SteveNOTsolostandlonelyinlondon

The Ordinary Life Of Elements (III) & Catalogue Of Wonders

2010-07-27T06:47:00.005+01:00

hi,
More of my photographs - this time hosted on the wonderful catalogue of wonders.

The Real Face Of The BNP...

2010-06-17T18:26:00.005+01:00

So the BNP have been 'shown up' again (just a day after it was revealed that leader Nick Griffin is to attend a garden party at Buck' Palace with Queenie in attendance).
This time a London local newspaper highlighted the embarrassing antics of one of it's May general & local election candidates from South London.
I need make no more comment really as the behaviour of this pathetic creature speaks for itself in volumes and says much about the ethos of this so called political movement...and they are surprised that they didn't get elected?!

Read On...

A BNP election candidate advocated the murder of illegal immigrants in the wake of the recent Cumbrian massacre.

Right-wing activist Charlotte Lewis, from Thornton Heath, wrote on her Facebook page that mass-murderer Derrick Bird should have come to London and slaughtered illegal immigrants rather than his "fellow British people".

Her tirade is the latest in a string of hate-filled rants and calls for violence against "pakis" through her Facebook page.

The latest post reads: "Ok, so I may well get in to trouble for saying this - but I've got to get it off my chest.

"I wish that Derrick Bird could have come down to London & shot dead some illegal immigrants, rather than killing his fellow British people.

"If that offends you then tough; it's my opinion and I'm entitled to it."

Her comments refer to taxi driver Derrick Bird, who went on a killing spree in west Cumbria on June 2, shooting dead 12 people and injuring 11 others.

Her latest Facebook rant was highlighted by website Hope Not Hate, Searchlight's campaign to counter racism and fascism in elections and beyond.

Gerry Gable from Searchlight said: "I think anybody advocating the murder of illegal immigrants should be prosecuted.

"People may view Charlotte Lewis as being a bit potty, but the overwhelming interest in firearms of the BNP tells a much more serious story."

When contacted by the Croydon Guardian Miss Lewis, 37, questioned why her "innocuous" comments were being treated so seriously.

In a bizarre rant she flip-flopped repeatedly over whether illegal immigrants should be murdered or not, before asking why her love of Chandi the dancing dog in Britain's Got Talent was not being treated as a story.

She said: "It would be preferable to kill illegal immigrants than fellow British people, because they shouldn’t be in this country."

Miss Lewis' true face was revealed in April after pictures were discovered of her swigging from a bottle of alcopops while clad in a burqa during a Halloween party.

The Carshalton and Wallington parliamentary candidate, who also ran for Croydon Council’s Shirley ward in the May elections, was snapped revealing her contempt for Muslims by hitching up her costume to reveal her underwear.

Oh dear.....

The Ordinary Life Of Elements (II)

2010-05-23T10:51:00.005+01:00

The Ordinary Life Of Elements (II) A day spent in London

More of the beautiful details of the world around us...

The Amazing Chiswick Tiled House

2010-05-15T18:26:00.008+01:00

Some images of this rather amazing tiled house in Culmington St, Chiswick. They even have a tiled car!

catalogue of wonders: the ordinary life of elements > photography

2010-04-16T10:19:00.004+01:00

catalogue of wonders

london, United Kingdom

a platform for all kinds of artists that make a stance of independence and originality, are daring, experimental, themselves uniquely, and deserve a larger audience...

Music, writings, articles, poetry...and much, much more...

http://catalogueofwonders.blogspot.com/2010/04/ordinary-life-of-elements-steven-lee.html

HELP!!

2010-03-23T18:37:00.004Z

I read that the terrible Tories might actually win not just control of Richmond council from the Lib's (who run a decent council at least and provide decent services - especially for those in real need), but ALSO the parliamentary constituency (also currently held by the Lib's with a small majority).

The Tories candidate in Richmond is the really rather transparent Zac Goldsmith (the multi-millionaire giant - recently involved in a non dom tax scandal a la Lord Ashcroft). He masquarades as the Tories green & environmental 'hero'.

Anyone know a right winger who has never done things that ultimately benefit them?
Sorry but I just can't believe the Tories, attempting to cover themselves in a fluffy and caring enviromental blanket so they look 'nice'. It's just not believable. They simply are not 'nice' and never will be.

Now do not get me wrong. I think (tragically) the 'New Labour' project has without a doubt failed. We can thank Mr. Blair for that. I'm a unapologetic 'old' Labour man. But I also have the political sense to remember the class (and industrial) destruction of the 80's and the sickening and rampant commercialism that Thatcher introduced, that which eventually changed Labour from Socialistic policies to the left/right confused bastard child it has sadly become.
So living where I do, I vote tactically to keep the plain cruelness of the right out. I am fortunate in being just over the river in the constituency of Twickenham, Vincent Cable therefore is my MP and he very obviously has a brain and appears to have some principles too so he will be getting my vote.
I do hope the voters of the constituency just across the bridge will think likewise...

On a slightly different note I'm also going to be going to see a lovely concert of Turnage, Glass and Henryk Gorecki for my upcoming birthday(the entrancingly beautiful & moving Symphony No. 3 'The Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs'). Lucky me! Cannot wait.

Actually the title of the Gorecki symphony could serve as an apt title for the recent state of politics in this dumbed down and over commercialised society...

The Re-emergence and Icy Bridges

2010-01-11T18:56:00.004Z

Hello.

So it appears I am not dead. Or in a coma, or persistantly vegitative state. I'm quite alive (as much as I ever will be anyway! Get the eternal optimist!).

Having suffered a computer explosion and given up tv amongst other things I have for some reason I haven't yet decided upon put finger to keyboard (NEW keyboard) and here I am...
Since I've last been here I've changed a few things, notably some LINKS (yes, to the left). I urge you check them out. Some are very good indeed, particularly my partner's music and video. Laurie Anderson is there too, and she of course is a very special lady. Enjoy. Go on, do!

ENOUGH of this tomfoolery.

It struck me this morning how sad it is that we as human beings get (or take perhaps)so little time to see those things in life that are simply of great beauty.
Walking over a very icy Richmond Bridge this morning the Thames looked frozen, oily and glorious. Quite magnificent. A few forlorn gulls shivered at it's banks and the omnipresent Heron that is always on the East Twickenham bank stood motionless like a winter sentry. The hill shimmered above draped in a carefully laid out snow curtain.
I slithered to a halt atop the crest of the bridge to momentarily witness this whilst commuters slid by as fast as their feet could on the frozen paving without falling. I had left a little early. I was lucky.

S x

Alive & Kicking!

2007-06-19T22:48:00.001+01:00

Hello!

It`s a busy time for me I suppose. Haven`t posted in some time I am quite aware, well now I`m online again, YAY :)

I`ve a new and so far (6 delightful and stimulating months), relationship. We`re good...
I`m very pleased with this (can you tell?).

I`m also rediscovering my somewhat mysterious family connections after a very, very long time. This is particularly cool, considering I`ve always felt kinda `lost` on this front.

So on the whole things are on the up.

I like :)

More to come...

S x

So I do exist..

2006-12-04T15:38:00.000Z

No I haven`t gone all existential or anything hippy. Just haven`t posted in bloody well ages. Crap eh...
So potted High [low] lights of the period since my last blog. Well. My laptop died... Tears abounded. But I don`t have an internet connection at the mo` anyway...
Had a nice enough summer though, it was pretty warm so lots of time was spent in the garden or out and about enjoying the sun and having a giggle.#
Finally managed to right my errant tummy, If you`ll remember I was ill with viral gastric problems for 3 months. I lost two stone [good! :)] and felt like death for some time after. Now much better but am now intolerant of gluten which ruins the diet somewhat. But hey, it`s not that bad really. And although I have put some weight back on now, on the whole I am still much slimmer and more gorgeous than I was. Actually needed to put some weight back, was looking drawn and skeletal at one point!! Yuck.
Had a couple of breaks, once to Glasgow - lovely for varying reasons and a super 6 days in beautiful Budapest in late October. That place always cheers me up!! :)
So that leaves me with now...
Well Xmas looms. Personally I am bit of a humbug when it comes to it. Having very little family means I tend to take little part in it all, it is after all very much a family time. So I will hole myself up in the flat, have some nice food, drink and whatever and be merry with lots of movies. Let`s face it - xmas telly is always crap on the whole.

Music I have been listening to -

Editors [I know it`s old ish now, but still so bloody good!]
Jarvis Cocker solo - Surprised by how good it actually is, wasn`t expecting too much. [And anyone with a song called `C***s Are Still Running The World` has my vote anyway!!
Broken Social Scene - I have fallen in love with them, unbelievable live too!
Some lovely old Kinks I found... London Loves...

Booooks -

The Francis Wheen bio of Tom Driberg is a brilliant and highly recommended read!

Anyhoo pop pickers [Quick homage to Fluff - bless `im]

S x

Hello Again

2006-07-24T15:37:00.000+01:00

You will notice that I haven`t blog-etted in absolute ages.
Well it has been rather a strange old time of it all, the last few months. In April my flatmate/landlord decided to go completely mad and chuck me out. He said I was `spying` on him. I would have had if his life was of any sort of interest (How interesting can a permanently stoned and pissed agrophobes life be!!!!). Quite the most paranoid person i have ever met in my life. So I had move (on my birthday!)and live in a room above a pub for what turned out to be 6 weeks. Bah...I was also rather ill at the time with a strange tummy thing (which is still being investigated). It appears to have stripped my guts of some chemical or something and I now might be Coeliac (or at least Gluten intolerant). Such fun....not.
I did manage at least to find somewhere half decent to live though, with a good mate; Mark. BUT my computer then decided to blow up on me so I currently have little access until it returns from the pc doctor...
But I promise to continue posting when I can get access, currently only for an hour a week at work at the mo`...

Ta ta for now

S x

3 things .....

2006-01-31T17:42:00.000Z

This from my lovely online pal Ryan @ http://aguyinlove.blogspot.com

Name 3 Great women singers -

Nina Simone

Annie Lennox

Dusty Springfield

Name 3 great male singers -

Billy Mackenzie

David Bowie

Neil Young

Name 3 Tv shows you watch -

Never mind the Buzzcocks

Newsnight

Little Britain

Name your 3 favourite movies -

Network

The Anniversary

The Pianist

Name 3 favourite books -

The Glamour chase (the maverick life of Billy Mackenzie) - Tom Doyle

The curious incident of the dog in the night time - Mark Haddon

The buddha of suburbia - Hanif Kureishi

Name 3 things you do not like about yourself -

My disbelief in myself

My inability to not feel sad when alone

My arse

Name 3 things you like about yourself -

My compassion

My love of music

My ability to manage in a crisis

Name 3 things that make you happy -

Good friends company

New experiences & new places

Love

Name 3 things that make you sad -

Greed and arrogance

Loneliness

when people exhibit coldness & a lack of compassion for others

Name 3 people alive or dead that you think were of importance to America -

Martin Luther King

Michael Moore

F.D.R

and in equal measure...

