...amazed just how long it's been!

Yes it has been awhile hasn't it kids.
So what has been happening in the world of me?
Well, a lot really, so much that I've be daunted by the idea of writing it all down.
Don't by any means, get the idea that my life has changed or that I'm doing better than before.
No, no, nothing big has happened, just lots of little things.
But little things take as much time to type up as bigger events, so as a unnatural-blog-o-naught, it's has become a large obstacle in my mind.
Oh silly me!
Anyway, here's to breaking the block

...just saying I'm not dead...

...I've just been off, busy, broken, ill.

I'll tell you more tomorrow, but I'd thought I'd better give you a preview.
Just in case you stop following me, mom.

...wondering if it's weird...

...that I've put our blood groups/types on our bicycle helmets?

Yes, there are precedents for this, racing car drivers up until the late 80's used to, not only marked on their crash-hats but also wear a waist bracelet with their blood information engraved. Watch the end of Grand Prix with James Garner or about 15minutes in from the start of Steve McQueen's Le Mans and you'll see what I'm getting at.

But is it necessary these days?
Well, maybe not for racing drivers as safety has been raised so high, but for bicyclists on Britain's roads?
Well, yes and no.
Yes because the risk of accident with a car as a bicyclist can be really high on some roads.
No because of two reasons; paramedics, A&E doctors and nurses are trained to ignore non verbal information that can not be substantiated, it might not be the helmet wearer's helmet for example, secondly, they can ignore this notice because the group and cross match tests to determine blood type quickly.

So why do it? Well if there was an accident involving one of us and the other was OK, it acts as a prompt for the medics, saving a bit of time. Also it's cool, especially as my green helmet is meant to look like a military one.

Yes, i'm not to sure either, but at least the information's correct; B+ for SL Bartlett, O+ for me, O W Dawson. Milly Moo, as a cat, doesn't wear a skid-lid but if she did, I'm sure it would say M+. Actually, cat's don't havethe same blood groups as humans or Resis monkeys. Hmm, so maybe.

...a retronaut, and now need...

...a few million (sterling) to get a Ford.
Yes it's no ordinary Ford, it's a Tin-Goose, Ford Trimotor. Remember the trailer for Public Enemies, with a top view of an aeroplane coming into shot to the soundtrack of Calexico's Black heart.

...a retronaut, and these are...

...the headphones to use to marry modern technology (an ipod, iphone, tape walkman?) with old(er) world charm.

The Panasonic RP-HTX 7 (£35-£60)
Here with an old ipod shuffle, a girl, on an old pre-macbook macbook, and the range of colours.

...a retronaut, continued...

...here's how to ride it, which ever one you choose:

...a retronaut, of a sort...

...trying to live in the past, with a select amount of the better paraphernalia from it. Of course, being in the present means you have the advantages of modern medicine and technology, so in a way, it's the best time: the retropresent.

First, Retronaut-transportation:

Here are some of my choices to make my retropresent transportation complete (most of I don't have because of money rationing, as in, I don't have any)

Pashley Guv'nor 3-Speed (a whopping £845)
....but it has Sturmey-Archer hub brakes and hub gears, how old man is that!
It's a rock solid steel frame with North-Road handle bars and the whole 'look' is based on the Pashley Path Racer from way before I was born.

(Specialized) Globe Carmel 5 (£399)
....it's not the Guv'nor but being aluminium and with dérailleur gears, you might be able to ride quick enough (and put cream tyres on), only real retronauts will know. It's also more relaxed to ride being a new hybrid rather than the Guv'nor's past racer stance.

Brompton P6R (in raw, £940+)
...put the Brooks B17 from the Guv'nor (£60+) and you've got the best folding bike in history. Handmade and with multiple configurations and colours, it's the best retropresent riding machine, not just for the city (where you can take on public transport) but ever. Ride it with a suit to take you to the higher echelons of retronautism.

...thinking it might be time to...

...resurrect the French Project again. The weather's getting better; no snow, less rain. Plus, longer days, might even make it out before the traffic gets a hold on the roads?

Got to watch out for the monster pot holes and the numerous roadworks too, which litter the run through Glasgow at the moment.

Maybe do it in stages? Maybe go around Saracen Street too. Maybe go and find more landmarks visible from a car?

Hmm, it might get fun again!

