the purefinder - archives
"you plant a tiny little detail which shouldn't be there"
For a few years I have spouted off about how I can't watch comedy - specifically Seinfeld, without being struck, and struck, and struck and struck again by the structural similarities between comedy and music. I have said that I see the establishment ond subversion of a pattern as something close to the essence of both artforms. I was thus delighted to read in yesterday's Guardian than I am not the only one.... see more...
February 5, 2005 10:54 AM
a different burden
The benefits of forcing oneself to walk around, amongst, and up mountains are almost endless. Last night I was reminded of one of these. At approximately 9:20 pm I finished a college project that I had been working on, intermittently, for three months. The project was, I hope, intended to allow us to make an independent epistemological investigation. We were asked to study an object from the natural world with resorting to secondary sources of information and to reflect and analyse our learning and the knowledge we had gained. We were also asked to use the project to explore... see more...
January 4, 2005 07:08 PM
the same profound calmness
When my children were babies, and I was their attentive and full-time dad, I found that I could relax them. I could actively cause calmness and contentedness to return to them - no matter how agitated or upset they were. I would pick them up - tiny little things enveloped in my hugeness. I would hold them close to my chest and swaddle them with my arms. With their chest and my chest in contact, I would breathe. I would breathe long deep regular slow breaths. Their sobs and their panting would subside and gradually their breathing would follow... see more...
December 13, 2004 08:10 PM
I'm not the person I was.
I'm not the person I was. The people that we are, the aggregations of our decisions and fears and aspirations and prejudices and principles and capabilities and weaknesses, must always exhibit some malleability as we clumsily negotiate our ways through the world and our lives. Most of the time we don't notice these incremental adjustments to who we are. Sometimes we are subject to a bigger jolt and we become aware that we are not quite the same people we were before. I haven't written here since September; this was the point at which I enthusiastically plunged into a... see more...
December 11, 2004 01:59 PM
We didn't notice the photographer.
We didn't notice the photographer.
The night before, a Saturday very shortly before Christmas, a farmer from outside the village had answered a knock at his door... see more...
September 18, 2004 03:10 PM
an pwned machine
My sister's computer was totally pwned. Indeed, one of the viruses tried to send it to a webpage named thus. Before I'd had anything to do with Linux, I used to read the rantings of the more fervent Microsoft bashers with a little disbelief. I regularly patched my software, was sensible and informed about the integrity and security of my computer and though I knew that other people got viruses, I didn't - literally. My sister and her partner brought their (XP) machine up this weekend- it was, they said, a little slower than it used to be... It... see more...
September 12, 2004 06:35 PM
managing the transition
Yesterday I had a tiny insight. Whilst at the football, I was trying to describe the nagging unease that my impending start at college was provoking. When I was looking for words to explain what was happening inside me, I realised that I am most concerned about the change between now and then; I'm appropriately confident that I'll be able to manage most of the work adequately, but I am a little concerned about managing the transition(s) between the life that I have now and the busier conflicted life that is likely after next Monday. Eight days to go...... see more...
September 12, 2004 04:14 PM
foot-holes
We bought our house hurriedly. I spent more time choosing a pair of glasses yesterday than I did, two years ago, considering our potential future home. I spent more time selecting the last pair of shoes I bought than I did considering our potential future home. Ordinarily this would be monumentally stupid but I think our haste was appropriate; we were three weeks away from homelessness, having already sold *our* house, and some probability of structural rigidity was enough to satisfy us that 'it would do'. We were moving a few hundred yards - literally just around the corner.... see more...
September 10, 2004 10:06 PM
the end of something
Tomorrow is the end of... something. It is the end of mrs padraig's treatment for cancer - her final radiotherapy session. I've got lots that I want to say that I also don't want to say. IYKWIM.... see more...
September 8, 2004 11:10 PM
Bunton Hush, Gunnerside Gill, Swaledale
The photograph shows a 'hush'.The lead-miners dammed streams above where they suspected ore to occur and released the water to scour away the material overlying the ore. see more...
September 4, 2004 11:35 PM
smiling for the cameras
I've enjoyed looking at Ricky Adam's photos from the Irish punk scene - here and here.... see more...
August 24, 2004 06:06 PM
Bob Mould says some interesting stuff
Bob Mould says some interesting stuff.... see more...
August 23, 2004 07:08 PM
lengtheners
I try not to play games on my computer. I try to avoid them because I am prone to compulsion and there is every probability that I can easily waste weeks playing freecell, or pinball or tetris. One of the reasons I took the plunge to using a Linuc solely was that I had succumbed to Championship Manager again and I decided that effective preventative action was required to avoid the summer disappearing. Today, whilst looking for a calculator in my KDE menu, I noticed, in the games section, that I had (L)Breakout. I should have known that it... see more...
August 21, 2004 11:45 PM
lead mine, Buckden Pike
The mine is near the top of the mountain and in the heart of bleakness. A working life here must have been tough. We ate our lunch in, what I decided was, the ruins of the mine's forge and I thought about how eagerly the miners would have nestled into its warmth. see more...
