lifes journey

One of my most poignant childhood memories is something I think of as The Great Venture. It began with a put-down from my father. I cannot remember exactly what was said. Time has erased the words, but not the feeling. Whatever it was, it lodged itself somewhere deep inside me. For months afterwards I carried a private determination to prove him wrong. I said nothing about it. I made no grand declarations. I simply planned. Then one morning, at twelve years old, I woke up and knew the day had arrived. My grandfather lived 43.5 miles away. About 70 kilometres. To an adult with a car, it was an ordinary journey. To a twelve-year-old boy on a bicycle, it was an expedition. I set off alone. At some point along the way I bought a postcard and a stamp. The postcard was important. It was proof. Grandad could post it back to my father so he would know I had actually done it. What I didn't realise was that Grandad would be on the telephone to my parents the moment I arrived. The...

A Facebook post caught my attention today. I can't remember the exact wording now, which is unusual because I spend a fair bit of time reading, writing and thinking about words. What I do remember is the feeling behind it. The question was simple enough. Why is there a legal requirement to stop and report hitting a dog, but not a cat? A straightforward question on the surface. An answer exists. The law says what it says. Case closed. Except it wasn't. Because what stayed with me wasn't the question. It was the frustration sitting quietly behind it. You know those moments when somebody asks about one thing but is really talking about something else? That's what I saw. Not outrage. Not somebody looking for an argument. Just a person bumping into a reality that didn't sit comfortably with them. A moment where the world's priorities and their own priorities didn't quite line up. As a cat owner, I understood immediately. Not because I had ...

I discovered today a huge source of what seems to be unpublished blogs going back as 2008!  How best to share them, thats my ponderance for the day, it feels like christmas!  For the last 10 years I have had my eyes on the current war situation in the middle east and find have an absolutely neutral view in the rights and brings if it all because that is the root of the entire issue, each of the players have good reason to be in a state of war and even if peace be found it will never be over, I sit here now in the group that is neither connected nor concerned, the only difference between myself and others is that there are those who are only concerned about the price of petrol without knowing the whys, the how's and the whens, not withstanding those who don't even know there's a war going on, I live in the other camp, those who know exactly what's going on, nd know equally that anything they contribute will not make one bit of difference, I'm not sure in ...

This morning I found myself reflecting on how much my life has changed and, more importantly, how much of it has remained exactly the same. The thought began, as many do these days, with something relatively trivial. A complaint on Facebook about a driver using full beam headlights. It was one complaint amongst thousands that pass through social media every day, but it set me thinking about a wider pattern. Increasingly, minor inconveniences become major grievances, public discussion becomes public complaint, and every complaint seems to generate calls for action, regulation and enforcement. That is not to say rules are unnecessary. Society requires them. Yet I often wonder where the line lies between genuine problems and the ordinary irritations that inevitably accompany life. Perhaps it is age that causes such thoughts. Perhaps it is experience. More likely it is simply the way my mind works. I have rarely been content with the immediate subject in front of me...

The Cost of Interruption in Artistic Immersion The Five-Year Battle to Protect Immersion This morning, I learned something that immediately explained years of frustration within my creative life. Research suggests that when a person is disturbed at the deepest level of concentration, it can take around 23 minutes to regain that same level of focus. A single fact suddenly made sense of years of internal anger, disappointment, and the quiet destruction of works that had once felt alive in my hands. For years, whenever I became fully absorbed in a painting or sculpture, something would break through the door of my mind. A knock at the door. A text message. A ringing phone. To the outside world, these interruptions seemed insignificant. Inside my creative state, however, they were catastrophic. What disappeared was not simply concentration. The entire internal world of the work collapsed. I would return to the painting or sculpture and continue working, but something essential ...

I have chicken thigh fillets and, starting to lose a little something its time to explore a new taste and texture for my pallet. I have spread my fillets, without drying, I have marinated  in salt and pepper and wrapped in cling film and placed on a rack for around 40 minutes.  While wrapping I remembered from some input, where omlette was cooked by wrapping in cling film and plunging in simmering for how long I can't remember, is memory right in thinking I have seen chicken cooked in similar manner. I have chicken thigh fillets and, starting to lose a little something its time to explore a new taste and texture for my pallet. I have spread my fillets, without drying, I have marinated  in salt and pepper and wrapped in cling film and placed on a rack for around 40 minutes.  While wrapping I remembered from some input, where omlette was cooked by wrapping in cling film and plunging in simmering for how long I can't remember, is memory right in thinking I have seen chi...

