When All The Wheels Stop Turning

When all the wheels stop turning
The dust has settled too
The fire's no longer burning
And the evening sends the dew

When darkness roams the alleyways
The city slows it's breathing
A tune the lonely the piper plays
Gives souls the time for grieving

I talk of time when street lights dim
The world is gently sleeping
The quiet stirs the thoughts within
The secrets they are keeping

In smallest bedsit, Mansion grand
The song remains the same
To hold that special someones hand
While whispering their name

For world's of hurt are carried through
To darkest part of day
Until the sadness felt by you
Seems just to melt away

The silence that surrounds your dreams
Yet plots your destiny
The strength of love and all it means
The place you need to be

So next time darkness seals days fate
And wheels once more stop turning
Believe that love is never late
And stays forever burning...

Cold Working Comfort

This cold weather spell has come to many of us here in the Uk as a bit of a shock. The wind chill has fair taken your breath away as you walk and the aching feeling you get as the day wears on is systematic of such extreme temperatures when having to work outside at times.
We British have a very stiff upper lip until you start talking about the weather, then we let our guards down and throw all our effort into a full blown moan about just how cold, wet or hot it is. It's a pastime for us Brits, we choose it as a topic above all others to the point where it has been a familiar sketch on many a sit-com... "weather is nice for the time of year" is a must when the conversation is grinding to a halt !.

I have seen many extremes of our wonderful weather during my life, let's face it if you live on the Welsh Border the weather is going to be anything but conventional. When i was around 22 i worked for a local contractor Dave Alderson, Dave would literally work night and day and i was quite happy (at that age) to do the same thing. We once headed off right up into the Clun hills above Ceri Forest close to the Powys/Shropshire border to put some wire fencing up for a local farmer, it was so cold in the freezing mist up there that everything was soon coated in a layer of fluffy white ice, including the wire we were trying to nail to the posts, which duly stuck to any skin it came into contact with!.
We worked all day from 7 am in sub-zero conditions until around 6 pm when it became too dark (even with the lights of the Land Rover shining for us) so at last Dave said "we had better head for home i suppose" fine words to me indeed at that point !.. except Dave being Dave said, "Oh well, while this wood is here we may as well fill the Land Rover up for the journey home we need some for the fire at home.." so yet another half hour or so later we were eventually heading back down into the valleys below.
There is something you need to know about a Land Rover heater in those days, if someone from the trading Standards office was confronted with that label on the Land Rover heater today they would be sued. Heat it didn't, blow it did, mostly cold air ! so we froze all the way home.

Did i learn anything from this escapade?, well obviously as it sticks in my mind then yes i must have,
I learned that I can take tough going if need be and hold my own, it proved i could work hard and not complain. But, if i am honest if i look back at it now I am confronted with a slightly different analysis and that is, why was i daft enough to do it?. The answer is simple and springs to mind almost instantly, "a sense of duty."
 A very very good friend of mine has warned me of the perils of the "D" word. It causes much strife and heartache in so many ways. To this day and until i am no more i will agree with her. Damn you Duty, you owe me big time.

You never know.

Inspired by a certain Mr Lennon, wish i could have 10% of his thoughts..

When all the guns are silent
When all the tears run dry
When life is void of violence
And children never cry

When hearts are never broken
And life is so revered
Not just a simple token
For priests so often feared

When skies reflect the mountains
The air stays pure and cool
And crystal clear blue fountains
Refresh the minds of fools

Then we can tell our children
Look what we all can do
No more earth's hostile cauldron
Now make it work for you ..

The angst of dreams

The still of the night
My thoughts race in my mind

Heart slows in anticipation
Moonbeam shadows formed

Sentimental selfless soul
Lost by shards of reason

Held in animated hate
Like cancer to my flesh.

Fallen idols litter paths
Like a shattered constellation

Time has played the Joker
Smug it simply laughs

Freedom begs release from this
Grains of life consumed

A world now damned by very thoughts
As the sandman craves attention. 

So tread the spine of rainbows
To a land that promise brings

Hollow thoughts forgotten
Until, once more.. the darkness falls.

Dave's Sunday Roast.

"It would be very easy for you to go into politics", is something I hear all the time. I guess it would,  along with many other things that require a smooth patter and passion for what you do.
The truth is, I would make a hopeless politician and I know it, the art of the political arena is a world away from that of a writer. Politicians have to learn to think as a collective, not for them the freedom to express just what they are thinking as writing allows me to do, far from it, expressing your own doubts when you are a political figure can mean instant career suicide.
I quite often think the press do our quest to be a free and open society no favours by sensationalising the fact that perhaps a politician has expressed a slightly different view to that of his party, after all isn't that the heart of democracy,  freedom of speech?.  It would find it unimaginable to stand on a plinth and speak to the world about something i could never believe in. I don't think that politicians are any the worse for what they do, despite their well deserved sleazy reputation, I think that as a collective we humans get things done and without that ability we may not have progressed up the evolutionary ladder quite so far as we have, I just have trouble with the fact that being chastised for questioning the direction of said collective shouldn't result in such damning criticism as it does, after all a good idea is a good idea if it comes from one mind or 100.