August 20, 2004 10:50 PM
I am the man
Today I had one of those moments where I did a thing, enjoyed it, thought about it and about my enjoyment of it, and treasured another little affirmation of the person that I think I am. Our awareness of the things that we enjoy and the affirmations we gain from these things are part of what makes us us. I've touched on this before from another angle, in a thing I have just resurrected from another place and introduced into the archive here. Today I was reminded that I am the tenacious problem solver. I am the man who... see more...
August 18, 2004 10:41 PM
I smelled it
A couple of weeks ago I was woken by a discomfited mrs padraig who told me that there was a baby thrush behind the fridge. It isn't really the sort of thing that you _can_ reply to, so I didn't; I waited for more information and complied with her request to get out of bed. I learned that she had gone downstairs to make breakfast and had become aware of a birdy commotion outside the back door. Fearing that the cats were about to bring a flapping feathery casualty inside, she opened the door, ready to shoo and clap... see more...
August 16, 2004 03:07 PM
the hormonal storm and its eddies and squalls
It would be efficient for me to direct you to this post and ask you to imagine that I had just written it again. When you are concerned with altering the probabilites of living and dying, it is perhaps understandable, and proper, that the side-effects of treatments are de-emphasised and introduced and considered fairly casually. This is as it should be, but every now and again I do wish that perhaps a deft nurse had slipped into my pocket a letter entitled 'The Secret Of The Things That Are Going To Be Really Shitty'. I'd expect there to be... see more...
August 15, 2004 10:31 PM
putting it on your plate
The things that I write here are saved into one of a number of categories - a MovableType feature that I'll probably make more (visible) use of at some point. One of these invisible categories is called 'blognavel' and, thankfully, there is currently only one entry therein. This will be number two. I'm _really_ glad that anyone apart from me actually reads the stuff I write - I'm aware that it can't be much fun for you and I do appreciate your efforts. It's possible for me to (or specifically, for MT to automatically) send out email notifications whenever... see more...
August 11, 2004 11:33 AM
what editors get paid for
I wouldn't try and pretend that there aren't any number of faults with my writing. I enjoy reading the stuff that I write almost as much as I enjoy writing it; that is the fundamental critical criterion that I apply to the process. Most people who write confess that it it is difficult to be contemporaneously objective about their writing - it's hard enough to even try and spot speling mistakes. _My_ recurring frustration with my writing arises from my apparent inability to apply any editorial judgement to what I have written - at least within any usefully short... see more...
August 11, 2004 11:14 AM
punk, the apparatus of the state and dead hedgehogs
Pffff... excuses and irregular posting - it has to stop! Well... It'd be nice if I could guarantee my future productivity and reliability, but I'm feckless and idle _and_ I have commitments and distractions. My recent distractions have mainly involved inventing computing challenges for myself; I've managed to solve most of these, but my genitals have become no larger and people have not (yet) been acclaiming me in the street. I've managed to get miscellaneous LInux audio (and midi) applications working and I've been thus able to attempt to practise my guitar productively - playing frenzied, filthy and ferocious... see more...
August 5, 2004 11:05 PM
new cds
I don't seem to be listening to much other than ~punk at the minute. I've bought twenty, or so, CDs that I probably won't bother telling you about. Today, I bought John Holmes - Everything Went Blacker - this is robust hardcore with lots of riffs, an amount of shouting and an air of menace. I also bought Planes Mistaken For Stars - Fuck With Fire. This is full-on, frantic, radio-unfriendly, screamy hardcore; it is splendid.... see more...
August 2, 2004 04:42 PM
football stuff somewhere else
If you're interested... there is a recent football thing that I wrote here.... see more...
August 1, 2004 05:28 PM
clean slate phew
I have almost no data. I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled everything - or at least everything that I could remember needing. I've been using linux (mandrake 10.0) more or less exclusively for the last couple of months; my eventual final Windows application was Championship Manager 2003-2004 - an unsustainable time-sump. It seemed as if some recent tinkering with partitions had failed to be welcomed and recognised by all factions and it was sensible to assume that chaos would inevitably result if action wasn't taken. So... I had a carefully considered rush of blood to the head -... see more...
August 1, 2004 02:32 PM
I laughed at those fools
I'm soooooo tired. Yesterday, in the heat, I walked 15 rough tussocky miles up, and in the vicinity of, Cross Fell - the highest mountain in England outside the Lake District. It was, more or less, deserted and mostly pathless. I did take my camera and *some* photographs, but unfortunately I didn't take any *good* photographs - it was very hazy and the mountain is fairly rounded and featureless, so... I got bitten about twenty times by horse-flies; how I laughed at those fools - for I am not a horse.... see more...
July 30, 2004 03:56 PM
more nonsense soon
I haven't written anything for a while and I'm not sure I can produce a good excuse for my lapse. I'll try. I think the reason why I dried up was probably hinted at in the final paragraph of the last/previous thing I wrote - where I confessed that I had been feeling burdened and vulnerable. The drawing to a close of the school term had made me keenly aware that I would be soon be going to college. In truth, for much of the last few months I have felt sufficiently burdened and the prospect of change and... see more...
