Manchester this...

evening, and heavy on the photoshop thank you very much. I've got a loverly little Canon IXUS 60 and took this handheld on ISO 800, then fiddled with photoshop and now it looks like a painting. Excellent!

Was out on my bike again, in the dark. I've bought loads of flashing lights so I wont be killed, put em on my helmet, on the bike, on the bag, on the pedals, on the spokes, on the handlebars, on the seat post, got so many lights I'm bleedin' knackered just hauling round my own weight in batteries. I'm so bright children think it's the Fair arriving and shout "Huzzah!" Birds think it's dawn and begin the morning chorus, a group of fundamentalists recently mistook me for the second coming and formed a new church and now I emit so much light I can be seen from space.

Still, if I get knocked down the buggers won't be able to claim they didn't see me.

"Your Honour, I was driving along the Queen's carriageway minding my own business when suddenly a great light appeared in the east and I thought what the fuck is that! Blinded, I ran into said light knocking (as I came to know him later) Mr Flynn into the canal where he subsequently suffered severe shocks due to an excess of voltage. M'Lud, if I'm guilty of anything it is of saving the night sky from this madman. I rest my case."

Hmmmm...

Cycling in Manchester...

yesterday I came across hundreds of Christian bikers roaring down Deansgate dressed as Father Christmas. Not wholly sure that Santa Claus would approve of such recklessness what with his carbon footprint being so low. I researched some info on the carbon footprint of cows (in the absence of info on reindeer farts) and discovered what a major hazard bovine rear-end exhalations represent.

Thank the Lord those Christians didn't pass through town riding cows or else we'd be totally fucked.


The photo below is of the Dee Estuary from West Kirby, taken last weekend. That's Wales in the distance.

Think I'm gonna receive...

a speeding ticket. Didn't see the cops until it was too late to slow down, they got me with a radar machine. Pah!

Someone at work has a great cartoon above their desk. It shows a big boss looking down on a lowly secretary and he says "Why aren't you working?" And she replies "I didn't see you coming."

Well I feel the same way about speed cops. Why was I speeding? I didn't see the cops. Doh!

Took this photo in West Kirby on Sunday eve.

Photoshop Elements 5.0

is a wonderful object though I'm not sure about the "5.0" bit. Five point oh? Whatever happened to 5, or five? And what's this "Die Hard 4.0" about? Four point oh.

Photoshop Elements plays a more positive role in my life than any Bruce Willis film, as is evidenced on the right.

The image was achieved by fiddling with Photoshop though I can't now remember precisely what I did. However, the trick has brought me joy which I suppose is the main thing.

Came across this particular...

swan on the Ashton Canal, liked the cut of its jib. In the UK all swans belong to the Queen. Grrr. They seem such graceful creatures, but apparently got vicious tempers, snap a man's leg clean off with a single look. Or is that break a child's leg with one wing. Or it might have been never pull a gun on a friend. The point I'm trying to make is, don't cross a cross swan. Oh no.

Autumn is in full swing...

here in the UK. Hmmm. Although I think the place looks pretty, dressed in golds, auburns, russets, reds and yellows, it does not do for me what spring does.

However, Autumn nevertheless provides the opportunity for a bit of John Keats. The same happened last year I know but hey, why deny ourselves a bit of Keats? The photo was taken today on the Marple Canal that skirts the east of Manchester just below the Pennine foothills and above Ashton and Stockport. More pics on flickr over on't right...

Keats opens the second stanza of his poem with a question, "Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?" He then implores autumn to ignore spring and instead appreciate itself, which is a lesson for me too. Spring, perhaps I love it too much, even to the detriment of autumn and winter. Nah, sod autumn and winter, they can look after themselves. Great poem though.


To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breat whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

- John Keats

Was in Derbyshire yesterday...

walking up hill and down dale, testing the knee. On't right is a photo of Edale taken from the north side of Mam Tor. Mam Tor is a large pointy hill that sits astride the ridge line running from Hope in the east to Despair in the West. Actually that's not true because Derbyshire isn't remotely like any place described in The Pilgrim's Progress, though it can be spooky when there's a fog. Hope really does exist even if it has been many years since Caleb was a popular name in the village.

