A Hundred Things About Me

1. I Can’t think of a hundred things

2-100. I hate lists

Gawd blimey y’all

I love accents. It’s what makes us all unique and God help the day we all start to speak like BBC News Readers or Trans-Atlantic Accent telesales people.
One thing that fascinates me is what would happen if a person was moved to a different location every year or so..what kind of accent would they have?

I’m talking about a fairly major move to a different part of the country or another English speaking country, not just down the road. I guess a good guide would be Christian Bale, a man born of South African parents of English heritage, born in Wales, who lived his early life in England, Portugal, and the United States. The ending result being this mishmash! but then why does he just sound like a Londoner in this clip!

Grandad

Having recently read this story by my dad about the passing away of one of my last remaining relatives, I was reminded of the happy times I had as a child, and the wonderful grandparents and great aunts and uncles I grew up with. Although I had fond memories of all of them, I had a particular soft spot for my paternal grandfather (a title grandad would have found a bit over the top!). To me he was just “Grandad”. A wonderful man, who I still think about over thirty years after he died. As an only child I never felt I missed out on having brothers and sisters, because I grew up with Grandad. We would play together, go for walks together and enjoy the sort of relationship that most children would have with brothers and sisters. Whenever I needed a toy to play with, Grandad (who was a carpenter by profession) would trot off to his workshop and come back with some hand-crafted bat, racket or doll’s house for me to play with. Actually, ignore the doll’s house bit..I was a bit of a tomboy and it was a more likely to be a fort than an penthouse for Barbie.
Whenever I went out with Grandad, I felt like I was in the company of royalty. It would take an hour to do a ten minute walk. Wherever we went, people would come up to him and say “hello Jack”. Old people would ask him when he was going to come round and “sort out their gardens”. They treated him as though he was some young gardener even though he was probably as old or older than his clients!
We would go on huge walks, usually ending up in some some South London park which always involved watching part of a cricket match. I am still traumatised by one occasion when I decided to play by some funny stripey wooden fences and waved back at the nice men who were waving at me, only to discover I was playing by a cricket “sight board” and the nice men weren’t waving, but were actually telling me to “get the f*ck away!!”
Grandad took all of this in his stride, like he did with most things. He was the kindest, most easy-going person I have ever met. He only ever lost his temper with me once, and it was such a rare occasion I still remember it to this day. One day I was holding my doll over the edge of our stairs, threatening to drop my frightened bit of plastic onto her bonce when Grandad appeared at the foot of the stairs. “Don’t do that” he said in his usual calm, soft spoken way. For some bizarre reason I decided to let Dolly go plunging to her doom. Grandad looked at me and said very softly “you naughty girl”. I can still hear his voice now, so rare was it that this man who i idolised should come even close to raising his voice at me.
I could go on to write a whole book about my grandad, and one day I probably will go on to do so. Until that time I hope the above snippits will give you some idea of what a wonderful person he was, and what an impact he had upon shaping my life.

Clear as mud

What follows is a list of instructions that came with a little doodad I bought to play my MP3 player in my car. The gadget itself is simplicity personified. However, I think with the instructions something was ‘lost in translation’ as they say! What follows is an exact copy of the text, including spelling…

INSTRUCTONS:
1. Check if the conect postrtion (side or front entry) if it is, skip to point5.
2. If not,remove the cover of this Adaptor by loosening the screws with a coin.
3. Reposition the cord to the desirded position (top.middle or button)
4. Replace the cover and screws.
5. Insert this Adaptor plug into the LINE OUT jack (or AUX OUT jack) of your CDPlayer
6. Tum on your cassette play and insert this Adaptor
7. Press PLAY on your CD player and adjust the CD player volume.
8. When done, aject this Adapior like any casserre.

I used to be indecisive but now I’m not so sure..

Apologies to any regular visitors for the frequent changes of design on here..I’m still fiddling! I had gone for a dark theme, but someone said they had trouble reading white text on a black background, so now I’ve gone for something plain and simple…for now anyway!

Yes We Can

Yes I do! Shame the UK and the rest of the World don’t get a chance to vote for him though! Come on America..do the right thing in November!

A Long Dark Knight

I don’t know what it is about Batman that fascinates me, but I’ve been a fan of the old Caped Crusader in his many forms since I was a kid. Maybe it goes back to the time during my happy childhood that I spent with my parents and grandparents when I had a Batman Kite. The kite was great..it flew like Batman, it had a great picture of Batman on it…it almost led me over the edge of a cliff like Batman! So fixated was I with this kite that when it escaped my grubby paws one windy day I chased after it like my life depended on it to the extent I didn’t notice the 50 foot drop below until the last minute. Oh well..the perils of superhero crimefighting.
Anyway, back to the present. Today I saw The Dark Knight and it didn’t disappoint. Batman Begins reshaped the whole Batman genre to the way it should be, taking it away from the camp theatrics of the 1960s TV series (which seemed great at the time!) and the hit and miss Batman films of recent years (the original Batman film starring Michael Keaton being the best of the bunch).
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight represent Batman the way I like him best..dark, tormented and serious. This is no camp Bruce Wayne mincing about with his pants over his tights. This is kick arse stuff, beautifully made, with a stunning story, photography and soundtrack. There is something about this version of Batman that inspires those of us who want to do right and fight the scumbags of this world, but who have our hands tied. Maybe one day our own Batman will come along, but until then I’ll just cling onto the vision I have of my Batman kite vanishing over the edge of a cliff..and try to do the best I can.