July 25, 2004 06:43 PM
in leaf
I enliven my days with consideration of the symbolic potential of the world in which my life is lived. When the fourteen-year-old me discovered photography - and my love for photography, I moved through my world, with or without my camera, framing shots, controlling what I wanted to be in sharp focus and clicking my imaginary shutter as lines and curves and textures and shades and colours arranged themselves to my satisfaction or excitement. As I have aged, my life has developed from a gallery of personal visual delight into the film of me that will not be made.... see more...
July 9, 2004 09:56 AM
zap!
We are just about to go and get mrs padraig measured and marked (tattooed) for her radiotherapy, which should be starting in three weks or so. We've been looking forward to this. I suspect that they will need to calibrate their equipment.... see more...
July 7, 2004 09:39 AM
not written in the morning
The operators of British trains were ridiculed in recent years when they attempted to excuse their occasional inability to operate their trains by blaming 'leaves on the line' and subsequently 'the wrong type of snow'. I am tempted to suggest that, this last week, I have had the wrong type of time for writing; it would only be a partial truth. It doesn't, generally, take much time to squeeze out the inane meditations which I put before you. When I'm writing this stuff it tends to come quickly - fully formed and at the speed of typing. It is... see more...
July 6, 2004 11:43 PM
today at the gym
Today at the gym I did things differently. I didn't arrive and launch myself into 90 minutes of intense cardio, with some weights and machines to follow. I warmed up with 15 minutes on the cross-trainer and then had an hour lifting and pulling and pushing weights (shoulders and arms). I was delighted to find that, when I am not exhausted, I am stronger. Many personal bests were bested. I started going to the gym because I like walking up mountains and I wanted to be fit enough to be able to do so - without barfing or dying.... see more...
June 28, 2004 06:52 PM
day-long big smiles
Today we invested in life. It was the village show. The village show is of the traditional English variety - there were prizes for potatoes, flower arrangements, cakes and jams. There were people re-fighting the (English) Civil War, a fly-past by ten jets, matronly posh ladies in floral dresses and ruddy-faced and panting urchins throwing eggs at each other. People drank beer in the morning. It rained incessantly. see more...
June 26, 2004 11:35 PM
footwear newsflash!
I bought a pair of these: Brasher Bosoli. I call them the shoomins.... see more...
June 25, 2004 06:42 PM
4/4
This morning mrs padraig, Barbara, was injected with her final batch of chemotherapy drugs. It seems like a lifetime ago when I watched the first of the cartoon-esque red poison dribble into her arm and thought of how we would incrementally make our way through to the point where it was all done. It hasn't been like that. When our first child, Gabriel, was born, it quickly seemed as if he had always been in our lives - like a line had been drawn across our lives seperating the part before his birth and the part that we were... see more...
June 24, 2004 01:41 PM
tenacious tree
It's windy. Earlier, as I disposed of the day's, literal, rubbish outside, my attention was grabbed by the silver birch trees which line our garden's edge. The gusty wind made leafy whips of them and they filled the garden with their noise. I looked up into the stormy sky and I projected the path the trees would follow through the air and onto, or into, the house, should the wind succeed in its apparent aspiration of removing them from the ground. I imagined the chaos of branches and leaves and crying children that I'd have to deal with. I... see more...
June 24, 2004 12:31 AM
Matranga frenzy
My Jonah Matranga frenzy continues. When I was a boy. Actually... There was a time when my youth, and my isolation in the middle of nowhere, excused my music binges. I saved money, or more accurately - didn't have anything to spend it on, for weeks and months and then bused or hitch-hiked, seventy or one hundred miles, to Belfast or Dublin to splurge*. I'd return with my bags filled with... Die Electric Eels, Husker Du, DAF, Birthday Party or A Certain Ratio records. Back in my backwater, I'd share my musical explorations with those of my friends whose... see more...
June 22, 2004 03:25 PM
Plopped through my letterbox
a cd; The Convocation Of... 's self-titled debut album.... see more...
June 21, 2004 03:29 PM
I bought things
Specifically, I bought Peter Carey's Jack Maggs and Far's Water and Solutions. Both of these things are pretty splendid.... see more...
June 20, 2004 10:32 PM
coefficient of fiction
I've been wanting to write other stuff for a while. I think that the other stuff is similar to that which is normally called fiction. Even my admission of this aspiration is quite a step. I'm not sure what I've been scared of. Actually it is, much, more accurate to say that I am not sure what I have been most scared of. I have certainly been reluctant to fail. I think I have also been reluctant to remove one of the inhibitions that I have placed on my writing - that it is about me and that therefore... see more...
