October Walk

Wandering about London towards the end of October I found various things I hadn't noticed before...I started in Pimlico with this attempt at reflecting the "youthful" nature of an urban street. Apart from the fact that this is utter drivel - urban streets are not in any way youthful...I think it's hit rather wide of the mark and maybe it reflects a 63 year old's view of youthfulness. Wonder how long before it gets nicked for scrap.(see left)? But at least it doesn't fall foul of Danny Baker's theory about the trouser bringing about the decline of modern statuary. That is, statues look silly in trousers. I hope to be examining this in more detail as time goes on...One way round this is to stick to female and / or classical subjects.

Edgy: this 'naughty' girl is roller-skating on a bench

Trousers are definitely not an issue for the next new sculpture I found, near Vauxhall Bridge on the north bank. And here...

an empty headed couple of gender stereotypes here

Smile!

vauxhall

These flats (left), which make up the St George Wharf development, started going up around the time i first moved to Camberwell. They're going up....and they've absolutely transformed the area. No-one used to live in Vauxhall, and now fecking thousands do. The US embassy fortress will be going up near here from 2013- no doubt so they can pass orders to MI6 as befits the tinpot little poodle nation that we are...and never forget that poodles are vicious little shits! Back in 2009 Boris Johnson was upset with the plans. It appears now to be opening in 2017.

This is an artists impression I found on-line:

I caught the Frog thing or whatever amphibian animal they named it after. I didn't have my proper camera with me unfortunately, which is always the way! It's heading to the MI6 building where it rejoins the road for a run back to the depot.

Then I walked along by the Thames for a bit. Haven't done this in a couple of years! Water seemed to be unusually high.

one of my favourite views: lots of water

I passed by Parliament Square before jumping on the tube to go back to the office. Glad to see the protest continues despite Brian Hawes death earlier this year.

Stuff Round Up

Does this mean Dark matter may not exist?

And this issue - has always bugged me. Just exactly why do corporations get the same rights as human beings?



Citizens United Case that prompted this amendment

dream

i found myself being made an officer in the navy. an admiral no less!

I was given a ludicrously over-decorated jacket to wear and two
shirts. That's right, 2 shirts which I had to wear one over the other.

On the way home through the centre of Plymouth I was harrassed by
small boys on bikes, one of whom was supercool riding a bike with the
back wheel missing and only half a wheel attached to the front. I have
no idea how he did this.

Then I remembered how anyone in a suit was attacked in Plymouth. I
recalled a time when I was on a bus, in a suit and locals started
throwing bricks at the bus windows when they saw me in a suit. No
doubt this is a throw back to my time at school where my uniform was
likely to provoke violence from boys at lesser schools.

I remember very little else!

Christmas Playlist

May be I'm coming to terms with Christmas now. Its difficult for me because while I manage to get through the rest of the year keeping myself out of distressing sociable situations, Christmas forces you to make a choice. The choice is: join in 100% or be left out utterly and on your own.

Over the years I've managed carve out my own niche. Obviously it was fine when i was a kid and even round my Gran's house as a child I used to go off to be by myself for much of the evening. And this was accepted under the guise that I wanted to see the Christmas Bond film, which was a regular feature of the ITV schedules. I'd sit upstairs in my Granparents' bedroom and watch on their little t.v. and be plied with drinks and snacks throughout. It gave a me a cool (as in temperature) space with reduced stimulus in which to sit, be and think, as well as watch a Bond film (one of the good early ones I hasten to add).

I went through a difficult patch then as a teenager. Found night clubs and that difficult and used to get far too wasted far too early. Mainly because the sociable aspect of this ritual was limited for me, and quite obviously I became much more sociable with alcohol, for a short time. So ended up I getting wasted instead.

Then i met a girl and married so it became a family Xmas. Her family up in the fens. Then friends took me in after she left me, and I had what up till then had been the best  Xmas of my adult life, with the people I had campaigned and protested with during the previous few years. Then came a second marriage, a whole new family, and my own child now, kept me in Xmases for the best part of a decade! Me and S more or less felt the same about xmas so we'd go off and do out own thang more often than not. Our own thang took in Norfolk, staying in our own flat and having friends round, disappearing off to Amsterdam one year or setting up camp in a relative's house for a few days.

