Tas didn't shoot the snakes ...

Post on STB by Tas telling how he didn't shoot two snakes, 

you'd need a bloody big gun to shoot this bugger Tas..

    Finished it couple of weeks ago, it's now in Paris with

some Ballet group, strange lot the French.

     Due in hospital next Wednesday for my "eye-op",

you know, the one where they slit your eye-ball open

and shove a needle in.

Thought I'd make it re: driving to work 'till then. I'm

ok in daylight hours, but headlights at night just blind me.

and last Monday night I knocked a keep-left bollard over,

so now I drive home in day light. Thankfully works quiet

now, and the " boss" lets me off early, he's a cool guy ha ha.

Forgot to add music to this post..

link was Whitesnake .. Sailing ships.. nah ...

Ships with Sails .. the Doors ... cool ..

and these guys did a cover of the Doors..

and this track of theirs has nothing to do

with anything.. but it's ace ...

Reuben H.

Valerie H.

.. Valerie H... June 1943...October 2011

Haven't got any words Val, so maybe we can share

this one last time, but I guess not, I guess I'm listening

alone now.

Bosman Blues ...

The Premier League is Soooooooooo feckin yesterday.

We haven't got a pot to piss in, come next year we may

not even have a club, but we are the holders of the League

cup, and CH and his Bosman's are in Belgium this week in

the Europa Cup. Some 5 to 10 thousand blues fans will be

there with them, bless 'em all.

    Crocs, a legend on STB, like many other fans, was gonna 

make the trip without a ticket but I've just seen that he and

Nicky finally have got tickets after queueing again for six

hours or more.... 

.. Just hope the Belgium police behave themselves and don't

start picking on our lads.. ha ha ..

KRO

Crocket1

Words and music and all that.. Derek H.

Recorded at 60a .. February 2008

H/Phones... please ..

New York Mary ....

Mary, an Irish girl who has lived in Rochester New York for many

 years now, called into see me today while on a flying visit to the UK,

 wow, I do like Mary.

 Only put this on here as I don't keep a diary any more, and neither 

of us were sure, but I don't think we have met for three years or more.

      After a hug and a kiss, and as I watched her walk away, I thought of

how, chances are I'll never see her again. But hey, that's a sad thought,

and to think of Mary is to smile....

Silver leaves....

So, 'tis the season of the back-slapping politicians. We had a crowd of

them in town last week, not sure (they all sound the same to me) but

I think it was the "Nice but Dimlebs. Never listen to their words now,

doubt many of us do, but I did listen to a guy named John Davies on

the local radio, he's my new hero, (well almost) I guess it's because all

that he said echoed my own thoughts.

    He talked mostly about the mess the banks are in, said quite simply

it started when Regan and Thatcher ( man that was hard to type) 

de-regulated them.  In simple terms this meant instead of being limited

to loaning out £10 for every £1 we put in, they could loan out £10,000

or what ever they wanted.... Hey, lets just trade in money, sod the miners,

sod the steal workers, sod any manufacturing industry, just give that lot

of peasants,  mops and buckets and call them the 'Service Industry"

      Most chilling of his comments were on the bail-out of the banks. He 

said the myth that this was done to protect joe public, wasn't a myth, it

was a lie to protect bankers and the politicians themselves. He said that

three years ago, the "casino' side of banks could have been left to go to

the wall with little or no effect to the public's money. Asked could we

still do this, his answer was ... yes ...

      I say Mr. Davies is almost my hero, but not quite, because there are

many guys out there that have the words we don't have, many that have

the where-withal to help us,  but don't... 

footnote....  though it hurts me to say it...

the act of bailing out the banks was not capitalism ....

Gypsy vans ...

I see the United Nations have got involved with the latest

eviction of Gypsy and Irish Travellers from a site in Essex.

Seems a bit over the top to me, and yes, before you start, I

know the picture above is a romantic image and I could have

posted one of  a Gypsy site looking more like a combination

of a scrap metal yard and a rubbish tip, but hey, so we wear

different specs, that's ok.

    Well I thought it was ok 'till I heard a phone in on 5 live

this morning and I have to say comments from some quite

erudite people left me pretty sad. I know I'm old enough to

know better but to hear the dark side of us brought to the

surface so easily wasn't good.

  

Friday night out .....

