Strangely Perfect

What Does That Title Mean! A. Those who practice Buddhism do so without any expectation of grace or favour.  They do it for two reasons: To Improve their own life and continuing existence To improve other’s lives and future existences You don’t have to believe that they do this – after all, it could all [...]

French Resistance: de Gaulle in London. (This posting originally released on 16 Dec 2007.  Reposted and edited because of the subject’s death.) This is a BBC News article on the women of the French Resistance who worked with De Gaulle in London and then went to Paris with him for the Liberation. Claire is one [...]

How Summer Camps Could Change Britain by Christopher M. Green (Convenor of the Summer Camps Forum and Founding Director of The ATE Trust) Download Links to Original Chris Green Articles: Letter to MPs February 2010 Suggested letter format to lobby your local MP on behalf of Chris Green’s summer camps’ initiative. How Summer Camps …inline [...]

Arnold Stang Dies The voice of Top Cat, the excellent cartoon series of my childhood has died at a good old age. He’s also in one of my favourite bits from the film “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”  About half-way through the clip below he’s one of the two gas station attendants who [...]

It’s Just Like Bladerunner, And Not Just the Weather! Tears in Rain Bladerunner, the movie, based on an old Philip K Dick science-fiction story, was made by Ridley Scott from North-East England, someone I’m distantly related to.  Made in 1982, it presents a very grey, wet, bleak future, heavily referencing Scott’s (and my own!) upbringing [...]

New Jaguar XJ In common with most cars like this, it’s a lovely looking machine – a style marvel; sleek and vapid, mercurial. It’s also a waste of space and a waste of effort. It’s two tonnes of mass for a 400kg payload is pants.  An ecological disaster zone. Money for Old Rope Not only [...]

A few test pictures using the “Starry Sky” setting on my Panasonic Lumix TZ5.  The pictures were done using a tripod at the three timer settings  that are inbuilt for that setting; 15s, 30s & 60s.    The sky was quite brightly lit due to some thin mist acting as a reflector for the urban lighting.

Introduction There’s a lot in the news about the terrible cost of road fuel. See here for example. The truth is that the whole system is shite and people, by their very actions PROVE that they can afford fuel AT ANY COST. Here’s how (from my trip experience). Yesterday I came back from Northumberland, a [...]

I’ve added the final extra bits to the lyrics for “Urbane Encounter” that were in the original when Errol was the drummer. It’s the bit about the Norwegians at Christmas at the end. Also, I forgot to say that it used to finish with a la-la-la bit like Marc Bolan.