It's a Hard Pill to Swallow

It's difficult for me to look at the Chelsea millionaire players in this picture and not feel bitter about the result yesterday. I'm sure every neutral football fan in the country was rooting for my relatively poor team to show them up for being such spoilt, rich, cheating twats. Sorry Mum, football still brings the worst out in me.

I was hoping Phil Neville would knock seven buckets of shit out of Didier Drogba for being the worst culprit but he's too much of a nice guy although he did get stuck in and played for the shirt. Where is Peter Reid when you need him?

Alas it wasn't our day and our history of not beating Chelsea in 9 years continues. At least we did achieve one record on the day and that was the quickest goal ever to be scored in an FA Cup final. It was scored by Louis Saha in 25 seconds and what a goal it was too.

I couldn't bear watching Chelsea celebrate with the cup and stuck the Gears of War game in my Xbox and annihilated a whole squad of John Terry and Michael Ballack look-a-like aliens with my chainsaw rifle and frag grenades; the only thing more satisfying would have been if they were all wearing Chelsea shirts.

De du doh don't de doh!

It was 1979. I was 14 years old. I was working at the local Royal British Legion club on a dump of a council estate called Cantril Farm in Liverpool collecting empty glasses. I was, what's known as, a Pot Lad. In the club I spent a lot of time listening to cabaret bands and watching audience members crooning to Patsy Kline numbers and Mack the Knife at every opportunity they had to get on stage. It was fun in a kind of innocent way and I made friends with lots of nice people.

I was just starting to get into music for the first time and one of the lads I was working with at the club was a drummer called Steve from another nearby council estate called Kirkby. Steve was a year or two older than me.

It was 1979. My sister Lesley had just had a house party to celebrate her 13th birthday, Elvis Costello had been on repeat the whole night singing Oliver's Army on an old Decca record player and one of Lesley's invited friends was thrown out of the house by our Mum for French kissing on the sofa in front of everyone. Things were heating up.

It was the end of the 70s, Punk was dead, thankfully, and my drummer friend Steve had learned some new drum patterns from this new band that he'd just started getting into. I bought a pair of drumsticks and copied Steve trying to play drums like his new hero Stewart Copeland. The band were The Police. They were the first band I really got into and it was all because of Steve who introduced me to them.

I loved the Police, they had an attitude that appealed to me, unlike Punk. Ironically I'm more understanding of Punk and it's meaning now that I'm an adult than when I was a kid and in a position to join in its revolution. The Police had a great sound. Their music was a mixture of rock and reggae, branded White Reggae. Sting sang with an Afro Caribbean vocal edge and he was very cool. He was also from the North of England which didn't make much difference to me then but seems to now that I'm older.

It's now 2009, 30 years after I first heard The Police. I'm 44 now and sitting in an air conditioned office a couple of hundred miles away from the old council estate. I've recently replaced my old vinyl copies of the early Police albums. Message In a Bottle, The Bed's too Big Without You and So Lonely have just been playing on my iPod and I'm transported back in time. The smell of stale beer is lodged in my nostrils and I'm playing drums on upside-down drip trays with Stewart Copeland again while Patsy Kline sings I'm Hurt for the umpteenth time this week. Someone strangle that woman!

De du du du, de dah dah dah, that's all I want to say to you.

The Mighty Unicorn

He just floated there, helpless, and waited for the huge, cold shadow that loomed ahead to engulf him. That great, white crested form reared up in slow motion like another mighty stamping unicorn, thrusting its chest forward until its mass would crash down on the beaten body in its path.

He didn't know how many more of these monsters he could endure. He was exhausted from scrambling to the surface after each wave dumped six feet of cold, Atlantic water on top of his head.

It was some minutes now since he got into this desperate situation, flung from the insignificant survival aid that was his windsurf board and rig. He'd never thought of his kit in this way before but now it hit him; the equipment that he had used regularly for the past however many years to have so much fun in the blue waves of South West England was, in fact, his only ticket out of this sorry situation. And he'd lost it, carried away by the mighty Unicorn - Hector.

He'd named the wave that had carried his board away after a most powerful Greek God. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, but looking back now, it seemed absurd.

Hector toyed with him at first allowing the board and sail to loll about in the lee of his mighty mane of white hair, then as the man stretched to grab the tail of the board, Hector would tug the plastic composite form from his grasp and send it scurrying forward out of reach.

