September 3rd 2014

At around 8.15 each morning this is my view. How long it remains my view depends on the Mayor of Bristol. This is Clifton, and it's a maze of streets, which by 9am have filled up with commuters. For 15 years I've parked either here, or in one of the adjacent streets. I love the architecture, the feel of the place, quiet yet in the centre of the city and the 10 minute walk into work feels like a treat (although less so sometimes heading home after a long day). Soon these streets will be empty, only residents will be allowed to park, and by experience across other areas of the city, during the day these streets really are empty. So today I thought, lets record the view from my car when I park at 8.15 every morning. Because one day I won't.

September 2nd 2014

Walking into work today, although still mild, it really did feel like autumn was creeping in. And it is because of the intensity of the light. Around 10 days ago I noticed the sun was lower in the sky than of late. A sign that the rapid change to a different day-length was gathering pace. This is why September has always been a favourite month of mine, the suns rays whilst still powerful, come in at an angle that lift the light on any subject it hits. It's the same in late April and early May. Something I picked up on with my 12th of May posting. [Link to May 12th].  The wheel of the year never stops revolving and that's a good thing. How dull would it be if nothing changed. As I sit writing this at 9pm a robin is tentatively singing its first territorial song. Its the first time I've hear that this autumn, a song that will continue through until the spring. When as now the evenings will draw to a close with the last (or in spring, first) of the house martins. Nature is moving.

September 1st 2014

An end of an era in more than one way. Today I put into my tax disc holder what will be the last ever tax disc I buy. From October the 1st it will no longer be necessary to display a tax disc in a car, so September 2014 is the final month of issuing disks. For 93 years vehicles driven on British roads have sported a paper disk, but no more. From 1st October 2015 no cars will show them and all number plates will now be scanned regularly for tax evaders. What I have also learnt is that September 2014 issued discs, the ones with the perforated edges that is, are rarer than hens teeth. As the DVLA have exhausted supplies of blank perforated discs, as a stop gap, most September 2014 issued discs have been printed on plain paper and so the car owner will need to cut the disc out with scissors. I ordered mine in mid August and so received it in pristine perforated form. Chances are this may become a collectors item as it has been issued direct from the DVLA and could be worth a few hundred pounds once it expires. Not bad for my £20 yearly outlay. Much as I can see the sense of the new electronic tax system, I'll miss the paper discs, especially that fear of ripping them trying to get them out of the perforated paper square. And I can see a whole host of problems when the electronic surveillance vans mis-read a numberplate, not to mention criminal gangs scamming legitimate plates. Progress I guess, but the end of an era indeed.

As is the fact that today, September 1st is the last month of this project blog. I have a plan for the new blog, but I can't believe I've reached this milestone so quickly. The time has flown and my 50th year project now has but another 29 days to run.

August 31st 2014

What a fantastic day today. Weather warm, not a cloud in the sky and well, what better than to go for a walk. Well to be honest, Julie persuaded me to go for a walk as after yesterdays long day I fancied a quiet, feet-up sort of day. However persuaded I was and if I'm honest, I was pleased to be on the move. We left the house and walked to Sand Bay via Woodspring Priory and a bridleway-cum-across farmland I'd never used before. A stop at the Sand Bay Tea Rooms was obligatory (it was packed) before the return leg along the beach, over Sand Point and back via the Priory. Not entirely certain but it's around 10 miles as a circular walk. Certainly we were out 5 hours and walking all that time except when forcing down cake and tea. I was shattered and hungry after that and so we made a friend of mine's wonderful vegetarian dish, Gamagees Pie. I've no idea why its called that (containing only onion, chopped tomato, celery, carrot, berlotti beans, pepper and Marmite) but it made such a tasty treat at the end of a tiring day, it made the exhaustion I felt seem to melt away with the first mouthful. What a fantastic day indeed.

August 30th 2014

........ eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly vessel. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death" (a deathly-pale woman), who are playing dice for the souls of the crew......

Samuel Taylor Coleridge walked along the Somerset coastline many times in the two years he lived at Nether Stowey with his friends the Wordsworths'. Nearly 200 years later I walked the same coast myself for the first time and like Coleridge found that it has an unnatural, magical and ethereal fascination. Neither pretty, nor unspoilt, it exhibits a spiritual attractive remoteness I can't explain.

Sandwiched between the carbuncle that is Bridgwater and Minehead this 30 odd mile stretch of coastline has a Nuclear power station, a blizzard of caravan parks, and Butlins yet, as Coleridge found, as we walked along Blue Anchor Bay today it feels isolated, strange, a place to not linger too long, yet somehow it's atmosphere of strangeness is a comfort. I know of no other place like this. Julie's reactions today were as mine when first coming here in 1994, I didn't like it, nor did she. I could tell Julie was uneasy being there, and yet 4 hours later the atmosphere here envelops you and provides a stillness of calm that only a landscape of many trod can provide. 

Coleridge many times traversed this area in his drug fuelled perambulations, composing some of literatures most astounding poetry, Kubla Kahn and from where the above comment elides to, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. He also composed one of my favourites, the Frost at Midnight in the cottage now owned by the National Trust. I made a radio programme which included this a few years back.

I didn't compose any poetry today but as I sat by some truly weird wooden posts impaled into the beach, hulks of rotten teeth belonging to a green monster from the sea, the landscape glittered and shone in a melancholic beauty. A lone fisherman broke the reverie.  I felt the fingers of Coleridge's imagination envelop me in that Frost of Midnight, 

"Or if the secret ministry of frost 

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon."