Sunday has arrived here in Shropshire with a flurry of snow and a cold breeze, perfect for Mother's Day, kids inside under feet, Dad snoring on the settee after lunch and the dog sat looking at you with his lead in his mouth. If that sounds familiar you have my permission to kick Dad, wake him up and shove him and the dog outside in the cold for an hour while you send the kids to play upstairs, then take the top off the bottle of Port you were given and hit the Tv button.. kick back and relax its your day, if anyone moans tell them I said it's allowed.

I saw in the news this week that processed meats have been added to the ever burgeoning list of items that are bad for you and will lead to instant death if you touch them. These warnings along with the scientific data that follow closely behind, written by leading scientists and nutritionists in their field are becoming a regular occurrence, now, that could be because the tests we run are getting more accurate or that we are looking down far too narrow a gun barrel for the tests to be conclusive. I think the former is possibly true but let me shed some light on the latter.  If you take a narrow minded view of a food, it will have a detrimental affect on your life in some way, sugar will rot teeth on its own, fibre will make you constipated, curry the opposite, you see, now you are getting a pattern.
 I am sure there is some very strong evidence that processed meats are indeed not the best product in the world to eat but in moderation I am sure they are no worse than any other item we choose to lay on our pallet as long as its in moderation and followed by a little exercise "Much ado about nothing" does spring to mind, but then again it was a slow news day.
Finally, as i mentioned the word exercise in the hopes of a British summer this year I am off shopping to buy a few pairs of much needed shorts, so if you bump into me in a sports shop please feel free to take a picture alongside me and publish it on every social network site you wish to as there is nothing better than having a good publicity shot in a place surrounded by items that help you get and stay fit, it's great for the image and what the hell, you never know i may pop round with you to the corner cafe and buy you a sausage and bacon with red sauce.

Have a lovely Sunday and Mum's enjoy your special day.

.Stress and me.

There are times when being a writer and a thinker can be extremely difficult. Not in a writers block sense but more in an every day sense. I tend to over analyze things and it leads to all sorts of issues, one of them is taking yourself way too seriously, life is full of ups and downs, if it weren't you would not be alive, it's part of who and what we are and I should accept it more easily.
I think a lot of the problems we all face in this wonderful day and age is a lack of time to sit down and actually take in what is and isnt imoportant, it's not the new TV or the BMW or the new house, yes they are lovely to have, but as with a child and a new toy the novelty wears off and your focus soon goes to some other expensive trinket.
I love the fact that my mind allows me to shut all that out on occasions and see just what we have in real wealth, yes i have my off days, in fact yesterday was one of them !, but in general i find myself able to have a wry smile at people's obsession with what they WILL own rather than what they already have.
When was the last time you just stood and looked at a view, no mobiles, no friends, no interruptions, just you and your breath ?. I would imagine very few of you could tell me. I can tell you I did it two or three times yesterday and yes if you like, send the stretcher and the white coated gentry, mad I may be, but to me it is an important part of life, most of what is great about this life is completely free and all around us, don't just stare at the surface, look into life, you will be amazed at what you see.
Some people do manage this through exercise, that is to be applauded, but at the same time you are focusing on something, your target weight, your target miles run/lengths swam etc, it's all about targets and aims, whereas standing there and taking in the actual realness of what is around you, feeling the depth of what is around you and the wealth in what we are given for free, gives you a safe house to bolt to when you are stressed.

 Try it.

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

Art should imitate life and explain to us all in better clarity just what it all means.  That is the simplistic view. The problem with art is that it sits uncomfortably beside the lifestyle many of us lead in the modern day world, if we are seen to be pandering to the arts we are deemed "liberal" and if we scorn such wonders of the above average intelligence we are too "Labour".
The fact is the general population would much prefer to see  a new hospital being built rather than a piece of breathtaking modern day architecture placed somewhere in a Town Centre with a few strategically placed benches for "the masses" to sit and stare at it.
When put like that it's no wonder art is fighting for funding, governments will play with the press and manipulate figures, newspapers will highlight costs compared to Hospitals and Schools and eventually art suffers (rather unfairly) as a result.
I must admit, art has done itself an injustice over the past few years, the carte blanche attitude to council officials rubber stamping ridiculous monstrosities on the edges of town's and cities which have gone wildly over budget is a travesty that must surely now be addressed, in Shrewsbury my home town we have a "slinky" which is the best way to describe it and it went way over budget (450k) and became the subject of many heated arguments, the idea was well meaning enough being a lasting monument to the great Charles Darwin who was born in the town, but it was headed up by people with poor budgeting skills and as usual, instead of a wonderful tribute to a man of our times it is a laughing stock to locals because of the sheer amount of money it cost, though outsiders without such knowledge marvel at the sight, it is actually truly impressive.
Therein lies a tale, the more the community is involved in art the better it is accepted, too often authorities are blinded by the kudos that comes with signing a well known artist who has national acclaim when in reality if they worked within their own community to find an artist of worth (of which there are many) the whole project would start on not only a better footing but also in a better financial position without the heavy fees a big name demands.

