Saturday 14 November 2015

Four years ..... four years gone by and I remember it like ....

... well this morning ..... I suppose ....

Billy Bragg wrote a great song 
in tribute to his late father ....

Well it seems like a perfect choice for today
A tank park salute
for my Dad

Still missing you big fella ...... x


Friday 6 November 2015

Momma Mia ......

... following the Italian Job Theme with yesterday's Matt Munro .... it is on days like these, when skies are grey and fields all wet, I look around and think of days in Italy ......

Like the vast majority of free thinking adults I am still enslaved by the world of work, but whilst I have a cunning exit plan, not quite on the scale of Andy Dufresne, I can see light at the end of the tunnel ......

So whilst I still have to crawl through a pipe of shit to get there, sometimes I do get a glimpse of what awaits me.

Despite never having been abroad nor owning a passport until I was 16.5 ys old I have been fortunate that my working life beyond 16.5 yrs old has taken me all over the world. Since starting my own company in 2000 not a year has gone by without numerous over seas assignments .....

So with my mind fully focused on Operation Pompeii, what better than my latest assignment to take me to Ascoli just a few miles inland from the Adriatic coast of Italy. I love driving along any part of that coast, and this time the car hire company supplied me with a Fiat 500 .... what a great dinky remake of a classic..... except for 1 thing..... they only had automatics ... my word what an utter shite of a gear box ..... everytime it changed up a gear it lurched..... christ at one stage I thought my pasta might be on it's way back up ..... but other than that, a loverly car ....



But the real treat of my visit was not the car,  it was thus ..........  I had completed the work I was commissioned to do........  and I had a few hours spare before heading back to the airport ..... So I headed into the centre of Ascoli ...... oh my word what a breath taking place ..... to steal the words of wisdom from .... In Brugge ....... it was like a fucking fairy tale ......{there's a lot of swearing in that movie} ...... but here I was in Ascoli and it was an archetypical Italian town.


I had never been before, nor actually heard of the place and yet by some random act connected with my work, on a wet windy day in England, I am instead driving around the wonderful place of Ascoli in a Fiat 500 [with a crap auto box].

Even the name of bus stops in Italy sound so poetic ....



...... in England we ask where the bus stop is .... but in Italy it is called..... Fermata Bus ..... say it out loud to your self ... gue on say it ..... Fer ~ mar ~ ta Bus..... again and this time put on a fake italian accent ..... now say bus stop in a broad english accent .... Fermata probably one of the worlds most beautiful words ....... not sure the same can be said for stop ........

This is why I want to escape this life and hide myself some where in Italy



no day-2-day bullshit
no emails
no crappy SMS text
no twats at Talk Talk to talk talk with

...... yeah yeah ... I know Italy is not perfect 
but you look out of your window now

........... then look at this



it may well rain in Italy ... 
didn't look too clever the day I was there
but where would you rather be ?

I know where I will be when I finally get out of this shit pipe, 
and the light is getting ever brighter and the shit not so smelly....

Till then how about
this for a Friday SoD .....



and if by a quirke of your job your find your self in Ascoli
you will not be disappointed .... 
who knows one day we may bump into each other ...


Thursday 5 November 2015

Terry Parsons

Tonight I watched the One Show for the first time in yonks* ......

Alexander Armstrong was on, and he was banging on about how he originally started his entertaining career with the intention of becoming a singer but ended up a comedi ..... ache erm .... cough .... a comedian .....

Anyway he was plugging his first singing album ....... A year of songs .....

At the end of the show, he sung the first track from the album ......

No..... No...... No .....[and for effect]...... No fucking nooooooooooooooo ......

He slaughtered what can only be classed as one of music's great master pieces ...... only my Elvis was ever capable of making a cover version better than the original, but tonight ..... seriously ....

The only person who ever sung this song to perfection 
was non other than
Terry Parsons
Robbed of this life at the stupidly young age of 54 .....
Oh what a voice of velvet taken too soon
On days like .........


A year of songs by Matt Munro
would beat a life time of songs by bloody pointless Zander !
£10.99 on Amazon ......
shittin ada .... if on days like these is anything to go by
what a joke .....


[post script - * it is officially recorded that a yonk is a period of 5 years]