The Haircut
I have always detested having my hair cut. It seems such a bloody waste of time and besides, I really don’t like looking at myself in a mirror for 30 to 40 minutes. For this reason, I always tend to leave it a bit longer than I should. However, this morning I had my haircut. I go to an old fashioned barber’s shop in Prague where they really do a good job, use old fashioned blades and you get a good head massage as well. Of course, I had to look at myself sitting facing that mirror. Perhaps it was the background music – a mix of seventies and eighties classics like Meatloaf and Patti Smith. Perhaps it was just my mood and state of mind right now. Who knows?
Read More »Learning to Ski After Age 50
Learning to ski later in life is an experience. Just getting the ski boots on is an almighty struggle and by the time those boots are on, I am exhausted. Then off you tromp as best you can with immoveable ankles and carting what seems to be two tons of skis over the shoulder. All around others from the age of three all the way to pension age move with effortless ease while you feel like an elephant on ice. Next, you carefully put on the skis. A balancing act in of itself as the damn things slip and slide making you look like something out of a cartoon whose legs are whirling frantically but there is no forward progress. Now, with huge attachments to your legs making it nigh
Read More »London and the Brits – Observations
I had a quick trip to London this week and I have decided that London is almost unrecognizable to me these days. So much development work and a real shift in eating habits over the last 20-years means that I really am lost there. I started my career as a Geologist with BP and after moving down from Aberdeen and a spell at the BP Research Center, I was moved to Britannic House – the tower block on the edge of the City of London. Being in the City, I retraced my steps from the Bank tube station as I would have walked to work some 20+ years ago and not only did I recognize very little but I couldn’t find Britannic House at all! I came home thinking it
Read More »Parallel Worlds, Aliens, Conspiracy and Life
Since I was knee high to a grasshopper I have wondered ‘what the hell is this all about?’ I mean this. The world, life and everything. It’s always been transparent to me that all is not what it seems. That ‘this’ really is an illusion – Maya. But what am I? Why do I exist? What’s the point? These questions often have plagued me and last night as I laid in bed I couldn’t sleep wondering yet again over these and similar questions. My problem was that I had been browsing the internet! There are all sorts of ideas out there. Not just ideas but ‘creations’ if you want where someone – probably asking the same questions I am asking – decided on making some answers. I read amongst other
Read More »Things That Went Bump in the Night
Growing up and leaving my version of Neverland, things took a turn for the worse. I guess it started around age 12 or so and maybe peaked at 17. Nights became sheer living hell at times as I lay in my bed scared to death. It started innocently enough in seeing a ghost. The man dressed as a Cavalier was sat at a desk writing, got up abruptly and walked out through my bedroom wall. My brother who I shared a room with saw him too. It went a bit pear-shaped after that though. Strange noises…. bangs, cracks, deep sighs, all unexplainable. Then footsteps. I hated the footsteps. Listening to ghostly footsteps moving closer and closer and closer…. Doors opened by themselves, things vanished inexplicably to turn up equally inexplicably
Read More »Seeking Neverland
As a young child I think I was quite innocent. Perhaps I was a tad over protected by my parents or perhaps I was just built that way. To be honest I do not know. I do know though that I had (and to some degree still do have) an imagination. My imagination was such that I drew other children in to my fantasy land and when I left it even momentarily, they stopped playing there. It was as if I were the catalyst for whatever fantasy we built. It was I that built layer upon layer of substance out of sticks, dustbins, stones and such. I would often delay having to go to the bathroom simply because I knew that on my return, the fantasy would be lost, gone,
Read More »Urine Deep
I found a book yesterday called the Book of Aquarius by Anon. I’m a good couple of years out of date finding it since it took parts of the internet by storm as a plainly written how to do it book on The Philosophers’ Stone. It can be downloaded for free if you Google it. Its quite well thought of in some quarters and, by many accounts, is the real deal. So what then is the Prima Materia for our Magnum Opus? Urine. Yes, that’s right – urine. Not any old urine – it has to be yours and it has to be collected at the right time. But it is Urine. From said Urine comes the Philosopher’s Stone. Yes, the thing you can live forever with or turn Lead
Read More »Policemen and Blondie
They used to say that you knew you were getting older when the policemen looked young. Well, that may be so but I have a different yardstick. Last night, I was listening to some Blondie and I thought to myself “Wonder what ever happened to Debbie Harry?” So I googled here and I discovered that she is 68-years old! 68! This is a woman I used to have on my wall and who I fantasized about as a teenager but she is 68….. This got me started. Cyndi Lauper – another amazing artist and I thought beautiful girl – well she is 60. Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders – she would be 62. My childhood love – Sandie Shore – now 66 and SuZi Q – 63. Now I feel
Read More »Time
I remember my Grandmother telling me that time sped up as you got older. I was probably 5 or 6-years old at the time and, for me, time was a mystery. On the one hand, Christmas just seemed to take eons to arrive and then, when it did, it was over in a flash. The month of December was like torture really. Each day, you would open one door on that advent calendar but each day seemed like a century. Now, of course, I understand my Grandmother’s point of view. Weeks and months flash by so fast I could swear it was still August if it weren’t for the weather and falling leaves. Time is a funny thing. We can measure it very precisely but what exactly are we measuring?
Read More »A Photo
A photo of my Dad looks back at me from my desk in my home office. He sits in rainproof gear and back pack with a big smile on his face on the top of the Sgurr of Eigg. It was chilly and drizzling that day but we had climbed the Sgurr in the morning and were now examining the remains of the Iron age fort at the top and admiring the views periodically visible through the mist. After a sandwich and crisps lunch, we would walk down the other side of the Sgurr talking animatedly about the Iron age, geology and Scotland. Half way down, I would step inadvertently into a hidden crack in the peat and have to endure a smelly, wet and very darkly stained foot and
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