baldysblog.co.uk

Archive for the ‘Baldy Tales’ Category

It is odd how what on the surface seems a pretty mundane task can take you unawares and become far more significant than you imagine or, could possibly have imagined at outset but this tale is all about such things. What at first glance seemed a simple thing became like dropping a stone into a still pool and watching the ripples spread far and wide across the surface awakening the ‘dark creatures’ that dwell deep down in the depths.

But having written that, I must question whether that is true or whether in fact, there was an inevitability attached to the whole thing and the ‘simple task’ in this case hanging pictures, merely served to reveal the underlying complexities that were already lurking there awaiting some appropriate moment to erupt like a volcano over a suburban parlour carpet…

Read the rest of this entry »

I was amused by an article in The Economist about Internet Dating and worth a read: http://www.economist.com/node/21547217. Obviously with us about to hit St Valentine’s Day, the topic is “topical”.

I must own up and say that for me, Valentine’s Day is up there with New Year’s Eve as one of those occasions that is always destined to disappoint in the event despite or perhaps because of all the planning effort that goes in to setting the “special event” up in the first place. Oh yes, I do have tales to tell on such things but, I will not bore you…

Read the rest of this entry »

For me, 2011 has been an interesting year with most of the excitement crammed into June when as I was about to depart for a month long trip to the USA, my grandson Mika was born up in Scotland, the day before I left. So June 2011 was to be a very intense month indeed !

Inevitably when I sit and write anything on December 31^st, I think immediately of my Father who died in 2007, if he were still alive, he would have been 91 today, his birthday. But I will think no sad thoughts, nor sing sad songs for we all have our time on this Earth and all eventually will leave it, the measurement being what we did with our time here, not the length of our stay.

Read the rest of this entry »

The other Saturday I attended the 80th birthday lunch of an old friend of mine Simon Mayhew which was held at a riverside restaurant, “The Depot” at Mortlake in West London and was a truly splendid affair attended by his 4 children and numerous grandchildren, I would certainly recommend the venue, both the food and service were excellent.

For a ‘present’ birthday card, I did a framed photo-montage (thank The Lord and Adobe for Photoshop), as the scaled down picture below which was great fun for me to do. The amazing thing being that I used a picture of him from almost 16 years ago when he came to my 50^th birthday, he looks no different at all, good for him and it set me to thinking around age and getting old.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have written about my memories and personal ties to this particular date before and will later summarize them again because they are all rather odd in the sense that I can not recall any other day in my life which has ever been connected in the same way to such a significant “news event” via so many different ‘threads’.

However, 10 years is a significant anniversary and as good a time as any to reflect on the impact of those days one of which I experienced, as so many others do on my recent holiday in the USA. Having to check in for your flight very early, US Customs/Immigration, never a barrel of laughs, as surly as ever. But also there are the political dimensions not all of which have led to bad outcomes, some indeed may well be very beneficial in the medium term.

Read the rest of this entry »

“The longest way round, the shortest way home ?” I was reminded of this saying recently as I reflected on my recent stay in the US with my Uncle. That unbeknown to me, I really needed that break but mainly to “break my past trail” to free up future progress, became obvious to me by just having made the trip but there was/is more.

Since my return I have had various things to do that were set up before I went on my trip plus and due to the weather whilst I was away, a veritable jungle of garden weeds to tackle in a town where the use of napalm is frowned upon so…

Read the rest of this entry »

Not too much to say as I have flown away on holiday but to set fear into all, I will return early July !

Recently as I am working on a major redesign of this particular we site, a task made rather more complicated by having to master the unfamiliar technology of database driven content management systems which is really what blogs are all about, I have been looking back at my past entries.

One of the things that you can do is that although this site is hosted “Out there on the Cloud”, I have a local WordPress site on my PC which I’m using for development purposes and I can use a copy of my existing bog entries as ‘data’ to populate my design experiments and doing so led me to some interesting ‘discoveries’ and realisations of the changes I’m personally going through.

Read the rest of this entry »

The saying, “War is too important to be left to the Generals” probably also applies to Constitutions and Politicians. Constitutional change is far too important to be left to the politicians, they just don’t seem to have a clue and certainly lack the intellectual rigour to suggest anything remotely workable.

This Thursday we have local council elections down here but also, the Referendum on changing the voting system from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote. Funny how a Coalition Agreement can conjure that up when herds of wild stallions couldn’t get the greasy buggers to give us a Referendum on the EU !

Read the rest of this entry »

Really following on from my earlier post and in case anyone actually follows this blog, a minor announcement: There will not be that much in the way of “new posts” over the next few weeks although the “look” may change a couple of times.

I am redesigning this site and that is a bit of a major undertaking because of the very nature of WordPress sites which because they are “live”, the pages being made up on the “fly” as demanded by users requires quite a lot more work than say, changing a simple xhtml site knocked up in Dreamweaver.

Read the rest of this entry »