June 19, 2004 10:06 PM
my favourite flags
My favourite flags are the tattered ones. I like the ones that have blended into the background of the flag-erector's life and whose real importance and significance is betrayed by the faded colours and decaying threads. Two years ago, the village where I live reacted to the prospect of an accomodation centre for asylum seekers appearing nearby with a flurry of flag-erecting. A couple of these flags have remained - now in tatters. The mechanism by which flags evolved and appeared is logical and sensible enough; if a group of miscellaneous yeomen and irregulars have assembled to achieve some... see more...
June 15, 2004 03:53 PM
it's been a while
I *almost* sliced off the top of a finger on my left hand a couple of months ago. I was chopping leeks, at a respectable rate, when a leek-wheel rolled back towards the knife - jeopardising my rhythm. I, cleverly, moved the knife slightly to the left, to avoid reslicing the leek-wheel. In that same motion, I deftly flicked the intrusive vegetable away with a spare finger and put the knife *almost* all the way through the tip of my ring finger on my left hand. I blanched instantly, I bled at length, and I toyed with a visit... see more...
June 14, 2004 07:54 PM
punchbagging
Today I've been 'the punchbag' again. It hasn't been a lot of fun. Ordinarily I profess myself to be wary, or at least something other than casual, when writing about those whose lives intersect meaningfully with me. This particular aversion arises partially because of my, selfish, customary reluctance to give anyone sticks to hit me with. There is also a matter of propriety. I use the challenges that my life, and myself, set for me to bolster my sense of worth. I like to achieve a difficult thing and I like to survive a difficult thing. I'm pretty confident... see more...
June 11, 2004 10:58 PM
more CDs
My gleaning of the scattered and unwanted cheap, secondhand and surplus(sed ) CDs available to me from around the world, prompted by my search for Moss Icon's Lyburnum*, caused the arrival of two new CDs today. They are both doubleplusgood. They are: Heroin's retrospective and eponymous discographical album. Also Onelinedrawing's The Volunteers * I _think_ I've managed to get a copy; one should be atop a padraig-bound pigeon at this very moment.... see more...
June 11, 2004 04:22 PM
I want I want I want
I want I want I want a copy of Moss Icon - Lyburnum. I've been googling like a good'un and I've even phoned Arizona and it's all been getting a bit frenzied. I've managed to buy/order loads more CDs that opportunely suggested themselves to me during my quest. When I was youthful and languishing in Clogher, I often felt frustrated by my inability to get hold of music that I wanted to hear. I was as gushingly passionate about music then as I am now and my hunger for exciting things to listen to meant that I had an... see more...
June 9, 2004 08:47 PM
it's been a while...
It's been a while since I heard an album playing in a discmongers and was impressed sufficiently to walk to the counter and ask "What is this that is playing?" The answer was Moss Icon's Lyburnum album, which was, frustratingly, not for sale. Or in print. I'm trying to sniff a copy out... Keen to avoid disappointment and unhappiness, I did buy: Rival Schools United by Onelinedrawing - EP Don Byron - Bug Music Meat Puppets - Up On The Sun U2 - Boy... see more...
June 8, 2004 11:32 PM
the wind, Hindscarth
It had been windy as I drove up to the Lake District. By the time we go the top of the hills it was strong enough to blow us about; we were being buffetted. We sat in a shelter on top of Hinscarth and I enthused about the noise that the wind was making. The stones from which the shelter was made shook as the wind struck them. I took a photograph of the wind - to remind me. see more...
June 5, 2004 11:21 PM
see more...
wholemeal computing - nowt taken out
Yesterday's post was the first made by Linux - I'm sure you could all tell the difference. I'm still not sure if I can come up with any better reasons for trying Linux than curiosity and a desire to learn some new stuff. After a bit of footering around, and experimenting with Knoppix and Debian and managing to get a succesful dial-up to AOL via Penggy, I threw a metaphorical thing at a metaphorical distro-dartboard and ended up with Mandrake 10.0 and a new ISP. It seems to have worked splendidly; I smile masterfully as people admire me in... see more...
June 2, 2004 10:59 AM
helping my cold
Today I made it back to the gym for the first time in 6 days. I had felt weird on my previous visit; my joints ached and my muscles protested and spasmed and I struggled to complete my cardio-hour and subsequent weight-play. I'd thought that it might just have been fatigue - I'd really pushed myself a couple of days previously and then went for a moderately taxing walk to take some photographs. In response to this apparent debility I was tough with myself, I lost myself in the effort and kept going. This was a mistake. The bizarre... see more...
June 1, 2004 11:19 PM
reading more
I've added a couple of new links to the 'reading' list. (Including, in emulation of Adrian's excellent idea, a link to my livejournal friends feed.)... see more...
May 30, 2004 03:44 PM
Even though...
I am (still) not what I own, I think it might be interesting if I noted my cultural purchases here. Today a lurch to the left, as I made my way back from the library, saw me browsing secondhand CDs in Selectadisc's WAS shop. Having just removed £4,500 from the building society(s) to pay for my new(ish) car I felt that some financial restrait was appropriate and thus left with only two bargain vinyl upgrades/replacements. I'm aware that Killing Joke are well regarded these days and their influence on subsequent musical evolution appears to be widely accepted; I was... see more...