God I miss her!

Since then it's been a struggle again. Two years round my parents in Devon before that got too much for me and them! My Dad's 70 now and they are SO set in their ways my presence for more than a couple of days seems to upset them more than please them. Then from 2009 I've been back on my own again. This will be my third solo Xmas since splitting with S. Next year I'm seriously considering going elsewhere, though options are limited as is money!

What's good about being by yourself is that you can pretty much ignore the whole thing and I get some time off work to catch up with "stuff". This year I've been to a couple of works dos, my local cycling do, and I've downloaded a load of Xmassy music so I can at least have a party on my MP3 player!

This is the most engaged in Xmas I have been for at least 4 years. There was that last final disastrous Xmas with S, the 2nd or 3rd most depressing of my life! We were both incredibly depressed that year. A split was inevitable!

And so - to my Xmas playlist.....

I've tried to find stuff a little off the beaten track - the sort of stuff you hear on 6Music played by those in the know, but that never appear on the mainstream compilations, or indeed hear in the shops.

I think I've done pretty well. A lot of the stuff I was after is unfortunately only available on vinyl or CD, and often not available at all, but i found some new stuff.

First off i went to look for festive soul and funk

James Brown
This album is misnamed. While there is definitely funky tracks on there, it appears to be a compilation from across Brown's career and includes much from his pre-funky era. So it might as well have been called Soulful Christmas. But for about £3 it was worth it even if only half the tracks came up to standard.
Having said that, James Brown's soulful stuff can be pretty good too!

Santa Claus go Straight To The Ghetto

Soulful Christmas

Santa Claus Is Definitely Here To Stay

Tit For Tat (Ain't No Taking Back)

Santa Claus, Santa Claus

There's much more to be had from this album, but these are the best tracks.


Bootsy Collins
I think this might be a bit of an overlooked christmas gem:

It's all good.

Chestnuts (AKA The christmas Song)

Jingle Belz

WinterFunkyLand

Santa's Coming

Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer 

Rudolph is now a funk and soul reindeer. This album is stuffed full of originals and classics radically reworked in the Bootsy Collins funk idiom. You can't go wrong at £7.49 (Amazon). Though I found many of the tracks to be available as free downloads and on You Tube. 

Motown
This is an album of mixed quality. Though enough good tracks to justify it's cost.

There's a few Jackson 5 tracks on there. I'm no Michael Jackson fan, quite the opposite in fact, however the ones on here are mostly very good.  Also on here, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, a mental version of "Joy To The World" by the Supremes. the Temptations aren't as good as you'd hope. They seem to be taking Xmas far too seriously and religiously for my taste, though "My Xmas Tree" ain't too bad, if a little sentimental. Marvin Gaye appears too with the marvellous "Christmas In The City". Kim Weston's "Wish You a Merry xmas" is cool in classic Motown diva style.


Then I looked for reggae and ska tracks - harder to find, unfortunately. At least on MP3 anyway.
http://www.mistletunes.com/reggae.html
I consider this to be a project in progress....watch this space.

finally, though i didn't initially go searching for it - jazz numbers kept coming up - so I selected a few

All of these albums have at least one good standout track on them, sometimes several. i advise you to check them out before buying.

Christmas Jazz

Ella Fitzgerald

I bought a couple of tracks of this - while I love Ella, the combination of her rich voice and Xmas schmaltz means i can only take her in small doses. Still great though. In small doses. It almost doesn't matter what you buy off this and amazon let's you sample before you buy, which is very helpful. 

Not the Verve, that wouldn't be a very happy Xmas would it? But Verve, the Jazz label. 