Name 3 people alive or dead who you think were/are of importance to the UK -

Tony Benn

Oliver Cromwell

Isambard Brunel

S xx

For Mike...

2006-01-22T11:48:00.000Z

`Old Habits Die Hard`

Mick Jagger & Dave Stewart

I thought I shook myself free
You see I bounce back quicker than most
But i'm half delirious, Is too mysterious
You walk through my walls like a ghost
And I take everyday at a time
I'm as proud as a Lion in his Lair
Now there's no denying it, a note to crying it
Your all tangled up in my head

Old habits die hard
Old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard
Harder than November rain
Old habits die hard
Old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard
Hard enough to feel the pain

We haven't spoken in months
You see i've been counting the days
I dream of such humanities, such insanities
I'm lost like a kid and i'm late
But i've never taken your coats
Haven't no block on my phone
I act like an addict, i just got to have it
I can never just leave it alone

Old habits die hard
Old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard
Harder than November rain
Old habits die hard
Old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard
Hard enough to feel the pain

And I can't give you up
Can't leave you alone
And its so hard, so hard
And hard enough to feel the pain

Old habits die hard
Old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard
Harder than November rain
Old habits die hard
Old soldiers just fade away
Old habits die hard
Hard enough to feel the pain...

Mike loved this song, i think it was probaly his favourite. A couple of months back we sat together in his room one night (admittedly rather inebriated!) and listened to it over and over and we both cried, laughed and hugged. So now it has a special resonance for me...

S x

Michael `Moki` Furniss 7th April 1976 - 18th Decemeber 2005

2005-12-24T11:03:00.000Z

`Moki` was his nickname, Mike he was known as. He was small, wiry and had an enormous personality to match up with his small height and was drop dead gorgeous looking. He was only 29 years old when he died last Sunday.
He lived a fairytale life. He was a brief ex who became my closest, greatest, most trusted and most loyal friend. He was my soulmate really. We got on on so many levels and shared so many things in common, hell; he was even born the day before me! We would go out on the town sometimes or just curl up and laugh together in his teeny room (which somehow matched his teeny height), whatever we did together it was always fun with him. He was a lovely, lovely, caring; sharing person who lit the room up when he walked into it. EVERYONE loved him when they met him, he just made you laugh and smile with his dazzling personality and his total love for life and those around him.
A little Peter Pan by way of Captain Jack Sparrow, some thought him a bit clownish. Not one bit, because here was a talented artist and graphic designer/Illustrator. I have been given a couple of pieces of art work. Like him it is colourful, beautiful and full of talent. He was a very clever boy.
I miss him like hell, we were so very close. I loved his honesty and his straightforward manner. If you were feeling low he would make sure you were smiling and felt cared for before he left you. He was relentless in the pursuit of other peoples happiness, he made it his job to help others out.
In his short life he packed alot in and has left a legacy of love and compassion for others. No mean feat and no mean man. This guy was genorosity personified.

One of the last times we went out we joined his Dad in central London (he came down on the train once a month to visit from Derby, where Mike was from). It was a really nice day, and when I got in that night I text messaged Mike to say so.
This was his reply:

`It was lovely. I hope you understand what I was saying about people we care about. I am about to curl up in bed and it`s freezing cold, but I am really, really warm. And sad and happy. I am, like I said, the luckiest boy alive because of all the people I have around me. You are one of them. :) `

He loved London. As we walked over the Thames on Hungerford Bridge that night towards Waterloo station, he sang a Rolling Stones song (he was crazy `bout them) called `Mixed Emotions`. It was a very cold night. He held my hand and told me I was his best friend and that he loved me and we hugged. We leant on the side of the bridge and watched the lights of London twinkling around the river bend and he said `Look, this is London. I am the luckiest boy alive`.
Mike, it was a privilige and an honour to be known as your best friend. I loved you too, very much.

S xx

2005-11-27T10:58:00.000Z

Boy Child
(Engel)

You'll lose your way
A boy child rides upon your back
Take him away
Through mirrors dark and blessed with cracks
Through forgotten courtyards
Where you used to search for youth
Old gets a new life
Reach out you can touch it's true
He's not a shadow of shadows
Like you, you see
Hearts hold on holding
If you stay one, you'll stay free
Go seek the lady
Who will give, not take away
Naked with stillness
On the edge of dawn she stays
Night starts to empty
That's when her song begins
She'll make you happy
She'll take you deep within her
Window lights for wanderers
Hide hard in your swollen eyes
Echoes of laughter
Hide in the cities thighs
Love catch these fragments
Swirling through the winds of night
What can it cost
To give this boy child back his sight
Extensions through dimensions
Leave you feeling cold and lame
Boy child mustn't tremble
'cos he came without a name

On Your Own Again
(Engel)

Wasn't it a good year
Wasn't filled with talking
It still moves through my heart
From time to time
City after city
Gray Granite gray as morning
Heroes died in subways left behind
far behind like our love
You're on your own again
And you're your best again
That's what you tell yourself
I see it all the way as far as anyone can see
Except when it began I was so happy I didn't feel like me

Little Things (That keep us together)
(Engel)

It's on days like these
When your brother falls
You can read it all in the Times
How a moving car
Stole a movie star

Little Things that keep us together
While the war's going on

It's on days like these
When your childhood cries
And you see it all on the news
Little children starve
Growing tired of born

Little things that keep us all close and warm
While the war's going on

Find a place you can hide
And take what you can
The time will arrive
When you need a friend
Stop looking at us
We're waving good-bye
There's a man
Shouting he's with me
When that morning comes
I can't wait to see
Just how high his eagle
On color screens
Is gonna fly
Going to fly

It's on nights like these
That your neighbor dies
'Cos he put a gun to his head
He was so alone
He had nothing left

Little things that call for a drink
That bury a soldier's death

It's on days like these
When your sister cries
And your brother falls from your hands
Jumbo jets can die
Killing 81

Little things that help us get by the why
Why the war's going on
Why the war's going on
Why the war is going on
why the war is going on
why the war's going on
why the war's going on

Obviously have been having a bit of a Scott Walker moment there!

S x

2005-11-26T17:30:00.000Z

PULP

`SUNRISE`

I used to hate the sun because it shone on everything I'd done.
Made me feel that all that I had done was overfill the ashtray of my life.

All my achievements in days of yore range from pathetic
to piss-poor, but all that's gonna change...

Because here comes sunrise.
Yeah, here's your sunrise.

I used to hide from the sun, tried to live my whole life underground.
Why'd you have to rise & ruin all my fun?
Just turned over, closed the curtains on the day.

But here comes sunrise.
Yeah, here's your sunrise

when you've been awake
all night long & you feel like crashing out at dawn.
But you've been awake all night, so why should you crash out at dawn?

and following the last uttering of that, the final spoken line it descends into a thrilling sonic sound wave of elegiac guitar. Really one of my favourite songs and from the excellent and final album `We Love Life` which was produced lushly by Scott Walker.

:)

Here to stay...

2005-11-26T16:40:00.000Z

HERE TO STAY - New Order with production by The Chemical Brothers

As used in the movie `24 Hour Party People`.

Who is this man
That follows me
This blue eyed boy
Who wants to be

This worthy cause
Of human kind
This bomb set off by time

Like a bright light on the horizon
Shining so bright, he'll get you flying
He'll drive you away, he'll drive you insane
But then he'll remove all of your pain

Like a bright light on the horizon
Shining so bright, he'll get you flying
He'll get you flying, he'll get you flying
He'll get you flying, flying, flying

This open book
Yet to be read
This second look
This leap ahead

The hope I held inside
With you, was kept alive

Like a bright light on the horizon
Shining so bright, he'll get you flying
He'll drive you away, he'll drive you insane
But then he'll remove all of your pain
Like a bright light on the horizon
Shining so bright, He'll get you flying
He'll get you flying, He'll get you flying
He'll get you flying, flying, flying

We're here to stay
We're here to stay
We're here to stay
We're here to stay
We're here to stay
We're here to stay
We're here to stay
We're here to stay

Like a bright light on the horizon
Shining so bright, he'll get you flying
He'll get you flying, he'll get you flying
He'll get you flying, flying, flying

:)
Nuff said :)

hahahahaha....

2005-09-22T17:15:00.000+01:00

Britney 'drives shop staff crazy'

Britney Spears has topped a chart of the most irritating singer for shop workers to listen to while at work.
A poll of 1,400 staff by recruitment website Retailchoice also found employees named Usher and Kylie Minogue as annoying artists.
Almost half of those quizzed added that customers had also complained about loud in store music driving them mad.
And a third of the respondents said they had to put up with the same CD being played up to 20 times a week.

TOP 10 ANNOYING SINGERS*

Britney Spears
Usher
Kylie Minogue
50 Cent
Robbie Williams
Akon
Beyonce
Blue
Justin Timberlake
Michael Jackson

This enforced listening to annoying music was suffered most by staff working in fashion and shoe shops.
Not surprisingly, the singers thought to be most annoying were also those whose records were played time and time again.
The poll also discovered that Christmas was the most testing time, with workers having to endure the continual playing of Jingle Bells, White Christmas, and Slade's Merry Christmas Everyone.

Hahaha!
How very true :)

S xx

questions...

2005-09-20T18:21:00.000+01:00

From my mate Ryan in Atlanta http://boyonboy.blogspot.com

`I got an email from another blogger and he asked me 10 questions. I thought they were cool questions and thought I would answer them on here and challenge anybody that wants to answer them and post them on your blog or in the comments here`.

Hence.....

1. What State was you born in? Middlesex, London, UK.

2. Where was your Parents born? Mum - Southall, West London, Dad - Treforest, South Wales.

3. Any Brothers or Sisters? None.

4. Grandparents still alive? No.

5. You play any sports? Cycle to work (4.5 miles each way daily) apart from that no, I am not into sports at all.

6. Closer to your Mom or Dad? Neither.

7. Have any pets? No, not anymore but when i did it was generally dogs and a rabbit too.

8. Plan on getting or are you married? No.

9. Favorite Actor? Stephen Dorff.

10. Favorite talk show host? Don`t have one...

:)

S xx

Friends and love

2005-09-18T00:20:00.000+01:00

BLINK 182 - `ALWAYS`

I've been here before a few times
And I'm quite aware we're dying
And your hands they shake with goodbyes
And I'll take you back if you'd have me
So here I am, I'm trying
So here I am, are you ready?