May 25, 2004 03:29 PM
something I learned today
Neutropenia One of the most serious potential side effects of chemotherapy is neutropenia (a low white blood cell count). As the chemotherapy destroys your cancer cells, it may also destroy your white blood cells. I knew that white blood cells, and the body's capacity to produce them, were destroyed by chemotherapy; I now know that this is called 'neutropenia'. This week's anticipated (third) cycle of chemotherapy for mrs padraig has been postponed. I/we hadn't really expected to get through the four cycles on schedule - it is, nevertheless, disappointing.... see more...
May 17, 2004 10:58 PM
Kerouac and the gym
In my life at the minute it appears that I spend a couple of hours most days sweating and panting. I am fortunate to be able to indulge myself thus. I've become a person who enjoys the gym. It is obviously essentially true that energetic activity is good for one's body. I think I'm also finding that it is very good for my mind. My battles with exhaustion and effort and stamina leave my mind... emptied. I think this is good. The uncertainty I've signalled above arises because I sometimes feel that it might not be *right* to be... see more...
May 12, 2004 11:28 PM
subsumed
I've been a little snowed under with this and that. And the other too. mrs padraig wasn't on top form last week and it was *interesting* trying to keep her, and her temporarily absent immune system, away from a profusely barfing member of the next generation. The young chap in question, Gabriel, actually barfed so much that we have had to buy a new carpet for his bedroom. I enjoyed a tremendous walk in splendid weather, and in fine company, in the Lake District. (photos will be added retrospectively subsequently/eventually). I slouched too much when watching Kill Bill (Volume... see more...
April 29, 2004 07:51 PM
I am not what I own
Amongst the bootleg traders with whom I associate, the (non-monetary) exchange of unlicensed live recordings is deemed to be a *good thing* as long as one makes the moral investment to support the artist(s) by buying their CDs and going to their shows. I do. It is also considered to be important not to trade material which is available commercially. I got an email from the Dischord mailing list to say that: Fugazi bass player, Joe Lally, has announced the launch of a new website to sell CDs of the first of the many live recordings Fugazi has collected... see more...
April 22, 2004 04:59 PM
p=kw
a recurrent recent contradiction
Yesterday I became 38. Today mrs padraig started her first cycle of (AC) chemotherapy. (There are going to be four cycles in total.) A canula was inserted into a vein in her hand and, along with a sizeable portion of saline, four syringes containing the chemotherapy drugs were emptied into her. The syringes were huge and one of the drugs (doxorubicin) was vividly bright red and this vaguely cartoon-y combination was in keeping with the slightly surreal nature of the whole cancer experience. A recurrent recent contradiction: I felt enormously privileged that there were places like the oncology and... see more...
April 8, 2004 11:09 PM
mr panties
Monsieur Pantin, a beefy acoustic trio, featuring my excellent friend Steve Cobham, have released a CD. It is splendid. There are MP3 clips here. I was delighted to see that the cover managed to (presumably inadvertently) blend the covers of Husker Du's Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. It's good enough to buy - even without the cover.... see more...
April 2, 2004 07:06 PM
mind-bat
We've been doing well. I continue to be astonished at our (used in a general sense to include all of humanity) capacity to deal with adversity. We've been getting on with it. Once, when I was a young(er) man, I walked around a corner late one night and was hit in the face with a piece of wood; the piece of wood in question was dimensionally similar to a baseball bat. I was sent reeling. This week we discovered that mrs padraig has sprouted a lump in her neck. We have conducted an extensive (external) comparative exploration of my... see more...
April 2, 2004 06:40 PM
googling for 'invasive ductal carcinoma'
I've been an information glutton since before I could read. In my Irish village childhood I was notoriously inquisitive and actively questioning. I've always wanted to know EVERYTHING. Once I could read, I filled my days, and my mind, with encyclopaedia and textbooks; by the time I was ten, or so, I probably knew almost as much as it is possible for a precocious-weirdo-boy to know - I knew almost EVERYTHING. During my secondary education, at a mostly uninspiring Christian Brothers School, I delighted in my juvenile subversive reluctance to study the subjects on the syllabus as diligently as... see more...
March 18, 2004 07:40 PM
like this
This afternoon was like this; it was all rather glorious. see more...
March 9, 2004 06:47 PM
maintaining normality
Today I walked again. I've been thinking that we have been succeeding in maintaining normality. The children have remained secure and untroubled in their cocoon of parental care. We have even managed to fit in a (fifth) birthday party for Nuala, our daughter. We've been shopping. I've been to the football. I've been to a concert. I've even been back to our local primary school to equip myself with more experience in preparation for my course. Today, I reclaimed some more normality and went walking along the river. I was shocked to see that it was all so different... see more...
March 8, 2004 07:05 PM
When it is as good as this...
Last night I sat in a theatre and was enveloped and enthralled by music. I went to Leeds to see Bill Frisell and Djelimady Tounkara (with some very gifted others). What I saw was a glorious passionate performance built by musicians from different continents and musical and cultural backgrounds. Its best moments were beautiful and entirely absorbing; at one point, with a pattern firmly established, the intensity dropped just a little and I thought that an energetic violin solo from Jenny Scheinman was necessary, she agreed and obliged. When it is as good as this, music is the best... see more...
