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Dear Mr Fidler Dear Proffesor Fidler, How very kind of you to send me a letter, it's not every day the vice-chancellor of your former university decides to write you, how devastatingly exciting! I have to be honest with you though, I was slightly disappointed that you made no time for even basic pleasantries before getting to business. Call me old fashioned but no matter how feigned or false, I do like when a letter starts with someone hoping I am in good health, or that I am enjoying my work. It just sets the tone of friendship that was sadly lacking in your letter. I found your idea that, having already paid for my own education at your institution of dubious repute, I now commence monthly donations to the university, rather dubious. I have to say, it was an interesting idea to send a letter to people who graduated only two years ago, had been made to pay their way with fees and a huge majority of whom are still grappling with the gargantuan amounts of debt that their education landed them in. The thing is, it's not just the debt, it's the fact that I already paid for this, I paid my fees for my education as we agreed at the time. Would House Of Fraser send me a letter to say that they hoped I have enjoyed wearing my jacket, and would I start making regular donations? Somehow, I don't think they would, you see, that's just not the way a market economy works. However, this said, I do try to be a fair man, and judge fairly any requests for some of what little I have. There is my tithes, Peace Direct get their monthly donation, the British Legion currently get donations whenever I'm next to the collection boxes. Now while I'm sure you'd like to compete, but helping men who fought and risked their lives for the country kind of trumps helping an increasingly greedy university. So I guess your handy direct debit form will have to go on the pile of other things to get round to, if I ever become very wealthy. Luckily, I have good news for you! You did not go to the bottom of this stack! On the contrary, you're lodged just beneath 'Help funding a coup in Equatorial Guinea' and just above 'Donate to the Labour Government'. I would ask that in future you never ever have the nerve to ask me for money again, at least not until you see President Obiang being led out of the Parliament building by a thronging, Winter Palace style crowd. Regards, Peter |
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2.11.06 12:54 |
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Blow The Wind Southerly... Yesterday was unbelievably cold and the sea was choppier than I've ever seen it up here before, row upon row of waves breaking, and some huge ones rolling in and crashing over the piers. Unfortunately the pics don't in the main do it justice, however they may give the idea of how choppy it got. I wanted to stay longer, but I was busy learning my first major lesson of the winter. That flimsy Mexico top may look nice, but it's really not the best outerwear for the freezing cold seafront.
3 seconds before this, the dog had it's front legs on his knees. It was the perfect photo. Sadly, I never was that quick to get the Camera out, but I like the way his footprints snake round and he's in front of the sea.
A Gull swoops in over the waves.
Apologies to the fisherman, I was trying to get a wave the moment it crashed over the North Pier, however on missing it, I noticed he was doing whatever fisher people do and thought it made a nice shot.
Just a Castaway, an Island lost at sea... |
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2.11.06 14:45 |
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Regina Enchanting... Isn't it funny how we comprehend other languages, not in the understanding of words and sentances but in the phonetics and how they sound spoken by native speakers, and also by often sub-concious social stereotyping. Take French for instance, the language of love, I'm quite positive that even the most profane of vulgarities uttered in French would sound ever so vaguely poetic. Now in practice, this is probably not so, I'm sure the last defiant, blood curdling cry of the Old Guard was closer to something from Tarantino than Byron, but let's face it, with the peaceful passing of time very few of us have been shouted down by over bearing, bayonet wielding Frenchmen with an imperial standard, and so the language is left to it's poetic and amarous self. Or we have Latin, buried as it is under centuries of history, a last memory of an empire ruined by it's own inevitable egotism, for years kept alive by school masters brandishing the cain for those who could not quote their verbs, and by Priests afraid of what might happen if people actually understood the service. Thus the language has passed quotations and phrases into everyday use to appear deep, to give some connection to the wisdom of the past, if only by citing the same string of characters. English is of course a law unto itself, full of the most intriguing foibles and ideosyncracies. For Simon Jenkins, writing in Fridays Guardian, this is all too much, and text speak and abbreviated spellings are the way forward, we should embrace the winds of linguistic change, but somehow I can't agree. I may not be the best at English, far from it, but the English language is like Cricket, it doesn't always make logical sense, but it's this that makes it what it is. Yes, spelling cheque as check may make more sense, but that's hardly the point, is it? As a language, it surely reflects in it's foibles the fact that it has developed organically over hundreds of years of usage, instead of stripping it of its quirks, it should be celebrated. |
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6.11.06 19:03 |
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Dear America...