Art to me is never about money, if it is then you are a dealer and as such it's a commodity and you will never truly know it's REAL value. Art is beauty, it's pure, it is from the very heart and soul of the person that produces it. What you see in a statue or a painting or even a book is a screen shot of a time and place in the artists life, something personal. There is no price on that.
If we are to believe in art once more we must take it back from those who continue to see it as purely commercial, art is dummed down when it is used as a way to attract tourists, it loses it's majesty and it's purpose. The great painters expressed themselves on canvas in no dissimilar way to Dickens or Chaucer did in print, we find solace in such work to this day, truly remarkable and it could never be repeated by such disfunctional pieces of pre-cast concrete or pornographic titilation we accept as art and literature these days.

The reality is very little will change, my ramblings will be seen as just that and poor decisions will continue to be made as to what the general public consider art, I am just so very thankful for what true art gives me as a person yet saddened by the continual slagging off of such a necessary part of our every day being, after all hospitals save lives and art enriches our lives, the two are not so different.

A friend in need,

In every walk of life we are given advice. From getting married to the colour of your next car, everyone has their own opinion. The truth is, we should listen to all advice we are given but the ultimate choice should come from within you as a person, not because of gentle persuasion from a friend. A true friend would guide you with what they know about the subject but should always shy away from pushing you directly into a situation. Many good friendships have broken up simply because of poor advice or misunderstandings.

In my life as you can imagine there have been many such instances of misunderstandings damaging a good friendship, the very fact i am in business leaves me vulnerable to such problems far more often than would otherwise be the case.
Here is a short story of one such case and to this day the situation remains unresolved.

Last April my mobile rang and it was a Policeman, he informed me that my business partner with the bike shop had been badly hurt on his way to work at a level crossing and his motorbike had hit a car. As would be the normal thing to do in this scenario i jumped into action to get everything organised including the recovery of his motorcycle and contacting the people that needed to know, it's exactly what anyone else would do. I rang a local recovery company and they were alerted to collect the very badly damaged bike and deliver it back to our own yard, something they didn't do, instead they recovered it past our yard to their own compound despite the Police saying to us that it was all clear to be dropped off.
A crashed bike or vehicle is kept in a secure compound if it is needed as part of the investigation into an accident where someone is badly hurt or killed, it is standard practise but as we are a garage and we knew the Police had cleared it and they had to drive right past our door to get to theirs we expected common sense to prevail.
It didn't and 2 weeks of phone calls followed to try and get the bike returned to no avail, in the end i rang a great friend of mine who worked at the garage and pleaded with him in the strongest terms to organise the return of said bike.
What happened next you couldn't write, my good friend lost his cool with the recovery truck driver and they almost had to be seperated, this all blew up several miles from where i was and i was never a party to it. But, because of that argument my good friend refused to speak with me again. Why you ask? well i guess he thought i was having a go at him personally and then his spat with the other guy was blamed on me and suddenly i am the enemy.
This situation only came to light when i next visited the garage he worked at and I was not spoken to, quite hurtful considering i am Godfather to his wonderful daughter and have also employed him part time when his funds were low.. but, as we all know to our cost sometimes life and friendships are very fickle and true friends very hard to find.  You may say to yourselves "surely this guy will recognise himself" and yes he may well, but I have a clear conscience and have no axe to grind in any way shape or form, my writing ability grants me such opportunity to dispel any untruths and cut to the chase.

The upshot of all of this is if you work with your best friends then be prepared to have the odd fall out, but try not to let it get as bad as with my mate and myself, there are no winners in such situations and it leads to a very awkward working relationship, to the point where we no longer use the garage for anything at all, quite a sad outcome from two adults who should know better.
 I would however, still do the same thing again as I am still trying to save everyone in the world, my naivety knows no bounds and I torture myself with some of the answers i give to people who are in need as the answer is almost always yes even if it brings me hardship, it's in my DNA i am not a super hero i am a fool of the most extraordinary kind, but it also has it's advantages in that i see life from a perspective that few would ever dream of or even cope with, in short it's who I am and that is very very difficult to change.
Look after your true friends like you guard your life, for without them we are surely the poorer and most certainly more vulnerable.

