BEARDY WEIRDY

My neighbour spotted me sorting out the bins last week and said to me "I see that you're sporting a beard…" and, now I come to think about it, I suppose that I was.

This, of course, is the closest thing to anything "sporty" that I'm likely to get at my great age, and was sprouted more out of laziness and a slight tendency towards skin irritation than planning, although the Beloved might suggest that it is symptomatic of me failing to look after myself properly as the latest depression slash fatigue cycle goes about working its dark magic.

Still, despite my intrigue as to quite how this thing might have ultimately manifested itself, because I'd never really gone quite this verdant before, I knew that it would have to go fairly soon, even though it had already passed the fiendishly itchy stage, because no immigration official is going to let me into their country if I resemble my brand new passport photograph so very, very vaguely, I fear.

Also, the Beloved's mother had already been making, er, barbed comments about my recent aversion to the razor, which probably sealed its fate, even though I was not exactly quite clear at that moment as to how to dispose of it without clogging the sink and by using merely an ageing Mach Three blade and a pair of scissors.

Still, even though it was temporary, I think that's it has been an interesting new look for me over the past couple of weeks and sometimes has even made the vainest flicker of "lookin'good today" flit across my mind before the full horror of remembering my potato-like countenance had resurfaced, not least due to the fact that my several chins could be slightly disguised by this hirsute coating.

What finally led it to its doom though was my last visit to the hairdressers during which much comment was made as to how "trendy" I was looking.

Naturally, this is simply not true.

By the time I'm boarding the "trendy bus" the trend itself must have already gone so far out of style that it might be well on its way to coming back again, but I can't have anyone suggesting that anything I do at all could be regarded as "trendy" and so, after a trip to the supermarket and a failed attempt to write anything meaningful on a Sunday afternoon, I disappeared into the bathroom with a freshly recharged "Beard Trimmer" which I bought somewhere at the dawn of time during my misguided "hippy" phase, and set about the crop.

Naturally, the "Beard Trimmer" was so very old that it no longer seemed capable of doing any actual trimming, so it was time to set about my several jawlines with the scissors before wielding the razor and filling the bowl, the floor and the medicine cabinet with hundreds of tiny, tiny bits of hair.

Mere minutes later and my chins were smooth and hairless again and my new look was nothing but a vague memory as my old look, bearing a more familiar and disappointing visage was staring back at me from the mirror.

Of course, the thing about beard age is that it never really stops. Already by Monday morning the scratchy stubble of its next manifestation was beginning to reveal itself as I rubbed my hand across my face whilst the latest disaster ensued, leading me to think that I really, really need to get myself into a far more regular morning routine to deal with this body horror nonsense.

And you, those of you that are lucky enough to be hairless of chin… You really don't know how we suffer…

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY, LESSER B

Well, here we are… We've finally staggered our way to Lesser Blogfordshire's fourth birthday [Alarums, Loud huzzahs! Toots on cardboard trumpets, etc] as this blog arrives at the point where four entire years of my life have been barely catalogued in the pursuit of something so trivial and pointless that it was hardly worth mentioning… although an awful lot of mentioning is what I appear to have done to little avail.

Although, technically we haven't reached that particular landmark at all, or rather we have, but it wasn't on this day that it all happened. The first fumblings in the dark happened about a week earlier but were deleted (or at least moved elsewhere) out of sheer embarrassment, but given that post number one bears today's date, in some small way it has become, by default, the "official birthday" of this most trivial of nonsenses.

So… what have we learned as we have travelled this rocky path over the last four years, or a full eight percent of my time squatting upon this miserable little planet?

Turning on the television early this morning I discovered that the game of stickball seems to garner far more interest than I could ever imagined possible, and the latest bout of it appears to have made some people very happy, and some others less so, a situation that will no doubt either change around or be repeated the next time they all gather to do exactly the same thing.

I also learned that contrary to popular opinion, volcanoes are very, very dangerous and unpredictable things which any sensible human being should steer well clear of, but seldom do. On a more personal level, during my commute to work this morning, I discovered that tw*ts in BMWs who have an arbitrary attitude to lane markings seldom have to pay the penalty for their utter, utter tw*ttishness.

