Memories & Perspectives

The long and winding road of just being enough. I post some social media to a mens mental wellbeing group on Thursday morning, I said I'd help as I'm good with writing copy and producing visuals. Someone that's actually grateful for my graphic design believe me, goes a long way. I also help the ladies boxing exercise class run by the same guy with social media. I'm indebted. He's done a lot to turn my life to the better reasons for still living stuck in a grimy fighty town as my potential drained away years ago - excuse the gravitas more on that later.  Of course I couldn't mention either of these altruistic causes I do in my spare time to the boss, as the concept of someone offering something out of the kindness of my heart without a financial incentive simply does not compute. Why would anyone do that? "He must be not telling me the whole story - he's up to something - is there a percentage to be had?" I headed off to work, the gate at the end of...

The Cavalier Charge - A Smart Car owner in a dumb world. I drive Smart Cars in fact I’ve had 3. It’s the automotive equivalent of a swatch watch which seemingly came out of nowhere and shook the market up. The Smart is fun and innovative and was a bold move in an equally at the time staid car market full of convention as to what parameters a product should follow. It eschewed tradition, used replaceable plastic panels for bodywork, space age seats, featured great visibility, an innovative chassis and a funky clutchless variable transmission directing a perky little engine.  My current one I bought from Stoke-on-Trent I'd got the train down from Manchester to test drive a metallic blue Smart I'd seen in an ad. I'd sat in the rather beautiful Glebe pub despondently having a veggie burger lunch after I'd taken this disaster out for a spin. You needed an oar through the steering wheel to get it to go around corners, so not for me, or clearly anyone else on the roads that da...

The Tryer. I live in a big old terracotta former school house, boys playground, girls playground flanking the main building demarcation carved in sandstone atop brick pillars, stained glass details, wide end grain block staircases, dry rot and leaks. She's a venerable old girl. I moved here in the early 2000's and I fell in love with the place. My brother quipped I'd bought an apartment like most people buy a shirt. He was right of course, rather more forethought would have been good, but the heart ruled the head - again. It's Grade 2 listed, so where possible the original features have been preserved apparently including some of its crumblier aspects. The apartments themselves are modern double height affairs with a bed deck, and of course the original windows. It's a nightmare to keep warm in winter, and got very hot in summer as there were no opening windows for 18 years, this annual 'dog in a hot car' scenario was the housing associations fault for signi...

Trope on a soap. Some things gnaw away at you. They are memories on repeat from seemingly the most innocuous of sources, but as Frank Spencer said, "a trouble shared is a trouble doubled" so here we go. I'd be about 11. Mum was always a lady never afraid to save some money, I still swear I'd be at least two inches taller if I'd eaten a bit better as a child.  She had this siege mentality when we were growing up and she'd squirrel money away. You'd often find her up a ladder decorating, or under the bonnet of some old secondhand car after reading a page on auto mechanics from the olive green oracle that was the Readers Digest book of DIY. Many a winter we'd have an extension cord and jump leads from the back window to the garage trying to breathe life into her latest clunker. I remember she had this very fashionable cropped beige duffle coat from the late 50's or early 60's that she'd always do odd jobs in. She'd resided herself to the r...