I notice...

it's been over a month since the op on my leg. So, here's a photo of said leg, said almost recovered leg. A fine example of leg it is I must say. This is a leg that's going places, I can tell by the look of it. And what larks me and the leg will having this winter, walking larks, cycling larks, maybe even running larks (but no running until after Christmas larks). We might even be up with the larks, though I'm not wholly sure of this as I have an idea larks bugger off to Africa every winter. Or maybe that's Africans.

In honour of this leg I've bought a winter walking coat. A posh winter walking coat for winter walking because me and the leg are again at one, in the walking sense that is. The other leg? Well, the other leg has always been a hearty soul, has always liked a drink and a laugh and even a merry old song on occasion. The other leg is as tough as old boots. No injuries for the other leg, oh no. The other leg is a sturdy leg, a brave leg, a best foot forward leg. Tough as old boots? The other legs sneers at the thought of boots, scoffs at any reference to sole sheathing, jeers when the subject of foot cover even arises. The other leg is hard, a hard leg, the other leg gets into fights in bars. In fact the other leg came home drunk one evening recently and demanded a rendition of the sea shanty 'Bill Bones Hornpipe' before it would rest. Of late the other leg has taken against the leg. I've half heard harsh whispers, threats, even mention of a knife. I worry about the other leg and am secretly glad the leg is now recovered. It's around this time that feelings of equilibrium should begin to express themselves, five or six weeks after the op the man said, a return of equilibrium, of poise. So no more frustration, no more imbalance, only harmony, sigh. Bugger, the other leg's gone out again. Damn, where is that song sheet...

Bruise update...

Wow! From certain angles this bruise looks like one of those Pacific archipelagos. The sort with shallow lagoons and coral. Or maybe a stigmata that got smudged, though I think of knee stigmata as more an indication of poor aim than pentecostal fervour. But what a stigmata! It's huge, a person would have to be really holy to be visited by something of this order. Either that or my leg was in the way of a sign meant for a local saint, it could even be a multiple stigmata originally destined for the nearby elderly and infirm. Bloody hell, all that suffering concentrated in one place, no wonder it looks a mess. That said, I think it best not to dwell too much on those waiting for the message that's now caught in the Limb of Leviticus. Hmmm, I feel saved already, might apply for a shrine grant from the Vatican, become bigger than Lourdes, lay down a car park and maybe an airport like Knock in Ireland. Of course the neighbourhood would have to go, but hey, sacrifice without pain, what would be the point of that?

I'm sticking with my leg theme...

for a little while longer. This morning a nurse removed the dressing exposing some fine bruises, as shown in this fetching photograph. I'm impressed with keyhole surgery, minimal damage, quick recovery and returned to bar of life in the blink of an eye. What more can a leg ask? And once again the National Health Service comes to the rescue. I didn't agree that they hired a South African firm to do the job rather than it be done in house because I see this as part of the creeping privatisation of a trusted service, however, the job's done and I'm glad about that.

Wey hey!

I'm having a mid...

summer clear out and decided to start with changing the colours on my blog. Hmmm, not sure about the yellow even though it gives the ol' place a summery feel. The leg on the right, by the way, belongs to me and the bandage covers surgical injuries because on Saturday I let a Hungarian rummage around in my knee. Actually, his actions were a little more focused than rummaging and he did a good job because, hurrah, he sorted out my cartilage problem. Or rather he repaired a tear in the meniscus via a procedure called an arthroscopy. I was very impressed though it all felt a little strange at the time.

The procedure started when a Scottish anaesthetist injected a drug into my spine that numbed everything below the waist. Now that felt really weird because it became as if my legs were no longer part of me even though I could see them. When I touched them they didn't feel like me and this was hard to realise because the evidence of my eyes was contradicted by the experience of my hands. Very odd indeed. I suppose it must have been a similar experience to those who suffer from paraplegia.

I didn't like it.

Initially I was offered a sedative, but scoffed, "Sedatives are for wimps" as they wheeled me into theatre. And lo, there I was, ringside seat whilst my Hungarian began to wrench around the table this leg that so clearly had very little to do with me. He cast a professional eye over the leg whilst I cast a sceptical eye over the same object and wondered what it was that had come between us. Just above me and to the left was a flat screen TV showing a knee that was strangely familiar. I liked the cut of its jib, I was amused by its form, I was taken by its sturdy, nay manly pose. That, I said to myself, is some knee. Whoever possesses such a knee must be successful in life and is no doubt a fellow well met, he may even have a girlfriend.