Over the weekend I decided to try my hand at "proper" writing again, only to find that, after four solid(ish) years of regular practice here in Lesser Blogfordshire, I can no longer write for toffee, and my pathetic attempt to knock out something vaguely original about dinosaurs was the biggest waste of a Sunday afternoon since the game of stickball (for which the boots of BMWs seem to have been particularly designed to convey the various sticks), was invented.

You see? Everything IS connected after all...

So… four years, eh…?

Four years…

Four years in which to discover that I'm really not all that interested in bloody people and the comings and goings and doings of their wretched extended families; Four years during which I found out that I used to write far much more about my mother than seems reasonable, and the void that she has left has left me struggling to find anything else to talk about; Four years in which I have discovered much about myself that is unpleasant and which probably explains quite why I have been abandoned by pretty much everyone who I ever spent any time with; Four years of self-examination which has finally revealed to me that I am lazier, angrier, more annoyed and far, far unhappier about just about everything than I could ever have imagined when I first sat down and thought "Oh, the website says that it's a free service… maybe I could try some of this blogging lark…"

Happy birthday…

And, as the unshot ending of "Withnail and I" might have put it…

"Chin. chin…!"

’OMLET

Saturday afternoon’s adventure in the big city was a journey in by train to go to the Royal Exchange Theatre to see the matinee performance of William Shakespeare’s  “Hamlet” as performed by Maxine Peake, because, in a break from tradition, although not for the first time, this was a Lady Hamlet (or ’omlet, as I like to call it.)

Perhaps “Lady Hamlet” wasn’t the best turn of phrase, but “Woman Hamlet” sounded odder still, and I know better than to refer to it as “Girl Hamlet” so it was the best option, I thought.

“But what’s wrong with just calling it ‘Hamlet’?” I hear you cry, which you would be quite right to do, but that would have been to ignore this production’s unique selling point in what is something of a departure for Manchester audiences in what has become something of a “hot ticket” for the Exchange which hasn’t put on a play I’ve actually felt like seeing in a year or three.

Anyway, with that little bit of gender bewilderment out of the way, I’d just like to point out that Maxine Peake’s performance is rather superb in this production which is also unusual in several other ways, not least in the lack of a skull during “that scene” and by using child actors to perform the crucial “play within a play” that turns the entire plot.

Amongst a generally excellent cast, there are stand-out performances by Gillian Bevan playing Polonia and a master-class in Shakespearean dialogue from the always wonderful John Shrapnel as both Claudius and the Ghost, the appearance of which is much enhanced by the simple and effective use of buzzing filament bulbs.

“Hamlet” is Shakespeare’s longest play, and one that is jam-packed with well-known phrases and sayings, and can run to well over four hours in its uncut form. As to deciding what ought to be cut, well, that is, of course, one of the Director’s biggest headaches, but this production was three hours long, with a two hour first part followed by another hour after the interval.

I will admit that I was struggling to keep my eyes open at some point about half way through the first section, not because of any dullness I the production, but because I’d not slept well the night before, and the warmth of the theatre was causing me to feel very drowsy.

Meanwhile, those “perchy” seats in the theatre itself have done awful things to my neck, and my legs were starting to ache “something rotten” after an hour or more of sitting still. Nevertheless, a swift interval Diet Coke seemed to perk me up a little, and the second half, the one containing some of the “greatest hits” of the Shakespeare canon, and an unexpected strip down to her underwear by Katie West playing poor mad Ophelia, fair rattled along to the inevitable tragic ending, one which traditionalists will be pleased to hear, still involved a bit of unhealthy rapier action.

So… Does the sex of the lead actor in “Hamlet” actually make any real difference to the play itself? Well, apart from the dynamics of certain father/mother/son relationships, and a certain amount of perhaps maddening frustration for Ophelia, to be honest with you, I stopped thinking about it very quickly, which probably means that there’s something in this notion of blind casting after all, despite any misgivings I may have previously held about such matters.