...filling you in (on the week just gone)

After my weekly meeting with Dr Cohen, I've learnt to judge the start of the week as 11am on Fridays.

So, in my mind, I've just completely missed blogging for a near whole week. And it's not like there's been anything to write about.

Hang on, start again, the grammar and sentence structure of the above was shocking. Plus, it's also a lie. Didn't I review the Wall of Death less than seven days ago?

Hmm. Anyway, it's been one of those weeks....

For a start, S L Bartlett has gone pack to work on placements, this time, on ward something at the RAHospital in Paisley. So the evenings for me are as househusband, running a bath, cooking dinner, loading the dishie and preparing the breakfast for the next day. I've been quite inventive with dinner. I say inventive, I mean inventive for me, as I'm no cook if truth be told. The menu for the last week read: Korma, rice and naans on Monday.Tuesday was breaded haddock, sweetcorn, peas, carrots, runner beans and oven chips. Then breaded chicken breasts, beans, lots of with chips again. On S L's day off, she did the honours with a roast dinner, similar to what I once wrote about, posts ago. Then last night, I made err, a err, what did I make? Of course, Spag-bol served with garlic bread and cheese to flavour. How did I forget that?

Moving away from the kitchen, I also had my second acting lesson. These lessons are only an hour and a half but I do think they're meant to work as snap-shots for the week.
On the first week, I was nervous and somehow managed to be in the right frame of mind. I'll write about this lesson in full later. The second lesson, apart from the group warm up, was reading from a script, in this case, scenes two and three from the Glass Menagerie.
Oh, reading out loud. This is the one thing that could scupper my future as an actor. I never read books as a child, just car magazines, and even then, between paragraphs, I'd look at the glossy images, so it was never sustained reading. More like short bursts and only in my head. Post internet though, reading is second nature. If I can't read to myself now, after more than 10 years of surfing the thingy-sphere, then I don't know. So, reading. Out load can't be that different to quietly; to yourself, right?
No, it's a completely different beast. Two beasts in fact. The added process of voicing the words whilst reading ahead becomes a duo-core process. Luckily, I somehow, without training past the age of eight or nine, can do it. Yes it's not faultless, in truth it's often a complete farce, but in places, I can do it well enough to add the third process in reading as an actor; to live the lines. What cheese I know, but it's a needed level of working. So, yeah, good. I do think I give the impression of an illiterate bumpkin but by the end of the second lesson; after less than three hours, I was acting with a script. A little bit Joey Tribbiani in posture and Grant Mitchell levels of woodenness maybe, but I am holding a script in one hand (and being a tea-pot with the other). There are two things of note however, one good, one bad. Good, in scene three, it is between Tom and his mother (err, Laura, or is that his sister's name), Paul Fortuna, the teach, told us to read in male/female pairs and read the opposite parts first, as in, I read as Mother and the female read Tom. Then swap. It really, really helped me. Hearing what I was meant to say minutes before I was going to read and say it. Like linguaphone for actors. If only I could have done it well for my partner for the lesson. God, I wasn't brilliant help but luckily, she was straight out of school and a Drama Higher. I'm guessing this as we didn't have time to greet before the read-thru. Second, bad, was the more into it I became, the more I couldn't see the script for my shouting. I seem to shake, but hey, I'm getting into it and since when has projecting your voice been a bad thing for actors?

Anyway. I'm proud of myself for going in the first place!
I, on Monday, grew a bloody great big coldsore on my face. On my lip, not as before, coming out of my nose like a perma-bogey. I would have missed it for this alone. Then, with an hour before the lesson, I was really tired, like exhausted. It had been building all week and by Wednesday evening I could barely get up off the sofa. Again, this would have been enough to put me off. Thirdly, traffic was shocking and with S L at work, I was driving myself. Hitting the M8 at a near standstill, I thought, I getting off and going back home. I then thought, sod it, I'll drive as far as I can to the UKTS until 6 and see if I'll be too late to creep in. Fourthly, I had local anaesthetic for a filling and as I had a snack before I left, my face became more dead, more anaesthetised. Gosh, How I'm I going do anything with a stroke-like smile? But in the end, I got there with 10 minutes to spare, even after finding a space to park around the corner, and although I had half eaten my bottom lip, which was a bloody mess and my coldsore looked like a entity in it's own right, I was getting out of my slumber. Maybe it was my driving in rush-hour or maybe it was my drive to get there in the first place. Beyond my usual self-induced panicky reluctance, the want to become more than I am at the moment; go beyond where I am now; to be better!