It was around this point that I asked for the sedative.

The remaining time went smoothly. I sang sea shanties and kept a weather eye on the TV which showed round things in liquid and instruments snipping and pushing and pulling and bits floating and other things that had so much and yet so little to do with me. Having exhausted sea shanties and about to move onto songs about herring they suddenly declared it was all over. I was whipped away to the recovery room where a nice chap called Mark checked my vitals before dispatching me to my room where I then lay for four and half hours until my legs returned once more to the fold. I was pleased to see them, would normally have partied but decided that such a thing may have been a touch too prodigal for the poor blighters so we had a cup of tea and some toast instead.

So, there you go. And my knee? Oh it's fine. A lot more subdued which is good because of late it had been getting above it's station, mocking the other one, not pulling its weight. Hah! Well no more. Fetch me the rubbing alcohol mother, the double K's back in town and it's dancing time again!!! Yee Haw!

The...

Festival at The Edge which began on Friday was so deluged the Sunday bit was cancelled. However, I drank beer which more than made up for the disappointment.

I'd like to say I drank beer to compensate for the poor weather but why tell a lie, I drank beer because it was there. And such beer! The beer tent was organised by CAMRA (the campaign for real ale) and there were approximately 30 or 40 different beers, ales and stouts with exotic names too. For instance a pint of Old Gussett is a positive start to any evening, followed of course by a gill of Worker's Mange to be then chased below with a shot of Damp Merkin. Behind the bar were burly men who knew a thing or two about beer, the brewery, name of thebrewer, the particular condition of his weeping skin complaint and why his wife sued for divorce. Yes, real ale can tell a story though it's important not to lose a sense of perspective, it's important not to overstretch, it's important (unless one has simply stopped caring) to avoid drinks named Evacuated Colon and Surge because you never really know what's coming. Believe me, it's best to stay away from them. So I safely remained with the middle range beers drinking pint after pint of Minor Complaint, Enraged Anus and Throb. It was a good night from what I remember though strangely I was unable to sit down for the whole of Saturday. Sigh.

On Sunday In Manchester it was...

briefly sunny. Huzzah!

The UK weather continues, on the whole, to be shit. Lots of floods and worry and misery. However, I spent the weekend, well, Friday and Saturday (Sunday was rained off) at FATE (The Festival at The Edge) in darkest Shropshire where I drank loads of beer and listened to some first class storytelling on the basis that FATE is a storytelling festival. Absolutely wonderful experience and I didn't mind the rain. In fact, being under canvas and listening the rain pitter patter, actually it was more like a heavy train passing, did not phase me one jot. Beer can be a wonderful soporific.

The River Mersey...

on Saturday. Note how grey it is, so grey even photoshop couldn't improve matters. Pah!

Athough I was happy a couple...

of weeks ago this rain is now getting me down. I've become seasonally affected, that is to say, I am SAD.

The Eastern Med is enjoying record temperatures whereas we in Western Europe are mired in bloody miserable rain and dullness.

Headline: Atlantic seaboard of Europe mired in miserable rain and dullness. Dan Flynn, a resident of Manchester spoke for most Western Europeans when he said, "We're mired in miserable rain and dullness."

And another thing, why is the Eastern Med stealing our sun ration? And why are we currently receiving more than our fair share of rain? And will the weather turn before I go camping this weekend at The Festival at the Edge, in Shropshire? And shall I take my wellies? And shall I take a hat, or a brolly or maybe both? I know I won't need a boat because the festival is up on an edge. Wenlock Edge is an escarpment which to me always sounds a risky place to hang around. I read somewhere about people plunging from escarpments, as if escarpments are places to be plunged from, then again it might have been peasants plunging from battlements so what do I know? Either way this coming weekend I intend to not plunge from anything.

And that's exactly how it should be.

The photo is of the River Mersey at Jackson's Boat in Chorlton yesterday.

