Not quite right!

The pictures were where I wanted them on the preview of the last post, but didn't quite publish in the same layout (sigh!). The miracles of modern technology - or is that the lack of miracles of the nut attached to the keyboard!!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A bit of an experiment

I'm going to try something new with the blog. My daughter took quite a few pictures of our trip on her phone, so I'll try to post a couple here. It's taken until now to get to this point, because we had trouble getting the pictures off of the phone - my daughter's laptop has Windows Vista, which the software that came with her phone doesn't seem to like, but we found that it works OK on my XP-equipped computer, so.... here goes!

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Clockwise, from top left -
Shakespeare's Globe exterior, Shakespeare's Globe interior, Danaide by Brancusi, my first real life Mondrian,

A bit of struggle to get the images where I wanted them, but practise will make it easier (I hope!).

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

London trip

It was, as anticipated, a long and pretty tiring, but interesting day yesterday. My daughter and I left the house at 6:20 to catch the train, arriving in London at 10:00. Having planned in advance what we wanted to do and how to get there helped speed things along, and we arrived at Bankside by 10:45, where we visitied the Globe Theatre, which my daughter wanted to do, having spent some time studying Shakespeare at school, followed by my half of the deal, visiting the Van Doesburg exhibition at Tate Modern. As luck would have it, I found the theatre tour quite interesting, even though I've never been a Shakespeare buff, while my daughter found at least some of the modern art we looked at to her liking. The best part for me was actually seeing some works by my favourite artist, Piet Mondrian, in the flesh, as it were - I've seen most of Mondrian's works in books, TV programmes or online, but, until yesterday, I'd never seen any in real life. In the afternoon, we went on to Covent Garden, where there was some street entertainment, amongst other things, going on, and finally (just to prove that my daughter isn't simply some bluestocking swot) to Hamley's, which was absolutely packed - you'd have thought it was Christmas week, given the crowds in there!
After some food and drink at Paddington station, it was time for the train home, and, hardly surprisingly, neither of us saw the whole journey back - my daughter, in particular, spent quite a lot of the time asleep - before we finally retrieved our car from the station and got home just before 9:00.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Got the music bug!

After what I wrote earlier on, I got into watching a few music videos on YouTube, then a few more, then.... I'm still into it nearly 3 hours later, playing songs I haven't heard for ages. Happy times!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Writer's block!

I'm sitting in front of the computer feeling that I want to write something, but my mind is about as blank as the screen was before I began this sentence. Calling my situation 'writer's block' is rather pretentious, I suppose, because that implies that I consider myself a writer, at least in an amateur way.
I'm listening to the radio while I'm typing - Planet Rock, specifically, as that's the station I almost always listen to - and a song with good memories attached has just come on, even though it's a song, and indeed a band, that I don't like myself. The song was ' Whip It ' by Devo, a fairly obscure item, to be sure, but one which several of my friends from home were keen on, and which was played at most of the wedding receptions of our group of friends (and on numerous other party-ish occasions), except mine. There were a few other songs that were synonymous with our little coterie ( ' Holiday in Cambodia ' by the Dead Kennedys was probably No. 1 on that list), and when I hear them, they always remind me of some really good times (and some sad ones, but very few in comparison). It's funny how music can not only set a mood, but recreate moods from years and years ago - very Proustian, I guess.
An early night is in order today, because my daughter and I are getting up at some ludicrously early hour to head for London for the day tomorrow. Living in Cornwall is great, for the most part, but, at least by U.K. standards, it has the drawback of being a very long way from pretty much everywhere else. Still, no pain, no gain, to coin yet another cliché.

Hope everyone has had/is having a Happy Easter.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

From one extreme to the other

Well, it looks like yesterday morning's sunshine was the weather gods' April Fools' joke, because by mid-afternoon it was pouring with rain and even sleeting a bit, and the wet and windy stuff is back with us this morning. After feeling upbeat at first yesterday, it all rather deteriorated as the day went on, to the extent that by the time I got back from work last night I was moved to comment to my daughter that it was one of those days when you feel like cutting your own head off.
I think I might sometimes be expecting too much from life and from other people, but, compared with the impression I get of the young writers of the blogs that I follow, and from my daughter and her friends, namely that they're intelligent, articulate and caring people, I fail to understand why a lot (in my experience) of current teenagers seem to have no ambition beyond getting pissed, causing trouble and firing off volleys of offensive verbal abuse, if not actual violence, at anyone who gets in their way. This seems to be particularly prevalent where I work, a small, superficially quiet and slightly touristy town where you'd expect nothing untoward to happen from one week's end to the next. I make no claim to having been an angel when I was younger - I drank more than my fair share of beer and got into various scrapes from time to time - but I don't recall me or any of my peers having the attitude that a lot of these yobs seem to have of having not the least respect for anything or anyone, even themselves as far as I can see. Some might say, no doubt, that I'm just being a typical old fart complaining that ' It wasn't like this when I was a lad ', but I don't see how a purportedly civilised society can function when large sections of it don't seem to care about anyone but themselves - I stand to be corrected, but I get the feeling that the present-day U.K. is one of the most selfish places in the world, and there are times when I want nothing more than to leave the country, and probably would if I didn't have my family commitments.
Looking on the brighter side, however, I'm just embarking on 5 days off over the holiday weekend, with my wife and daughter off work and school respectively for most of the time, so I think it's time to kick back and have some fun time together, something that doesn't happen often enough lately. And to hell with the weather gods!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A new month & some sunshine

10 days into Spring, and we've finally got some blue sky and sunshine. The weather down here has been rancid for the last week or so, but things are looking up today. I'm not working over the Easter weekend, although that's only because it's due to be my weekend off anyway - I normally end up working most bank holidays - so I'm hopeful that the weather will hold and that we'll be able to do some family things for once. My daughter and I may be going to London on Monday, although it'll be a long day trip if we do - we've both got places we want to visit, which, by a happy coincidence, are almost next door to each other. I spent a couple of years living in London in the 1980's, so I don't get stressed out by the hustle and bustle, and I can find my way around fairly well, certainly in terms of the 'touristy' bits, a considerable advantage if you're intending to go to a few different places - it's really easy to waste hours in London just getting around if you're not familiar with the place. I suppose you could say the same about any large city.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B