More maybe I just really want to. You know, be an actor and stuff or summink or nuffing.

It is also of note, I was early for all appointments, lessons and things that week. Getting there early ain't that bad after all!

...reviewing Wall of Death: Way of Life

at the SECC, Glasgow, February 2010


When I was an extra at the Tron Theatre last month, to kill time between takes, I looked through the leaflets on display. Along with the usual 'see this' and 'go there' rectangular bits of glossy paper, there was a pile of matt, round cards.

These circular objects where promoting a new show with a black and white image of a boy on a motorbike at a near horizontal angle. And with Wall of Death in big capitals on the card's diameter, I instantly knew I wanted to see it.

The song covered by REM started going round in my mind:
          "You can waste your time on the other rides
           But this is the nearest to being alive
           Let me take my chances on the Wall of Death"

It seemed fitting, then, to here this song in the show. I say a show, I mean a convoluted cross between a gallery opening with nervous speeches and Q & A, and a wax-work-like walk through.

You enter hall 1 of the SECC after you're told to go to hall 2 as you collect your tickets.
You then wait and ushers wearing red Wall of Death T-shirts, which give the impression of slick rock-band like informality and cool, hand out postcards and pens for your question for Ken Fox and Co.
Err, I wasn't expecting this, think, what do you ask? Actually, what are we expecting from this thing?

SL and I had a card each, we came up with some non-sense about can you be too old to learn? We did also think of, 'if your children became seriously injured from this, err, sport, would you blame yourself?' A bit heavy or just out and out mean-spirited, we stuck with the age thing and I keep my card as a memento. I did toy with, can you do it with animals but I couldn't word it in a way that sounded appropriate for the many kids that were also in the audience. Plus, I like mementos.

We then were escorted into the next bit, another part of the black curtained hall 1. "stand along to the red rope on the ground" said a disembodied voice. As we all went forward, the red t-shirted brigade took our questions for Ken's lot. At the rope stood a man with grey Elvis-esque hair, a leather bikers jacket atop of a white shirt and black tie and trouser combo. He nervously began to talk into the mic;
         "When I was 13 or so, I read a comic about a stunt rider who performed on a Wall of Death, I want to grow up and do this for myself one day, you ride like no other at speed and without fear...." etc, etc, etc.

Yes, well who wouldn't, it looks cool! Plus motorbike, hell, you're Brando!

But how many of us get to fulfil their dreams from childhood, you're still a child at 13 these days, right?
He, Stephen Skrynka, the artist and now, hell rider, did.
As he continued with the laboured introduction, we, the audience could see a fairground stall, circular and colourful behind him. It was covered in bright lights and gramophone horns with small models too. As we eventually 'stepped this way' towards it all, the t-shirted bodies passed us A4 sized posters with old fashioned fonted words, it was a bill of the events of the day; Zoetropes for the modern eye, Wall of Death Hell riders, an experience, a way of life the sheet acclaimed.

The zoetropes where filmed live my cameras, and fed to screens above, so that more of us could see the magic. Are the cameras the modern eye, or are we? What can be gleamed, however, is the beauty of Skrynka's work, all inspired by the with we'll see soon; The wall itself and the stunts performed on it. The music played on horned gramophones with where in-between the zoetropes, which were themselves on old gramophone turntables. The audience took turns to turn and spin the models for others to see. If I'd been listening at the start, I would have heard Skrynka say that these are just glue, wood, plasticine and paper, it's OK for them to get damaged, if only by accident.

After about 10 minutes of the zoetropes and Skrynka running between them, changing the 'discs' like a man spining many plates at a talent night, we more to the next black curtained part.

Attacked by many full height and full width screen on with images where projected of practice on the wall by Stephen and Ken. The speakers shouted out the noises of the un-silenced exhausts of their bikes. A talking head of Ken explaining his choice of lifestyle and the qualities needed for it.

We then move round the giand dark object that sits almost unseen in the middle.
Then a part opens and the projected screens black out.
"Come right up, come right up, and welcome!" said a voice fit for darts commentary. This heralded the start of the Q & A but also the much needed introduction to the riders themselves. At last, maybe this is where the show will start. No, this is a quiet family who don't do that much public talking but do ride a mean wall. Ken Fox has the last Wall of Death in Europe and there are only a couple or so other working examples left in the world. He, between answering many pointlessly asked questions, explains why this was his calling and why no-one else wants to do it anymore. He also answered my unasked one about animals or pets on the wall. Apparently, some people did it with lions in the side car. No dogs mind.