Dead Tired.

Have you ever been in a stressful situation?.  I don't mean opening the £350.00 gas bill when you only have £20.00 in the bank I mean serious full-on unrelenting stress, every minute of the day seven days a week?.
Well, I can tell you from experience it's not for the faint hearted.
Building a successful business means going out on a limb, going that extra mile, having a vision and more importantly a plan on how you are going to get there. What you can't factor in is just how you are going to manage when you are suddenly confronted with not one, but five or six problems, all at once. The trouble with business is that you can plan all you like, you can do cash flow forecasts, be defensive in your spending and have an aggressive stance towards credit control, all these will help but only you and that determination to succeed will see if you have the stamina to be successful.
The last few weeks I have changed course with my business and it has proved a success in more ways than one, customers are coming to us regularly and life should be rosy but in reality as the owner and overseer I am so busy on a daily basis i neither stop or sometimes even get chance to eat. I am more tired than I have ever been and the mental stress sucks the very life out of you drop by drop.
Exercise and early nights are always a great help, they give you the stamina to fight back and feel good about yourself but the reality is it's a short term fix, it cant continue. Stress is notorious for creeping up on you unawares, combine that with stress at home and it doubles your chance of serious illness, alarmist that may seem but it's a fact.
So, how to best avoid it?.   I like to think we are masters of our own destiny so therefore my way of combating stress would be to spread the load. Employ someone in the office or the workshops, in fact better the office as, though i am an equal opportunities employer, I think the business lives or dies with the response from that first phone call.
If after all this you are still feeling like myself, drained, numb,fatigued,mostly worthless and feeling like you are everyones kicking boy you only have one avenue to fall back on, get the hell out for at least a week if not two and get your self a well deserved break because believe me no-one is Superman in the world of business and if you think you are, well I can assure you your reign will be very Pope-like in it's longevity.
So take some good advice from an old dog, if it feels like you can't cope more often than not then chances are you aren't and the business and you will suffer.

Take that break.

Better The Devil You Know?.

Sitting here at 5 a.m in the morning I find my mind wandering somewhat, always a dangerous phenomenon as it really shouldn't be allowed out unsupervised!. It's at times like this when you are deep in thought that you realise the irony of Monty Python's "Meaning Of Life", for as much as we deny it we are all looking for those deep meaningful thoughts and answers to go with them that we can share with others and will somehow lighten all our ways along the path of every day life.
The fact that I have made the above statement probably means I have been here too long already to some and to others, who have been in the same position it may make complete sense. We are all looking for the answers to so many questions on a daily basis, some we are satisfied with and others will remain a mystery, though perhaps it isn't such a bad thing, I mean who would REALLY like to know what happens when we die?, surely the very gift of life is the unknown, as if it were ever proved that the outcome was death and that's the end of it we would all surely be a lot worse off, or would we?.
Let's just imagine a top scientist is one day sat in a darkened laboratory somewhere in middle England  and he suddenly finds out exactly what happens to us after death and, if he could stand up and demonstrate without question all his findings about what becomes of the human soul when we depart our earthbound bodies, just what would happen to the single largest industry in the world, religion?.
 The facts would only get in the way of one true heaven, one true God, one true spiritual entity, the Pope would be pointless, the Archbishop Of Canterbury would be a none job, atheists would be singing "I told you so" until the cows come home and back again, what a thought!.
The facts are we are better off not knowing either way in my humble opinion, because as with all things that have an unknown outcome we humans (the vast majority at least) would rather err on the side of optimism, even those staunchly opposed to any kind of God or afterlife would like to think they will be spared total darkness when their time comes.

I can almost hear you asking what my thoughts of an after life are..( I am sure I heard a voice at the back or did I just imagine that too!). Well considering the above script I guess it's a fair question to ask.  I believe there is something in what people say about the after life but not in quite as corny a way as some religions would have you believe, I think the human spirit can take other forms and therefore the possibility of our thoughts still leaving a trail in the hereafter are quite possible, but I personally think that after time they would fade to nothing and so life carries on. That may be a simplistic view but it's one I am happy to contemplate as I get older and in any case it's far easier to write it all down here than it is to invite a Jehovah's Witness inside the house to discuss the merits of The Watchtower!.

So, luckily for us life goes on, we remain in blissful ignorance and as a race we will continue to argue over religion and it will therefore continue to cause wars and deaths by the thousands. When that thought hits you it's hard not to wish that the mad scientist from middle England is nearing completion of his life long project on the truth about the afterlife...

Hope you all have a good Tuesday.