All-in-all then, a cracking afternoon’s theatre, only slightly marred by the sweary, shouty football fans on the train home, and the prospect of navigating my way home through streets packed with the horrors of the annual Lantern Parade, but that, as they say, is another story, and for this posting at least, “the rest is silence…”

CLAIRE MARTIN AND A QUARTET OF CELLOS

Along with collapsing toilet seats, the beginnings of a cold, a very painful trapped nerve moment involving my right knee that convinced me that old age was finally upon me, and at least the vaguest possibility of a holiday booking, Sunday also brought along with it an evening trip into town to attend a jazz concert.

This was at the Royal Northern College of Music and involved us finally using up the credit we had acquired by our last minute cancellation of attending an event at around the time my mother passed away.

She was just hanging on back then, but didn’t look like she was going to make it, and having long pre-booked concert tickets – I think for an accompanied film screening, but I don’t remember now – seemed like a bad idea at the time and, sadly, we were proved correct in that notion.

Anyway, what with forgetfulness, and busy times, and so forth, we kind of forgot about them, until we had a sudden recollection a few weeks ago which was accompanied by a realization that the year that we had in which to redeem them was rapidly approaching the “up” stage, having flown by in almost indecent haste, and with me achieving very little as it sped miserably by.

Anyway, rather at random, we picked Claire Martin’s concert out of the brochure as looking the most appealing, despite not really knowing that much about her, or indeed, what the concert was likely to involve.

Oh yes, I know now that she has an O.B.E., and presents shows on the radio, but last night, as we shuffled into the studio theatre, we knew nothing at all about what we were in for and, to be perfectly honest, when the Montpellier Cello Quartet strolled onto the stage, I was beginning to worry that something alarmingly avant-garde was afoot, especially as I have a little-publicised (i.e. I mentioned it here a couple of times) aversion to “bloody fiddle music…” and these looked like bloody BIG fiddles to me.

Happily, after a rather excellent rendition of “Invasion” Claire herself arrived on stage to greet what were obviously her fans (well, they all seemed to have heard of her before anyway) and it turned out that this new fusion of chamber music and jazz worked rather well, and Claire Martin’s smoky vocals ran through the card of hits both old and new for the better part of two and a half hours, and we drifted out into the chilly September evening clutching a newly purchased, but unsigned… (I’m far too shy for that sort of interaction) CD in our hands, and feeling rather satisfied at our sublime choice of evening out.

THOSE MOMENTS…

Because it’s me, I do tend to set myself fairly strict limitations when I wave my telephone in the vague direction of the sky during those “pull over to the side of the road and think” moments that I’ve recently been treating myself to during the morning’s commute.

There must be no cheating. When I pull up at that now oh-so-familiar viewpoint (and it’s usually the same viewpoint because that’s one of the rules), the resulting picture, if I choose to take one, must be pretty much of what I see right there and then.

There can be no hanging around to see if it gets “better…”

None of that.

What you see is what you get, or rather, what I see is what you get.

This morning, for example, I could, after all, have decided to hang around for another ten minutes or so in the hope that it all got far more spectacular, but I didn’t, despite the fact that the pink afterglow of the dawn and the cloud structure actually looked rather promising as the sun looked on the very brink of coming up.

Instead I pulled over to the side of the road, thought my thought, and pointed the camera at the sky to preserve what I could of the moment, before setting off once again to battle with the commute, and failing to take my second “pause” at the viewpoint over the big city which is sometimes my second option when option one proves to bland, murky, or disappointing to be recorded.

You see…? Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, I do sometimes choose not to take a sky photograph as I go about on my travels, especially if the “murk” factor is way, way too high.

To be honest, this morning, I did lurk a little longer than usual in order to watch the low lying clouds as they tumbled down the mountains across the valley from me, which is why I found myself pondering upon these self-inflicted “rules” of mine.

After all, if you can’t even be bothered to obey your own rules, what hope is there…?

MANCHESTER, EVENING - 150914

Manchester, evening - 150914

DONALD

Sir Donald Alfred Sinden, CBE, FRSA (9 October 1923 – 11 September 2014)

THE MOST BITTER DIVORCE IN HISTORY

As a nation, or, perhaps soon to be former nation, it really does rather look as if we're about to get ourselves involved in the most bitter divorce in history in a week or so’s time, a divorce, I might add, that few of the ninety two percent of the population living south of the border were really looking for.

