Emotional Crashes

 

Dare to be Different (10/9/03)

As a child, paraded views of what went before,

This house, this hill, that battle, that wall,

This uncle, this cousin, and given little space,

To make connection.

A calculating machine, DNA programme,

Making just the same mistakes,

Duff data,

Make interesting connections,

Parading hill/house life choice loves and walls,

All of us have them, perhaps.

Left to create the internal being,

The centre to your life experience,

A pilot, driver, witness to the outcomes,

Or a soul, perhaps,

A created being.

Discarding much of it all,

Is miscalculated in some ways,

Making your own rules,

Making interesting connections,

Parading your own madness, before hills, and houses.

Choosing your own loves, and walls,

All of us have them, perhaps.

Duff data,

Interesting lives,

Walled, hill or wood-dwelling uncles, No DNA.

A Serious Truth

If you met yourself, would you speak ?

If you changed the eye colour, length of nose, hair,

Earlobes, moustache, pissedness, breasts, hips,

Silliness, speed of living-ness,

Loves, likes, etc...

No, its still just a person.

Change anything at all, and I still love you, the entire human race, with all your failures, pettinesses, loves, weirdnesses, obscure habits, obscure thinking patterns, bizarre dress senses, acute mental states other than zero, and the datum, etc, etc...

I can now see you all for what you are.

I can now see that its all alright, everythings just fine,

Its just not a problem.

Is that my doing, or hers ?

Or something more ?

30 New Pennies.

I'm alive

My ears, damn them to deep hell !

Chilling to a silent fire,

Melt to hear the phone bell.

I'm dead

Line busy, damn the thousand !

Slinking electron-node journeys,

To the tone of line-jamming.

My lips remember,

Damn the memory of intense mockery !

Memories of follies,

Games drawn in intermittent glance kisses.

The eyes bleed and weep smoke tears,

The lungs tighten on your (dying) breath,

And my mind-cage door is open

Walkabout in the outback of your dreams.

We're all fucking dead.

Dead, alive, alive, fucking dead !!

Your tongue remembers,

My face remembers,

My legs remember,

Your hair remembers.

We'll wake in dodgy dwellings,

Wide stinking alleys of Northern exposes,

And both at 150 arms lengths,

Parallel stretching miles to a call-box,

And the cold night star car dog fox rain frost.....

And your cloudy breathing.

Smoking in orange light pools,

Grubby country street hangouts,

(Sharing tenuous common moments with her memory.)

(Stone my village heart headless horseman snorting nightmares.)

I know I'm alive,

Walking through stone fields to

The stone badger with

My stone head in a felt cap.

Missed Again

Still not allowing details of my personal life to seep through, well, not too much, but focusing on the writing.

People often say that they can only really get it on with their creative side when they're a bit flat, or down, or whatever. I wanted to write when I felt optimistic, but maybe they have a good point. As with the other hand-written stuff, this will eventually get t(r)yped up and re-posted....

Am glad that Blogger hasn't been as infected with emoji crap like FB, as there are a few I could add right now.

Compliments of the season to all. x

Poem. Old.

I can't even date this, but when I was fiddling around with trying to get some of my thoughts on to paper I ended up coming back to the old archives, totally unfinished, and disorganised as they are...and saw this one, and it seems so bloody apt right now.

 

Forgive my handwriting, maybe I'll transcribe it one day.....

The recurring theme, and I have a long drive ahead of me again.

2016 you tested me, nearly as much as 2012. Not quite, but Jeez, work on that sense of humour, please......

Dungeon Wood (Real Place)

As a sort of follow-up to the post I did on local history, based around a wood near where I am currently living, a phone call earlier today caused me to go look up the Bridleways Group, and their claim across some land I'm involved with....then when I did, it turned out that it wasn't the land I had been lead to believe, so that was ok, instead it seems that the equestrians are trying to claim rights of way all over the place in anticipation of a major change in the law coming up in the not too distant future.... Kirklees Bridleways Group Looks a bit like they're "official" doesn't it? They're a voluntary group even if it seems they might be sanctioned by the local authority, when of course they're not.

 

 Still, the internet meandering that the whole episode lead to my turning up this one:

Dungeon Wood

I just get lost in old maps....

