While You Were Sleeping

It is 9.25 on Christmas Eve and I have been to work, come home, put every Felice track I have on a playlist and pressed repeat, cooked a ham, the best I have yet done (a bastardisation of Jamie Oliver's jerk ham), made some sausage rolls, made some stuffing for tomorrow, arsed about a bit, introduced the youngest to Lynrd Skyrd and Bob Marley (neither of whom I'm overly fond of) and had a bit to drink. I'm about ready to collapse, but it will be hours before I get to bed, then it will seem like minutes before I am woken up again. It probably will be minutes.

My record of the year list still consists of the Felice Brothers, but two mentions have to go to famous children................Teddy Thompson, who I will be seeing in January and Elvis Perkins, whose album is brilliant; most of it is anyway and it will stand up for years to come.

3 good articles today slagging Cameron off in the Guardian. I can't be bothered linking to them, you know where the Guardian site is, but it's nice to see that, finally, he is getting some stick. One of the articles is about how his front bench rebelled against him and his idea of banning them from taking up dozens of directorships. They said that they would point out that he doesn't need directorships, because he has inherited millions.

This tells you all you need to know about the bastard Tories. The old Etonian leader(s) are hypocrites and the rest of them are so consumed with greed they would rather betray their leader than give up easy money. Note that they didn't rebel on a point of principle, they squealed like stuck pigs because it was suggested that they concentrated their efforts on the jobs that are elected, and well remunerated to do.

Steady Rolling

There is a great piece by AC Grayling on secularism in todays Guardian. Christian nutters have had it too easy for too long; it's time to fight back.

Which gives me the opportunity for a moan. My nipper goes to a school on the other side of town. We made a rational decision to send him there because it is the best school in town. The Welsh government won't tell you that, because they like to keep these thing secret, but, as I worked for the council at the time, I saw a report which is not publicly available, which made it plain that to send him to our local comp would have been irrational to the point of lunacy. Its a bit of a pain, with all his new mates living miles away and it's a bit a pa9in paying the extra bus fare, when he could have walked.

Which brings to my point. As he waits for the bus, he is surrounded by dozens of kids waiting for a free bus to a catholic school in another town, and every bus stop I pass on the way to work has loads of kids wearing that schools uniform, waiting for the free bus. My nipper cannot get free transport because there is another school nearer to him. Well there is another school nearer to the Catholics too, but they get free transport because they believe in fairy stories. I have mentioned before that most of these kids were in the Church Of Wales as juniors, because that particular school has a better reputation than others. It ain't just, I tell you, and the bigger injustice is that the local school are all shitholes and public money goes to faith schools.

Play flow, it will relax you.

Hallelujah, Christ, I am sick of that bloody song, whoever is doing, mostly though, I am sick of hearing it constantly hummed everywhere I go. I'm not sick of Leonard Cohen, especially his narration of the Tibetan Book of the Dead:


Have you seen Outnumbered on the BBC? That's us, that is.

Jesus On The Mainline

If you are of a spiritual bent, or even if you are just a curious bystander, you will most definitely appreciate this: When Jesus met Buddha

Song For My Father

It's been how long?

It hardly seems worth it anymore, but like the bloody Blues, I just can't give it up.

Throw a shoe at Bush

I have been trained over the last few months and I am now qualified to teach certain simple self defence moves to carers who might be at risk of assault. I can guarantee that if anyone attempted to assault me, they would succeed, yet I can stand in front of a room of people and demonstrate techniques to them which will reduce their chances of getting hurt. I am living proof of the old adage that that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.

My old Mondeo is knackered and I am having to change it, which is not something I enjoy doing, which is why I always drive knackered old bangers until they literally fall apart. The Mondeo is going to Oxfam, who will auction it and keep any proceeds. Bear this in mind if you have an uneconomical old banger, it could still do some good. I wonder how much I would get for the Mrs?

The Guardian has a new list of 100 best websites. The interesting thing is how uninteresting it is. Nearly everything on the list is well known, whereas a few years ago nearly everything would have been new. The reason I started blogging was because I was finding so much stuff that was just, so new, so different, so plain unbelievable..............now everything seems a bit old hat and everyone knows where to find stuff that interests them. The comment box that invites other recommendations is empty, so far anyway. The web has stagnated!

Here is my end of year list:



A magnum photo essay on life and death in Brazil............ a man will talk to you as you view it, just so you know: Requiem in Samba