The power that keeps us alive, and it's nature

Jeez, I leave my blog for a few months and all my readers piss off - that's what you call loyalty isn't it! What on earth has happened to the great British Bulldog spirit. Well, unless you want to enjoy erudite discussions on the finer points of existence don't bother coming back, that's what I say.

So what is that power that keeps us alive, and what is its nature?

Now go to Spotify and put Alvin Lee's name in and listen to how brilliant he is. Play it loud! But remember, without life you wouldn't be able to enjoy it.

I'm not going to go away (well I might). For sure you don't have to come here, I probably wouldn't bother if I wasn't me. But then if you stay away you would miss this reminder to listen to 'Goin Home', probably Alvin's most famous contribution to existence.

Is there a God?

If God can't handle swearing, then he's not for me.
If God is into religions, then he is not for me.
If God sits in judgement, then he is not for me.
If God says it's wrong to enjoy the pleasures of this life, then he is not for me.
If God makes rules and regulations, then he is not for me.

But if, just if, God is that sweet feeling, that when I feel it, it brings to my life the qualities I most enjoy,
then I'm up for that!

Three Xmas cracker jokes!

What do Guillimots and British Gas have in common?

How do you get a nun pregnant?

If the doctor tells you that you have three weeks to live, what's the best thing to do?

'Sixties rock star's face appears on cork tile'

Today the news was released that Pretty Things lead singer Phil May's face appeared on a cork tile at a remote Devon farmhouse. The local farmer was shocked and stunned by the find on his bathroom floor.

'I've read in the papers about people finding Jesus's face on a piece of toast, and I can't believe it has now happened to me. But I don't think it will change my life - I'll be out there feeding the cows in the morning just like I always am'.

No-one is expected to make the long trip down to Devon to witness the find. Phil May is remembered by his generation as the popstar with the longest hair on TV in the mid 60s.

R.I.P. My sense of humour

Politically, I am now officially to the right of Ghengis Khan.

Yes, after nearly sixty years I have finally completed the transition from a left wing pinko to a hard line fascist. I am now slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan which puts me just to the left of Margaret Thatcher.
So what has brought about this gradual transition? Well, I think the main thing is I can't cope with 'reasonableness' any more. It just causes so many problems. It's all very well to be reasonable but there are too many repercussions. It all just comes at too high a price.
I think we have contaminated the conciousness of our population. We have created an environment where people can't think for themselves, or look after themselves. It has happened unknowingly, just because it is quite reasonable to look after one another - after all, isn't that what civilisation is about.
From birth to death we instill fear into the people, to the point where they are scared to live. We are ending up with a population of people with no guts and built in parasitic tendencies. Aaaaaaaaagh I can't stand it any more!
I started out with the intention of writing a serious post about my views on how to bring up kids, but anyway, hope you get the drift.

Hello, I'm a first aider. Can you hear me?

Can you imagine my surprise when I ended up giving an unconscious and gorgeous Melinda messenger lookalike, a top to toe examination on my first aid course today? By the end of that she was fine, but boy, I needed CPR, and fast!

I scraped through the theory exam this afternoon. 20 multiple choice questions and I managed to get 17 right. Hopefully when I come across my first real life first aid situation, a multiple choice box will pop up to enable me to at least have a fighting chance of giving the patient the correct treatment.

Tomorrow I face three live stuations - one with a patient who isn't breathing, one with one who is breathing, and one accident scenario that I have to take charge of. Nervous, me, you bet? Today in the practice session I made a right tit of myself.

The life of a yogi

I am surrounded by women.
The horse world is predominently female, at least the leisure horse world, which is where I mainly hang out. There are a few of us blokes, maybe making up about 10% of the total.
I spent yesterday in my digger digging a trench so that we can install the much needed electric supply to our tack room (for the kettle ok!). Every time I turned the digger off, and I am talking all day here, I could here the sound of female talk and laughter coming from the house (up to 50 yards away). That's all they did all day, and then when it cooled down a bit, they got their horses out and went for a ride.
Dont you just love them!

Early one morning

When I started this blog I had something to say. I had some attitude, and I was happy that I had found a place to express myself.
Maybe it was because for years I had no where to write.
As time has gone by, I feel more free from the 'attitude'. Only occasionally do I feel angry and compelled to swear about some stupid thing man is getting up to somewhere on the planet.
I think, perhaps with age, I am more accepting of the human condition, and the strange situation we exist in.

Does nothing matter?

I've always been fascinated by nothing. I like the way it is made of two words, 'no thing'.

Sometimes I try to experience nothing. I actually really like it. But if I am honest, it's not really nothing. What I am talking about is 'no thoughts'. There is still something going on there though - I am still alive. It is a deeply peaceful place.

Maybe when I die, that is truly nothing.

Does nothing exist?

You can take the meat-eater out of the farmer, but you can't take the farmer out of the vegetarian

So Far
Fourteen sheep lambed - seven to go. Sixteen live lambs and two dead.



Nine cows calved - two to go. Eight healthy calves and one dozy one on a bottle.



One horse foaled - one to go.



And Chloe's afterbirth

This is unbelievable.

On Good Friday I made my confession online, and this morning, Easter day, I received Holy Communion, delivered to me in a polystyrene container by a courier van. It came complete with a DVD of a conveniently shortened version of Easter mass.

So without moving my arse more than ten metres my soul was cleansed. I have to say I do find it heartening that the church has embraced the computer age in this way. Not only convenient for me, but also green for the planet. I call that a win win situation!

Frank, I love you.

Inspired by Leni I just had to put this up. It's long but stick with it - it's a blast!

Taking a break

To the last few readers - I'm taking a break. Really busy on other stuff. Hope to come back soon.
Love
Tom

A day in the life...

