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Archive for the ‘Baldy Tales’ Category

From as early as I can remember in childhood, I loved music of all kinds and until my voice broke, enjoyed singing. Rather like the comedian who longs to play Shakespeare, whatever talents I have, I would have traded in an instant just to be able to play an acoustic guitar or a piano perfectly but sadly, this was never to be…

After my divorce almost 25 years ago, a friend of mine lent me a flat to stay in, I was grateful but also somewhat horrified to discover that whilst there was a huge B&O TV, there was no sound system and no means to play music ! How could one live like that ?

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In simple terms and as usual, I just don’t have any because frankly I cannot see just why that a particular hour on a particular day will make you ‘do something’ you clearly have no desire to do like giving up smoking, losing weight, going to the gym 4 times a week and so on and so forth. When it comes to such “Giving Up/Doing Better Stakes” and even with the most ‘benign alignment of planets’, midnight on the 31^st December really just isn’t motivational in any way.

The key to any ‘lifestyle change’ (what a toss pot phrase that is), lies in a personal motivation: “I want to lose weight because I hate what I look like in a mirror” or, “I know it’s unhealthy but also, smoking is really just too expensive, I’m spending £70 a week on it !”

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At this time of the year when even people in the Media want to wrangle as much time off as they can, TV and the Newspapers are full of pre-recorded/edited material. As one reader commented in the Economist, their article on Internet Dating called “Love at First Byte” was an obvious ‘filler’ written ages before and never previously published but for all that, it was quite an amusing article: http://www.economist.com/node/17797424

It set off in my mind a whole set of past memories and that is what the Closing of the Year is all about, saying goodbye to the past and hello to the future…

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Although not an earth shattering event, I awoke today to my 65th birthday, I am now official an Old Age Pensioner as well as just being an ‘Old Git’. I cannot report that I felt any different, there were no string quartets and choirs of Angels to herald the dawn, in fact it was a pretty ordinary day.

With one exception: Having a birthday immediately after Christmas means that it is often forgotten or ‘over looked’ by most and yet this year, at least by my low standards, there were quite a number of phone calls, e-mails and a flurry of birthday cards and even, one or two presents so, yes it was an unusual birthday in this regard. There were no great events of celebration,  I had my ride by the River Brue, my friend John came round to help me reassemble a bed and my afternoon treat was a visit to the Blood Pressure Clinic but never the less, that is how some birthdays go !

Perhaps the most remarkable thing for us all as people, is the ease with which we can both ‘see and solve’ other people’s problems whilst being incapable of doing the same for ourselves, we may be ‘Angels to others’ but we are assuredly ‘Angels with broken wings’ when it comes to ourselves.

Of course the reality is simply that of ‘emotional involvement’. We can take a Helicopter View of other people’s problems simply because they are not ours and we can therefore be totally objective and because all changes carry costs, we are insulated from those costs which is not the case whilst going through our own “changes”. So this little essay is about me asking someone else for help…

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In the First Ashes Test at the Gabba, I was delighted with the England Cricket Team because although a draw, from a very poor first innings, they showed great character and spirit to force the draw in their second innings. It was brilliant because our record ‘Down Under’ under such circumstances, is historically woeful but, not this time.

As happens with any great International side whether Australia in Cricket today or, Brazil in Football in the past, there come fallow periods where a new generation has to take over and develop for the future with, some disappointing performances whilst that process happens and this may, characterize the current state of Ricky Pointing’s Team today.

However and even allowing for that, the England performance in the Second Test is one to be relished because it was truly a great Team performance not one that relied on an outstanding performance by one man. That said though, great to see Kevin Pietersen back on song with a double century – brilliant.

Really this just follows on from my previous blog post “Coming Home” and is part of that process which started on my recent trip to London which led to the laying of some ghosts for me plus my reassessing previous assumptions and trying to plot my way forward from where I am today.

However, it is rather more than just this because our view of any ‘journey’ is predicated by where we start our travels from and in this regard, past memories and our reactions or, how we handled things at that time, can provide helpful clues to decisions we have to make today. Although ‘history’ does not repeat itself in exactly the same way, as people we can often have the unfortunate habit of repeating our past mistakes if we are not careful.

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I was born in Hackney Hospital but bought up in South London and although I have lived away from London, the City of my birth, I have always returned to it frequently indeed, for many years and no matter where I was then living, I always insisted on meeting up with friends and having my birthday celebrations there which fall just after Christmas.

I suppose that either you are a “city person” or you are not, I have always been a “city boy” and consequently have always felt at ease in cities both here and abroad. Apart from one fleeting visit, I have not been to ‘my London’ for the six and a half years I have spent in Somerset, nursing my Parents through the final stages of their lives. However, this week I took the time to do so…

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As we are now in mid November, I have reached the point where I as usual, just stop shopping until the New Year and that includes the Internet which is my favourite form of shopping. This may just be an age and stage thing, but still…

When I moved down to Somerset to look after my Parents, my children, their grandchildren would often ask me what Nan and Granddad wanted for Christmas/Birthday and my replies were just never that helpful because when you reach a certain age and stage, the simple answer is “nothing” or at least, nothing you could expect someone else to buy you.

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I was reminded today by my annual invoice, that I have been writing this blog for three years now having started it in November 2007, I even find myself amazed since I really began it as a bit of an experiment to test myself out. The reality is that the vast majority of people, launch themselves on a personal project like this, life gets in the way and then the enthusiasm rapidly drains away.

According to some estimates, roughly 175,000 new blogs are started every day but probably only 10% survive, if numbers are you thing, Technorati is a good site to check such stuff out on the ‘blogosphere’: http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/

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