... well it was a new one for me, although it was more a Friday
evening as it started about four pm. Started with me lying on the
floor of the chemist in the recovery position, Danny holding my
hand and saying "stay with me Derek,stay with me they'll be here
soon"( He's an ace guy Danny, but a bit of a 'drama queen'.) "They"
being two para-medics in an ambulance, they duly arrived and
spent best part of an hour getting my OBS stable, what ever that
means.
This entailed them putting sticky terminal points all over the
top half of my body, although that's not quite true, they only put
them where I had hair growing. Next they put plastic clothes pegs
on my fingers then shot some little needle thing into my thumb
for a blood sample ( nearly an arm full )all the while they kept me
talking, man, I don't do that, what they trying to do, kill me?
Eventually they decided it was ok to move me and bundled me
off to Solihull A & E.

Seems I got the last cubical/bed and they repeated all the
stuff the para-medics had done.. more sticky patches, more
blood tests (this time it was an arm full) and finally wheeled
down to the x-ray room etc. Of course everything was fine,
as I had already told them. This all took four or five hours,
most of which time I just sat on my bed watching what ever
was going on.
Best entertainment was the mobile x-ray machine, I swear
this was a scene from the ward in Catch22. Seems, unlike
me, no other patients could bemoved, hence the mobile
x-ray. Having wheeled it into a cubicle the nurse would
come back out, draw the curtain, and instead of shouting
"Fire inthe Hole" she shouted " X-ray , x-ray" as she
walked to the far end of the ward with a tv zapper in her
hand. Upon her cry, all the staff opposite the cubicles,
about ten of them behind a huge curved 'counter' left
their seats,and, still talking to each other crouched
down out of sight. The nurse with the zapper fired the
x-ray machine then shouted "All clear" at which all
the staff re-appeared from behind the 'counter', still
deep in conversation as if nothing had happened.
Well I guess you had to be there, but I thought it was
a hoot. By about ten, we, me and them, had had
enough of each other (and they wanted my bed)
so they signed me out and I got a taxi back to 60a.

Got to say what strange places hospitals are,
thankfully I have never stayed in one.To anyone
reading this and if you are into time travel, quantum
thingy or worm holes into parallel universes.... well,
they are real, we just call them"hospital entrances"
I spent four hours or more watching people coming
through them, leaving the world and all they know
outside, all with the same submissive demeanor,
as if they are saying " there you go doctor, there's my
body and soul for you to do as you will" Sure you get
the odd jerk like me who won't even put on those
stupid gown things with ribbons up the back,
well come on, maybe Jennifer Aniston can wear one,
but the rest of us?
If you want the last word on hospitals I suggest
you take out your copy of High Windows by Larkin
( of course you have one) and read "The Building"
brilliant. Anyway, spent the rest of the weekend
just me and Roland, cool ....

.... oh.... don't be so bloody stupid.... I'm fine ...        KRO.

No reason ....

.... Just love this lady .... just love this song ...








.... Just one more ....

Bye Amy ...

Thankyou for the gift ...

I'd rather stick pins in my eyes...

..as KLD would say.

    So, I finally got back to an optician, a local guy in the village,

a small business run by two brothers, surname Maginnis. My

guess was they were Irish which was correct and I so wanted

to ask him if his middle name was "where's" but I resisted the

temptation as I had to charm him if I was to get any glasses.

    Well how the hell do you charm an 'educated' Irishman with

a voice of pure gold? Thank god for Darren Clarke, winner of

the Open on Sunday, one mention of his name and I was in.

The soft-spoken optician agreed to sell me some glasses before

he packed me of to hospital, seems I have cataracts in both eyes.

He said I had lost 90% of my vision, but the specs would get my

sight back to around 50% and the hospital would restore the 

remainder.

   Have to say, what a cool guy he was, although I was a little 

concerned at the glint in his eye, and the restrained smile on

his lips as he described how at the hospital, they would slit the

side of my eye open with a scalpel...... then shove a needle through

said slit to draw off the cataract. This done, they would then shove

a clear plastic lens through the open slit and job done.. well, ninety

seven times out of a hundred.. ha ha .

    So all in all no big deal, but it does jog you into remembering how

precious life is, and how wonderful are all the gifts that go with it...  KRO

Apart from the title this track has little to do with the above.

.. Gifts (I'd send)

Words and music an' all that .. Derek H.

Recorded at 60a ....... April 2008

H/Phones.... please?

Footnote to last post ...