Come on let me , hold you, touch you, feel you.
Always
Kiss you, taste you, all night.
Always

And I'll miss your laugh your smile
I'll admit
I'm wrong if you'd tell me
I'm so sick of fights
I hate them
Lets start this again for real

So here, I am, I'm trying
So here I am, are you ready?
So here I am, I'm trying
So here I am, are you ready?

Come on let me hold you, touch you ,feel you
Always
Kiss you, taste you, all night .

Always
Come on let me hold you, touch you, feel you.
Always
Kiss you taste you, all night,
Always

I've been here before a few times
And I'm quite aware we're dying
Come on let me hold you touch you feel you
Always
Kiss you taste you all night
Always

Come on let me hold you touch you feel you
Always
Kiss you taste you all night
Always
Always
Always

EMOTION, indeed...yes...

S xx

Sylvian Emotion part 2

2005-09-11T14:04:00.000+01:00

David Sylvian - Cafe Europa

They fired off the first shot
So we're on our feet and running
We're re-writing all the textbooks
In the process of becoming
There's so much to live for
If we stop putting up a fight
There's a place for every story
And this one starts with us tonight

Let me take you down
To Cafe Europa
There's so much to be found
So much to discover
Let me take you down
To Cafe Europa
There's so much to be found
I won't let you down

We're travelling by moonlight
From London to the Highlands
We lose ourselves in inner cities
In the hope of re-defining
The space that surrounds us
What an emptiness within
It's all in the papers
The boy's in love again

Always arriving
Headlights lit up from coast to coast
Empty days full to bursting
With the names of the people and places
We miss the most

I'm taking the last train
Flying the last flight
I'm calling on the angels
And letting in the sunlight

Let me take you down
To Cafe Europa
There's so much to be found
So much to discover
Let me take you down
To Cafe Europa
There's so much to be found
I won't let you down
I won't let you down

Let me take you down
To Cafe Europa
To Cafe Europa
Theres so much to be found
So much to discover
Let me take you down
Cafe Europa
Cafe Europa

It's the heart that has been broken
Finds the truth in what is spoken
Cafe Europa
Cafe Europa
Let me take you down...

God i LOVE this song! The sort of deeply emotive music (and lyric), that should be listened to with a few candles in the room while the rain beats a steady pattern at the window pane...while you have that special person enveloped in your arms...if only.

www.davidsylvian.net

S xx

2005-09-11T01:23:00.000+01:00

History

2005-09-07T07:31:00.000+01:00

Uncertain future for East Germany
By Ben Bradshaw BBC News, Hof

This From Our Own Correspondent was first broadcast on 3 October, 1989.

As East German President Erich Honecker prepared to welcome his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, to Berlin, trainloads of East Germans fled to the West as Hungary and Poland relaxed their border controls. The Iron Curtain was down......

It is quite difficult for an Englishman to understand the emotions that were unleashed on Hof's railway station in the early hours of Sunday morning.
We do not have a minefield and fences running down the middle of our country.
We do not have a wall cutting our former capital in half.

I think anyone would have been moved by the scenes that changed a cold, dank, autumnal Sunday in a north Bavarian town into a world event.
Going or staying is a dilemma that enters the minds of even the most steadfast East Germans Train after train arrived to tumultuous applause. Those on board, men and women, weeping copious tears of joy and relief.
They had arrived at last.

Some of them had waited years, had repeated applications to leave turned down.
Others had jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute. They had heard what was about to happen and they had taken their chance.
Going or staying is a dilemma that enters the minds of even the most steadfast East Germans.
The difference is usually they do not have a choice.

Exodus

It was not just the arrivals at Hof who wore their emotions on their sleeves.
The local people turned out in their hundreds to welcome them.
Stout men and women in their Sunday best, twice or three times the average age of those getting off the trains, wept as they clapped. "These are our people, free at last," they said.

East Germany's citizens enjoyed, as they still do enjoy, the highest standard of living in the communist world And still the exodus goes on.
The movement over the border between Hungary and Austria continues and what many people forget is that those leaving East Germany legally this year will number more than at any time since 1961 and the building of the Berlin Wall.
And here of course is the crunch. The Berlin Wall did its job so successfully that many commentators say East Germany only really began after its construction.

International recognition

Erich Honecker led East Germany from 1971 to 1989It was after 1961 that the country managed to establish some form of stability.
Its doctors and engineers were not running off to the West.
It became the showpiece of the Eastern Bloc, 10th in the World Bank league of international economies.
Its citizens enjoyed, as they still do enjoy, the highest standard of living in the communist world.
Many of those leaving East Germany at the moment profess to be doing so for political reasons Then came the longed-for international recognition in the early seventies, when Western countries, apart from West Germany, established embassies in East Berlin.
So, little East Germany with its population of just over 16 million, proud of its Prussian and Saxon ancestry, flourished in relative terms.
But a concerted effort by its government to cultivate some kind of East German national consciousness failed.
For most East Germans their condition remained an artificial one.
They did not compare their lives with those of the Poles, Czechoslovaks or Russians, but with those of their German cousins in the West. Cousins who drove a BMW and took three foreign holidays a year in countries of their choice.

Opening borders

Many of those leaving East Germany at the moment profess to be doing so for political reasons.
There is no reason to doubt them. But for others the incentive is more basic.
One 40-year-old arrival in Hof told me: "I've been working my guts out for 20 years and what have I got to show for it - a Lada."
East Germany has survived by keeping its people in.
It must not be assumed that all East Germans want to go West. Many do not It has been able to do so because it was a part of a solid political and military bloc in a divided world, and in which its allies played ball.
But in rapidly changing central Europe they, Hungary and Poland at least, are no longer willing to do so.
By tearing down its border fence with Austria and saying East Germans could come and go as they please, Hungary in effect tore down the Berlin Wall.

Difficult reforms

It must not be assumed that all East Germans want to go West. Many do not.
Among them are the leaders of the numerous opposition groups to have sprung up in response to the country's current difficulties.
By and large these people want to maintain socialism in one form or another and the thought of being swallowed up by West Germany, with problems of unemployment, homelessness and drug abuse, fills them with horror.
But they will tell you that every day longer that their government resists reforms, more people who essentially think as they do will give up and say: "To hell with it, we would be better under rule from Bonn."
These are the people who could be East Germany's hope for the future, but there is no sign of the government entering a dialogue with them.
Those arriving at Hof say it is too late anyway. They even report people lining the route of the trains in East Germany waving and clapping and holding placards saying: "We're coming soon."
So spare a thought for Mr Honecker, as he and his ageing Politburo colleagues try to raise a smile later this week.

Hotbed of opposition

East Germany's 77-year-old leader suffered and was imprisoned under the Nazis.
How could it open its borders and introduce free market structures but maintain its separateness from West Germany? He devoted the rest of his life to building the first state of workers and peasants on German soil, only to be abandoned by their children and told by those who stayed they have had enough. What can the little man from the Saarland do?
If he continues to resist reform, the mood of the people, dark enough as it is, will only get worse. But if he grasps the nettle and does what everyone, save his own ideological advisers, is telling him to do, what will become of East Germany?
How could it open its borders and introduce free market structures but maintain its separateness from West Germany?
As one senior East German politician recently put it: "If we give up socialism, we give up our reason to exist."
As the world asks itself how many more birthdays East Germany can look forward to, I cannot help wondering what Mr Honecker really feels about the man from Moscow who will be sharing the podium with him in a few days' time.
For all the bombast and rhetoric fired in the direction of the imperialist West during the current crisis, it is Mr Gorbachev, of course, who is really to blame for East Germany's predicament.
It is his glasnost and perestroika that have brought the trouble.
One wonders what he must be thinking, as the Soviet Union's most docile and reliable ally becomes suddenly a hotbed of opposition and unrest.

I...and who....?

2005-08-28T01:11:00.000+01:00

I am in strange and reflective mood. I inadvertently, and thank god i have (!!), met old pals (VERY good old pals whom i have neglected). It all seems so odd. I need to be in love...yet again. But this time i need to be in love with the man I, I mean `I ` want. AND NEED!
You know who you are........

S x

Potent and resonant lyrically and EXTREMELY contemporary really, still!

2005-08-10T21:35:00.000+01:00

ARMAGEDDON DAYS (are here again) by Thethe http://thethe.com

They're 5 miles high
As the crow flies
Leavin' vapour trails
Across a blood red sky
Movin' in from the East
Towards the West
With balaclava helmets
Over their heads YES!

But if you think that Jesus Christ is coming
Honey, you've got another thing coming
If he ever finds out who's hijacked his name
He'll cut out his heart and turn in his grave

Islam is rising
The Christians mobilising
The world is on it's elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message
And worships the creeds

"It's War" she cried
"It's War" she cried
"This is War!
"Drop your possessions
All you simple folk
You will fight them on the beaches
in your underclothes
You will thank the good lord
For raising the Union Jack
You'll watch the ships sail out of harbour
And the bodies come floating back
Watch the ships sail out of harbour
And the bodies come floating back

If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today
He'd be gunned down cold by the C.I.A.
Oh, the lights that now burn brightest
Behind stained glass
Will cast the darkest shadows
Upon the human heart
But God didn't build himself that throne
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome
God doesn't belong to the Yankee dollar
God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn't even go to church
And God won't send us down to Allah to burn
God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown

Islam is rising
The Christians mobilising
The world is on it's elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message
And worships the creeds
The world is on it's elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message
And worships the creeds

Armageddon days are here again
Armageddon days are here again
Armageddon days are here again
Armageddon Days Are HERE!!!

1989

The King And Queen Of America by Eurythmics http://http://www.vibber.dk/eurythmistan/index2.html

Well c'mon darlin'
The stars are burning bright
C'mon now darlin'
Our lick is good tonight
'Cause we're the all time winners
In the all time loser's game
Yea we're the all time winners
And here we go again

The king & queen of America...

Yea it's the king of nothing
And the queen of rage
With a pile of confusion
Upon a glittering stage
You know we never did anything
To make ourselves feel proud
You know we never did anything
So let's play it loud
Let's hear it for the -

King & queen of America...

So c'mon darlin'
There's a big moon in the sky
-We're gonna build
A little satellite
-We're gonna make it fly...
We're gonna send it up to heaven
All the way up to the stars
And all of them aliens
Are gonna find out
Who we are
We're talkin' 'bout the

King & queen of America

Methinks those songs still work and really...SAY IT!

kisses

S xx

ok so it`s more lyrics, but due to what seems current events this seems particularly appropriate...