March 5, 2004 11:16 AM
vile-Winterton disgusts me
Ann Winterton is horrible. Michael Howard, the leader of the Tories, has acted appropriately. Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, didn't act appropriately: Mr Palmer said: I was not sure whether to complain, but the remarks were really unjustified and tasteless. Everyone was completely embarrassed and stared at their plates. If she had been the host, I would have got up and left. Staring at your plate _isn't_ the way to go, Nick.... see more...
February 26, 2004 01:55 PM
snowed two times
My children were exuberant because it "snowed two times in the winter". I was pretty pleased too. They went to school to look out the windows and I went for a walk. In the snow. Hah!
see more...
February 26, 2004 09:57 AM
the bizarre projection thing
Sometimes I find it entertaining to imagine that we could be seen as what we project rather than as the light we reflect. I often illustrate this bizarre fantasy by explaining that if I could project the person I think I am onto a mirror I would see the young man that I was in my early twenties; I would see a serious scruffy man with long hair (or dreadlocks) - the man I was at the time when I started to make good choices about my life and the world. That man is inherently who I am. mrs... see more...
February 24, 2004 07:03 PM
I have...
I have, subject to being judged medically fit, been accepted for a three year degree course (BA (Hons) in Primary Education with recommendation for QTS) at Bishop Grosseteste College, Lincoln. I'm as happy as anything.... see more...
February 17, 2004 07:32 PM
my passion for music (part 345)
Today I awarded myself a new CD. Whilst this isn't a rare occurrence, it was slightly unusual as I chose to go to an urban space (Nottingham) and visit a shop to try and find what I was looking for. My normal preference is to make opportune purchases from eBay or from amazon marketplace sellers; most of the CDs I buy are sporadically in and out of print and they are often hard to get hold of. An example. Today I had a, rare-ish, opportunity to visit traditional retailers and I had a nagging desire to hear some Chet... see more...
February 16, 2004 10:33 PM
'sufficiently sunk in'
I've experimented with a few different ways to start this piece. I tried to start by suggesting that I'd had quite a week. I tried to start by suggesting that one can't prepare for that which is unexpected. I tried to start by saying that I was quite proud of mrs padraig and myself. I suppose that I have, by creating the previous paragraph, done all of these and I can now start with the real beginning of the story of my week. It starts on Thursday. The 'it' in question is my piece of writing - not the... see more...
February 15, 2004 05:51 PM
* Jehova has joined #tohuwabohu
I have spent a chunk of the afternoon reading the IRC Bible. It starts thus: * Jehova has joined #tohuwabohu <Jehova> Let there be light. <Jehova> ... <Jehova> Well, let's call the light day, and the darkness night. <Jehova> Yes... <Jehova> well, enough for today * Jehova has left #tohuwabohu... see more...
January 24, 2004 05:37 PM
spiritual
Though I had heard cover versions and quotes from other pieces, Spiritual was the second John Coltrane track I heard on a recording of the man himself. see more...
January 12, 2004 10:56 PM
the reeds reappeared haloing
These leaves were protected from the worst of a severe frost by overhanging trees. see more...
December 29, 2003 06:36 PM
my quiet places
These are my favourite places - my quiet places. see more...
December 27, 2003 03:40 PM
in flood
It had been raining heavily and persistently for a few days and the river was, once again, filled and excited. see more...
December 22, 2003 07:03 PM
Thieves Moss
Thieves Moss, Crummackdale, Yorkshire - an area of limestone pavement tucked away in a rarely visited bowl-shaped valley under the eastern side of Ingleborough... see more...
December 6, 2003 11:37 PM
moughton
It was very cold. And quite bleak. Moughton, the hill in this photograph, is a splendidly rugged lump of limestone... see more...
December 6, 2003 11:18 PM
leaves lit
The leaves were brilliantly lit by a strong low winter sun on a frosty morning. The photograph was taken on a steeply sloping footpath leading down a wooded gully to the Trent. A man who came along struggled to walk up the path as the sun shone directly into his eyes. Everything was light or dark. see more...
November 28, 2003 10:47 PM
not hiding in the hedge
It appears to be accepted that we each find our own beauty. see more...
November 9, 2003 07:19 PM
between clarity and cloudiness
The clouds, which had enveloped the hill tops, had just been dissipated by the heat of the wan sunshine and it felt like the sky was somewhere between clarity and cloudiness. see more...
November 1, 2003 07:50 PM
transition
Eventually, with the transition almost complete, I took this photograph.
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November 1, 2003 07:44 PM
imperceptible flow
The river (Trent) flows past the village where I live with little urgency and a generally imperceptible flow.
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October 29, 2003 06:29 PM
Blue returned to the sky.
out of the murk
As the sky cleared, this lush and textured micro-world reappeared from out of the murk.
