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https://linktr.ee/lucyreidarts 'I can play the piano' whispered 5-year-old me to our deputy head teacher Mr. Dennis who was s... -
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Saturday, 31 March 2012
Tangerine Dream
Well it was cooler today and the fuel Crisis has eased! I was following the bidding on a second hand car on ebay which ended today but because I haven't had a car for as long as I haven't had a Television, namely six years I couldn't secure insurance for less than the value of the car. The Car was an old Jalopy and would have been useful for visiting family and trips to the D I Y stores but it wasn't to be.
So I bought a Bicycle instead!.
I purchased it from http://www.regbraddickcycles.com/ in Broadway, my first visit back down there for years. I was looking for a Hybrid with Suspension that would get me up the Taff Trail. I've been as far as Merthyr on my old Raleigh but am hoping that the Navy Blue Claud Butler will make my riding experience easier.
I have to admit to 'Bicycle Rage'. I get Bicycle Rage when I have to wait too long for cars while waiting to cross on Canton Bridge. I get the rage when Pedestrians waddle along like overweight ducks blissfully unaware that they share the Taff Trail with Cyclists. Cardiff is a Car City. Car is King. There are loads of cyclists especially when the weather is like this but the standard of cycling lanes and the volume of traffic just doesn't make it an enjoyable or safe experience.
Even though Francis Maude was a Tory Tit-Head for insisting that people fill their Jerry Cans, the ensuing panic buying reflected our fear and paranoia of being deprived something that perhaps allows us one of our very few freedoms. Our freedom to travel, to go wherever and whenever we want.
The reason perhaps that I have been so critical of Kairdiff is that I have essentially been a prisoner here for the last six years. No spontaneous combustion engine to take me away from here. Buses and trains sure, but I like many, am selfish. I am selfish because I want to control my mode of transport and my journey.
How long can we carry on like this, with our reliance on Oil and Petrol? Are people changing their behaviors in preparation for future shortages and austerity.
Perhaps we should ask that lady in York.
Friday, 30 March 2012
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
The Rubik's Cube of Life
Yesterday I had to get out of the 'Diff' again. Cheap Day Return to Bristol Temple Meads and then a bus to Clifton. I usually get off by the Museum and walk back down but I stayed on it and got off in a lovely little area. With a take away Latte from Nero's(Oooh la la! Have been boycotting them, since discovering that they don't pay any tax, like me)) to get myself in prime position for the Freebie next time, I sat down on a bench outside Clifton Library which it turns out is not open Tuesdays and Thursdays. I've done this many times, arrived in an alien area and like a dog marking its territory I walk about to get the vibe. I saw a man in a waistcoat looking rather aristocatic and I wrote down in my notebook 'Walking Pomposity in a waistcoat' and lo and behold on my way back to the main thoroughfare I spied a bookshop which was having a closing down sale and who was sitting in the back but the very same gentleman. I gave him a £1.00 for Paul Theroux's Patagonian Express and left thinking about him, his life, his shop, Amazon and Internet Booksellers and my own judgementalism.
On a good day I claim to be a Socialist but I don't know what I am really. I realised yesterday that the wealthy are vulnerable as well. I realised this as I helped push a Rangerover which had stalled at the lights. I didn't think twice as another two hunter gatherers were doing the same and there was a lady and little child at the wheel. The wealthy 'break down' as well but I suppose that they have better support structures and can afford to go private and pay for Counselling and Psychotherapy! Waiting for Cognitive Behavior Therapy on the NHS is like waiting for Hell to freeze over. I have been on the waiting list six years now, since my diagnosis, so I presume that they have forgotten or I am no longer on the list. Good thing it's not an emergency eh? Well it was back then. I suppose what I've had, that others don't have, is the luxury of time.
Since the age of 39 when I had my second 'breakthrough' I have had the opportunity to disassemble my Rubik's cube. Take it apart, blow out the dust, shine a light on the dark and dusty corners inside. Very few have this luxury! I think it's a necessity actually and not a luxury.
After calling into the Folk House for my copy of Spark Magazine I discovered Bristol Central Library which was open till 7.30 and had a Juice Bar inside. How civilized! I read books on Personal Finance and on Bipolar Disorder and on Mental Health Nursing. I'm either getting ill or better because I'm entertaining the idea of helping other people with their disassembled Rubik's cubes....yes, even the wealthy!