That was about 10 waves ago and now he hadn't seen his life raft for quite some time, gone who knows where, but he didn't care anymore. His thoughts had moved from survival to his wife, waiting in a delivery ward to deliver their first child, a child he now realised he'd never see.

"Why am I here and she there, both of us on our own with separate battles to overcome", he thought, just as number 11 smashed down and shocked his senses yet again.

This time, the rise to the surface was even further than before. He wasn't going to make it this time. Through the deep, dark water ahead, he saw his wife cradling their newborn child in her arms and he saw the Unicorn rearing its beautiful head in defiance, commanding the man's respect. The man dropped his head and made a vow to the great, Greek God - If I survive this torment, my respect for you will be symbolised by the name of my first son.

A sudden welcome hand grabbed the man's arm and he was dragged away by a kited angel.

Studio opportunity

To quote the immortal lyrics from Phil Collins...... Suh Suh Studio

Actually his song was called Sussudio or something daft like that but anyway I'm really excited about a potential studio place that may come available in quite a high profile Arts complex in Bristol.

A friend of a friend is an Artist and Silkscreen Printer and she is looking for someone to share the expense of her studio. My friend and I thought it would be a good idea to join her in a sort of Artists Cooperative. My friend is interested in fabrics and clothes design and I'm interested in photography, cyanotyping and alternative photographic printing methods.

If we could work out a process for printing onto fabric and other absorbent materials, we may have an opportunity to combine both into a marketable product.

Avoiding Pomposity

I recently became conscious that as I get more confident in writing, I may have the tendency to become verbose and pompous. I hate both of these traits. However, I like the sound of my own voice and I may tend to show off a little in my writing. A good Writer will resist the temptation to show off and put down on paper more than is necessary in getting across his/her thoughts. This is something I need to be conscious of.

On that subject, I came across the following example that illustrates that verbosity and pomposity are not welcome and get in the way of good communication.

The Hydrochloric Acid Letters
The following letters were exchanged between a New York City plumber and the Bureau of Standards in Washington:

The plumber wrote the Bureau stating that he has found hydrochloric acid good for cleaning out clogged drains.

The Bureau wrote him: "The efficacy of hydochloric acid is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence."

The plumber replied he was glad the Bureau agreed.

The Bureau tried again, writing: "We cannot assume responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residue with hydrochloric acid and suggest that you use an alternative procedure."

The plumber again said he was pleased the Bureau agreed with him.

Finally the Bureau, realizing that they had not written in a language that was understandable, wrote to the plumber. "Don't use hydrochloric acid. It eats hell out of the pipes."

A Calling......

In 2001 I visited British Columbia for a 2 month winter adventure. I spent most of my time learning to snowboard in the winter playgrounds of Whistler and Blackcomb with my friends Jimi and Nicole. However, during my time there I looked up a distant relative who lives a modest lifestyle with his Welsh partner near the X Files studios in the hills of North Vancouver.

Bill is an ex Royal Marine who settled in Canada when he finished in the armed services. When I met him, he had just turned 70. I couldn't get over how fit he was. He was a great outdoors type; probably a hangover from his time as a Marine. He would go on these huge treks into the wilderness which was basically right outside the main door of his house.

Bill had a retreat on one of the Queen Charlotte islands off the coast between the mainland and Vancouver Island and took the ferry over to the island from Horseshoe Bay or one of the few ferry ports along that part of the coast. In the summer, Bill and his partner would load up the camper van and head south down the Pacific coast through Washington State, Oregon and California to Mexico. It was a relatively simple existence and one that I seem to envy more and more as I get older.

When I met Bill, I had just come out of a lengthy relationship and I was still living in Scotland. The trip to Canada was my way of dealing with the aftermath following the breakup. I was a bit mixed up and didn't know what to do with myself and the Canada trip gave me an opportunity to have some fun and delay any decisions regarding my future. I ran away for a while.

During one of several trips to Bill's home he talked about his plans to canoe north up the Pacific coast to Alaska via the Inside Passage; a long series of deep fjords flanked by snow topped mountains that headed north east into Alaska past towns and villages still inhabited by the ancient First Nations, the original aboriginal tribes that inhabited this part of the world before the white man.

This subject was very interesting to me. I was interested in the history of the displaced natives (maybe due to my Scottish and Irish genes) and their traditional methods of expression through music, dance and various art forms such as the use of totem poles. I was also interested in their current political standing in society and the social and cultural injustices this race of people have had to endure under the white man's rule. I read a lot about this while I was in BC and visited the fine Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver.