I didn't buy the whole album, but a few tracks are worth buying. Ella Fitzgerald's "Rudolph", Ramsey Lewis Trio's "Here Comes Santa Claus", "'Zat You Santa Claus", Louis Armstrong, "Greensleeves" John Coltrane, Shirley Horne, "Winter Wonderland", "Santa Claus Is Coming To town", Bill Evans, a jazz organ version of "Jingle Bells", Jimmy Smith, 

The Ultimate Jazz Christmas

Count Basie's Jingle Bells is sublime, and a must have for any Christmas playlist. But don't buy the album, it's just not worth it. Pick off the 3 or 4 tracks you'll like, at the most, and buy them.

 Finally, more traditional type music:

Plenty of old school xmas classics on here. The album is way cheaper to by than individual tracks so go easy. If you start feeling you want to buy more than 6 or 7 tracks of this album then you may as well buy the whole thing and listen at your leisure. Some of the tracks on here are seldom heard such as Louis Armstrong's "Cool Yule" and Earnest Tubb's "Blue Christmas".


I already have the perennial favourite - the Phil Spector Christmas album. It's a shame I only get to play it three weeks of the year

And this is my rather modest Christmas groceries stash:

The duck is in the freezer!

Happy Xmas!

The Moon

I wondered if I could get a decent snap of our Moon with my camera. I'm quite pleased with it.

"I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean how dare they go on strike when they've got these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?" Millionaire & ex public schoolboy, Jeremy Clarkson

aging, flabby millionaire tosspot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Colombia

Between 1986 and 2010 over 2800 were killed according to one source, and over 4000 according to others. Most assassinations were carried out by paramilitaries or the Colombian military; some were carried out by the guerillas. In 2009 only around 4% of workers in Colombia were unionised. Wikipedia

Clarkson probably thinks this is a good thing, least ways, he hasn't apologised for his crass and offensive remarks. His non-apology reads thus:

"I didn't for a moment intend these remarks to be taken seriously – as I believe is clear if they're seen in context. If the BBC and I have caused any offence, I'm quite happy to apologise for it alongside them."

Here are some examples from the "Justice For colombia" website - there are many many more examples if you click on the link, and they continue right up to the present. 

http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/campaigns/union-rights/

1st of October 2009 at 8.30 p.m., hired assassins seriously injured Mario Montes de Oca Anaya and killed Alberto Luis Pastrana Soto, who was with him at the time, as they approached the main entrance of Hospital San Jerónimo in the city of Montería, Córdoba. 
Montes de Oca Anaya, head of the local branch of the Córdoba teachers’ association, ADEMACOR, and a legal advisor on the matter of displaced persons, received three bullet wounds and is currently in hospital in the city of Montería. As in many other such cases, the death threats against the teacher were reported, but the authorities took no action. Mario is the brother of Boris Montes de Oca, a member of the CUT executive and head of the Labour Relations and Collective Bargaining Department.

8 December 2009: The ITUC has denounced and strongly condemned the murders of art teacher Zorayda Cortés López, who worked at the Higher Technical Institute of Pereira, the capital of Risaralda, and Leny Yanube Rengifo Gómez, a teacher and active member of the Cauca education workers’ union, Asociación de Institutores y Trabajadores de la Educación del Cauca – ASOINCA.

It is unacceptable and a cause for grave concern in the trade union movement that 195 teachers have been assassinated in Colombia, without a single arrest being made, and that 35 trade unionists have been killed this year alone.http://www.ituc-csi.org/colombia-195-teachers-killed-no.html

Teacher Trade Unionist killed every two weeks in colombia

http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-17808-f0.pdf

It's not just the killings, and it's not just Colombia, there are imprisonments and intimidation worldwide, Turkey, Iraq, Somalia, Thailand, all over central and south America, Africa and the Middle East. Have no doubt that if the west continues down its current road of oppression and injustice we may well see this happening in Europe too. Remember that it was happening in Europe as recently as 35 years ago. That's not even to begin on some of the suppressed stories from the 1980s miners' strike in the UK. Don't be complacent!

http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?page=morenews&id_mot=43

This makes Jeremy Clarkson very very happy: a murdered Trade Unionist