Now, I’ve avoided, for the most part, commenting upon the forthcoming referendum, not least because it tends to get you a whole load of abuse, but also because the one time I did make a public comment about it, I was pretty much told that it had nothing to do with me anyway, and it was for the people living in Scotland to decide the future of Scotland, no matter, it seems how actually Scottish they are.

And that’s a perfectly valid point…

Of course it is.

The difficulty is that it ought not to be up to just the people of Scotland to decide the future of the rest of the nation as well.

At least not in my humble opinion.

The funny thing is that the rest of the union doesn’t even get a say on the matter… despite the fact that they are affected, whether you like to admit it or not. Yes, Scotland should decide Scotland’s fate, but it appears to have a disproportionate amount of influence over the rest of our destinies, too…

This is not the same as independence for  Rhodesia, or Hong Kong, dammit, we are (or at least were) a Union and, whether we like it or not, a lot of our destinies and the way we are viewed by the wider world, are rather bound together by history if nothing else, and it’s not really for one generation to kick sand in the face of history, and, even if some of that history is very suspect when it comes to a moral standpoint, nobody alive today had a great deal to to with any of that.

And I suspect that in the cold light of day, once the “bugger off” joviality is done with, most ordinary Britons wouldn't want Scotland to go, because the poorest of both countries will be the ones who bear the brunt of the suffering.

As ever…

And, as a Northerner, it’s hard not to imagine that most Scots, seething at their resentment at what the government have done to their country over the past several decades, seem to equate the whole of England with those numpties in Westminster, and fail to reason that quite a lot of us didn’t want them running our lives either.

Of course, quite predictably, the people most concerned about the divorce appear to be the economists. Now most of us don’t really think all that much about the economy until we have to pay more for our Dollars or Euros, or if our house price collapses, but the Stock Markets have no such worries, and when the pound collapses, which it inevitably will due to all of the unknown post-devolution issues still to be addressed, nobody’s life is likely to get any better unless they’re a banker or a stockbroker or a politician.

The poorer people of both nations will suffer, and maybe simply because of the ire being thrown towards the few in Westminster… but you can guarantee that it'll be the savings and pensions which are yours and mine that'll be getting clobbered, not those of the complacent idiots who claim to run these countries.

Nelson… (ironically)

Also RUK might have to renegotiate its position in Europe and what benefit is there from the “Har! Har!” groups on both sides of the border if everyone gets stuffed?

Still, the “Yes” campaign seem very motivated and obviously believe that everything will be fine, so that’s okay then, but the BBC News has now started resembling the old “one of these things is not like the others” song from “Sesame Street” as it pops up the pictures of the “Big Four” players in this sorry saga.

Alex, Alex, Alex... don’t you realise that all of this petty point scoring makes you appear and sound just as smug as all of the other gits, making it seem as if Holyrood politics would look just the same as Westminster politics to everyone outside the place after all...? Leaving Scotland merely with one bunch of self-serving gits in suits replacing another bunch of self-serving gits in suits... Still, if the argument is that at least they're “our” self-serving gits in suits, then I suppose that it’s fair enough... as long as your personal “place in history” is assured.

Is it wrong of me to accept that it’s perfectly okay to let people bugger up their own country, but to resent them buggering up mine... or is that just how it’s felt to be Scottish for several generations…?

I’m not pro-, but I’m not particularly anti- either - I’m far more pragmatic than that - and, even though I know that I would prefer the status quo (because I’m not much of a one for appreciating change), I’m far more concerned at the actions of just one generation meddling with the entire mass of history in something that isn’t just a one-off protest vote which can be rectified by another vote in half a decade or so, but is more of a “forever” thing…

Nothing is forever, of course...

“Because of the unique way that the UK is structured...” as that old BBC ad used to so nearly put it, means that a huge change which also alters the life of the other 92% is being decided by 8%… but then I imagine that's just how much of Scotland felt when all those numpties were getting elected throughout the eighties.

So... it’s payback time...?

Or, as Howard Goodall put it so eloquently recently, “Anyone else find it strange to be a voteless, powerless spectator of the biggest constitutional change in our country’s modern history?”