...this time, please? On behalf of the rest of the civilised world, who aren't particularly fond of war, suffering, a global climate of fear and sinking to the level of our enemies in order to try (and fail) to supress them?
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7.11.06 15:13 |
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Not what you expect... "It is thought that the 22 year old man from Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, put a lit rocket into a delicate part of his anatomy. He may have been re-enacting a scene from a film." ...not what you expect to hear from the lunchtime news. I'm stunned that people this stupid actually exist. And I'm not even going to ask what type of films he watches. |
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9.11.06 13:40 |
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Nightmare on the first fret... Yes. Nightmareous. The stuff of nightmares. I can do C (although I normally play C2 out of habit) But F eludes me, continually, I'll be playing quite happily and then I see it and it menaces over me, it leaps from the chord sheet and into my psyche like a bandit intent on pillaging. It ravages through the neurons and on out down, through the nervous system, my fingers twitch and then I decide it's not worth it and just play whatever else I feel like. Why would anyone make this chord? I know all the real guitar players on here (Huw, JB, Pete, this means you!) will mock me for this, but really, why! It's like G, D, A, Am, Em, C2, all lovely examples of chords, to a lesser extent C, E and Bm. Why would anyone stray from the formula!? Did Status Quo use F's, did they? No, and did it harm their career? Some little known facts about F!
I thank you all for listening to this public service announcment, brought to you in association with the letters A,B,C,D,E and G. * - I'm not a musician, I'm a poor guitarist. ** - I can't verify all of these statements as true, some may be based on bitterness, bile and my trauma at the hands of the chord F.
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10.11.06 16:32 |
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Underachievers must try harder... So, picture the scene, there I was, stuck for anything to blog, yet feeling the need to do so and I stumble across a brown envelope, manilla, about 20cm long and 12cm wide, marked only with my real name in handwriting. Of course, I was immediately distracted from wondering what to blog about by wondering what is inside this mystery letter, and how did it get to be in my room anyway? Thoughts flash through my mind and meander into conspiracies and theories, espionage, stolen money, beautiful women, fast cars, this envelope has clearly been placed here by someone who has cunning broken in and left it for me to find, someone who knew I would look there today. I flip the envelope over and it looks like it's been opened already, so I pull the flap open and slide out the contents, there before me lies nothing other than...
Needless to say I was a little disappointed, no secret invites, no money, no request for urgent assistance by MI5 or the KGB. But then I thought about it, perfect. What could be better, I could write a wonderfully witty and self-deprecatory post about how I was such a horrible under achiever all through school, we could laugh together at my parents evening trauma's and mock my inability to muster anything other than apathy for the work they asked me to do. Perfect blogging material, I could even scan the worst bits, the bits that really said I was a no-hoper who would die poor, illiterate and unemployed. I eagerly started to read, I remember the trouble these things got me into, I used to get such a telling off over them, I was the under achiever, the one who if he had put his mind to it could have gotten straight A's but really wasn't interested anyway. At one point they were refusing to enter me for the higher level papers, they said I was incapable. At that point it seemed like my epitaph would be the phrase "Must try harder". I always insisted I would try hard in the exam itself and things would be ok, but no one listened, I was put on the special reports reserved usually for the real trouble makers, had to be signed by parent and form tutor every day to show I attended and did the work. Yes, they had me all worked out, I was to be the failure, the one who was let down by his laziness. So I flicked past the first subject. Art, an average report, nothing really bad, but then, that teacher had only taught me once, the next one would be worse, the next one would be bloggably bad. English, not brilliant, but she points out that I am achieving a higher standard of work. French. A for effort. A? How dare she, I can't blog that. Geography. B. Heck, by the time I reached Technology and read "After a very slow start Peter has made rapid progress of late, this is mostly down to a pleasing change in attitude towards school work..." I was about ready to throw the thing down in disgust. How dare they be so positive. Turns out the only below average mark in the whole thing was for R.E, which was to be expected, for a subject that encourages religious thought, when faced with real religious beliefs teachers tended to spaz out. And Maths, in which my grades were all the highest band possible, but the teacher wasn't pleased at my 'insubordination' and more to the point the fact that I spent time in lessons insulting the school cricket team. At any rate, I left off reading the report most disappointed. How dare they. The spend my whole childhood putting me down and telling me I'm useless, then when I find a school report and decide to blog all about how crap I was, what happens? I find the only one that ever existed where they said anything good. Typical...
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13.11.06 16:56 |
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