2005-07-25T21:58:00.000+01:00

Tears For Fears -` Shout`

Shout
Shout

Let it all out
These are things I can do without
Come On
I'm talking to you
Come on

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul
In black and white
They really really ought to know
Those one track minds
That took you for a working boy
Kiss them goodbye
You shouldn't have to jump for joy

Shout

They gave you life
And in return you gave them them hell
As cold as ice I hope we live to tell the tale

Shout

And when you've taken down your guard
If I could change your mind
I'd really love to break your heart

Shout

See what the title says

kiss

S x

Sylvian emotion

2005-07-19T17:29:00.000+01:00

The Boy with the Gun

He knows well his wicked ways
A course of bitterness
A grudge held from his childhood days
As if life had loved him less
Reading down his list of names
He ticks them one by one
He points the barrel at the sky
Firing shots off at the sun

”I’m the law and I am the king, I am the wisdom, listen to me sing”

He carves out the victim’s names
In the wooden butt of the gun
He leans well back against the tree
He knows his kingdome’s come
He’ll breathe a sigh self satisfied
The work is in good hands
He shoots the coins into the air
And follows where the money lands

”I’m the law and I am the king, I am the wisdom, listen to me sing``

He pauses at the city’s edge
Of hellfire and of stone
He summons up the devil there
To give him courage of his own
He’ll free the sinners of deceit
They’ll hear his name and run
His justice is his own reward
Measured out beneath the sun

”I’m the law and I am the king, I am the wisdom, listen to me sing”

And my name’s on the gun
The work is just began
By the boy with the gun

Forbidden Colours

The wounds on your hand never seem to heal
I thought all I needed was to believe

Here am I, a lifetime away from you ?
The blood of Christ or the beat of my heart
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes

Senseless years thunder by
Millions are willing to give their lives for you
Does nothing live on ?

Learning to cope with feelings aroused in me
My hands in the soil, buried inside myself
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes in you once again

I’ll go walking in circles
While doubting the very ground beneath me
Trying to show unquestioning faith in everything
Here am I, a lifetime away from you ?
The blood of Christ, or a change of heart

My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes
My love wears forbidden colours
My life believes in you once again

Orpheus

Standing firm on this stoney ground
The wind blows hard
Pulls these clothes around
I harbour all the same worries as most
The temptations to leave or to give up the ghost
I wrestle with an outlook on life
That shifts between darkness and shadowy light
I struggle with words for fear that they’ll hear
But Orpheus sleeps on his back still dead to the world

Sunlight falls, my wings open wide
There’s a beauty here I cannot deny
And bottles that tumble and crash on the stairs
Are just so many people I knew never cared
Down below on the wreck on the ship
Are a stronghold of pleasures I couldn’t regret
But the baggage is swallowed up by the tide
As Orpheus keeps to his promise and stays by my side

Tell me, I’ve still a lot to learn
Understand, these fires never stop
Believe me, when this joker is tired of laughing
I will hear the promise of my Orpheus sing

Sleepers sleep as we row the boat
Just you the weather and I gave up hope
But all of the hurdles that fell in our laps
Were fuel for the fire and straw for our backs
Still the voices have stories to tell
Of the power struggles in heaven and hell
But we feel secure against such mighty dreams
As Orpheus sings of the promise tomorrow may bring

Tell me, I’ve still a lot to learn
Understand, these fires never stop
Please believe me, when this joker is tired of laughing
I will hear the promise of my Orpheus sing...

3 songs from David Sylvian (Japan) and his most hauntingly beautiful solo album `Secrets of the Beehive`. I have had this cd for many years and these songs have always evoked strong emotions for me, hence the annotation.

S x

today 07.07.05

2005-07-07T22:28:00.000+01:00

.....

LONDON MAYOR KEN LIVINGSTONE
`.....This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful.
It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old.
Indiscriminate slaughter irrespective of any consideration for age, class, religion, whatever.
That isn't an ideology. It isn't even a perverted faith. It is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder. `

PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR
`It is important... that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire impose extremism on the world.
Whatever they do it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world. `

CHIEF RABBI JONATHAN SACKS
`These terrible events have brought home to us the full evil that terror represents.
It is not the weapon of the weak against the strong but the rage of the angry against the defenceless and innocent. It is an evil means to an evil end. `

SIR IQBAL SACRANIE, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE MUSLIM COUNCIL OF GREAT BRITAIN
`What we need to be aware is the terrorists, these evil people who have carried out this series of explosions in London, want to demoralise us as a nation and divide us as a people.
All of us must unite in helping the police to hunt these murderers down.
I think, yesterday, we celebrated as Londoners the euphoria that our great city had secured the Olympic Games.
Today, we watch aghast as we witness a series of brutal attacks upon our capital city. I think we were together in our celebrations and we must remain together in our time of crisis. `

RESPECT MP GEORGE GALLOWAY
`We argued... that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings. `

RAMESH KALLIDAI, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE HINDU FORUM OF GREAT BRITAIN
`Britain is a good example of a multi-cultural society where all faith communities have been living together peacefully. It is now more important than ever to ensure that we do not succumb to terrorism by allowing ourselves to be divided. `

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso

`It's absurd, those criminal attacks against innocent people that have nothing to do with the problems that are raised by the terrorists.
This criminal act [is] not only against Britain, against the British people but against all civilised people in the world that do not tolerate these kind of crimes.
All of us from President Chirac to the president of China expressed sympathy to Tony Blair and Britain. There is a strong consensus on the need to defend our values. `

News website reader Scott Wenbourne was on the train travelling in to Aldgate station when there was an explosion in the carriage in front of him.

`It was about 8.50am when it happened. I was one carriage down from where it happened and had my back to the carriage door.
All of a sudden there was a loud bang and a flash of bright light. It threw me to the floor in the middle of the train.
At first some people thought it wasn't serious, perhaps just a minor derailment, although some people were screaming.
But straight away, as soon I hit the floor my first thought was "it's a bomb", although I can't be sure.
It all happened in slow motion, I thought the windows would blow through.
Carriage 'ripped apart'
One of the train staff came along and said that we had hit something but that there was no need to panic.
We got off at the back end of the train and they walked us towards Aldgate station.
As we walked up past the carriage we saw debris and torn metal. I noticed the carriage was completely ripped apart on one side.
I saw three bodies on the track. I couldn't look, it was so horrific. I think one was moving but I'm not too sure.
There were also, I think, some bodies in the carriage, some were moving but I couldn't really look. No-one was attending to them.
We walked to the platform, which took about half an hour as there were so many of us, after all it was rush hour.
There were police at the platform and some of the injured were tended to.
Many people had black faces, bleeding from parts all over their bodies. Nobody seemed to have anything too horrific, they all seemed to be conscious.
As soon as I got out the station I phoned my mum to tell her I was OK. Someone from work called as well. I just stood around for a bit trying to take in what happened.
When I got to work one girl said she was just getting off the train at Liverpool Street when she felt the whole building rock.
We've been told at work to stay in the building, pull the blinds down and keep away from the windows......`

Comments - London, Thursday 7th July 2005.....

S x

UK Gay Pride 2005

2005-07-04T21:23:00.000+01:00

Well,

That was a bit of a week and a bit! I am somewhat weary, but it was a super giggle :)
It was especially lovely to see me dear Kristof, who always manages to come over from Budapest at just the right time to cheer me up and make me feel human ~Aww bless~ He is my total luv :) He went back Saturday :(
Saturday was also GayPride UK, in London. It was admittedly a little lacklustre, but then Live8 was the same day...I attended with my gorgeous Ali, she is the perfect fag hag, albeit a rather attractive one. It was lovely, we have been friends now 30 years, since we were both toddlers almost and due to her living in India (Chennai), i haven`t had her to myself. We trolled together onwards at Waterloo stn where she met me, to the rally in the square where there were speeches, Ian McKellen looked rather tiny, but nevertheless nice. Then we went to a few bars in old Compton st. Lots of cuties abounding of course. Ali and i basically got a little pissed and had a really lovely laugh, someone spilt red wine all over the back of me gorgeous powder blue shirt, so thats that into the bin. Bumped into a friend, Peter who is loads of fun...an ex from 1995 (Hi Chris :) (!!!!!) and my Deputy manager from work who was fabulously pissed and more. Hung around until closing then met up again with Peter to hit the club, this time Shinky Shonky. Absolutely loved it, Boogaloo Stu was hysterical (`Hello Motherfuckers!`) and the music was cool (they even played The Killers - ta Albert Twatlock!). And only a fiver, very good stuff!
Sunday was lovely too, chillin` and stuff, watching `Close Encounters..` etc and having food. London CAN be good in the right company ;)
Popped in the evening for a brief meet up with Ali (recountings the previous days adventures a la Pride! Giggle..), Mands and Rob in The Red Lion then drifted away to sleep...yawn...
:)

S x

Jumpin Jack Flash, it`s a hash, hash, hash...

2005-07-02T00:23:00.000+01:00

Hmmm,

Not good, but ok.
Why does June Always provoke such adverse feelings 4 me? i will never quite know...
It hasn`t been a terrible week, just a little bit of a dissapointing one..hey ho.
Though i have had some fun..u know who u r
:)

S x

The New VirginRail Ad...

2005-07-01T17:42:00.000+01:00

Love train

AD BREAKDOWN

'Will you quit stalling? We're going to miss the train'

THE PRODUCT: Virgin Trains

THE BRIEF: Make people forget how grim train travel has often been in recent years. Instead, inspire them with a bit of good old-fashioned romance.

WHAT'S GOING ON: As one of Virgin's new Pendolino trains powers through the English countryside, the Railway Children race down to the fence to see the "big dragon tearing by".
On board, modern day "customers" mingle with living, breathing icons of the golden age of the train.
Margaret Lockwood and May Witty order a pot of tea, asking the waiter to make sure the water's boiling. Cary Grant tries to chat up Eva Marie Saint. And (rather strangely, since the train has already been racing through the fields) Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon hobble down a Euston platform in high heels and make it on to the train just in time.
The advert - a full minute long - reaches its climax (to the kind of orchestral soundtrack one might expect from a Hollywood epic) with Cary Grant declaring: "Beats flying, doesn't it."

CAST LIST
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon - Some Like it Hot
May Witty and Margaret Lockwood - The Lady Vanishes
Albert Finney Martin Balsam - Murder on the Orient Express
Sir John Mills - In Which We Serve
Jenny Agutter, Sally Thomsett and Gary Warren - The Railway Children
Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint - North by North West

A strange message, perhaps, to come from the House of Branson. But the atmosphere created by this advert is so seductive that the experience of post-Hatfield speed restrictions, delays and overcrowding, seems a world away. By linking the train experience with flying, it's almost as if the most realistic alternative to rail (driving) is not even considered.
"The whole brief was to reinvent the romance and passion of train travel," says Helen Kimber of ad agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, which created the advert.
Keith Lovegrove, author of Railway: Identity, Design and Culture, is in no doubt that the brief has been fulfilled.