Most of Dungeon Wood appears to be a chunk of Beaumont Park these days...... Wish could see how it used to look 100+ years ago...

Archive Test

Exactly what the title says...


Old Blogger pictures

Older ones

Even older...

And more...

(That's over 2000...though there just might be duplicates here & there. I didn't deliberately upload them to these albums, it's just Google doing it's thang...)


Maybe, just maybe they're not all lost forever. I know there were hundreds that got deleted a while back, but some managed to be auto-saved by Blogger, so when I lost the first of the four seperate hardd drives along the way, some got salvaged. Still, I reckon about 20,000 plus disappeared permanently.....

Maybe I'm relying on the external 2Tb drive too much now....

Eeek!

G+,Google Drive, Google Photos, Picasa etc etc.

How very confusing. Since Gooogle acquired Picasa, my old "Blogger" albums have now been archived. They're still "there", they just aren't obviously shareable anymore.

I probably still have the majority of the photos, and the text that went with them has all gone anyway, some of which I admit was my own doing when I tried to reinvent myself after leaving Lower Chatts Oakenshaw, 4 years ago, and some of which I repeated the exercise on when things at Cliff Road didn't go the way I thought they might. Like all the Paxos photos, and Crete and so on. Silly really.

Now I think that I wish I hadn't done either of those things. A picture of two, five, fifteen years ago, in context was always just that. A snapshot of things past. Why be ashamed, embarassed even? If someone new comes on the scene, can't they accept that at nearly 50, I'm bound to have some sort of history.....?

It still feels as if the Google acquisition is editing my past, albeit inadvertently, and to an extent, with my assistance.

I have often speculated about where this blog should go, as it has long lacked direction. The people I have shared it with over the years know my identity, so I can't suddenly turn it into an anonymous diary thing, which was a thought at one point. Facebook gives you a good dumping ground for "sharing" found links/stories/items/news, so it's not going to repeat anything from there. So what? Maybe I ought to steer it towards the creative side again, photos and writing. Leave the "god what a great band this is..." and "OMG how shocking" sort oif stuff to FB.

I cleared the decks at home for a big life-move to the West Country lately, which has all gone totally tits-up, and that really is another story, so watching my old Blogger photos disappear into  the ether, for about the fourth time, is hardly a new thing, it's just an opportunity to start again....

This is me, taken relatively recently near Yateholme, Holmbridge, with Gwyn. 2e is there somewhere, in the undergrowth, after I had retraced my last-twenty-minutes-or-so steps to find a lost item, a fit-bit watch or similar. Happier times.

It's less than a week to Christmas, and I can't help but feel a bit bloody wretched about how things are panning out. It's hard to be optimistic at the moment. Sod 2016, you were a bugger. 2017, I sincerely hope you've got something nice in store.

There is a little cottage far away.....

Goes Without Saying.

Three Years Ago

A lot has happened in the intervening time.

 Castleshaw res. 28/1/12

Heights Crossroads.

How can I sum up my life for these three years? I can't. Loss, finding, endless self-blame & loathing^10, lots of dog walks, endless self-destruction, endless work, the pages flying off the calendar, the clock spinning round and round, new diaries, unexpected trips to unexpected places, Lindisfarne, Cumbria, Flamborough, "Center Parcs", Wales, Whitby, Malham, to name but a few. Reading glasses.....

I decided long ago not to share my private life in any way that could be misread and thrown back at me, as so many times before, so won't change that rule.

It's been rocky, as roads go, hopefully 2016 might be a bit smoother......

Sunday Sun

My view on Sunday. Taken after the first dog walk of the day....

After diddling and daddling, catching up with my books, trying to get other bits & bobs sorted, a dozen coffees and a bacon sandwich it was time for the second walk...

Via Upper Stubbin to Flush House....on the way I came across the galaxy as captured in a burr on this ancient fallen tree....

 

In the wood next to it I found an enormous Yew tree, could it be the actual one that Yew Tree Lane is named after? They're reputed to live for hundreds of years, if not even more than that, so possibly.... There was an excruciating scream, Gwyn had located a snare....and got it firmly round her neck. Nice, not. The wood isn't shot, and the nearest shoot is miles away.... There are many many holes though, and the whole place stinks of badgers & foxes. 

 

 

Over the top and down into Black Sike.....

