Friday Four - especially for Neil

Song One...


Song Two...


Song Three...


Song Four...

Friday Funny

The advantages of easy origami are two-fold....



I'll tell you something that'll warm your heart... electrically heated lungs

Friday Four

I'm figuring that resurrecting this every three months is enough to just about keep it alive.

Last time around we finished up with this song

So what links that song with this one...



then what links that song with this one...



and what links the second song to this one...



and finally what's the link between that song and this one...



and there you have it... four songs linked in a chain (with apologies to Radcliffe & Maconie) all you need to do is tell me is the four links. And very easy this week I think - Off you go Neil ;-)

A lot of bits of nothing

Written Tuesday 21st May 

This working week has started in much the same way as it's recent predecessors. With a packed diary based at the opposite end of the country to my home and family, I have to accept the reality that Monday to Friday will be a tightrope walk - trying to throw myself into the exciting challenges of the project Im working on but also to spend the right time (and the right times) with those that I love the most.

As a result I find myself in Caffe Nero at Clapham Junction, trying to map out the day ahead's events so that I can dive in on autopilot, see everyone and do everything that I need to and be over two hundred miles away at tea time.

Yesterday I finally admitted that my job really does require a lot of time in London, by buying an Oyster card. There was something about doing this that felt like defeat, even though I know it's just a more cost effective way of doing what I do at the moment. It doesn't make me any less rooted in the North West, but it makes me feel like one of the masses that I commune and commute with once I reach Euston. Normally when stood on an underground platform,  I console myself that I've left this grind behind - that I'm a visitor,  a tourist,  an outside observer of the rushing, pushing and crushing of London travel. The Oyster card is a frightening reflection of the reality of my working week and of being sucked back into the world I turned away from 13 years ago.

I've tried making conversation with the person opposite me - but they just smile awkwardly as if to indicate that I've broken the golden rule. "This is Clapham Junction station at 7:30 on a weekday morning - we don't talk we just rush - got it!"

Friday Four... for old time's sake

Thanks to Marianne's little nudge today - I decided to take the Friday Four out of mothballs and see if anyone is interested in trying to link these four songs. The rules are fairly easy, but just in case you don't know them - the first song here is linked in some way to the last one from last time. The second song is linked to the first, the third is linked to the second and finally the fourth has some link to the third. It's a chain... we nicked it off Radcliffe & Maconie.

So the last one was almost a year ago... you can find it here. But to be clear, the last song last time was Rufus Wainwright's version of Hallelujah. You need to find a link between that song and this one...

Song One:


Next up - can you find a link between Song One and this one...

Song Two:


You've got the hang off it now. Can you link that song with the next one?

Song Three:


...and finally. What links Kirsty or her song with the final song...

Song Four:


Enjoy....

Friday Funny - Comic Relief Special

A special in honour of tonight's Comic Relief, here's one of my personal favourites from a few years back. Catherine Tate stars as her obnoxious schoolgirl character, Lauren Cooper, and they have a new English Teacher...



You can still donate this year... http://www.rednoseday.com/sponsor-and-donate

Bite me Alien Boy!!

January The Fifth

The unadorned room
Seems shabbier than before
The season of joy.

Undecorated.
Stripped of its festive layers,
The room is naked.

Reduced to a husk,
From which to flower again
And face a new year.

January 5th, always feels to me like one of the saddest days of the year. Christmas has become a period I've looked forward to more and more over the last decade or so, but even when I didn't hold much stock by Yuletide, I still hated the day when the decorations had to come down.

Today I went around the house, slowly removing the festive decorations,  undoing the lights and taking the baubles off the tree. Eventually, I squeezed the newly naked Nordmann Fir out of the nearest window, and took it off to the local Scout hut where it will be used for woodmanship practice. I returned to our newly un-Spruced lounge, and hoovered up the remaining traces of needle and tinsel. I looked around the sparse rooms which I had created, but didn't feel quite as depressed as I have in years gone by.

Maybe, in the same way that Christmas has grown on me, Twelfth Night won't groan on me anymore. Maybe I'm learning to greet a new year with my room clear.