Cover is blown

"This advert works on so many levels," he says. "It successfully suggests that travelling by train is once again fashionable. There's a subliminal message that there's a chance of an encounter with a celebrity on board, but there are various nods too to British culture - for example the two girls nudging each other as Cary Grant is chatting up Eva Marie Saint."
This is not, Lovegrove says, a new theme in advertising. He points to a 1938 advert for classic US modernist train, the 20th Century Limited, which said a visit to the bar lounge is "an experience akin to being a guest in a famous and exclusive club, for rarely does the Century move without a quorum of internationally-known people on board".
It's the combination of the old films with the modern which impresses Lovegrove most, however, as well as the way characters from two Hitchcock films meet in the corridor.
The care taken in production means this is one of those adverts which repays repeated watching. "When Tony Curtis is on the train, there's a cover of Hello! Magazine in a rack behind him with a picture of Curtis himself on it, with the headline "Life's a Drag". Little touches like that make it watchable again and again."
Helen Kimber agrees that the key to the advert's success is the trouble taken in "post production", ie the work done with computers and editing after the filming has taken place, and where the ancient is merged with the modern.

Countryside adds to air of drama

The previous Ad Breakdown article on the VW Golf "Singin in the rain" advert gave a taste of how this is done - in the Virgin case this work (by Ludo Fealey at Glassworks) took three months - the time an average advert takes to make from beginning to end. His tasks included such things as matching the shadows on the new and old actors' faces, and reflecting the film actors in the modern props and windows.
The music, composed by James Brett who was the assistant musical director of the Party in the Palace at the Queen's Golden Jubilee, and recorded with the 62-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra, deserves special mention for the way it supports the mood of a John Williams Hollywood epic.
Behind the scenes there was much toil too, particularly for those involved in obtaining permission from the studios which own the original films, and in the case of actors such as Cary Grant who have died, getting agreement from their families.
In some respects this advert may become a classic, to rank alongside the BR promotional films and the 1980s British Rail "Relax" advert in which even the Penguin in the logo on a passenger's book dozes.
The central idea is not in itself new - not just in the way that Keith Lovegrove points out, but in the merging of new and old. Anyone remember Griff Rhys Jones and Holsten Pils, for example? But when so much love and attention has obviously been lavished on something, this scarcely matters.

COMMENTS.

Ad Breakdown refers to the 'classic' BR Relax ad, but all this did was highlight the vast difference between the ad and the awful experience of actually travelling by train. This Virgin ad makes exactly the same mistake. I had the misfortune to travel by Virgin last week and the misery of the journey when compared with the ad is indescribable. Show cramped seating, screaming children and executives yelling into their mobile phones and you'll be closer to the real rail experience.
Jane, Botley, Hampshire

I though the ad was brilliant!
Mark Richards, Nottingham

I absolutely cannot fault this very well crafted short film. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as an advert, because it is rather let down by the reality it promises to deliver. If only the trains in the UK were really this nice! It is a fantasy film therefore, to be enjoyed on only that level, and not to be regarded as reflecting the reality of train travel in the UK today anymore than "The Lord of the Rings" films reflected the reality of life in New Zealand.
Rob, London, UK

S X

:)

2005-06-28T20:55:00.000+01:00

This is not a sad post, it`s a happy one because i have fine friends :)

Pet Shop Boys

`Email`

Communication's never been
as easy as today
and it would make me happy
when you've gone so far away
if you'd send me an e-mail
that says 'I love you'
Send me an e-mail
that says 'I love you'

Now time and distance melt away
No digital delay
And some things
can be written down
that we're too shy to say
Send me an e-mail
that says 'I love you'
Send me an e-mail
that says 'I love you'

There may be other
temptations in your life
Don't want to add more
complications to your life
but I'm sending this e-mail
to say 'I love you'

Now there's a ghost
within this house
You're haunting me tonight
I'm looking at some photographs
and thinking that I might
jump on a plane
and surprise you where
you are
but do you want me there?
I'm so insecure
but one thing would make me sure
if you'd
send me an e-mailthat says 'I love you'
Send me an e-mail
that says 'I love You'

`HERE`

We all have a dream
of a place we belong
The fire is burning
and the radio's on
Somebody smiles
and it means "I love you"
but sometimes we don't notice
when the dream has come true

You've got a home here
Call it what you want
You've got a home here
to return to
when you can't
face the world and you need
some support to succeed
You've got a home

We all make a mess
of our lives from time to time
It's part of the process
that you stumble as you climb
And if you ever feel
the pain is far too big a deal
I say with pride
I'll be on your side

You've got a home here
Call it what you want
You've got a home here
You're gonna want it when you can't
face the world and you need
some support to succeed
You've got a home

S xx

Saturday says...

2005-06-25T21:41:00.000+01:00

hello,

I had a charming, funny day today after a couple of downbeat ones...
Met Kristof, me lovely poof pal from Budapest at Stansted Airport at some godforsaken hour and giggled our way into London Liverpool St. on the most bone shaking of rattling and humming trains - the poor, ancient things! Stansted Express indeed! Balls...Anyway we had a lovely, silly day mooching about London and (VERY) late lunched at the Back Cap in Camden before haunting a few dodgy cheap cd shops. Luv it :). It was so nice to just laugh and giggle about stuff and be entirely silly - giggle.
Me got (as pressies),

~ Hungarian fags ~

~ Rare Eurythmics `Don`t ask me why` boxset cd single :) :) ~

Me bought in dodgy, cheap cd shops,

~ Athlete ~ `Vehicles & Animals` (`U got the style`)

~ Starsailor ~ `Silence is easy` (`4 to the floor`!)

~ The Fatima Mansions ~ `Bertie`s brochures`

An utter classic!!

~Aww bless ~

S x

:)

2005-06-15T19:43:00.000+01:00

:)

Me be back...
U know what i mean...

:)

S XX

The Killers Lyrics

All These Things That I've Done Lyrics

When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
One more son
If you can hold on
If you can hold on, hold on

I wanna stand up, I wanna let go
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand

Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no

Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the blackburner
You know you got to help me out

And when there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
These changes ain't changing me
The cold-hearted boy I used to be

Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the blackburner
You know you got to help me out
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier
I got soul, but I'm not a soldier...

Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the blackburner
You know you got to help me out
You're gonna bring yourself down
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the blackburner
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

Over and out, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done

If you can hold on
If you can hold on

Fabulous :) !!

S xx

this week i have...

2005-06-06T22:58:00.000+01:00

HELLO!

This week i have been mostly...

LISTENING TO -

Heaven 17 - Best of + remixes

Act - Laughter, Tears & Rage: The Anthology

dEUS - No More Loud Music

Pulp - Countdown

Billy Mackenzie - Outernational + Remixes

READING -

Ben Watt - Patient

Jo Slee -Peepholism - Into The Art of Morrissey

and mainly having a giggle with assorted pals at a birthday party in an allotment...don`t ask! It was a good old giggle, believe me...and this guy, who is just lovely :) :)
Lucky old me :)
I start new job soon, so at least i will have a bit more cash and get back to normal service, just weeks away now :)

So yay for the summer!

:)

S X

gay

2005-05-19T20:29:00.000+01:00

Same Thing In Reverse by Boy George.

How does it feel, what do you do
When he's all alone with you
Do you kiss him, hold his hand
Who's the woman? Who's the man?

Is it twisted it is sick
Mother nature's little trick
I don't have to feel no shame
In God's image I am made

Your brother doesn't understand
How you could love another man
And your poor father thinks we're cursed
It's the same thing in reverse

It's the same thing in reverse
Nothing better nothing worse
It's the same thing in reverse
It's the same thing
it's the same thing

Love is! La de dah

What can you say where do you go
Do you want the world to know
Make a prison of your fear
Be a kamikaze queer

Bite my lip hold my tongue
Hope I'm not the only one
I don't have to be afraid
In God's image I am made

Your brother doesn't understand
How you could love another man
And your poor father thinks we're cursed
It's the same thing in reverse

It's the same thing in reverse
Nothing better nothing worse
It's the same thing in reverse
It's the same thing, it's the same thing

Do I love him, yes I love him
So don't question my affection
This is not some damn affliction
It's just love in contradiction

It's the same thing, it's the same thing

Black boys in cars (it's the same thing)
White boys with poisonous hearts (it's the same thing)
Even on the one eyed guru (it's the same thing)
And why the hell you looking at me (it's the same thing)

and I never wanted to be part of the gang (it's the same thing)
I never saw this as part of my plan (it's the same thing)
I walk down the street with pride (it's the same thing)
Happy that you're by my side.....

S :)

XX

Musings.....

2005-05-18T17:32:00.000+01:00

hello,

I have been a tad naughty lately due to general bad (mis) demeanour...oh well, thats me...

3 Things...

A. I was sat in the weak sunshine pleasantly on Sunday afternoon at the bus stop (waiting to go meet this guy :), the most angelically pretty little girl stopped and waved and smiled and continued to do so going down the street. Her enormous young Dad dressed in chains, shades and tracksuit smiled copiously and wide. It seemed like a small ray of beauty amongst the ruins...

B. This guy... :) :)

C. It always amazes me how people change when they get on any of the myriad forms of public transport. They might be chatting animatedly beforehand and having a right old giggle, but then as the bus (or whatever..), doors close manical silence draws over them...strange really.

anyway, kisses..

S x

2005-05-09T19:25:00.000+01:00

Manners !

During a good manners and etiquette class, the teacher says to her students:
"If you were courting a well educated young girl from a prominent
family and during a dinner for two you needed to go to the toilet, what would you say to her?"
Mike replies "Wait a minute, I'm going for a pee" The teacher says :
"That would be very rude and improper on your part."
Charlie replies: "I'm sorry I need to go to the toilet, I'll be back in a
minute." The teacher says : "That's much better but to mention the word
''toilet'' during a meal, is unpleasant."
And Little Johnny says: "My dear, please excuse me for a moment. I have to
go shake hands with a personal friend, whom, I hope, to be able to
introduce
to you after dinner. "

The teacher passed out.....

Tee hee...

S x

andmoreagain...and again.

2005-04-08T16:20:00.000+01:00

dEUS - `Instant street`

You're probably right, seen from your side, that I've been luckybut I've been meaning to crack all week.
Yes I've been involved, it never resolved into anything shocking.
Pains playing yoyo in my body as we speak.

And now I found something to look for, but I can't decide,'
Cause I might find that to stroll behind is better than to score.
Just like I did before.

It wouldn't be true, not towards you, to say that I'm staying.
When on every single impulse, on every other move I react.
'Cause in any old creek, with changing technique, you'll see me playing.
After any old motherfucking blow I'll be back.