Piranhas suffer from nerves...

shock. Honest. All that guff about piranhas being the type of fish that would eat it's own mother, and it's mother's mother, and anyone elses mother turns out to be not true. In reality it seems the piranha is a fairly cuddly type, in fact the sort one might invite to babysit should they become neighbours. And all this pack stuff? Well solitude makes 'em anxious so naturally they're drawn to groups. And the teeth thing? A piranha spokesfish interviewed by Associated Press was quoted as saying, "We think this latest research might be a turning point. Yes, yes we know about the eyes and the teeth and the blood and the gore and the evisceration but you know, we're really just guys. Hey, some of us even have families. What's that Julian? Oh sorry, yes, some of us even had families."

Quite touching really.

Bones of giant penguin found...

shock. It seems this penguin was running door security at some bar in Peru 36 million years ago. The penguin's remains, plus jacket were discovered when someone noticed he'd gone missing. By all accounts the 5 foot bird was particularly unpopular at cocaine parties. It's modern descendant survived Darwinian selection by developing more modest drugs practices and moving south where it winters on the frozen tundra of Antarctica. It is also notable that the modern penguin's 5ft forebear was unable to turn it's head without putting someone's eye out, and we are talking serious hazard here.

I mentioned recently Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds and how modern physics posits a view of the universe that is profoundly strange. For instance rather than there being only one universe there may in fact be as many possible universes as there are possibilities. To quote from the text, "If this interpretation is correct, then at this very instant your body coexists with the wave functions of dinosaurs engaged in mortal combat. Coexisting in the room you are in is the wave function of a world where the Germans won World War II, where aliens from outer space roam, where you were never born and where a 5 ft penguin might be waiting to put your eye out..." (2005: p169)

Now, is that spooky or what? I don't mind Dirk, I named him Dirk as a friendly gesture, in Peru 36 million years ago but in my bedroom? Hmmm. I know, I know, call me old fashioned but I really do think a penguin's place is somewhere else. And besides, if my coke dealer ever catches a glimpse of that bird's conk then its beak won't be the only thing that's inflated. Jeeze, I'm paying through the nose as it is. Urf urf.

Bloody universes, grrrr.

It has poured with rain...

in the UK for a week or so now. I discovered this photo in a rural paper that covers the quaint Cheshire village of Huge Injection. Cats and dogs have been replaced by elephants, so it was some downpour. Many locals, mostly named Jethro and Caleb were swept away. In my opinion this is no bad thing for they were hirsute, and most probably cousins which I thought added a Darwinian aspect to the tragedy. Mention of this to the grieving families seemed not to help.

In the meanwhile fear stalks Manchester with the first diagnosis of trench head. Now it moves easily among the city, ebbing and flowing, like Poe's Red Death. Excepting it's more fungal. A bit of a worry nevertheless.

I've been looking for...

a summer poem to post because I'm happy. Happy at the summer, even though it has rained, nay, it has pissed down on the UK for a good week or so now. Am I downhearted? I am not!

Here's a bit of Bill Shakespeare. Although the sonnet compares youth to summer and in the comparison finds summer wanting, I like it all the same. Off we go then...

Sonnet XVIII 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day'

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."


Bloody marvelous. Just like summer in fact.

Oh yeah, and here's Pablo Neruda on wine...

Ode To Wine

"Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.

My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.

But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are
the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine."

For wine drinkers this represents a call to arms. Cheers!

Currently I'm reading...

Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds (more of which in a mo), William Gay's new novel Twilight, and Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy.

Prof Kaku, a physicist and leading adherent of string theory proposes that there's more to the universe than meets the eye, as I too have noticed. However, string theory also allows for not one universe, i.e. this dusty ol' place of ours but loads of universes and some in which we might even also exist. Now, in purely practical terms I like the idea of also existing elsewhere because at the very least I can read more books and at the very most this multi-verse provides a top excuse to not turn up for things that will be boring.

"Oh, sorry to have missed your party last night but I was elsewhere." Fantastic, and it's not even a lie.

Hmmm, there's a catch though, some of these universes are not like ours. Some are tiny, so tiny they make tiny look the sort that might cause trouble in bars, and some look downright uncomfortable. Indeed, this Calebi-Yau universe appears no fun at all. It's either a tiny place, i.e. the sort that might get caught in your bum when you sit down, or it's huge and the equivalent of existing on a black run at one of those expensive ski resorts.

Now, there's a troubled thought.