michael caine

i nearly posted this one, couldnae decide

lunchtime waffle…

oooh. is there a website where you can find out who shares your birthday? That would be very useful!
I know that my little niece shares the same birthday as Stalin… the resemblance is startling!
but thats about it

as for maurice mickelwhite(?) i predfer the top piccie of him, the bottom one is more obviously iconic, but in the top he looks much more flawed, human

far from swigging champers in the south of france, he is often to be found in the leatherhead branch of B&Q, purchasing formica shelving units, or some such, as he has a mansion quite near my parents (stellar street?) in leatherhead

in fact his wife was once chased by Donald McCloud (my folks lovely old pooch) across Leatherhead golf course, right into a bunker!

actually this isn’t totally true at all, Donald in fact chased that New Zealand Opera singer woman
Dame Kiri Te Kwanawa… and not Mrs Caine
It wasn’t that Iceland mum, Kerry Kattona? or Eric Cantonna either. oh well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_anniversaries
And click on the relevant date.

brilliant!
i am
Willy Messcherschmidt
Jay Silverheels (who he?)
and Gilberto Gil

A Frisbee day or a Kite day?

kite

gadzooks. a gale.
isn’t it wonderful!
who needs champagne when you’ve the sploosh splosh froth of an exuberant Ocean!
I abandoned bike and walked in, doing the ladder lean into the wind
certain programmers complain of having their face blown off!
I shook my fist at the sea and trudged along
The painter Turner used to insist on being tied to a ships mast and sailing straight into a storm. nutter
can’t see the Marina Fishing fleet agreeing, tho’ they do have fantastic tattered bin bag flags

can still tatse the salt sea spray. yum
……………
oh dear. that sounds horrible
glad it wasn’t worse

here you are with your pet bin

……….
the ladder lean? I don’t think its a proper phrase? …yet
but why it’s obvious, pure Monty Pythagoras, with, i guess, You the hypotenuse?
You have to lean into the wind, as far far forward as possible, pretend your ski jump champ, Eddie the Eagle!

leaning sideways would encourage toppling over, that would be plain daft!
Do try it, ’tis good fun…. but top tip not on a cliff top

all these garments coming alive is just like the finale of Bed Knobs and Broomsticks!

The North Berwick witches used to tie a knot in their hankies, as a spell for the wind
and every time a prayer flag flaps it sends a prayer up to heaven. inspired holy laziness!

‘Idiot Wind’, we all need an indian style name
When we were trekking in the Andes, Flaps was ‘Turd treader’, whilst i was ‘Cloud Sniffer’
… curiously i did the naming

namaste

Namaste
everybody greets you on the mountain trails in the Himalayas in this way, it’s sweet

Young Wangchuck, bless ‘im, once told me that when buddhists make the hands together in prayer gesture,
they are actually cupping their hands in a symbol to contain the light of our buddha soul.
look down into the space created between your thumbs and you can see the expansive, transcending gleam of the ‘jewell in the lotus’

… kinda like a koh-i-noor cuppa soup?

Amsterdam

oh for the gift of brevity! shortwinded-ness a virtue
written some long ago lunch hour
………….

once upon a sometimes, i hitched a ride in a camper van from the european juggling festival in Verona, all the way up to Amsterdam.
the bloke who was driving said come and stay in my friends squat,
so we rocked up to this huge ominous Victorian Institution looking building.
When we arrived a 10 year old boy dashed over and gave us a note
he said ‘give this to them inside, it’s from my mother’
So we handed it over as we entered.
It was a note warning the squatters that the police were going to evict them the next day!
we felt like the prophets of doom. Don’t shoot the messenger!

The situation was that teh squat had been open for 14 years or so, and if they occupied it for a further week, under Dutch law it could never be evicted
The squat itself was horrible, not like our lovely Prague home, this place obviously once been great, but over the last couple of years had fallen apart through squabbles and now consisted of a few junkies, living in dank, miserable rooms.
Long ago, the building had been an orphanage and had a really sad, unhappy vibe about it, a place haunted by the ghostly children of it’s past.

That evening we were all sitting about in the squat bar, having a few farewell to teh squat tequillas, when in burst this mad, horrible amphetamine fuelled pirate of a man.
He was obsessed with defending the place and boss ordered everybody about, build the barricades!
I quickly grew tired of that authority and went outside to sleep in the van

Next Morning, got woken at about 7:00, piling out of vans were 100 black clad Dutch Riot squad complete with shields and batons.
Within moments they’d smashed down the door and surged inside.
There were the isolated squeals of a scuffle, but most of the squatters were half asleep and sleepy, sheepishly stumbling out into the street. A few with scarves draped over their face’s
for a minute an anarchist flag, waved above the building, stark against the skyline.
rapidly hauled down. All over.

That evevning we came back to pick up the van. The entire site of the orphanage had been flattened. The bulldozers had been called in. and within hours reduced the place to a pile of rubble. awesome. The Dutch are thorough.
…….
………………
hmmm… so I guess you won’t be staying there then!