We turned away from instant stuff
our cracking codes were breaking up
our words were sucked out it made them clean.

And after lowness say it
and after more let it be known
Our codes are grown into something mean.

You're probably right, as for tonight, you're making me nervous.
What is it you want me to be thinking of?
I'll put on a movie, I'll play something groovy as a matter of service
And I'll chuckle when you smile as a matter of love.

'Cause you know it's not my style to be giving up now.
And this pain in my side, I had enough.

This time I go for Instant Street
This life's a soulless excuse for all abuse and parenthesis.
The flyspecked windows and the stinking lobbies they'll remain all the same, all the same.
This time I go. This time I go...

gorgeous ...

S xx

in my life.....

2005-04-05T22:23:00.000+01:00

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life
I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

In my life I love you more

A truer word never spoken quite so elegantly...and if i have sent you something so gorgeous it means i love you and think of you, not just weird; but nice also.

love

S xx

sad, hope he gets through it; he`s cool and talented...

2005-03-02T20:07:00.000Z

Singer Edwyn Collins has brain surgery.

A Girl Like You was the height of Britpop.
Musician and writer Edwyn Collins has undergone emergency brain surgery after suffering a haemorrhage late last month.
The 45-year-old Scottish musician's wife Grace Maxwell said the former Orange Juice frontman was recovering and is "as well as can be hoped for".
Collins, who also had success as a solo artist, is in a London hospital while his condition is being stabilised.
Ms Maxwell, also Collins' manager, added in a message posted on his website he was "continuing to fight".

'Loving thoughts'

She also thanked fans and well-wishers for their "loving thoughts", and said she would keep them informed of any developments in the singer's condition.
Collins' biggest hit with Orange Juice was Rip It Up in 1983, which reached number three, and in 1995 he scored a big solo hit with A Girl Like You.
On BBC 6 Music's radio show Roundtable on 18 February, Collins said he had recently been ill.
"I suddenly got a horrible sense of vertigo, the room started spinning around and I started puking up," he said.
But he put it down to food poisoning at the time, adding: "I'm two days into recuperation and I should be fine."

Global hit

Collins was a leading figure on the alternative Scottish scene in the late 1970s and 1980s, forming his first band, Nu-Sonics, aged 17.
They became Orange Juice, who were independent favourites and briefly broke into the mainstream with Rip It Up.
He pursued a solo career with mixed results until A Girl Like You, at the height of Britpop, which was a top 10 hit in seven countries and reached the top 40 in the US. He continued the success with songs such as `Keep On Burning`, `The Magic Piper Of Love`, `Addidas World`, If You Could Love Me` and the lovely, almost sexy `Make Me Feel Again`.
In 1999, he created and starred in Channel 4 sitcom West Heath Yard, which featured cameo performances from Jarvis Cocker, Natalie Imbruglia and Alan McGee amongst others.
He continued his `ultimately maverick quest` by appearing as a guest on Rolf Harris's album after being impressed by the Australian icon's rendition of A Girl Like You.
He had recently turned to producing new bands including Sons and Daughters, The Cribs and Little Barrie.
A compilation of his early songs, The Glasgow School, is due to be released in May.

S xx

back

2005-03-01T22:07:00.000Z

OK,

so i am back...

Bigger, better & stronger than ever (i hope :)

life awaits again :)

S x

My love and i, we work well together
But often we’re apart
Absence makes the heart lose weight, yeah,
Till love breaks down, love breaks down

Oh my, oh my, have you seen the weather
The sweet september rain
Rain on me like no other
Until I drown, until I drown

When love breaks down
The things you do
To stop the truth from hurting you
When love breaks down

The lies we tell,
They only serve to fool ourselves,
When love breaks down
The things you do
To stop the truth from hurting you

When love breaks down
The things you do
To stop the truth from hurting you
When love breaks down,
Love breaks down

My love and i, we are boxing clever
She’ll never crowd me out
Fall be free as old confetti
And paint the town, paint the town

When love breaks down
The things you do
To stop the truth from hurting you
When love breaks down
The lies we tell,
They only serve to fool ourselves,
When love breaks down
The things you do
To stop the truth from hurting you

When love breaks down
You join the wrecks
Who leave their hearts for easy sex
When love breaks down
When love breaks down
When love breaks down.....

``Steve McQueen``lp - Prefab Sprout 1985.

2005-01-30T21:40:00.000Z

Bosnia's horrific war memories

By Nick Thorpe BBC News, Bosnia

There were countless horrors in the wars which led to the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A Serbian army general has now surrendered to the authorities and will go to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague to answer war crimes charges dating back to 1999. But what happens once camp guards have served their sentences?

Kole stood trial in The Hague in Holland in 1999
Dragan Kolundzija, Kole to his friends, is sitting at the bar of the Hotel Prijedor when we enter.
He smiles awkwardly and gets down off the stool to shake hands.
He looks younger than his 46 years.
If you saw him in the street, you could mistake him for a football coach.
Not a reserve policeman.
Not a concentration camp guard.
He has not agreed to an interview yet. He has turned down the approaches of other journalists.
It takes Lola 10 minutes to persuade him to speak.
Lola, my fixer, who fought for a while in the same Bosnian Serb army as Kole and tells dirty jokes all day long, has a heart of gold and is not afraid of anything.
Meanwhile, I watch the women cleaning the glass panels which dot the lobby of the hotel.
Then we go upstairs to a big empty room with a gas heater.
The hotel staff seem afraid of us, or of Kole, I cannot decide which.

Kole was a guard at Keraterm in 1992, one of three concentration camps in north-west Bosnia, where nearly 1,700 Bosnian Muslims were tortured to death in three months in the summer of 1992.
Thousands of others still bear the scars.

He pleaded guilty to one count of persecution as a crime against humanity. And got three years in jail from the Hague War Crimes Tribunal.
And was one of the first to be released.
Five of his fellow guards are still serving sentences.
"There were 30 in total", he says.
Sitting with him, it is easy to remember that the Serbs too are victims of the Bosnian war.
That the jailers too, suffer.
His hands shake badly. And his lips.
He tries to hold his hands still on the pure white tablecloth.

We make small talk for a while, but I cannot pretend we have come to talk about the river, which flows lazily by, beneath the windows.
I try to be gentle.
I am a storyteller, not a prosecutor.

What ways were open to you to show kindness to the prisoners?
He breaks down immediately.

Unusual friendship

After a while, he says he has a friend.
A Muslim, who was an inmate at the camp, when he was a guard.
We guards were much closer to robots than to human beings you know.....
Kole - `Would we like to meet him? `
Ten minutes later, Suad, known as Duda is there.
He too is trembling.
The Serb and the Muslim, the guard and his prisoner are sitting side-by-side, broken faced, broken eyed, drinking stupid soft drinks as though there was no war, no cruelty, no injustice in this world.
"We guards were much closer to robots than to human beings... we were all doing things which were not connected to our true selves... " says Kole.
"There was chaos in the compound, and chaos outside in the town. And men with guns."
They explain to me, in fits and starts, what a concentration camp means.
What the concentration of men means.
It is where men are concentrated to death.
Four rooms with 400-500 men in each, 120 metres square.
In the summer heat. With no space to lie down.
Civilians, from 15 to 90-years-old.
Rounded up at the start of the war on the orders of the high command, zealously carried out by local henchmen.
Muslims had been officially declared vermin.
So they had to be concentrated.
Every night Serb soldiers, back from the front, came to the camp.
They wanted revenge for lost comrades.
They asked the guards for the keys to the rooms.
And committed acts of unspeakable barbarity. Of sexual humiliation and horror.

Of all the guards, only Kole refused to hand over the key, says Duda.
That was the only shift when there were no beatings or killings.
Except for just one night.

'Dark black night'

"It was dark, the soldiers somehow got into the room and Kole was shouting, stop shooting, stop shooting!" Duda says. "By morning there were 200 bodies."
Kole is hunched up at the table, staring at the back of his hands, as though he does not know what they are.
After a while he says, "that was a dark, black night".
At the Hague, Duda testified in his defence.
Partly thanks to that, Kole is out already.
The judges believed he did what he could, to alleviate the suffering.
Now the two men are friends again. Like they were at primary school, like beautiful lost children growing gradually and only aware of themseleves and each other...

After the interview, I try to find the toilet but my brain is fogged up.
I walk headfirst into a plate glass door. The women cleaned it too well. It quivers but does not break.
I walk with my hands in front of me now, like a blind man.

But there are those who still believe in a final solution to the 'Muslim problem'
This hotel, this country is a labyrinth of invisible glass.
On the way out of Prijedor, we pass Keraterm, the ex-camp. Once a factory for bathroom tiles.
It is a low, meaningless building beside another factory, which boasts a chimney at least, for making bricks.
25,000 Muslims are back in Prijedor. Out of the 45,000 who once lived here.
Some stare at Kole in the street. Some shake his hand.
Nearly everyone was changed by the war.
But there are those who still believe in a final solution to the "Muslim problem".
That one race, or ethnic group, is better than another.
But if Kole and Duda can live together anyone can.....

S x

2005-01-19T17:07:00.000Z

'I don't like Monday 24 January'

Staying in bed could be the best option.

Misery is expected to peak on Monday, as 24 January has been pinpointed as the worst day of the year.
January has been long regarded as the darkest of months, but a formula from a part-time tutor at Cardiff University shows it gets even worse this Monday.
Foul weather, debt, fading Christmas memories, failed resolutions and a lack of motivation conspire to depress, Cliff Arnalls found.
GPs say reading up on depression and exercise are ways to beat winter blues.
"Yes, we do see lots of people with depression and anxiety in the winter months.
"The message is it's not a terrible disorder, people do get better," Dr Alan Cohen told BBC News.

JANUARY BLUES DAY FORMULA
1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.
Where:

W: Weather
D: Debt
d: Money due in January pay
T: Time since Christmas
Q: Time since failed quit attempt
M: General motivational levels
NA: The need to take action

"Exercise and bibliotherapy - reading a number of books to allow people to understand their own symptoms and how to control them," were initial treatments, he said.
The formula for the day of misery reads 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.
Where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January's pay day - and T is the time since Christmas.
Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.

GPs say exercise will boost spirits
Dr Arnalls calculated the effects of cold, wet and dark January weather after the cosiness of Christmas coupled with extra spending in the sales.
He found 24 January was especially dangerous, coming a whole month after Christmas festivities.
Any energy from the holiday had worn off by the third week of January, he said.
By Monday, most people will have fallen off the wagon or abandoned the nicotine patches as they fail to keep New Year's resolutions.
That compounds a sense of failure and knocks confidence needed to get through January.
The fact that the most depressing day fell on a Monday was not planned but a coincidence, he said.

