Its Me

Yes I thought I would pass by and say hello. I am working on a cunning plan, only I am working on it very slowly, as I have never been one for rushing about on the grounds it is not good for you. Now that I am old and battered I can't rush anyway, but the fact I am old and battered does tend to prove not rushing about is not a bad thing. Anyway I am in the process of writing a book, I have so far written two, one of which has been proofread and the other is in the process of being proofread. I am also drawing images for a friend who is writing the second book in a series about a cat. So as you can see I am a busy chap

This is one of the pictures I drew, but it was not suitable, and it does have a few issues so there is a second version of it for the book about the cat which will be tweaked to look posh and hide any mistakes (the images not the book).. I never mind too much. One other interesting thing I have done today is make a tall marble run. I bought the thing to keep my youngest grandson amused ages ago, only he has not seen it yet, however it keeps me amused from time to time, and is an entirely stress free pastime 

 

Cows, Zombies and Me, but not Football.

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I am still working on the workshop; progress is exceedingly slow at present because not having a design can lead to technical issues as you progress. One of which I am trying to sort out in a neat way so that no one will ever know I might have made a design error. And I have almost finished . . . . Phew . . . . It is not structural so the workshop will not fall down, but I needed to sort it before I put the corrugated sheets on the outside walls or that would have been so much harder. Anyway that should now be a piece of cake . . . . . That’s an odd saying. Why something being relatively easy should be linked to a piece of cake makes no sense to me. If someone asked me to make a piece of cake I would consider that extremely difficult indeed. And not a piece of cake even if it was actually a piece of cake if you get my drift.  I mean I can make ginger biscuits dead easy and damn good ones too, but cake no.

I have been out this evening saving a cow which had got onto the road and was well spooked. Not helped by idiots driving too fast and refusing to slow down for the poor critter. Anyway the farmer who owns the cow turned up and it is now safe in its field again. . . . We suspect it may have been Zombies that released it. For reasons I have not yet worked out it seems Cows don’t like Zombies and Zombies don’t like Cows. Actually when you look back on films involving Cows and Zombies it is hard to think of one where both Cows and Zombies feature, generally its either one or the other.

Right I plan to have a cup of tea and a chill not watching football in any form whatsoever . . . . I am not a fan of football and I suspect neither are the Cows or the Zombies. So despite our differences we have much in common.

How I never became a Hero

Today I plan to tell you a true story of a heroic nature, OK I think it was heroic because I did the heroic deed. It is an event that happened many many years ago as in a seriously long time ago when I was about twenty or there about.  At the time I was an Electro-Mechanical engineering apprentice, well either that or I had just finished my apprenticeship and I worked in a lab in a huge engineering business in one of those post war new towns. The fact it was a post war new town is important because this particular one had a network of cycle paths and footpaths that weaved about under the roads with nice wide sloping grass banks to keep the cars and pedestrians apart. All part of the optimistic design ideas for post war towns at the time.

Now living in this environment it was not uncommon when the weather was nice for me to walk home from work even though it was about a mile and a half. It was still quicker than driving due to volume of traffic. Well one particular summers evening as I was wandering under one of the pedestrian/ cycle underpasses which went under a dual carriageway a rather formally dressed chap in front of me who was just emerging out of the subway set off running like a bat out of hell. Not something you see every day and that’s for sure, well as I was a few feet or so behind him as I emerged to my left coming down the hill and bouncing out of control on the grass banks was a large truck with no driver. Luckily as I watched it heading towards me it ran up one of the grass banks stopped and then rolled backwards before starting to continue its trip down the hill. This gave me the opportunity to run up and leap into the cab before it gained too much speed and I was able to hit the foot brake to stop it just before it attempted to go under one of the pedestrian bridges. That was just as well as the truck cab was about three feet higher than the bridge and I might have got a bit squashed. Well as I sat there pondering where the handbrake was the driver turned up, apparently he had got out of his cab to ask directions and his truck set off without him. He was very panicked so I had to sit with him to get him back on the road and to the factory he was delivering too.

Once I got him there I then wandered back home thinking OOOOooo very heroic maybe I will be in the local paper looking heroic. . . Well about half an hour later the police turned up at the scene of the accident as it was visible from where I lived, so I went and said I had stopped the runaway truck and had taken it and the driver to a local factory, they then sped off without even asking my name, and that was that.

I never got to be a hero. . . and although it sounds a bit scary to tell the truth I did much scarier stuff when I worked offshore in the very early 1980’s when it was still a bit gung-ho.

But if that had happened today it would be all over YouTube and social-media and I would be able to look heroic and say . . . No it just all in a day’s work.  Being somewhat old and knackered now I suspect I would never catch a runaway truck these days and folk would point and laugh, But I did have the satisfaction at the time to note that everyone else ran screaming and panicking and I as a stubborn rebellious bloke (always was and always will be) did not.

Now this story is entirely true in every detail it all happened as I have detailed and I never became a hero, which makes you wonder just how many folk do heroic stuff and never get any recognition for it, I bet it happens most days.

An almost rational reason why I plan to vote to leave the European Union

I thought I would have a quick break from Poetry today and do Politics (sorry about that).

