Why Blog?

Here's the question. Why do people blog/tweet/update status every five minutes? Do they want people to take an interest? Is it all vanity?

Now here is why I blog. It's a bit like therapy.

I'm able to write/say what I really think, without someone else having to sit down and listen. I can pretend that the whole world is interested, empty out my mind and get on with life.
No damage done, urge to be creative appeased and what I wanted to say...said.

Which makes me feel better about life.

That's why I blog.

Zen Blogging

Long time no blog, but having finally bothered to get the internet at home it seemed like time to get back in to the saddle. In an attempt to impose clarity and quality I have decided to limit each blog post to a hundred words.
So a mouthful or morsel of blog.

Right, let's recap the rules
1 - 100 hundred words per post - no more - no less
2 - Titles count to the limit
3 - Links and numbers count as one word

Ok, time for the post proper....well perhaps that will have to wait for the next time

Song Lyrics

Inspired by (ok, you got me...I'm just stealing the idea) a few similar notes on facebook recently here are a few lyrics from some of my favourite songs and bands for you to try and guess. How many can you get...I've tried not to be too obscure but be prepared, this may get eclectic...

1) You quiver like a candle on fire, I'm putting you out

2) Take your shoes off and I'll throw them in the lake

3) No excuse to be so callous, dress yourself in bleeding madras, charm your way across the Khyber Pass

4) Here's an evening dark with shame, throw it on the fire, and here's the time I took the blame, throw it on the fire

5) Every time just like the last, on her ship tied to the mast

6) But ask me why and I'll spit in your eye. Oh ask me why and I'll spit in your eye

7) Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh fanatical, a criminal. Oh won't you sign up your name we'd like to see you're acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable.

8) I'm coming out of my cage and I've been doing just fine

9) She's a little pilot in my mind, singing songs I love to pass the time, gonna write a song so she can see, give her all the love she gives to me

10) He was shot six times by a man on the run and she couldn't find how to push through

11) Don't waste your time on me, you're already a voice inside my head

12) Windmill, windmill for the land is everybody in?

13) Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning

14) We'll see the stars that shine bright, stars made for us tonight

15) Just trying to see in the dark, just try to make it work, feel the fear before you're here

16) Music's my language and all I can say, is that you are the one who takes me away

17) Um what you say? Um that you only meant well? Well of course you did

18) Speed so fast felt like I was drunk, city lights lay out before us

19) Sunny days where have you gone? I get the strangest feeling you belong

20) Because out of all the people I've known, the places I've been, the songs I have sung, the wonders I've seen. Now that the dreams are all coming true, who is the one that leads me on through? It's you!

Flat sorted...what's next?

Okie Kokie, I've found (and more importantly put money down on) a nice little one bed flat within easy walking distance of work...so panic over, or at least that panic is over...now I can panic about all sorts of different things. Not least my probable difficulties in actually affording anything, don't think I'll be going out ever again...not that that would be the end of the world cos it's a pretty decent space.

For your interest (though I doubt you are interested) I've got one of six flats in a refurbished pub. Reasonably sized kitchen/living room decent double bedroom and a small shower room, all up on the first floor. Rather pleasingly the whole shebang is in an L shape round one side of the building so I've got an absolute load of windows...whether I can actually fit the sofa up the stairs is another matter entirely...and one I'm trying not to think about too much

As I suggested last time out I'm not a 100% sure on whether I'm actually going to have internet in the place so blogging is liable to go somewhat out the window for at least a month or two whilst I move in and sort stuff out. I'll still be checking e-mail and so forth from work so i won't be completely out of the loop.

So if you need somewhere to crash in the west country, you know who to call (not the ghostbusters)
Dave

House Hunting

My search for somewhere to live from April onwards continues apace, but I am starting to find the search a little stressful. I have never lived alone, so this is the first time I've viewed apartments knowing that it is my decision that is final. At university my source of income was fairly reasonable (parents, savings and student loan), council tax didn't need to be paid and all other bills were split three ways. I'm earning a reasonable wage now, but still it's difficult to be sure how much I can really afford.

So whenever I view a flat (which I'm doing again later today) I'm having to balance cost against all sorts of other parameters. Do I want to spend a little more for a bigger, nicer place? Or should I hold back so that I can spend a little more on furniture, bills and so on (I'm seriously considering going without a telephone landline and broadband, which may rather affect my blog rate)?