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Monday, 26 March 2012
The Wife of Bath
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"Whan that April with its shoores a saught"
And that is all that I remember from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that we studied for O level. It was a glorious sunny day today and with the lack of a plan and feeling a little claustrophobic on the mean streets of Cardiff, I hopped the A Train to Bath. Bath is not too far from Cardiff and is a classy place with some gravitas and grain. It is also a wealthy place. Tory or Lib Dem I would imagine. I felt like a tourist. I have been a few times before and like a dog marking its territory I made a circular walk from Bath Spa Station. I took my notebook and pen in the hope that the muse would strike. I asked a couple of people where the Job Centre was and they didn't know. They were locals as well. Evidently a Middle Class town, the chavs and chavettes stood out a little bit. They appeared self conscious. There was a 'cafe culture' in Bath which would wipe its derriere on Mill Lane. Its unfair to compare Kairdiff with Bath. But I'm going to anyway! I wonder if it has got to do with History. Bristol and Bath have a history and heritage. Cardiff's only goes back as far as the Industrial Revolution. Merthyr was bigger than Cardiff at the beginning and now oh how the tables have turned. I wonder what response Ian 'Dunk the Spunk' Smith would have if he told the people of Cardiff to travel to Merthyr for work. There is no work in South Wales. No work of any class and gravitas. As an experiment I went into the Job Centre and spent some time on the Job Search Machines and it was as fruitless as if I'd done it in Cardiff. On the Train, I received a call telling me that I was to attend a Job Fit Information session on Wednesday! Oh Goody! A line from the Big Issue screamed out at me after the Phone call. In an article about George Orwell's 'The Road to Wigan Pier, the author and journalist Stephen Armstrong visited Wigan in August of last year. He spoke to Richard who said to him " What do you do if you are a 45 year old man with few skills, and you're told, 'If you work really hard you could be the one wearing the orange apron saying "Welcome to B&Q". Richard concluded with "I don't know why people aren't rioting?" The next day, in Tottenham, the riots began.
I can't imagine a riot happening in Bath, unless it's the return of the Roman Ninth Legion. Bath like Abergavenny, Penarth and Cowbridge is twee, quaint and wealthy with loads of Middle Class Punters milling about. I have to admit that I got done in Debenhams walking past a sign offering a Ploughman's Lunch. I won't tell you how much I paid but for ingredients that didn't come in at a 1/6 of the full price. I then had one of my many ideas that never come to anything. Re-introduce the Ploughman's Lunch into the British Culinary Calendar but proper ingredients and you could still make a decent profit if you sold it at a Fiver. I left like a wounded Welsh fox. I should have walked about to Roy Orbison's 'Only the Lonely'. There were plenty of buskers about, I'm surprised that one didn't follow me like Alan a' Dale.
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I felt alone in Bath but not lonely. It was glorious down by the river, next to the Rugby club and looking over to the Cathedral and the waterfall. I am savoring my last moments of freedom because even though I have what is generally considered a serious mental health condition, (at least amongst the dinner party set), the forces of Toryism are closing in. I overheard obviously well to do's passing along on the river bank spouting some nonsense about benefit claimants. The Charity Shops of Bath were a dissapointment. There was plenty of stuff but none of it authentic and real like the stuff that I had purchased in Newport. They say that someone who is given a heart transplant starts to take on different characteristics, perhaps the personality of the person who had the heart originally. Maybe I just didn't want to put on the clothes of the Middle Class. There is a problem in UK plc. The Middle Class are too educated and comfortable and the old working class, or by now the underclass, are deprived a decent education and become trapped. Like Kensington and Chelsea, Bath is a Middle Class Ghettoe! There won't be any riots here.
Cardiff on my return felt warm and comfortable like an old pair of slippers. They say that you always hurt the one you love. I know I slag it off 'something merciless'. It's just that I want it to be better.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
The Forgotten Space - A Film Review
For one afternoon only in Chapter 2 when 'normal' people were out enjoying the sunshine, the founder member of the Grungetown awkward squad was indulged in 112 minutes of pure, unadulterated socialist propaganda. It was my first time in Chapter 2 since the re-furbishment and a WoW is required for the plush seats in fluffy red and a ceiling like a poor person's planetarium with little stars of light. I only found out about the film this morning and what took me up the Taff Trail and across Pontcanna, avoiding the lay-line was the promise of a world tour on a Container Ship. We begin in the Port of Rotterdam, a place I know well and which features in my book to be published in 2012 'Amsterdamned'. I walked around the port of Rotterdam whilst undergoing a Psychosis or Brainstorm. It was rather uncomfortable, watching the Containers being moved and handled mechanically, everything automated because in the words of the Port Manager, they don't go off sick, they don't go on holiday and they don't have a Union. Watching the Forgotten Space was like being a Ship's Captain on a Container Ship with the Cinema Screen like the Window of the Bridge. The Film is a collage of various cities and ports around the world Rotterdam, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Bilbao. The people who are interviewed are like Dresden dolls, fragile in their humanity as they co-exist and live within the borders of this Capitalist Profiteering. The saddest stories came from America with three people who mesmerised you with their story and personality. They were living in a Container Yard and they couldn't get out. Human Psychology and Poverty had conspired to keep them prisoners within its walls. The Chinese Story, although sobering does not persuade, that the people are not content, even though to the Western eye, their work conditions and tasks prove mundane and soul-destroying. The film did not really succeed in painting the Global Shipping Industry as an evil, although you were always aware of the ecological effect on the environment and if the film succeeded anywhere it was in showing the indomitable human spirit in face of the oppressive drudgery of their work, no more so than the Fillipino Domestic Maids and Nannies meeting for one Sunday afternoon underneath the escalators of Hong Kong. The film ends in Bilbao and shows how the Titanium covered Guggenheim Museum despite the glowing accolades from an urban planner do not persuade that it is anything other than a Capitalist's plaything. It is people that make places and this film should really have been called 'The Forgotten People'. It was meditative and persuasive and perhaps the Chinese Academic and the Dutch Historian provided the best 'vox pop' and commentary. I was indulged. My confirmatory bias was confirmed.
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