Do you dread 24 January? Is this the most depressing month? How can you beat the winter blues? Send us your views.
We would also like a photograph that represents how you felt on the day if you have one , email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk with the subject line 'Misery'.

Says it all...

S x

Marc Almond.

2005-01-16T17:57:00.000Z

MARC ALMOND ON HIS HORROR CRASH .

Jan 15 2005
EXCLUSIVE: `It turned me grey and made me stutter again but I'm lucky to be alive`
By Fiona Cummins, Showbiz Reporter,Daily Mirror.

Marc Almond's horrific motorbike crash that left him unconscious for 10 days has brought back his childhood stammer. He gives an exclusive interview to the Mirror.
The Soft Cell star suffered two massive blood clots that caused his head to "swell to the size of a football".
He fractured his skull in two places, shattered his right shoulder, perforated his eardrum, suffered a collapsed lung, underwent emergency surgery twice and faced the prospect of brain damage.

SURVIVOR
He couldn't walk or talk in the aftermath of the smash, which saw him tossed 20ft through the air.
One of the most difficult aspects of the accident is that the singer's stutter has returned with a vengeance.
"When I was in my teens, I had a terrible stammer," he says. "It has come back worse than ever now and I suppose that's because I was shaken up like a jelly.
"I couldn't get a fix on sounds properly. I was in shock and couldn't form words. Sometimes I can't even speak on the phone. If I hear disembodied voices I can't focus or talk - I'm going to have to work on that."
Describing his feelings after the crash, Marc says: "It was very difficult and emotional. But I'm a tough old boot. When I first came round and found out my situation, I was determined to be strong and get out of hospital. I wasn't going to be beaten by it."
The singer, who spent five weeks in hospital, believes it was a CD of daft songs which finally roused him. "I have a parrot at home and I sing these silly, childish songs to it and they played me a CD of those songs.
"I also remember the tune Oh Superman, by Laurie Anderson, from when I was unconscious. Apparently somebody on the scene was playing it in their car and the lyrics are: 'You'd better get ready, ready to go'."
But the gay star, who has a long-term partner, didn't go. He woke up instead... and thought he'd been kidnapped.
"I opened my eyes and thought I'd been taken prisoner and was being tortured.
"I couldn't understand why they had stuck all these things in my mouth. I tried to pull everything out because I didn't know what was happening and they had to bind my hands.
"Eventually, I started to accept my situation. It was just very frightening - the strangest thing that has ever happened to me."
A S he began to regain consciousness, Marc's first memory was of voices. "I remember my mother saying: 'You must come round now, you've been asleep for nine days, you've been in a terrible accident.'
"Then I'd hear the voice of a friend, then my sister, then another voice, asking me to wake up.
"At first, I couldn't understand why they were there, all talking to me. I was trying to make some sense of the situation... then, eventually, I came round.
"I wondered if I was in a dream and hoped someone would wake me up."
Although a flamboyant performer with a reputation for excess, Marc's confidence has been badly shaken.
The star, whose hair turned grey after the smash, is polite, nervous and apologetic, saying it's the first time he has discussed the accident outside his circle of friends and family. He fears he may become "emotional".
But though he is still recovering in many ways, his sense of humour remains intact and he talks non-stop as if he finds it cathartic to share how he came so close to death.
Marc, 47, who has had a string of hits including the 1981 classic Tainted Love, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, Torch, Tears Run Rings, The Days of Pearly Spencer, Jacky and Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart, has no memory of the accident. But the five-inch scar which runs across the right side of his head is a stark reminder.
He had been riding pillion on October 17 last year when the Suzuki crashed into a car near St Paul's Cathedral. As he hurtled over the handlebars, he inadvertently dragged off the helmet of the bike's driver - his manager and close friend Mark.

CATHARTIC
And as he lay bleeding, Marc also pulled off his own helmet - extremely dangerous after suffering a serious head injury.
"Yes, I was lucky not to haemorrhage. The paramedics arrived then and sedated me. They saved my life because I had a huge blood clot and my head was the size of a football. They did emergency surgery and then it happened again so they had to operate again."
Marc's gaunt face pales as he tells what happened in the aftermath, when his mother was urged to travel down from Southport, near Liverpool, as it was feared her son may not survive the night.
"They had to drive for six hours, not knowing what they were going to find."
Marc was in such a terrible condition that they even hid mirrors from him. "Apparently, I didn't look very pleasant at all. My eye was almost hanging down my face and I was black with bruising.
"I had plugs sticking out of my head, I was having transfusions, I was on an oxygen machine and they had a bolt to monitor the pressure on my brain."
His family were also warned that the star might be severely brain damaged. "The doctors warned them to be prepared but, although I have the stammer and the anxiety, it's a natural thing I've got to overcome - it's not down to brain damage.
"I've gone very grey since the accident and I'd maybe like to use a little hair colour but I want to let the scars heal. I also want to show that I'm not afraid or embarrassed - they're just my war wounds," he laughs.
He keeps giggling as he explains that he has no dignity left now, after so many friends have had to help him to the bathroom.
In all, Marc spent three weeks in the Royal Free before moving to the private London Clinic for a fortnight.
Of the bike's driver Mark, the singer will only say: "He's had some terrible injuries and is dealing with it in his own way."

BEFORE the accident, the star had been enjoying a revival. He received rave reviews for gigs at London's Almeida Theatre in July, which have been immortalised in his Sin Songs, Torch And Romance DVD, released on January 31.
His body may now be a patchwork of scars and his shoulder may never work properly again but Marc says: "I look at it as if I've been given another chance. There was a young guy in hospital with me with a head injury who, sadly, didn't make it.
"Yes, I know my life is a bit different now and it's never going to be totally like it was but it'll be as near-as-dammit."
Marc has also battled not to become a recluse, although the accident left him "terrified of going out" and he admits he'll need counselling to help him heal psychologically.
At one stage during his hospitalisation, he faced the prospect of a tracheotomy - which could have ended his singing career - but he reports that his voice is fine.
In fact, he hopes to be back on stage by the summer after an operation on his shoulder next month and wants to reschedule concerts with his Soft Cell co-star Dave Ball, which were due to take place before Christmas.
His ordeal has made him more philosophical about life. "Some people make their beds, go out for a lovely day and never come home," he says. "I came back after five weeks.
"It makes you aware of how fragile you are, of your own mortality and that things can happen just like that - and so randomly.
"Life is an adventure. It's not about being successful. Success for me is going from one failure to the next without diminished enthusiasm. It's about having an interesting life and great friends.
"I don't have huge ambitions. I just want to have a good life and a chance to live it."
Then he leans forward, his childish face alight as he repeats euphorically: "I am so lucky. I'm alive, I'm alive."
Marc Almond has not been paid for this interview. A donation has been made on his behalf to London's Air Ambulance, the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, based at the Royal London Hospital.

S x

Article from The Guardian 04/01/05

2005-01-16T15:13:00.000Z

The victims of the tsunami pay the price of war on Iraq

US and British aid is dwarfed by the billions both spend on slaughter

by George Monbiot
Tuesday January 4, 2005
The Guardian

There has never been a moment like it on British television. The Vicar of Dibley, one of our gentler sitcoms, was bouncing along with its usual bonhomie on New Year's Day when it suddenly hit us with a scene from another world. Two young African children were sobbing and trying to comfort each other after their mother had died of Aids. How on earth, I wondered, would the show make us laugh after that? It made no attempt to do so. One by one the characters, famous for their parochial boorishness, stood in front of the camera wearing the white armbands which signalled their support for the Make Poverty History campaign. You would have to have been hewn from stone not to cry.
The timing was perfect. In my local Oxfam shop last week, people were queueing to the door to pledge money for the tsunami fund. A pub on the other side of town raised £1,000 on Saturday night. In the pot on the counter of the local newsagent's there must be nearly £100. The woman who runs the bakery told me about the homeless man she had seen, who emptied his pockets in the bank, saying "I just want to do my bit", while the whole queue tried not to cry.
Over the past few months, reviewing the complete lack of public interest in what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the failure, in the west, to mobilise effective protests against the continuing atrocities in Iraq, I had begun to wonder whether we had lost our ability to stand in other people's shoes. I have now stopped wondering. The response to the tsunami shows that, however we might seek to suppress it, we cannot destroy our capacity for empathy.
But one obvious question recurs. Why must the relief of suffering, in this unprecedentedly prosperous world, rely on the whims of citizens and the appeals of pop stars and comedians? Why, when extreme poverty could be made history with a minor redeployment of public finances, must the poor world still wait for homeless people in the rich world to empty their pockets?
The obvious answer is that governments have other priorities. And the one that leaps to mind is war. If the money they have promised to the victims of the tsunami still falls far short of the amounts required, it is partly because the contingency fund upon which they draw in times of crisis has been spent on blowing people to bits in Iraq.
The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war.
It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives just over $16bn in foreign aid: less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq.
The figures for war and aid are worth comparing because, when all the other excuses for the invasion of Iraq were stripped away, both governments explained that it was being waged for the good of the Iraqis. Let us, for a moment, take this claim at face value. Let us suppose that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with power, domestic politics or oil, but were, in fact, components of a monumental aid programme. And let us, with reckless generosity, assume that more people in Iraq have gained as a result of this aid programme than lost.
To justify the war, even under these wildly unsafe assumptions, George Bush and Tony Blair would have to show that the money they spent was a cost-efficient means of relieving human suffering. As it was sufficient to have made a measurable improvement in the lives of all the 2.8 billion people living in absolute poverty, and as there are only 25 million people in Iraq, this is simply not possible. Even if you ignore every other issue - such as the trifling matter of mass killing - the opportunity costs of the Iraq war categorise it as a humanitarian disaster. Indeed, such calculations suggest that, on cost grounds alone, a humanitarian war is a contradiction in terms.
But our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them. The tone of Blair's New Year message was almost identical to that of his tear-jerking insistence that we understand the Iraqi people must be bombed for their own good. The US marines who have now been dispatched to Sri Lanka to help the rescue operation were, just a few weeks ago, murdering the civilians (for this, remember, is an illegal war), smashing the homes and evicting the entire population of the Iraqi city of Falluja.
Even within the official aid budgets the two aims are confused: $8.9bn of the aid money the US spends is used for military assistance, anti-drugs operations, counter-terrorism and the Iraq relief and reconstruction fund (otherwise known as the Halliburton benevolent trust). For Bush and Blair, the tsunami relief operation and the Iraq war are both episodes in the same narrative of salvation. The civilised world rides out to rescue foreigners from their darkness.
While they spend the money we gave them to relieve suffering on slaughtering the poor, the world must rely for disaster relief on the homeless man emptying his pockets. If our leaders were as generous in helping people as they are in killing them, no one would ever go hungry.
· You can join the campaign against global poverty at:

www.makepoverthistory.org

S x

lyrics...