I know that I shouldn’t really be ranting about this, because it will only get me into trouble... but standing by and saying nothing seems unwise, too...

So here I am, pointlessly ranting as my country crumbles around me…

“Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone…”

Maybe, by feeling powerless, we’ve got more in common with the Scots than we realised, and it’s only the risk of losing them that has made us realise it.

BAH!!!

I'm feeling just too damned miserable about absolutely everything to be bothered with any more blogging at the moment… so here's a picture of yesterday's sunrise over the Sett Valley taken at about 7.15am during a short pause in my journey to work to fill the gap…

There was a chap on the High Street as I drove past doing a "proper" job of photographing this, by the way, who'd obviously been there a while.

Then again, there was a chap sitting in the exact same spot yesterday evening sipping wine from a stem glass as darkness fell, so that's obviously the place to be at the moment to indulge in a bit of contemplation...

MAKING CUTS

I was interested to note that, for obvious reasons, a "beheading" sequence was edited out of a piece of Saturday evening entertainment last weekend, and, whilst various people might find this to be far too cautious, or "letting the terrorists win" I genuinely do think that, in this instance, it was the right thing to do.

You could argue until the cows come home about the validity of such a possibly violent scene being considered "entertainment" anyway, but that's not really the point that I'm discussing here. After all, such scenes have featured to demonstrate "mild peril" in all sorts of movies, TV series, and historical dramas over the years, but sometimes it's about timing, and the "family audience" at which this particular programme was aimed, perhaps ought not to be exposed to such a scene during these sensitive times.

After all, it's not "Game of Thrones" is it…? Just some harmless teatime family fun, and sometimes such things are deemed "inappropriate" even if the kids go off and hack at virtual warriors in their video games afterwards.

Regularly TV shows or showings of movies are pulled from the schedule because of some breaking news story, be it a plane crash, or a stabbing at a school, and in the majority of cases this is done purely because it is understood that it might be "too soon" for a work of fiction to be graphically representing something that is horribly real, especially as the families and friends of those involved in the unfolding tragedy may possibly be viewing.

You may think that this is wrong, that such excessive sensitivity is pointless, or that "art" needs to be "challenging" in some way and take risks, but I prefer to believe that sometimes it's just showing a kindness or a courtesy to other people's suffering, and it's actually quite pleasing that in these cynical times, someone in broadcasting circles is capable of just being nice…

The decision about whether or not top cut is never lightly made, but, in my opinion, it is always better to err on the side of caution in such matters, simply because you can never really be sure just how the scene is going to be received, and, whilst it is often the case that showing the very same programme or film at a later date shouldn't make such scenes any less shocking - art, after all does sadly often imitate life and help us to understand it better - sometimes it's about timing and judging the mood of the viewing public.

You should also try to imagine the reaction of an organ such as the "Daily Mail" if such a sequence had been shown just a few days after the second brutal execution of a journalist had been revealed to the world, and a similar threat was still hanging over another hostage.

The pious, holier than thou, "How very dare they?" headlines would have been leaping out at us all, especially as they appear to be just waiting for any excuse to go "BBC Baiting" these days.

That said, the press in general really have nowhere to stand when it comes to this particular matter. Despite the family and the Foreign Office pleading for the name of the hostage not to be released, the very next morning "The Sun" had both his name and a photograph plastered all over their front page, along with some aggressive rhetoric which really, really can't have helped cool the situation down or relax the threat to the hostage.

I wonder if they were pleased with themselves? I wonder if they congratulated themselves on their exclusive, or their "bravery" at daring to be so defiant from the safety of their offices? I wonder whether they genuinely believe that the only way to deal with such a threat is to stand so very defiantly when it's somebody else's neck on the line?

Cretins.

Happily, even those news outlets that normally publish the front pages of the various newspapers on their own sites had the wisdom not to show this one as a roundabout way of getting around the "problem" of not being able to use the name, but I'm sure that it's only a matter of time before they decide, much as during the era of those "Super-Injunctions", that the knowledge is in the "public domain" and it is ridiculous to pretend any more.

Would that the papers could show the same sensitivity and restraint that the TV drama producers are prepared to.