Bill was looking for a co-pilot for his canoe trip and thought I might be interested; I was. Unfortunately, as things turned out, I had to return from my trip early due to my spending all my tax money on the 2 month trip and I never got the chance to take Bill up on his amazing offer. I came back to the UK and thrust myself into a job to pay back the money I owed to the taxman. Regrettably, I have never had the chance to return to see Bill and join him on his Great Alaskan Adventure.

Which leads me on to a very moving and profound film I saw again last night - Into the Wild. The real life story of Richard Johnson McCandless (AKA Alexander Supertramp) brilliantly realised by Sean Penn who directed the film and Emile Hirsch who plays Richard with incredible virtuosity from a young Actor. Richard, disgusted by the consumerist society surrounding him, decides to turn his back on all things associated with this way of life and embark on his Great Alaskan Adventure. He would live off the land and exist without reliance on modern comforts and any obsession with possessions.

This film is difficult for me in that it shows how shallow I can be and how reliant I have been on personal possessions to make me happy. I am guilty of living by the ethos that Richard rebelled against. I have analysed this on many occasions and have come up with many causes for this dependency. They don't fix the problem but at least they help me to understand it.

Suffice to say that the film made me think that my unrealised Great Alaskan Adventure could have led to a more spiritually enlightened journey than the one that presents itself to me today.

It's never too late to go on a journey and change an ethos is it?

Maiden Roll

Yesterday was a bit special. I helped Wendy process her first set of negs from her newly repaired Olympus OM1. It's a lovely, old, metal bodied, fully manual camera. Wendy managed to liberate the camera from the repairers last week before we went to Cornwall. So I gave her a bit of tutoring and we ran a roll of Kodak Tri-X through it while we were away.

We processed the results at home yesterday. I think she was really pleased with the results. She has a good photographic eye it has to be said. I was particularly pleased with the shot of me above. It makes me look like I know what I'm doing.

I was using my Nikon F60 loaded with infra red film. The deep red filter that is used with this type of film kills most of the light entering the camera, so that even on bright sunny days a tripod is always necessary to avoid camera shake. The results can be stunning for landscapes and urban architectural shots with bright foliaged trees and deep, amost black skies and clear, white fluffy cumulus clouds. This is my first attempt at using this type of film.

Despair Amid Tales of Sci-fi, Aliens and William Shatner's Extra-Long Assignment

I've just been reading about a great British comedy actor called Simon Pegg. I've been a fan of his stuff since I was introduced to Spaced by my friend Matt. Simon Pegg plays Chief Engineer Scotty in a new Star Trek movie that comes out today. I can't wait to see it. As well as a Simon Pegg fan, I'm a fan of the early Star Trek series too. Reading about Star Trek reminded me of a cruel tale told to me by my Dad and and an episode in my life for which I can never forgive him.

Star Trek had a relatively short life as a TV series. It only ran for a couple of seasons but I was mad on it. It was a low budget sci-fi story about the crew of a USS starship and its ten year mission to seek out new life and new civilisations and to boldly go (probably the most famous dangling modifier used in a TV strapline), where no man has gone before.

The starship's crew was made up of a mixed race and mixed species group of specimens from planet Earth. However, it was Captain James Tiberius Kirk that I liked the most. He was charismatic and good looking (helped along by lots of soft focus, especially in some of the romantic episodes) and very hammy. He was brave and daring and got lots of respect from the other crew and attention from the females. I wanted to be Captain James T Kirk.

I watched the show whenever I could. It was fantastic escapism for a young lad.

Then along came a bombshell delivered in typical insensitive style by my Dad; Captain James T Kirk, an American Spaceman, the winner of many a Klingon battle, my hero, was actually an Alien. No! How could it be so? He had an American accent, he looked like us, he behaved like us (well in my dreams).

When my sobs had subsided, my Dad went on to tell me that after a certain amount of time in Outer Space (and Captain Kirk was going to be away on business for quite a long time), a human being ceased to be classed as such and was regarded an Alien. Hence, there was no coming back for Captain James T Kirk. He would never be one of us again, he would be different from now on and I would never meet him.

It was such a disappointment to my young mind that I've never forgotten it and never forgiven my evil Dad.

As for William Shatner who played Captain James T Kirk, he went on to play the role in several feature length versions of Star Trek and eventually turned into a bit of a weird looking, bloated fellow with facelifts and injections, not too dissimilar to the Blob. Hmmm, maybe my Dad had a point.