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October 29, 2003 06:04 PM
Thousands of drops on thousands of berries sparkled. 
...everything glistened. teasel/weasel
As I photographed teasels, a weasel appeared cautiously from a hole near my feet. see more...
September 26, 2003 04:01 PM
saying 'no' to rundgren
In 1977 I became one of the people for whom music is an obsession and a passion. see more...
August 8, 2003 04:57 PM
Venturi Tears
I was, in the past, introduced to fluid mechanics. We did not become friends. I took little away from my exposure to the examination of how to describe the movement of fluids beyond a few vague concepts, a lingering antipathy for a lecturer who had, I believe, once had some vortices named after him, and an affection for the word 'tribology'. Amongst the vague concepts I retained from those doodling reluctant afternoons spent in a lecture theatre in Leeds, were the ability to recognise turbulent flow as I urinated and the memory of a few types of behaviour which... see more...
June 2, 2003 10:25 PM
emotional rollercoasting
I want to write about thoughts that I had last night, but, because of experiencing the... experience that produced the thoughts, I am probably a little too weary and intellectually impaired to manage to perform this task profitably. I'll have a bash anyway. I went to a football match, which is something I do frequently. I have a season ticket at Nottingham Forest, the team which I support, and watch the 23 matches they play at their home ground each year/season. Depending on the resources of time and money which are avialble to me, I sometimes/often travel to another... see more...
May 16, 2003 05:01 PM
to lift children
My children are still very young - my son is almost six and my daughter was recently four. Though each are close enough to perfection for mrs pádraig and myself to constantly marvel at our good fortune, there have been times when their sleeping has been a problem. It was enough of a problem for us to become a little obsessive and unbalanced. I knew every creaking floorboard in our house. I experimented with, and eventually _knew_, the best combinations of amplitude and frequency for the swaying cradling that would produce sleep for my son. From the nuances of... see more...
May 13, 2003 05:03 PM
collected as children
The things that we collected as children are likely to have been a product of the place and time where our childhood was spent. My childhood was spent in a small village in Northern Ireland, close to the border and in the Troubles. Boys of a different generation may have wandered in the fields around their homes and collected delicate eggs from birds' nests. I wandered in the fields and gardens behind our village and collected fragments of twisted metal. Our village was subject to a succession of bombs, mainly 'proxy car bombs' - to precisely describe these using... see more...
May 12, 2003 05:05 PM
the Tories disgust me
Today, Tuesday 6th May 2003, the Guardian carries on its front page a story about the appointment of Barry Legg as the new chief executive of the Conservative Party and reminding us of his involvement in the disgusting abuses of power of the Conservative controlled Westminster council in the 1980s. The council was most famously found to be guilty of selectively selling off social housing to engineer a demographic shift in marginal wards in which they hoped to increase the number of Conservative voters and displace low income familes, and homeless families, from the borough to other areas. Today's... see more...
May 6, 2003 05:06 PM
a wet, berserker cat
We have two cats. Before our children arrived our cats were much loved and secure about their place in our hearts and in our home. We have lived with these cats on the edge of a couple of villages and their world before the children came was an idyll of slaughtered, tortured and dismembered wildlife and welcoming laps. It all changed. Though I occasionally look at our cats, or at least at one of them, and think to myself that they, or it, are handsome examples of their species, the brutal truth is that we don't really have much... see more...
April 23, 2003 05:09 PM
Visions of Jazz
I've resisted the temptation to write about my current inability to listen to anything other than the New York Dolls' first album, which has now been playing since early yesterday evening. I've been reading Visions of Jazz, by Gary Giddins - the author of fine jazz criticism for the Village Voice, for a while now. If you have been waiting for it to reappear in Nottinghamshire libraries, I apologise, it will be back soon and I can tell you now that you'll probably want to buy a copy anyway. Gary Giddins writes beautifully. Gary Giddins writes tremendously effectively and... see more...
April 22, 2003 05:12 PM
beliefs 'a', 'b' and 'c'
Today I made a compromise. I took my daughter to the church in the village where her pre-school group attended an Easter service with the headmaster of the local primary school, which is Church of England Controlled. At this type of school "the church can appoint governors but there is no church majority on the governing body. The teachers are employed by the Local Education Authority, the LEA funds repairs and capital projects, religious education follows the local agreed syllabus, the worship is Anglican." I was born into a strictly adherent Roman Catholic family in rural Northern Ireland. My... see more...
April 7, 2003 05:14 PM
the dusty flowers
Today we received an eight page glossy brochure from the Highways Agency detailing plans to upgrade a section of a nearby road. This road, the A46, is a crucial route in this part of the east midlands - linking Lincolnshire, Lincoln and Newark to the midlands and the west of the country. At the minute the road follows the route of a roman road, the Fosse Way, and it is always busy and easily overwhelmed by the volume of traffic it carries. The section of the road nearest to our home, between Newark and Bingham, often sees fatal accidents... see more...