Andrew: ​“It’s been fascinating watching Jerry transition from a semi-feral cat to what he is now. When I last saw him it was 10:30am and he had slept for some hours past his normal routine. Not only that, he kept coming back several times”. ​Reply: ​That really is fascinating to watch. ​And it’s exactly the sort of thing that tells you a cat is starting to feel like he belongs. ​When Jerry first arrived, his behaviour would have been driven by uncertainty. Semi-feral cats tend to run on a pretty simple survival routine: eat, disappear, stay safe, and avoid becoming dependent on any one place. They’re always thinking about escape routes and backup plans. ​What you’re describing now feels quite different. ​The fact that he didn’t head out until 10:30am, which is much later than he previously would have, suggests there was no urgency for him to leave. He wasn’t feeling the need to patrol, check territory, or go looking for resources elsewhere. Even more telling ...

I have come to understand that living with respiratory diseases is not a matter if endurance but a matter if wisdom, a shift from force to strategy, frim pushing through to listening closely.  The body no longer works in automatic and operates on negotiation, on quiet agreements between energy and breath. I have learned to rest before I am tired, ti pause between strain arrives, to break tasks down before they break me down, this is not weakness it is a form if intelligence that emerges only when the body demands respect. A small rest taken early becomes a kind if prevention, a way of avoiding the crash that comes from ignoring the first whispers if fatigue. The old saying about a lazy man finding the smartest route has becime a quuet philosophy for me. I have stopped seeing efficiency as laziness and seeing it as survival, as adaptation as a way of making sure every breath I spend is worth the cost no longer fighting my limits but working with them  My...

We live in a culture that demands constant declaration. You are expected to have a public stance on sex, an opinion on politics, a tribal alignment in religion, and a performative sympathy for every tragedy that rolls across a screen. The social contract has morphed into an endless, exhausting after-dinner debate where everyone is talking, nobody is listening, and the price of admission is your own peace of mind. ​So, I've opted out. ​My terms for existence are simple: your business is yours, mine is mine, and I have zero interest in holding court over either. If you want to argue over ideologies, don't invite me. If you want to perform moral outrage, do it somewhere else. I don't need you to agree with my life, and I extend you the exact same courtesy. Radical disengagement isn't hostility; it is a fortress built for quiet. ​What people mistake for cold isolation is actually basic mental hygiene. When you stop hosting the endless clutter of other people’s expect...

As time moves on it seems I have become more and more involved with a variety of Social Media, some and I have parted ways over the years and only the most useful have survived, U-Tube, Twitter, Facebook and its components remain.  A part of exploring many outlets for work it would seem is not only lost time but more importantly a dilution of information, of images and input all split between Timelines, notes, Groups Posts and Pages, for a long while it was difficult to manage and all became one big mess of information and posts, the obvious downside for having ones fingers in too many of the proverbial pies but these have to be explored, even this Blog which I have turned to today the time between posts has become longer and the posts shorter. The waters are now calmed, the wheat and chaff separated and some for of order now exists even then however I find my desktop files are still filled with stuff that there is no online home for an therein no guarentee of protection from onl...

19/10/2026 - Keeping the Wheels Turning Some days seem determined to test whether the wheels will keep turning. The day started early. Very early. By the afternoon I'd already moved drawers, prepared rooms for new carpets, spent nearly an hour recovering forgotten passwords after Sheila's computer unexpectedly met the floor, argued with artificial intelligence about the unauthorised appearance of ginger cats, discussed the nature of time itself, and somehow found my way into planning supper. Looking back over it, none of those things were on the original agenda. That's often how life works. The interesting part isn't the interruptions themselves. Most people deal with interruptions every day. The interesting part is what happens afterwards. Years ago, a single unexpected problem could derail an entire day. One complication arrives and everything else gets pushed aside. The momentum disappears. Plans are abandoned. Frustration takes over. These da...