August 29th 2014

Wodehouse. The very word dispels any thought of depression or melancholy. I thought it was only myself who when feeling a little dull around the gizzard opened up a Wodehouse tome and guffawed at the antics of the Drones Club. Elixir to any fevered brow. Yet over time I read of many who satiated their need for mirth with a re-reading of the antics of one Bertram Wooster at the Market Sodbury School prize giving. A delight then that today flopping onto the mat like an expectant kipper, two of the finest pick-me-ups a chap could wish for. December is a long way off, yet on checking the seating arrangements this week, such is the timeless draw of the comic genius of P.G. that most seats were taken or reserved. It will be four months before I fire up the old two seater and hove into the city for an evening of derring-do and aperitif. I can't wait.

August 28th 2014

I'd just sat down in the garden for ten minutes with a refreshing brew, while waiting for Julie to get home from Wiltshire when I made the mistake of checking Facebook on the Blackberry. I'd been nominated for the ridiculous 'Ice Bucket Challenge' by my lovely cousin in law Alex.  Much as I love Alex, it saddened me that the nomination came from her, because to her I'd send a refusal. But a refusal I did. I've watched this bizarre social media trend gather pace over the last week and wondered what has happened to the World?

Why have we lost our individuality to think and process without interference?  What is this gathering momentum to 'not be left out' of a situation. Stop and think.

Undoubtedly a good cause to put funds into Motor Neurone Disease charity (note if it goes to ALS this benefits American research), but this is just one of many millions of good causes around the world. Personally if the money went into sorting out the developing world's water crisis I'd support that whole heartily. Water, or the lack of it will destroy the Planet, and in not too many years ahead I'm afraid. But I digress.

The disconnectedness of social media allows millions of friends on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to demand a service from an individual without a second thought. I'm not including Alex here but recent research has revealed that 53% of people doing the ice bucket challenge never gave any money to charity, and a third had no idea why they were doing it, with a sizeable number saying they did it as self promotion.  And there was me thinking giving to charity was an altruistic move. What worries me more with this increasing collective wave of social media is that it is an unstoppable wave of pressure on the individual to conform to what society wants us to be. You may think I'm wrong, you may think I'm just a grumpy 50 year old, and that is your right to do so, but let me explain.

None of us would write an e-mail or a letter to our friends or family and say you must give £60 to this charity because I say so, it just would not happen. (Social media seems to have forgotten the challenge is give £60 OR, I REPEAT OR, forfeit that with a dousing of ice water over the head - people are doing both). In the same way there is often a certain uneasiness reading the invitation recently dropped through the letterbox; Sam and Pete would like you to come to our wedding,  and suggest a donation to this animal charity instead of wedding gifts.

Yet social media is rapidly becoming the vehicle for a blunt ended weapon of pressure that 'you must conform'.

Increasingly I feel that social media's disconnectivity is a dangerous tool in the control of the many by a few. Its the same disconnectivity that allows car drivers to behave appallingly on our roads shielded by their metal box; they'd of course never cut people up in person or walk right up behind them for miles because the individual wasn't walking fast enough. Disconnection cultivates  individual bravado (and in serious cases cyber bullying) and mass hysteria.

I've recently deactivated my Twitter account for this reason, as anyone who puts their head up above the baying masses parapet was immediately shot, then hung drawn and quartered, before having their photo put on Instagram, by people who know much less of the discussed argument than the instigator. And that's not healthy. Debate is healthy, something the late Tony Benn spoke passionately about. We need to understand others views, but,  more importantly we need to listen to the views of others. Listening is the most important thing any individual can do. Don't talk, don't lecture, open up you mind to another way by just listening, and listen silently.

Listening and understanding are something I strongly feel social media is stifling - the mob is right the individual is wrong. That is of course until another 'viral sensation' comes along and like a pack of hounds chasing a foxes scent they move in the opposite direction onto another victim. If you have ever watched the train station crowd scene as they change platforms at the beginning of Jaques Tati's 1953 film  Monsieur Hurlot's holiday then you'll get the idea.  There is undoubtedly some good coming out of social media, but boy have I seen some collective baying of hounds. It's like the man on the eighteenth century gallows who facing the voyeuristic unwashed mob, contemplates his death for killing a deer to feed his starving family because the landowner he poached from didn't pay him living wage. How many in the crowd pitied him I wonder. 

Monty Python's Life of Brian is an excellent summation of this. Brian, addressing the masses outside his bedroom window in an attempt to get them to go away, the crowd thinking he's the Messiah....... (with thanks to Wikiquotes)

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!

Crowd: [in unison] Yes! We're all individuals!

Brian: You're all different!

Crowd: [in unison] Yes, we are all different!

Man in crowd: I'm not...

Crowd: Shhh!
.
And that's my point. If individuals wish to do the ice bucket challenge and post their efforts on Facebook, then do so, I'm happy. Equally, if I refuse to take part, then I'm at liberty to do so. I also worry that mass media coverage of ALS or MND will divert monies away from other research, other possibly smaller charities (we all have limited disposable income) and so what will that effect be in the long run. On the same day I saw a posting for a chap called Christian Nock who walked the 8,000 mile British coastline to raise funds for the homeless ex soldiers which this country happily just spits out and forgets about once they're of little use to our country's security. He himself ended up homeless. His target was a modest £200,000, (£181,849 raised so far) yet hardly any media coverage has followed him, I certainly didn't know about him before yesterday even though he finished the walk in March. And so, I shall donate to him retrospectively, and not to the now swelled coffers of the ALS charity. I am exercising my individuality, but conforming in a way as I rarely give to charity, so thank you Alex. If it hadn't been you who nominated me for the Ice Bucket Challenge I may have just said no and forgotten about it. But as it's you and I'm fond of you, Christian Nock actually doing something himself for others, gets the 50p.

And finally well done Alex, you did the ice challenge because you wanted to - and for that you make me happy.