So... with just four or so minutes of a whole season to 

go we were safe, and then relegated, way to go Blues.

    Nothing else to say, and the link to this track is a

tenuous one (from a Jack to a King and back again)

but I do love it ...

KRO

Step away ...

Sorry but it's more music, just ain't got much to say these days.

Old school mate called in at Runway yesterday, long time no 

see. Said he had been playing some of my music, how cool is

that, some one listening to my stuff.

   He said he had "been mostly playing" 'Step away', the last

track my daughter and I recorded together. Spooky, but that

was over two years ago now.

  Man it's strange how time goes so quick, it's as if the older you

get, some weird 'Einsteinian' law takes over, as if the weight of

years compresses time and each new year gets shorter, and 

shorter...... 'till.... well, you know ...

Anyway.... Step away ..

 Words and music an all that ... Derek H.

 Lead vocal ... Melanie H.

 Recorded at 60a ... March 2009

   ( h/phones ... please ?)

Noughts and crosses..

Just a few days more and on the 17th of April, the swallows return

to Runway. Heather( the farm manager) however, reckons they get

here two weeks before and hide up at the top cow-shed, before 

coming round to my place, just to tease this silly old bugger.

  When I first moved to Runway I had two units, one was my office

and also where I lived for eighteen months. The other, my workshop

was some hundred feet long by twenty five feet wide, royal blue carpet

covered the floor and the walls were white.

      A few years back, on some hot June afternoon I had a thirty foot

football spread out on the floor, and was taking a break sitting on

the floor when a swallow flew in through the open barn doors.

For the next five minutes I sat spellbound as it gave me the most 

stunning display, swooping a fraction of an inch above the floor

then up into the roof.

All too soon it left, and I was left to treasure a very special few moments.

I rose to my feet to continue working and there it was.....

Bird shit all over my work.... Well, I guess nothings for free...

KRO

27th FEBRUARY 2011

...All these emotions but I can't explain them... oh Blues my Blues....

thanks to kristoff1875

.GOOD TALK SON ...

.. Had a message from my son saying he has a blog

up and running..... I don't know, ex-rock star, actor,

now author, you'd think he'd find something better

to do with his time.

Here's a track of his old band cable. He was pretty

laid back on stage, I'm told at one gig he took an

armchair, TV, and few cans and watched a film ....

As you can see below, he was a well-read kid even

in those days....

... Enzopia ....

.. Turns out that if you do crosswords with Tas and the General, and

the answer to 12 down is Enzopia, well one of you gets  this strange

eye complaint, and I have. So, I did as I was told and went to the

opticians for an eye test and specs etc. what a waste of time.

        .. I guess my warped sense of humour didn't help, as I walked into

the wall instead of through the doorway to the opticians room, and then

sat in the chair facing the wrong way, but the bottom line is she 

wouldn't sell me any specs unless I go back for further tests... ha ha ha !

 . This leaves me with a couple of choices, some I can't be arsed with, so

I'm gonna do an Andy Warhole, my dark glasses are winging there way

 here as I write ...... so all you sweet little things , shades and smokes ...

 cool way  to go ....... innit .......

Wemberrlleeeee

That proves it then, it ain't the gypsies, it's me. I'm the curse.

I fell in love with my Blues some fifty years ago, but this year

 I didn't renew my S/T, (many reasons for this) and what d'ya 

know, we get to a 'real' final, and I miss a very, very special

 night at Stans. I spent the night alone at 60a, pacing up and 

down the kitchen floor, chain-smoking and listening to radio

WM. I know it sounds daft, but I could feel the atmosphere,

and when the final whistle went I sank to my knees, fists

clenched, sweat in my eyes (brummies don't cry) and a stupid

grin on my face that is still there two days later.

   Of course the whole country doesn't want us to be there,

and the Arse are gonna stuff us 10-0, but hey, stuff 'em,

we're there, and we ain't just goin' for the 'day out, we're

goin' there to win, goin' there to piss everybody off.....

So here's a fellow bluenose doin' his stuff .........

     

New year ...

Happy new year, and the start of a new decade unless you believe it

started twelve months ago ...

Not the most exciting Christmas hols I've ever had and the Blues didn't

help, nothing to do with results or form, but they have that look and

feel of relegation certs, a look I know so well. Still, it was snug and warm

at 60a, my last ever Christmas here, it has to be sold this year, out of my

hands... should be fun.