Still decorating..........it's become a bit of a chore now. TV had to be disconected and moved which is why its the radio tonight. Just listened to the Proms, quite enjoyed it untill they broke into ''Land of Hope and glory, Mother of the free'' and we're not. Some people have very little hope and its a long time since we had any 'glory.'.........'mother of the free? I know a lot of people who would disagree.

Song Saturday; Feeling bad blues.

A piece of music called ‘feeling bad blues’………..
and I’m totally relating to that today.

I’m still decorating,  but I’ve have had several ‘mishaps’ along the way today. While messing about in the shed looking for my paint brushes I walked into a split plastic container and sliced my leg open on the knife like jagged plastic. I just about recovered from that when my daughter turned up. She wanted toast so I grabbed the toaster to plug it in not knowing  she had already put the toast in, and to make sure I inflicted maximum damage, as I grabbed the toaster my fingers slipped into the hole and made contact with the red hot bits inside. That was another ice pack and dressing. By the time she left I was so doped up on painkillers I couldn’t feel the pain, until I leaned over too far, unbalanced the ladder, slipped and cracked my head on the shelf……..and that used the last of the disposable ice packs. No joking.............this really HAS  been my day

So yeah…………..’feeling bad blues’ is a very appropriate piece of music for me today.

 

Question time seems worth watching this week, its on now, on BBC1 and available afterwards on the BBC iPlayer on the Question Time web site. This weeks topic..... is 9/11.............

Baha Mousa, tortured and killed by the British Army.

God this makes me sick.
From this ( above)
to this ( below)
in just two days
courtesy   of the British army.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8727075/British-Army-cleared-of-systematic-abuse-by-Baha-Mousa-inquiry.html

‘’ A three-year inquiry into how a prisoner died in British custody in Iraq will clear the Army of operating a systematic regime of torture.’’
‘It has found no evidence that British soldiers conducted wholesale abuse, torture and murder of suspected insurgents during the occupation of southern Iraq. Instead it will strongly criticise serving and former soldiers for their conduct and describe "numerous failures" of the chain of command.
 ‘’Those ‘numerous failures’, which were apparently NOT part of ‘wholesale abuse torture and murder’, resulted in the death of  Baha Mousa,  a civilian who was beaten to death in British custody. The 26-year-old hotel receptionist died two days after his arrest in September 2003.  A post-morterm examination found he suffered asphyxiation and at least 93 injuries to his body, including fractured ribs and a broken nose. It seems no one is actually personally accountable for this.
‘’More than four years after Mr Mousa's death, Corporal Donald Payne pleaded guilty to a charge of inhumane treatment at the beginning of a court martial which was to run for six months and become the most expensive in British military history. By the end of the trial, all charges against the remaining defendants were dropped due to a lack of evidence, including a charge of manslaughter against Cpl Payne.  The soldiers who had been on trial were, L/Cpl Wayne Crowcroft, Pte Darren Fallon, 23, both accused of treating Iraqis inhumanely, Sgt Kelvin Stacey, accused of assault, Maj Michael Peebles and Warrant Officer Mark Davies, both of the Intelligence Corps, who were charged with negligently performing the duty of ensuring the detainees were not abused by men under their control. They were cleared of all charges. Of the other soldiers who were acquitted, four - Maj Peebles, W/O Davies, L/Cpl Crowcroft and Pte Fallon - are still serving. Lawyers for all seven declined to comment’’.

if you are a UK tax payer,
this is what your money buys.

So much trouble in the world.............

This guy knew a thing or two..............
and not a lot has changed in the last 30 years

Goodbye to my vinyl............all 200 of them

The time has come for me to say goodbye to about 200 vinyl records.
The record collection has been promised to my daughter for years, and, after lots of soul searching, nerves of steel and a strong resolve………….I decided to let her have then now rather than ‘in the will’ which is what she always joked about. She even gets the old Marantz deck, still in perfect working order.

What a strange feeling, very nostalgic, as I took them out of storage, one at a time, I almost lost my nerve and told her she had to wait. I hope she appreciates how good some of that music is. But I need be practical, I don’t have lots of space, very rarely listen to them and I am trying to cut down on belongings. De-cluttering is liberating, sometimes it feels as if the belongings own me rather than the other way around.…………..


So………….time to say goodbye………..:-)

Another moan..............