CONTROVERSY (OR NOT)

You know, I fretted buckets that a weekend blog posting that I wrote last weekend might prove to be ever so slightly "controversial" amongst my chums. I worried for days beforehand about whether or not it was appropriate or not, only to find that no bugger actually read the bloody thing...

Generally speaking, I don’t often go out of my way to be deliberately controversial as such. Sometimes it just sort of “happens” when I’m trying to be whimsical in that way that only I seem to understand.

And sometimes it simply doesn’t work anyway, given that I generally flitter through life being much ignored, overlooked, and unloved.

Sometimes I make a quite innocent remark, only for it to be massively misinterpreted and get me into a whole heap of trouble, and, on occasions, I just suffer from an almost impossible to predict crassness and tactlessness that I maintain was more about unfortunate timing and unlucky coincidences than anything deliberate.

After all, I ought to know better.

For example, I know that the England (and Wales) Cricket Team have been making a spectacularly poor show of playing the recent one-day series against India, but the commentary on Test Match Special that I have enjoyed for years has been significantly tainted by the occasional presence on the team of a recently added summarizer who is, quite frankly, spoiling it for me with his jibes and comments and generally irritating manner.

Being a creature of the modern era, at least in some ways, I have been onto several social media platforms to express my irritation at his continued presence, albeit in a slightly abstract and whimsical manner, only to have all of my opinions ignored by just about everyone.

And then an innocent enough exchange – or at least I thought it was – about fund-raising opportunities got me into a whole heap of trouble when the easily offended brigade chose to point out a particular unfortunate coincidence (about which I had been previously unaware) over something I wrote in a failed effort to amuse someone…* 

Maybe you could sell one of your players...?

Well… you wouldn’t have to sell off ALL of him or her, obviously… I mean, presumably most of them have viable organs…? Obviously the livers probably aren’t much of an option, but there must be a spare kidney or two knocking about…? ;-)

Ironically, when a friend of mine had a similar sounding experience recently, I sent him a personal message which included the following…

Here’s one of those timely reminders that you can write what you like (whatever it was), but you can never predict how it’s going to be interpreted… and the possibilities of people taking offence about something that comes completely out of left-field are extraordinary…

Perhaps sometimes I should listen to myself a bit more.

Of course, we are living in times where people will keep on “reckon-ing” in public, and so we all probably need to be a little more careful about the things we say and write, but, equally, we can’t all predict what everyone’s personal circumstances might be at any given moment, or how anyone might react to something that everyone else might see as being utterly harmless.

We do, from time-to-time, need to be careful about the things we say, of course we do, but should that mean that we all have to walk on eggshells all of the time, just in case we upset someone, however unexpectedly or unintentionally…?

In the end, it seems, it might be better if we all just shut up about everything I suppose, but I suspect that’s precisely what the “joy vampires” would prefer…

* This never actually happened, of course (because almost nobody actually gives a damn

* about anything I might have to say), but I'm using it as an example of the kind of thing

* that does happen from time-to-time...

NEW GLASSES 2014

The time inevitably seems to have come around again, seemingly alarmingly quickly given that it had been two years, when I needed my eyes torturing for a few moments before being told that, once again, and because I am growing weak and feeble with age, and my disability is increasing, my prescription has changed, and a brand new set of spectacles would be necessary.

This, of course, always means two sets, because I also need my prescription sunglasses for those rare occasions when I want to venture to sunnier climes, or when I want to keep a vague air of anonymity as I walk the mean streets of  Coldsville…

So I went through the usual half-hearted routine of picking and choosing the new frames, knowing that anything too significantly different would feel like I'd had plastic surgery or something, at least for a few days, as it presents such a different aspect to the world whenever you put such masks on.

Eventually, I went for something not entirely dissimilar to the ones I was already using, because they seemed to have gone down reasonably well during the last couple of years and didn't look too much like "old man specs" (or so I thought…)

Three weeks after ordering them, having endured the usual torturing by the optician, and following an apologetic phone call explaining the delay, they were ready, just about in time, I feared, for the next check up telling me that they'd changed again.

I took the phone call telling me that they were ready at work, but didn't have a convenient moment to go and pick them up, but listened dutifully (if not attentively) as I was given a list of the times that the dispensing optician would be available to, er, dispense them.

