Pet Crow

A friend of mine recently described going Up North for Christmas as "a bit noisy."

Her boyfriend and her are sans kids and so inevitably heading up to the family home would be a noisier environment than normal.

How many kids were in the house? I asked.

Two she answered.

Seemed low, I thought.

I was expecting over 5, minimum. Maybe 10+

Oh, and a Crow.

She added breezily.

A crow?

A crow.

Her dad rescued an injured crow a few years back and made the schoolboy error of rescuing before googling. Always google first, rescue second - everyone knows that.

Turns out that crows live for 20+ years.

And this particular crow has taken it upon itself to make more noise than the kids - that's it's MO. So once they kick off, the Crow starts 'barking' apparently - don't know what that sounds like but them there crows can kick out some big noise at the top of trees. God only knows what they sound like in the confines of a family living room in Preston against the background of fighting children.

The mind, and ears, boggle.

Royal Statistical Society

Rumoured to be trying to lighten their tone and reach a wider audience with the "tagline"

(adopt Northern entertainer accent) "What are the chances of that?"

That student that went to jail

32 months for chucking a fire extinguisher off a roof.
It's no good sending someone with no previous convictions to jail, one inside he's just going to be schooled in crime.

When he gets out who knows what he'll be throwing off roofs.

Mini fridges. A small black and white TV. Maybe even an IKEA billy bookcase.

It's not the way.
Really, it's not the way.

So, it used to be that my life's ambition was to have written an episode of The Simpsons.

That's looking increasingly unlikely.

For the dual reasons that I'm not writing one and Fox don't know where I live and/or aren't knocking on my door.

So, I've come up with a new thing that I would have liked to have done.

Perfectly achievable (if you had a time machine) but certainly relatively local to me - and therefore do-abble, and something I would have been equally proud of.

And it's yellow too, just like Homer.

I'm referring of course to the opportunistic wit who, on learning the location of the Snappy Snaps that George Michael slammed his Range Rover into, bonged out of his brains, and in all probability nipping out to buy a combination of Pringles and/or Double Deckers larger than the Greek National Debt, graffiti'd it.

And not even 'tagged' or did anything in any way elaborate. But actually etched it into the side of Snappy Snaps with what I like to imagine was literally, an old school compass.

A perfect execution of the idea in every regard.

Genius.

Beauty.

Who reads this blog anyway? Not even it's writer, that's who.

So, adding value is the theme of the Buddhist Organisation SGI.

Or maybe another way of interpreting this was finding the value in any situation.
This would be a good thing to drum into my pretty little head.

It's something that I know about and believe in anyway, I suppose.

Something that I've definitely talked to my sister about - the idea that whatever's happening is happening for a reason and the trick is to try and find a way of learning from it.

Of finding value from it.

So yesterday was a good example, I thought.

I got really quite cross around 4ish working at home in the back room when my not always considerate of others neighbour invited a friend over for tea and then started with the whoomp whoomp whoomp of bass-in-the-place average house music.

Miao.

Chairman Miaow.

Creativity is mistakes as Grayson Perry once remarked on Radio 4 - something he has written down on a beam in his studio.

And something I mentioned to Kim Buteyko Breath Coach when he said people who are enlightened 'Shine out like a sore thumb'.

I know this was a mistake, and what a glorious mistake it was.

Anyway, I digress.
Which incidentally should and could well be the title of my autobiography.

The value creation of what was happening there was shifting me to another room to work in - incidentally, where I'm sat now, which while it doesn't have any direct sunlight, has a much nice bigger table, and higher ceilings and is actually really nice to work in.

So there.

That was the value that I was trying to create and that was the value I found it difficult to see.

Just like the value in the situation of Elissa blowing me out last night, but perhaps not in the way I was initially hoping.

Actually, when I spent time with her, I found her quite annoying.
And then we had all those - holier than thou - arguments.

And then she changed her plans at the last minute.

I think the value to be added there or rather to be found is not to waste too much time or effort into making plans with her.

---

And as for the - self inflicted - predicament I find myself in today, this morning, this week, well, this has also happened for a reason.

OK, I'm not particularly happy at this exact moment in time with some of the macro things that are going on. Living on my own. No girlfriend. Having to self structure and so on and so forth, but you know what, that's OK.

I've obviously put myself in this 'stress position' for a reason.

I wasn't happy at RKCR, where I was working on my own, having to muddle along and feel embarrassed at doing things I wasn't particularly skilled at - visual stuff - and work on work which was at the very bottom of the food chain in terms of whether people considered it important.

So, to some extent I find myself left with the life that I had anyway.

I suppose the difference now is because of the amount of time I have, my energy will 'break out' and force me, not in an angry way, but naturally flow out of me and make me go in new directions.

And that can be no bad thing.

I suppose it's similar to people who devote their lives to becoming an artist. The hard thing is not having a job, in a lot of ways, that's the easy thing. Someone tells you what to do, there's a hierarchy, a structure, all of that stuff. You get paid at the end of each month, someone else makes the rules.

That world wasn't for me. Clearly.

But the other world I find myself in now is really hard too. Granted, I'm not an artist, but there is something akin to the artist's way that has meant I've put myself in this situation.

Hope that's cleared everything up.

At least on a slightly grey, humid, Tuesday late July morning.

Peace.

Out.

x

It's a rain 'story'

Since when did weather become about 'stories'.

I kind of get, although at the same time, not get at all the whole fashion 'stories' thing.
When they say, Autumn 2011 is looking like a clogs story.

But then again, it's not much of a story is it?

I mean, it's not really much of a page turner. There's only really one page to turn.

Once upon a time.
Well, Autumn 2011 to be precise.

It was fashionable to wear clogs.

Because some dufus said so.

The end.

Not really going to make those best seller charts now is it?

---

But weather.

Whenever I hear weather presenters saying "Today in the Western half of the country, it's a rain story"

It's not a rain story.

It's going to rain.

Then it'll stop raining for a bit, just long enough for you to put your washing out, then it'll rain again.

The end.

No more stories.

---

Footnote.

I also heard a weather forecaster say, so tomorrow, if you live in London, you've been getting used to 22'c, say hello to 14'c.

That's right.

We're all going to walk out of the door tomorrow and say hello to 14'c.

I just wish they'd stop trying to sex up the weather.

It's the weather.

Just let it be weather.

It's enough.

It doesn't need stories and we don't need to say hello to it.

---

Sketch show idea. The photography couple.

All they really do is just take pictures.

They don't really talk to each other. They just take pictures of building and stuff and sometimes show stuff to each other on their cameras.

Their cameras are a way of interacting with the outside world. They're effectively mutes.

This needs developing but eventually would you get to a stage where they get married and all they do is take pictures.

Fun if people came over for dinner and they just took pictures, wouldn't talk to anyone.

Kind of like modern mime.