5th March 2009

Woke up this morning to three inches of snow. I set off across the fields with some barley and haylage for the sheep. They were pleased to see me. I have been feeling the temporary nature of existence a lot recently. Yesterday the air ambulance landed at a farm over the valley – I still don’t know why. I breathed in the morning air and thought to myself ‘we hang here in life by a thread’.

I haven’t written any of the book for five days now. Sometimes it seems like such a huge task that I just can’t get started. Then at night I lie in bed writing it in my head. Next day I turn the computer on and do anything rather than write. I have my doubts about this book, but I won’t let that stop me from writing it.

About 10.15 I set off across the moor to Haytor where I have been invited to a meeting about ‘sustainable tourism’. I told the guy I thought the title itself was an oxymoron, and he agreed with me. There were about ten of us there and I listened to what everyone had to say. Some pretty idealistic people there, mixed in with a few realists, plus me feeling pretty cynical about the whole thing. There seems to be a whole class of people who basically just live having meetings. Some of them, even most of them, are good people for sure, and some of them know their stuff, but a lot of it is worlds away from trying to make a living out of an honest business. Truth be told, I’m not sure if honest business is the best way to go any more. Most businesses these days seem to make their money from what is politely known as ‘funding’, or what might be more correctly called ‘hand outs’.

I met up with Ed at the meeting, an old acquaintance from when we lived at Haytor. When I said I had no idea why I had been invited to the meeting he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Well, it’s free heat isn’t it’. I know it was a farmers joke but to be honest, that’s what it has come down to for a huge wodge of the population these days.

One of my favourite sayings of all time is ‘these days’, as if they are any different to any other days (I learnt that from Tolstoy’s book Anna Karenina – just have to drop in the name of a Russian author there so that you all know I am not totally uncultured). In the break Ed filled me in on the details of a few of the local events. Fortunes gained and fortunes lost, that kind of thing. Then we had to fill a form in that asked us if we had found the meeting helpful. Of course I couldn’t resist a rant – something I am getting more prone to doing as the years go by.

So that was today…..so far!!

Important stuff!

What is important in this life?

Money
Sex
Love
Power
Freedom
Warmth
Food
Breath
Air
Water
Peace
and of course, being Earnest.

That's it folks, I'll settle for that lot!

Forty words for snow, my arse!

I have one!
Shite!

What's wrong with swearing?

When I was a kid I couldn't work out why, for no particular reason, some words were forbidden. Now I am grown up and I still have no idea - to me words are just sounds. We were told that it would upset God if we used bad words. If God is upset by such a small thing then he is of no interest to me. Of course, now I know God couldn't give a fuck! All these silly little rules are made up by anal little twats who just can't seem to break free from their tiny little boxes - what's wrong with the fuckers?

Now they are trying to stop people swearing on telly. I heard this lady saying we should go back to using good old fashioned words like 'bother' and 'flibbertygibbet'. Amazingly, I do have another life away from this blog where to a degree I try to behave in a professional manner. I do try not to swear in front of my clients, and I do know I have lost business because of this blog (can you fucking believe that!). I have long wrestled with the moral dilemma of whether I should hide forever my love of the foul mouth for the sake of a few quid.

Do you know, if all those small-mimded twats would shut up, then maybe I wouldn't feel the need to swear quite so much. But for now, it's the 'word police' that make swearing even more fun than perhaps it should be. So bollocks to them, I say!

Beatles v Stones

Remember Oasis v Blur. Well in the 60s it was The Beatles v The Rolling Stones. I was working through some pretty heavy shit when I was a kid, so naturally I was a Stones fan. I liked the Beatles, but for what I needed saying I needed Mick and Keith to say it.

As time went, I guess round about 67/68, the philosophies and images of the the two bands kind of came together. That would be roughly around the time of the albums Sergeant Pepper and Satanic Majesties. Glorious days!

Youtube has this feature that I recently discovered, where they present you with a random selection of songs, compiled depending on your previous requests (yes Vicus, technically not random ok). My list is made up of 80% Beatles tracks, and for some reason quite a few Jethro Tull songs. I have never requested one of those that I remember but I did get a bit into The Soft Machine a while ago - I think Jethro must qualify as Prog rock.

Now as I get older I spend most time listening to The Beatles. I just love the simple words and emotions of the early Beatles songs, and then of course when the psychedelia kicks in, well, I'm like a pig in shit!

Love and Peace brothers and sisters.

Odds on Obama

Evens
He does something really dumb within two weeks.

11-8
Over the next three months it becomes apparent he is as crap as all the other politicians.

2-1
Within four years it becomes painfully obvious that despite all his good intentions, he is as unable to cut through the crap as anyone else has ever been.

5-1
His ratings drop dramatically in the first year as all the hyped up people realise he is full of shit too.

10-1
Sends US troops into action in another country within 12 months.

25-1
Gets out of Iraq within the next 14 months.

50-1
Sees sense and pulls out of Afghanistan.

100-1
Reins in the Israelis and actually makes some progress on improving Palestinian rights.

1000-1
He actually is as good as he seems.

Family Trees

'a dirty load of catholic shagging bastards'

Yes, that's how my dear wife described my family - she has a way with words! This was her measured and thoughtful response to my enthusiam for the release of the 1911 census.

Tribute to Frank

This track is off Frank's classic work 'We're only in it for the money'. When I bought this album in 1968 it said it all for me really. The hippy scene was blossoming, but inevitably 'business opportunities' were opening up and we could see that the seeds of destruction were already well germinated by this time.

By the early 70s the game was up, but we did make some impression. Small it may have been in the great scheme of things, but it's good to get down a marker every now and then - helps keep the monster in check!

New Year 2009

Bollocks to it!