A couple of days later, when I did have a convenient moment, I left the office a few minutes early in order to do so, only to find that it was early closing day, and the vague reference to "Wednesday" that the receptionist had mentioned in her call, was, quite obviously (it seemed then) referring to when he wouldn't be available.

Everything's a bloody saga, isn't it…?

Still, a couple of evenings later, I was sable to slope off a few minutes early again and made it to their Emporium before closing time and got myself properly fitted to my new prostheses, whilst listening to the gabble of the optician who has obviously been on a customer care course in encouragement recently, such were the "smashings" and "brilliants" he was throwing my way for being able to look at the correct eye at the correct moment, and, more pleasingly, not nipping off to throw up in a bucket at the sight of my hideous countenance.

I tried my best to guilt-trip him about my Wednesday experiences, but such was his enthusiasm, that I even failed at that, and so resigned myself to remaining a grumpy bespectacled potato instead of one who had managed to pass on the grumps to another.

So, now here I find myself presenting yet another new face to the world, albeit one which feels fatter, grumpier, sterner and hairier than the one I previously remember having. This is because, despite accusations of being rather "budgie-like" in my relationship with mirrors, I don't often spend much time actually looking at myself, so that when I do, it always comes as rather a nasty shock when I really don't recognise the man in the mirror, and am surprised when he really doesn't at all resemble the image of myself that I have in my mind.

Perhaps I should have got chunkier spectacles after all, and hidden more of this monstrosity from the world in general…?

Or perhaps the time has come to go the John Merrick route and put the potato back into a potato sack...

PAUSES FOR THOUGHT

These are a few of those recent "pull over during the commute and pause for thought" moments from August and September, 2014 which I've been posting on FizzBok on the mornings that I remember to.

You see, I am quite lucky.

I get to drive over a rather lovely hill as I drive to and from work and, since my employers have given me the use of a rather rinky-dinky teffalone, one which takes at least half-decent snapshots when I point it in the vague direction of the sky, I've found myself pulling over to the side of the road on morning after morning and trying to capture some of the more spectacular-looking of those moments.

Because...?

Well...

Sometimes, you just have to, don't you...?

Well, you do if you're me anyway...

However, we're getting towards that point of the year where Sun-up is getting later and later… and soon I will be driving through the darkness with the sunrise happening whilst I am already sipping at the first couple of mugs of coffee of the day, safely huddled in the grey box next to the sewage works.

Either that, or I might still be battling my way through the ice and snow and shivering in blind terror at the antics of the other road-users around me, whilst the clouds do their merry dance behind the concrete walls which conceal them from me.

So, in other words, there may not be too many more of these this year… but we'll still have these to look at and remember those brighter days by, which is probably why I stopped for those moments and took the pictures in the first place.

Anyway...

The thing about these pictures is that they might not be the most spectacular sky pictures you're ever likely to see, but I hope that you enjoy them despite that...

IN STRICTEST CONFIDENCE

Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly low, or on the very brink of insanity, I get ideas in my head that immediately sound utterly ridiculous, but I persevere with them nevertheless. Like when I occasionally toy with the idea of doing some acting again. After all, I reason to myself, I used to quite enjoy doing a bit of the old board-treading at school, and occasionally I feel as if I need to find things that I enjoy doing when I’m feeling gloomy.

But then I try and practice, or at least think about the idea, by perhaps saying some words out loud when I’m in the car, they instantly just sound utterly ridiculous when it’s me that’s saying them, and I quickly put the idea back into its box until the next time I’m having a crisis or something.

Come to think of it, in my mind I know full well that those school performances were pretty embarrassing, too. Whilst my Jacob Marley (I know, typecasting at its very best) was generally well received, I know now that I could have done far more with those chains, those locks, those weights, and the mere thought of all that howling just makes me cringe in utter shame. (Heck… Even the programme cover design I did makes me want to weep nowadays…)

As for Franz the comedy Nazi butler in “The Sound of Music” let’s just recognize the fact that he once existed and then never speak of him again. I do like to think that the late Sam Kelly and I shared a similar disdain for public “Heils” however…

Also, rationally (if I can consider anything that I think nowadays to actually be rational…), I know that the last time I was persuaded to drag myself onto a stage to make up the numbers in a cough and a spit appearance in something so dreadful I dare not speak its name, I can nowadays only remember the massive pain-in-the-arsedness of having to turn up each day, remembering to shave, and the utter fear of not remembering the words.