Now, with that all wrapped up, finally, we ascend the stairs to the high level platform on top of the wall itself. Deafened by the bikes in real life, as aposed to video of them, we smell the oil the original round postcard told me about. The atmosphere starts to intensify, the expectation rises as we see the three men (one, Alex being only 15) and the only girl in the world Hell Rider as they take to their machines......
           "It's like at the start of a grand prix, but you're right there, in the thick of it!"


So, as I sip my 4th decaffeinated Earl Grey of the day, I can look back and say, yes, after all lthat padding and guff, the wall, sorry, The Wall, was well worth it. Those Zoetropes too.

I can see what it was all about now. I can see what Stephen was trying to say;

Wall of death: a Way of Life

I going to see it again, before it leaves Glasgow, you should too

...making posters

http://www.andybarefoot.com/politics/cameron.php?poster=161196

...wondering about the niceness of suburbia

Has the idyllic but superficial nature of the appeal of the suburban neighbourhood been ruined with the boom in local council's use of the wheelie-bin?
In other words:
Is the wheelie-bin the modern blight on the wafer-thin gloss of suburban aesthetics.

So many Victorian terraces, Barratt-built modern toss and everything before, after and in-between has be compromised by the introduction of the one-size-fits-nothing wheelie-monster.
The idea of Victorian housing, whether terrace, flat or house, was to have the best parts of life showing. The best room; the Sunday-only front room was, well, the front. You sit there in your best clothes, watching everyone else's sitting there in their best, looking back at you. All was well in society and at least  on one day, you knew exactly where you where in the grand scheme of your street. You, in Victorian society, knew where you were in every other aspect of life all the time anyway.
But today, there is no front in the same fake 'all is well' sense. So many houses of the past are now flats, flats are now studios. Fit it in, it's all introverted living anyway.
When you now drive up and down any suburban context in Britain today, it's not the houses that you first see, it's the bins, the masses of bins. Wheelie with many various coloured recycling boxes on top. Don't get me wrong, I recycle like a nut myself. But it's strange how the rubbish now controls the area between the front door and the pavement. What next, we literally do the laundry in the gutter outside, in the street. No, that's just silly, we have machines in the kitchen, integrated and hidden, for washing and drying that lot. No, we, as modern-lifers, seem to be proud of our shit, the waste of our- until quite recently- prosperous lives.

It's really bazaar why it's got like this. But until some bright-light a few years ago thought of the wheelie being the answer to the question no-one asked, the back alley, the back passage, the rear run, was thought to be a thing of un-need. Now, it would be the thing to make the wheelie work without the visual blighting we have at present. The trucks could run up or down them, with the technicians or whatever, working behind. That would work right?

I don't know, I'm asking you!

...going to...

...plug my Milly Moo.

Not actually pluging her, but the crappy poem I wrote about her. Still needs a bit of tidying I think, but anyway....

Nobody knows were the Milly Moo goes.

Plus, her she is, rabbiting to the birds last Sunday

...going to push on up and out...

...yeah, I don't know what I mean either. Something about not getting so sleepy all the time.

Well I've started my have a big roast dinner:
Roast chicken breast (over cooked to taste perfection but it shrunk like no-bodies business)
Roast carrots
Roast Parsnip fingers
Steamed runners
Steamed peas
Steamed carrots
Steamed Broccoli
Roast potatoes
Bread sauce
Chicken gravy from steamed veg water (vitamins, hopefully)
Yorkshire Puddings

It might be bad taste to advertise my gluttony but I don't always eat like this. Normally it's a bowl of cereal or a fortnight on Tuesdays, Dominos 2-for-1 (which we eat over 2 nights)

Anywho, here's a picture of said meal:

...sleepy sleep

Yeah, I don't know what it is, or why, but I've been so sleepy this last week.

Shame really, I've wanted to do more writing and I'm full of ideas too, but yeah, I'm shattered.

Maybe it's the cold or the fact that it's been really, really dark here in the Second City of the Empire, but...

...I've struggling to stay awake longer than three hours at a time.

Anyway, I'll eat more veg, maybe that'll do it!