SOMETIMES THE SYSTEM REALLY FRUSTRATES ME,

I end up feeling so angry at the injustice of the whole dam system. My daughter (long term single parent) has tried for so long to .. well... just generally cope in the face of adversity. She's done really well, she is in a new house, the kids are at a much better school, her debts are under control and all she needed was a job. It has taken 6 months of continuous applications to get this far but... at last..... she has been offered a job. Her confidence is boosted because she has been told how well she did at interview and how she shone through on the online testing.
Then comes the problems.........the job is monthly paid, the benefit system doesn't cover her for her first month without wages, When she does get paid it will not be for the full month because they are paid in arrears, and she has two children to feed and rent to pay during this first month, all without pay. The wage is a little above minimal wage and the employer is not at all flexible in the hours worked, she wasn't even told the hours until she was offered the job. The hours are 1pm - 6pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. After school club for two kids four times per week will be over £50 per week plus the initial £50 to register the kids with the club in the first place.The after school club finishes at 6 which means she will also have to pay a taxi to collect the kids and bring them to her work, that's another £5.00 per day. And that's without even considering the cost of childcare for 7 hours on a Sunday IF its available. Even when all of that is in place.........there  are at least 12 weeks per year when the kids are not at school and she will have to pay 2, possibly 3 times that much in child care. I would love to help, I used to but her new house is in a different town and she is now too far away. And anyway as soon as she moved away and I couldn't have her kids my other daughter asked me to childmind for her after school.........life seems very difficult for every one right now.
My daughter  wants to take this job and she knows she will get a bit of help toward child care costs eventually when every thing is sorted out, not that she has a choice in the matter , because if she refused the job she would lose all of her benefit for refusing work. No one wants something for nothing, but do we really need to make those who have so little struggle so hard and never get any further forward.
And of course my favourite gripe..............total inequality of wealth and wages in this country , that just goes round and round my head and makes me even angrier.................

Art Sunday; Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo de Rivera the ‘other half’ of the famous Mexican husband and wife artists Frida and Diego Rivera

She was born; Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón, in Coyoaxcan, Mexico on July 6, 1907 and died July 13, 1954. She was probably best known for her self portraits, (and for being the wife of artist Diego). As with many female artists, her work is sometimes overshadowed by her better known husband. 

Her life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. She gave her birth date as July 7, 1910, but her birth certificate shows July 6, 1907.

Frida had allegedly wanted the year of her birth to coincide with the year of the beginning of the Mexican revolution so that her life would begin with the birth of modern Mexico.

At the age of six, Frida developed polio, which caused her right leg to be permanently withered.

Her work is celebrated in Mexico as a lasting testament to the Mexican indigenous traditions and styles. She is appreciated by Feminists the world over for depicting the female form and experience honestly and without compromise.

Mexican and  Native American cultural traditions are an important element of her work, which has been labeled  ‘Naïve art’ or ‘folk art’. Her work has also been described as "surrealist",

The marriage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera was volatile at the best of times, it was said they couldn’t live without each other, but couldn’t live with each other either.

They were married, divorced, remarried and both had affairs. Even the affairs were notorious and extraordinary, Frida had an affair with Trotsky (among others) and he had an affair with her sister Christina (among others.


During their life long relationship there were abortions, miscarriage, traffic accidents, tantrums and its even rumoured that they had a hand in the murder of Trotsky.




She apparently said of herself, I was born a bitch, I was born to paint’……….
Information from Wikipedia, read more here;

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

Song Saturday; Albatross

I’ve been out for most of the day,

away to the park with family,  Kids, dogs etc…

And as we fed the ducks, this was playing in my mind……..
Ok so we don't have albatross in the local park,
just mallards and geese, but reminded me of this.

The fields at this time of year.

These are the fields around my daughters house. I love these colours but at this time of year the fields change on a daily basis. Go away for a few days and when you come back its all different. The first few pictures are either just before or just after the harvest. Then there are a couple of pictures of stubble burning. I'm pretty sure that's an illegal practice now but the farmers have done it around here through out history and I can't see them stopping any time soon. The couple of pictures in the middle with a shadowy frame and rerflections are taken from inside the bus shelter looking out of the perspex windows onto the fields. The last few photos with the bales were taken earlier this evening, the hay had been bailed some time during the day. Next time I visit I expect I'll see brown fields not golden ones. Things change very quickly this time of year.