I appreciate that this is not particularly interesting to the average reader, but it is taking up a lot of my thinking time over this last month. Where once I might have been pondering a new post or poem, now I lie awake struggling with the complexities of interior design and just whether I can actually fit my parent's sofa up the stairs in the most recently viewed house.
With a bit of luck things will be sorted out in the next few days and things can return to some sort of normality...

...decisions...decisions

25 things that you may not know about me

1 - Had I been born a girl I would have been named Katherine, after one of the central characters of the Geoffrey Trease book 'Cue for Treason'

2 - I play chess at a reasonably decent level for my local team...I also write their match reports

3 - I am an awful liar

4 - My heroes include Marc Overmars, Groucho Marx and James Stewart

5 - I am interested in things like Tarot and Horoscopes even though I do not believe in astrology, I think they have a placebo like affect that can be beneficial

6 - If I had sons I would like to name them Jo and Dan, that is Johan and Dante

7 - I am incredibly nervous about public speaking or any other kind of performance

8 - Whilst I have an eclectic taste in music that leans predominantly towards indie my favourite music to listen to live is folk

9 - Despite being fairly sarcastic myself, I do not recognise other people's sarcasm very well at all.

10 - I spend hours worrying about the smallest of things, pondering the slightest thing that might have been said. My fear of rejection is immense, rivalled only by my fear of failure. I find it very difficult to accept that anyone actually likes me.

11 - I will do almost anything to avoid an argument about anything personal

12 - I subconsciously rehearse conversations in my head, when I say something witty it is often scripted

13 - Writing this list is incredibly difficult for me, real insight into my inner self is not something that I offer up to anyone, mostly because I'm ashamed of it.

14 - I buy wine almost entirely based upon the name and appearance of the bottle

15 - With a few exceptions I only do things that I find easy or am naturally good at...revision, practice and dedication are alien concepts to me

16 - Luckily I have a very high opinion of my own abilities, allowing me to complete everyday tasks under the illusion that I am doing them in a manner vastly superior to everybody else...seriously I believe myself to be better at shopping than other people.

17 - When I was very young I was sent to my room without dinner for refusing to be the farmer's wife in the game 'The farmer's in his den'

18 - My favourite composer is Bach, my favourite picture is 'The Ambassadors' by Hans Holbein (It's in the National Gallery in London, please take a look next time you are nearby) and my favourite poems are Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' and Noakes' 'The Highwayman'

19 - I have only thrown up as a result of alcohol twice, but as an unfortunate side effect of drinking too much snaps in one evening I can no longer eat or drink anything with a peach flavour

20 - I turned vegetarian on a whim and have no particular reason for continuing to be so. Strangely enough I am steadily growing stricter on the matter.

21 - I prefer wearing smart clothes like suits and ties, I think this has something to do with my general preference for order and regulation alongside my complete artistic failings which continue into the world of fashion

22 - Films that I especially enjoy that you might not know include 'Harold & Maude', 'Jean de Florette' (and it's sequel 'Manon des Sources'), 'His Girl Friday', 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' and 'It Happened One Night'. I cannot recommend any of these films too much

23 - I am exceedingly shallow and jealous of other's successes

24 - My dreams include living in New Zealand, sailing around the world and owning a VW camper van

25 - Three of the above are lies

Autumn Sun

The summer had not come, but still was gone
October and finally the clouds parted
A glimpse of what could have been
Just a day to live the wrong season
One day to walk and watch and enjoy

Drove out of town to fight the crowds in the wilderness
Walk the Wiltshire hills
Which roll like the clichéd waves
Escape the crush and embrace the view
Pick a spot to sit and read and dream

Haze in the distance
Not cleared by the breeze which cools
But doesn’t chill
Rustles the pages and stirs the grass
Grown long beneath my feet
Insects on my sleeves, a spider
Starts to spin between thumb and book
But is borne away

Shadows dance with the words as I forsake the view
Subtly changed when I finally gaze again
No longer the same, so I rise
Pause for ice cream
To lick and drip and refresh

Another drive, another view
But the same crowds even in the forest
Delicate colours will be gone in a week
Swept together, reduced to nothing
But now those leaves shine and dance and dazzle

I remember another autumn
The same unique tableau
Not here, but beside the lake
Where the light shimmered and leapt across that mirror
Keep the city, I do not need it
Anything that can be bought is worthless
Who wants to live forever?
Not I

One day I too will shrivel and fall and rot
But it will not matter
Even if I do nothing more
For I was there
That autumnal day in England
When I walked and dreamed and drank and lived
Was it perfect?
No
But close enough