Have you noticed that here in Britain the great debate about should we vote to stay in or leave Europe is starting to look slightly silly as each side raises the stakes like a mad game of Poker. . . . I will match your World War Three and raise you pestilence and Armageddon as a result of aliens from Venus.  It is getting harder to get any real idea about what the best thing to do is. Certainly the stay campaign has the greatest clout because the bulk of the establishment are scared of change and the unknown, so they are doing a great job of ensuring that leaving looks like total madness.

Well it may surprise some, but I plan to vote to leave and there are rational reasons for this and also one very non-rational reason. Firstly I need to say as I have said before I am a bit left wing (not very, just a bit) and unlike a lot of the out voters I would be happy to let more refugees into the UK, particularly from Syria. Ooooo I get annoyed by British politicians and now the EU with feeble excuses not to help people who are fleeing a terrible war, most of whom are just decent ordinary folk.

In theory the principles of the EU should appeal to me, I mean I voted to join in the first place (OK yes I’m a bit old). I believe in equality and a level playing field in life for all, and that we should protect the vulnerable and the weak. All stuff which the EU is meant to stand for. When I voted to join all those years ago I was hoping we would be part of a single currency, and that it would be possible to travel about in Europe as easily as nipping up the road to Scotland. We would be one big happy community, smiling hugging each other and having a good life.

But is that what happened No the EU  has turned into a huge bureaucratic semi opaque monster, I don’t know if money is spent wisely or not and there seem to be more dodgy deals and . . . I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine stuff going on than one can shake a seagull at. The politics of Europe are becoming polarized and based on self interest with the Euro on the brink of yet another crisis. In fact I suspect the Euro crisis may have been delayed a bit until we have our vote, or am I just being a bit cynical. . .maybe.  So my main reason not to remain is that I do not believe that the long term future of the EU is looking good. The stay in campaign say we would enter a recession if we leave, but if the Euro starts to fail and we are part of Europe then that will happen anyway. Right now I just feel Britain may have more control of its economic future and the well being of its population outside the European Union. I am just an ordinary man on the street I may be wrong I don’t know, but I can only do what I feel is right long term.

I did also say I have one very irrational reason why I am voting Leave, it is a very simple one. Both David Cameron and Tony Blair have said they intend to vote to stay in . . . I do not know them personally but Oooooooo they both annoy me with their smug I am better that you attitude

OK there you have it I will vote Leave I don’t know it that is right or not but I suspect Britain will Stay in just on the shear amount of doom stories the government is managing to get into the news. And even I am not of fan of the . . .  . We don’t want all these foreigners over here . . . . attitude of some of the Leave supporters. Why is there a them and us approach to all this; Britain will not sail off into the sunset and we will still be part of Europe come what may.

If we do stay in and the EU economy very quickly starts to go into crisis I promise not to say I told you so. . . . . when I say promise I am in fact lying. . . . I will  

the pharmaceutical industry might be suffering some Unusual Excitement

Although not entirely back to normal my hand is getting better….. PHEW ……. So I no longer look like The Curse of the Claw, however I have been taking some tablets to help. In the old days when someone gave you tablets to take they would be in a small brown glass screw top jar with something like ‘Take three times a day’ written on the label and that would be that. No these days, they tend to come in boxes and so called blister packaging and acres of it too. But also inside these boxes will be a piece of paper in tiny print warning of the potential dangers of the pill you are about to take.  In general it appears that even the simple placebo has paperwork in small print that says the pill will kill you, either from a stroke or heart attack or some other option. However the pills (which are bright orange) also have listed on this piece of paper ‘Unusual Excitement’ …….WHAT? Are they mad, so I thought I must photograph this as prove it is not me that is MAD but the pharmaceutical industry.

So today I have been waiting for some Unusual Excitement to happen. I went to Montgomery thinking there might be something Unusually Exciting there but there was not, although I did talk to a man with a huge oak beam that he was using to repair a steam powered pterodactyl that had crash landed in his garden. And I saw several people who said “O MY GOD LOOK AT YOUR HAND, is it PLAGUE………….. .  … . . . … . . .  . . . . . . . . . . .AUUUuuuuuuuuuuuGgggggHHHHHHHHHHH. Then I left Montgomery and returned home and watched tractors going backwards and forwards and doing synchronized harvesting of Hay….. I suspect they must have read the ‘Fifty Grades of Hay’ book and were showing off a bit…. But it was not unusually exciting, not even a bit. Then Mr Jones said he might get some of the same tablets because it might help with his Alien Spotting in the woods. He said being abducted and examined by aliens can be unusually exciting and anything that will help is worth trying….. I did tell him that being wrapped in cling film and wearing a big red wig was more likely to scare aliens that attract them, but he explained that was just a mistake and he had forgotten to change before he left home….?

The dog says my hand is looking better and no longer looks like a rat that has swallowed a party balloon, but just a fat rat that has been over indulging at a party….. He also added that he had been having a rather unusually exciting day before falling about in hysterics….. Mum said IDIOT but I think she means the dog. 

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