March 21, 2003 05:17 PM
eyebrows and the Big World
Tonight I will witness unedifying behaviour. Two groups of people, identifying themselves with neighbouring cities in the English east midlands, will sing proudly of their hatred for each other. Some will posture and proclaim their willingness to do physical harm to the others. Many will have spent all day drinking and will, by the time the focus of the day arrives at 7.45 pm, have become dangerously disinhibited. Some will actually have attempted to make arrangements to encounter their counterparts from the other city and initiate violence. The police will be busy and there will be arrests. Some people... see more...
March 19, 2003 05:18 PM
war reading recommendation
A friend returned my copy of 'They Called It Passchendaele', Lyn Macdonald's account of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917. This, and the prospect of war, prompted me to consider that it may be an appropriate moment for an enthusiastic recommendation of this, and Macdonald's other books about the First World War. 'They Called It Passchendaele' is a seamless and compellingly readable assemblage of the journals and tape-recorded testimonies of over 600 participants in this horrific, bloody and pointless struggle for the Ypres Salient - an irregularity of the front which attracted the attention of the generals. The... see more...
February 28, 2003 05:24 PM
be careful
I have two children, a boy and a girl aged 5 and almost 4. I have been the parent who has stayed at home to look after them since their birth and my wife, being a grown up, has worked to financially support us. I have taken care of them. I have also provided a relentless vocal accompaniment to their early lives - "be ca-arefuul". I have told them to be careful on almost every occasion I have asked them to do a thing, or go to a place, and every time they have left my presence. "Be careful",... see more...
February 25, 2003 05:27 PM
my favourite thing
My favourite thing is my CD of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. I dearly love the music on the CD and I would consider myself to face a spiritually impoverished future were I unable to hear it again. But even I found myself in a musically deprived hypothetical reality I would still cherish owning this object. My copy has, what I have believed to be, the original iconic cover; it shows a serious Coltrane furrowing his brow as he looks to the left and, I imagine, listens and considers what he hears. I don't suppose I could honestly claim... see more...
February 21, 2003 05:34 PM
to contemplate war
I live in a little box in a little village in a little island arbitrarily located off the coast of the European continent. My family and my box and my interests and my friends are my life. This is the embarrassing suburban reality within which I live - I am insulated from the world and, to whatever extent is possible, I try to interact with it on my terms. I am very fortunate; I am amongst a healthy and happy family. We are never hungry and never cold. As a younger, and possibly better, man I thought that I... see more...
February 16, 2003 05:58 PM
Mingus and Zappa
I'm listening to Charles Mingus again and once again I'm enthused and excited. It's 10 in the morning and I haven't had coffee yet but I am ennervated by listening to this great music. I was listening to 'the Clown', Mingus's 1957 masterpiece, last night before I went to bed and I drifted off to sleep genuinely excited about the prospect of listening to this splendid LP when I woke. It's a significant enough collection of songs to be excited about in its own right, but my excitement last night was prompted by the crystalisation of a suspicion that... see more...
January 31, 2003 06:01 PM
you must choose?
football, hooligans and complacency - 18/10/01 In August this year the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) released the annual report of its football disorder section... see more...
October 18, 2001 04:02 PM
gravity
Barnsley 2 Forest 1, 18/08/2001 I'll start with my conclusion, which may aid brevity; Barnsley were a poor side to get beaten by. see more...
August 18, 2001 07:59 PM
excitedly
how excited am I? Well, I'm excited enough to actually write something, though it may be brief. see more...
August 9, 2001 04:04 PM
dancing about architecture
ten famous sufferers from piles, football and writing... see more...
December 7, 2000 03:55 PM
ooh Mark Crossley
Mark Crossley went to Loftus Road and all he got... Mark Crossley's testimonial on Tuesday night, attended by 15,011 people who passed through the turnstiles, and apparently around 4,000 who did not... see more...
May 4, 2000 04:13 PM
a single voice
some more acronyms and the future of football... again In the late 1800's, as the Football League was evolving into a national structure, the nature of the football clubs from which it was constituted was betrayed by their name; they were locally based clubs with an association with their area and the people within it. The earliest professional clubs, with a few exceptions, developed from amateur sporting institutions and their membership was essentially open to those who wanted to join. With the increasing spread of professionalism, many of the football clubs issued shares in the club to enable ground... see more...
April 20, 2000 04:24 PM
the curate and his egg
Nottingham Forest vs Tranmere Rovers 18th March 2000, The City Ground see more...
March 18, 2000 04:17 PM
"the referee's done nothing wrong"
match report - Wolverhampton Wanderers vs Nottingham Forest 26/02/00 see more...
February 26, 2000 04:19 PM
the next big issue
In the last twenty years football fans have made their voices heard. The eighties, in which lowest post-war attendance figures provided an obvious indication of the malaise within and around the game, saw those who retained their active enthusiasm for football assert their right to have an influence over its future development. The eighties provided no shortage of unfortunate and tragic reminders that the game needed to be rescued. The events surrounding football also provided the pressure which would deform the structure of the game and allow its evolution. Episodes of hooliganism frequently erupted into the national media and... see more...