And there were only about six of those dotted through the banal nonsense…

Standing there, with my knees quaking in the wings, knowing that word number one had vanished and taken all of its little word friends along with it, was just horrible, even when I knew that they were penciled in on the clipboard that my “character” (and I use the word loosely) carried.

Oh well, at least I didn’t have to hang about for the curtain call… Given what I was doing, that would have been an insult to everyone else involved, I always thought. Plus, of course, I could be home and in bed before the end of the interval, which is always a bonus when you live in the back of beyond.

So, my mind may occasionally drift off and consider thesping again, but the practical part of my brain knows that I can head upstairs to write a pithy phrase of my own only to forget it before the computer has had time to boot up, and that’s when I’m thinking of my own words. Remembering pages and pages of someone else’s would be nigh on impossible, especially this aging addled old cranium of mine.

And even in the unlikely event of me managing to remember them, there is, of course, the additional rubicon of then having to stand in front of people and say them out loud, preferably with some sort of performance sprinkled into the air around them.

Not a chance in hell of that happening, I suspect.

This public performance anxiety is, I fear, also why my scriptwriting pastime finally ground to a halt. It wasn't just the lack of self-confidence in what I was writing (although that played a huge part in it), but also the thought having to say my words out loud and in front of other people, especially people who might think that it was all utter rubbish.

I do consider joining a writing group again from time-to-time, if I could find one, but that whole crippling, crushing lack of self-confidence thing tortures me into submission and instead I do nothing, preferring instead to rattle out blogs like this in relative obscurity and anonymity.

You know, I once read somewhere that, in certain quarters, shyness is equated with selfishness. Well, all I can say in response to that is you just try living with it, matey…

Way, way back in the day, I used to quite enjoy performance poetry and occasionally toy with going along to some of that again.

Don’t get me wrong, I doubt that I could ever stand up and spout some of my own doggerel out loud in a public place, but I think that it might just occasionally be pleasant just to be amongst it again and hear some well-chosen words drifting across an enraptured room, although I would cringe in transferred embarrassment at the inevitable smartarse heckle and so probably wouldn’t enjoy it at all.

You see, a lot of the time, I’m not even suffering on my own behalf, but absorbing the blame and the shame for the entire room, presumably so that they don’t have to.

Lack of self-confidence… It really is a bit of a bugger, especially as “people” seem to think that I don’t suffer from it at all, especially as when, in the days when I did used to socialize, I was often the loudest idiot in the room.

I was trying to compensate for something I suppose… either that or the demon drink had a hold on me…

Even expressing opinions could leave me flustered and I really can't get across to anyone quite how much self-loathing can follow even the simplest of social interactions, and how much I would hate myself as I headed home after yet another evening of public embarrassment and humiliation.

I believe other people refer to such things as “parties…”

But then again, my artwork fizzled out in much the same way. Showing my “work” to people who might proclaim it to be utter garbage was more than I could bear, and that was before I ended up working for a guy whose entire modus operandi seemed to be to ridicule and belittle everyone who worked under him, for the betterment of the product, of course...

(I'm amazed sometimes that I manage to function at all any more, especially in the workplace...)

That was years ago now, but it’s left its mark on my stuttering soul.

In recent years, I’ve often felt like I have had a lack of encouragement, or someone to believe in whatever abilities I may or may not have had. I always wanted some kind of a mentor, but even then you have to persuade someone that you actually have some kind of ability for them to mentor you about, and that really isn’t possible when you don’t believe a word of it yourself.

It’s far too late now, anyway, but it still nibbles away at me from time-to-time, and I regret being such a bloody coward for letting those feelings of self-doubt and disbelief overwhelm all of those possibilities I once believed I once might have had.

So it looks as if I might have to try and find something new to enjoy doing, although, after all those years of searching, I really am beginning to wonder quite what it might actually turn out to be…