take you were you want to go....

And later on, in the militia interrogation room....

Golodkin: Yes, that's him... Jack Osborne... he came to me, wanted a big church chest... That's not a nun with tits.....

featuring fine performances from William Hurt, Michael Elphick, and Alexei Sayle, along with Brian Dennehy (one of my favourite and I think highly underrated American actors..) its a great film.... but, again, I digress..... my sanity last week was saved by my lady friend, who I think still has it.... but never mind.. I never had much use for it anyway... so, until all Parks are like Gorky, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!

Fatalism.. or not......

Well, the beard that is wise but inebriates not is having a rare old time.... one of the best he's had for a while, to be honest... windowsills full of tomato plants, a coffee table model railway about to jump off the planning board and into reality, an ISA, a lovely fun relationship with an incredibly beautiful woman, a Ford Cortina, and many other great things... strange how things go... which brings me to a quandary i've had for a while.. religionwise I should be a bit of a fatalist, but often I find I'm not.... to enlighten you as to the reasons, I must tel you that the Beard is in fact pagan... and I mean it in the old fashioned sense, not the more modern (and innaccurate) one of Atheist... pagan of course comes from the latin paganus.... meaning country dweller..... meaning one rustic enough to still believe in the old gods of nature, rather than the more sophisticated "city gods..." but i sort of digress... a fair while ago I decided that the old gods of my viking forefathers made far more sense to me, geographically, culturally and faithilly... (is there such a word..?? there is now...) now, according to this faith, a man (or woman, of course) is born when one of three sisters begins to spin a thread.... everyone has a thread, and it is this sister's job to spin them... a person dies when the third sister (of three, I hasten to add...) cuts the thread.... now, it is obvious that no one has any choice in this.... at all... you are born when you are born, you die when you die... this explains, of course, why we all know of someone who was fit, and healthy, but dropped down dead art thirty... and we also know someone who smokes like a chimney and never exercises, and will be celebrating their 80th birthday next week.... but what happens in between...??? well, one theory has it that the second sister, the one who weaves, weaves a pattern that you follow.... the other theory is that she weaves the pattern you make.... now, the first of these denies totally the concept of free will, which, as anyone knows, may or may not exist... there are good arguments either way, and in fact if there is no such thing it actually makes things easier to explain... but it denies the existence of both evil and hope... the second implies that we have complete control over our own destinies, except where our existence is impinged upon by others.... the second is also, however, a more modern way of thinking, coloured possibly by the Nazarene heresy... plus we all know of incidences of "Fate " and "Destiny..." personally, my take on it at the minute is that for most people, it is enoughthat we live our brief lives as we wish, and the second sister is content to tick over and weave what we do... but that at times, wehn it is necessary, either she is instructed (and by whom?? even Odin is subject to her weaving...) to weave a certain pattern for a certain individual, or that she, either in conjunction with her sisters or apart from them, decides for whatever reason to weave that pattern... which leaves us all at the whim of some power whose objectives we cannot fathom, and cannot resist... which to me is a fairly comforting thought... far more so than the Judaeo-Christian tale that God will no longer interfere with our affairs till the end times.... I want divine or supra-divine intervention, thank you very much.... and i think most of us do... but there we are.... anyway, enough from me for one evening... until the cutting of the thread, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!

not sure.... but something.. or nothing....

Strange how your mind wanders.. but maybe yours doesn't.. so let me rephrase.. strange how my mind wanders... i was remembering the othe day a theory of matter that myself and a schoolfriiend invented at school.. strangely enough.. the basics were this..that really, there were only two things in the universe... stuff, and gap... and everything else was made up of them.... and that there was more gap than there was stuff... and just to make it more fun, what we tend to think of as gap is usually made up of stuff... for instance, space and time... for in my opinion time is not the stage upon which we act, but merely another player.... time, we must always remember, does not pass.. it is only the failure of our nervous system to comprehend time that gives the illusion of time passing.... all moments are both instantaneous and eternal... when you imagine existence, imagine one of those long exposure photos of the brooklynn bridge at night, with all the headlamps showing as lines.. then imagine every lamp line to be an individual particle... and that the picture is infinite.. and you've got a fair idea of what the universe really looks like...i was told once that everything in the universe was simply a probability function... i've also been told that everything is simply a wave function equation, or that its a product of a deranged imagination.. although my money's on the last.... but it gets late, and i digress.... and i still haven't explained the appeal of Anthea Turner... if it is indeed explainable.. until we are all perfect housewives, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!