Now I don't know how to tell if these taddies are frogs or toads, but I know there are natterjacks in the area, and those ones that turn white, though beyond that my toad knowledge runs to nothing..I'd like to think these are going to transform into a million toad one day though.....

  

They're not going to get any interference from the anglers....seeing as how the club that used to rent the dam seem to have abandoned it.....

 

I sat for a while waiting for the dogs to come find me. The fish were jumping, but I couldn't see if there was any cotton to be high... I say they were jumping, it's funny that whenever I put the camera down they started, then the second I thought I'd like to get a snap of them, they turned shy.

Nearly got this one...

 

Someone's been in to the bit where the anglers used to park, seemingly to nick some hefty branches....I could be wrong, as my current info is that the owner is someone I know, though I didn't know he was the owner until later on that day...Maybe he fancied some firewood....

 

I'm embarrassed that I don't know more than a tiny percentage of the 600+ species of wildflowers, what with being a gardener and that..but am hoping over the course of time to increase my measly repertoire as best as I can...Whatever these are though they're very eye-catching...

 

Up to the main road, past what used to be Newlands, a collection of wild memories from the 90s when it was a pub/restaurant, now it's two houses, but the people are nice... Then across what some know as "Randall's field" and into the village for a couple of pints at the Oak...Very civilised.

 

Downhill all the way, more or less, here looking back up the Daisy Field, where are the blooming daisies then? Into Liphill, up to Booth House and down into Hinchlife Mill....Sunday, sorted.

The Internet of Local Things

Apologies to the one or two contributors who added some of the following pictures to FB, (and an odd one or two might be mine, but hey.) but I just wanted to use them to try to illustrate an odd tangent that things can suddenly go in...


There are, I'm sure, 1000s of similar "closed groups", that are equally well meaning, but haphazardly run and worse off for it. Enthusiasts, who eventually dare to come out and give/lend their private pictures, I'm talking local interest/historical types here, nothing weird, though you never know of course...The one most pertinent to me is "Huddersfield Then And Now" (sic).

The sheer scale of the newly realised power to connect things, such as FB, is immeasurable really. If we concentrate on "local history" for a moment though, by way of an easy example...Most people have some old photos, their own, inherited, or other hand-me-downs, or whatever, collecting dust in an old shoe-box or something somewhere, and long-forgotten. An impossible job to collect & collate them all perhaps, but given the nature of "social media" the ambition is less of an Everest and more of a Ben Nevis as time goes along....The same is clear for any kind of data, music, stats, art, documentaries or whatever I suppose, but this is so much more democratic than ever before. The ability for any jumped-up little or big, wannabee, to "have their say" is a mixed blessing obviously, as not everyone has something worth saying in the first place, but bear with me...

The way I'd like to see things develop is for FB to facilitate the joining up of the various contributors to a given subject to work outside of FB itself, say via a Blog or other format, to produce a more polished and 3rd-party user-friendly experience. To cut out the speculative nonsense, the chaff if you like.

Clearly a one "dedicated person type blog" has a lot of merit, but surely a group effort might be more than the sum of it's parts?

I have a lot of ideas, just not enough time to realise them without help. Maybe it's just easier being an observer rather than a doer.. I am a doer, just most of my "doing" is trying to keep sane, solvent, and satisfied, and so on....maybe I don't always get the balance just right.

..oh, and side-tracked, of course, that's a given.

I can't post a link to the current thread that's "grinding my gears" given the "closed" thing, but going back to 1850ish:

These are more or less all the same area, hopefully that's obvious in context....

What I want is for the many old established historical families locally, to root about in their attics and cellars or sheds, or wherever, to dig out their own old pictures of the area, going back to as far as possible, like the dawn of photography....so that this shit doesn't get completely lost.

FB is helping, but this is an uphill thing....

I can't shed much light on the pictures apart from they're all more or less centred around "Digley" which in the 21st Century is only known as a local reservoir, but was previously a village/area that is now mostly forgotten. As I walk my dogs around here a lot I see odd hints and remains of the past, it's pictures like these that put flesh on the bones of that past,and I do think it's a potentially fabulous use of the collaborative nature of the internet that needs some urgent polishing.....

 

Like when did "St James's" (sic) become "St David's"?? Ha! Riddle me that internet....


Happy June people.