2005-01-07T17:22:00.000Z

BEING BORING

(tennant/lowe)

I came across a cache of old photos
And invitations to teenage parties
Dress in white one said, with quotations
From someone’s wife, a famous writer
In the nineteen-twenties
When you’re young you find inspiration
In anyone who’s ever gone
And opened up a closing door
She said: we were never feeling bored

’cause we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: make amends
And we were never holding back or worried that
Time would come to an end

When I went I left from the station
With a haversack and some trepidation
Someone said: if you’re not careful
You’ll have nothing left and nothing to care for
In the nineteen-seventies
But I sat back and looking forward
My shoes were high and I had scored
I’d bolted through a closing door
I would never find myself feeling bored

’cause we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: make amends
And we were never holding back or worried that
Time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on a friend

Now I sit with different faces
In rented rooms and foreign places
All the people I was kissing
Some are here and some are missing
In the nineteen-nineties
I never dreamt that I would get to be
The creature that I always meant to be
But I thought in spite of dreams
You’d be sitting somewhere here with me

’cause we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: make amends
And we were never holding back or worried that
Time would come to an end
We were always hoping that, looking back
You could always rely on a friend

And we were never being boring
We had too much time to find for ourselves
And we were never being boring
We dressed up and fought, then thought: make amends
And we were never being boring
We were never being bored
’cause we were never being boring
We were never being bored...

Pet Shop Boys
1990
`Behaviour`
Uk n.o. 20

Although not as commercially successful as many of their singles, “Being Boring” may well be the most beautiful thing the Pet Shop Boys ever recorded.Over a lush musical soundscape of warm basslines and sustained strings, Neil Tennant opens up lyrically, giving a simple chronological account of his life and times, with plenty of clever colour and insight into his 20s and 30s.But it’s with the last of the three verses that “Being Boring” really makes its magic felt, as the tone shifts from one of gentle reminiscence to become a lament for friends lost: “All the people I was kissing/ Some are here and some are missing/ In the nineteen-nineties”.That verse takes on extra poignancy with the knowledge that Tennant had recently lost a close friend to AIDS, but despite that the song retains an air of positivity: more a celebration of life than a mourning of death.The title itself comes from the novelist F Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, herself an author, who wrote: “She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.”

R.I.P. Tsunami victims & famillies

luv Steve xx

It`s below...LOOK!

2004-12-11T15:16:00.000Z

helloo,

for some strange reason le blogger has decided to pop me latest posting way down the page so it looks as if nothing is there...it IS, maybe `coz it` s a biggish one it is lower on the page, SO SCROLL DOWN me lovlies

:)

S x

Lovely lyrics.....Yes it`s by The Associates/Billy Mackenzie again, but SO damn good were they

2004-12-11T15:11:00.000Z

The Rhythm Divine

You know that my tears
Have kept me awake
the longer you're gone
I'll hunger and shake
From Warsaw to Rome
I'll wait out of time
With you in my heart
The rhythm divine

So won't you come close
Bring this to an end
With each winter rose
My love I'll send
So tender the night
When you hold me tight
With you in my heart
The rhythm divine
With you in my heart
The rhythm divine
With you in my heart
The rhythm divine

You know that these tears
Have kept me awake
the longer you're gone
I'll hunger and shake
From Warsaw to Rome
I'll wait out of time
With you in my heart
The rhythm divine
The rhythm divine
The rhythm divine.....

Listen to me

There's a fog in my eyes
I can no longer realise
Please listen to me (listen to me)
There's a frog in my throat
Sometimes I think that I might choke
But baby please listen to me (listen to me)

You've got the keyt to my heart
However near or far
But baby please listen to me (listen to me)

You've got to understand
In anyway that you can (anyway)
I'm your biggest fan
Listen to me (listen to me)

I know sometime that you're wrong
Mixed up and very proud and strong
But baby please listen to me (listen to me)

If you forget the past
It's the only little thing that I ask
So baby please listen to me (listen to me)
Listen to me
So baby please listen to me
Listen to me
Listen to me

Liberty Lounge

The story unfolds like the winter brings with her the snows
My friends promise me one thing
You'll raise your glass high to the sign of Orion
In Liberty Lounge they tell the best stories in town
They sing upstairs with Brando
That he come 'round and duet with Monroe

A car waits outside to take you uptown
To tattoo your mind
The air, perfumed and stirred
Set your soul free, free as a night bird
On a street down on Mars
Tell me what could I do?
I can visit a psychic who can sing me the blues
Those earthly blues

The story unfolds like the winter brings with her the snows
My friends promise me one thing
You'll raise your glass high to the sign of Orion
In Liberty Lounge they tell the best stories in town
They sing upstairs with Brando
That he come 'round and duet with Monroe
In Liberty Lounge

Sing That Song Again

There's rhymes and there's reasons
You know that we don't have to talk to be heard
'Til hell freezes over
I love you but you say they're just empty words
And you'll keep that promise
The one that you made to yourself when you cried
For once I'll be honest
The ghost of my love somehow can't be denied

So sing that song again
The one that makes me feel that you're still there
Sing that song again
The one that makes me feel that you still care
Sing that song again
The one that makes me feel I have a choice
Sing that song again
The one that wraps me all up in your voice
Sing that song again

There's tears and there's riches
You know that we don't have to see to believe
There's pearls and there's bridges
And rivers run deep but you know I can't leave
And you'll keep that promise
The one that you made to yourself when you cried
For once I'll be honest
The ghost of my love somehow can't be denied

So sing that song again
The one that makes me feel that you're still care
Sing that song again
The one that makes me feel that you're still there
Sing that song again
The one that makes me feel I have a choice
Sing that song again
The one that wraps me all up in your voice
Sing that song again

So sing that song again
The one that makes me feel that you're still there
Sing that song again
The one that makes me feel that you still care
Sing that song again
The one that makes me feel I have a choice
Sing that song again
The one that wraps me all up in your voice
Sing that song again

Sing that song again, sing that song again, sing that song again.....

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Gorgeous and beautiful, haunting and perfect...

S x

Aries - my star sign..

2004-12-11T14:45:00.000Z

Some Famous Arians !

March 21, 1946 - Timothy Dalton - Actor (former `Bond`)
March 21, 1962 - Matthew Broderick - Actor (`Ferris Bueller..`)
March 22, 1923 - Marcel Marceau - Mime artist
March 23, 1910 - Akira Kurosawa - Director
March 24, 1834 - William Morris - UK Designer and social campaigner
March 25, 1867 - A, Toscanini - Conductor
March 25, 1928 - James Lovell - Astronaut
March 25, 1940 - Anita Bryant - Singer
March 25, 1934 - Gloria Steinem - Publisher
March 25, 1942 - Aretha Franklin - Singer
March 26, 1859 - A. E. Housman - Writer
March 26, 1931 - Leonard Nimoy - Actor (Mr.Spock - Star Trek)
March 26, 1934 - Alan Arkin - Actor
March 26, 1940 - James Caan - Actor (`GodFather/Misery`)
March 26, 1942 - Erica Jong - Writer
March 26, 1944 - Diana Ross - Singer
March 27, 1947 - Elton John - Musician
March 27, 1942 - Michael York - Actor (`Cabaret/Logan`s Run`)
March 28, 1928 - Zbignew Brzezinski - Poland-Political Leader
March 28, 1955 - Reba McEntire - Singer
March 29, 1937 - Billy Carter - President's brother
March 29, 1943 - Eric Idle - Comedian (`Monty Python/The LiFe oF Brian`)
March 30, 1844 - Paul Verlaine - Writer
March 30, 1853 - Vincent Van Gogh - Artist
March 30, 1937 - Warren Beatty - Actor
March 30, 1945 - Eric Clapton - Singer
March 31, 1934 - Richard Chamberlain - Actor
March 31, 1934 - Shirley Jones - Actor (`The Towering Inferno`)
March 31, 1935 - Herb Alpert - Musician
March 31, 1933 - Christopher Walken - Actor
March 31, 1945 - Gabe Kaplan - Actor
March 31, 1948 - Rea Perlman - Actress (`Taxi`)
April 1, 1815 - Otto Bismarck - German Military leader
April 1, 1883 - Lon Chaney - Actor (`frankenstein`)
April 1, 1886 - Wallace Beery - Actor
April 1. 1932 - Debby Reynolds - Actress
April 1, 1953 - Ali MacGraw - Actress
April 2, 1805 - Hans Christian Anderson - Writer (`Pinnochio`)
April 2, 1908 - Buddy Ebsen - Actor (`Beverley Hillbillies`)
April 2, 1914 - Sir Alec Guinness - Actor (Star Wars - Obi-Wan Kenobi and MANY other roles)
April 2, 1920 - Jack Webb - Actor
April 2, 1948 - Emmylou Harris - Singer
April 3, 1783 - Washington Irving - Writer
April 3, 1924 - Marlon Brando - Actor
April 3, 1924 - Doris Day - Actress
April 3, 1926 - Gus Grissom - Astronaut
April 3, 1942 - Marsha Mason - Actress
April 3, 1942 - Wayne Newton - Singer
April 3, 1944 - Tony Orlando - Singer
April 4, 1928 - Maya Angelou - Writer
April 5, 1837 - A. Swinburne -Writer
April 5, 1856 - Booker T. Washington - Educator
April 5, 1900 - Spencer Tracy - Actor (`Guess who`s coming to dinner/Adam`s rib`)
April 5, 1916 - Gregory Peck - Actor (`To kill a mockingbird/The Omen`)
April 5, 1920 - Arthur Hailey - Writer
April 5, 1937 - Colin Powell - Military/politician
April 6, 1874 - Harry Houdini - Magician
April 6, 1929 - Andre Previn - Conductor
April 6, 1931 - Ram Dass - Guru
April 6, 1937 - Merle Haggard - Singer
April 6, 1937 - Billy Dee Williams - Actor (Star wars-Lando Calrissian)
April 7, 1928 - James Garner - Actor (`Victor/Victoria`)
April 7, 1939 - Francis Ford Coppola - Director
April 7, 1939 - David Frost - UK TV Host

April 8, 1918 - Betty Ford - First Lady
April 8, 1954 - Dennis Quaid - Actor
April 8, 1963 - Julian Lennon - Beatles Son/musician

April 9, 1821 - Baudelaire - Writer
April 9, 1892 - Mary Pickford - Actress
April 9, 1926 - Hugh Hefner - Publisher/porn baron
April 10, 1932 - Omar Sharif - Actor (`Dr.Zhivago/Lawrence of Arabia`)
April 11, 1928 - Ethel Kennedy - Political Family matriarch
April 12, 1930 - Tiny Tim - Entertainer
April 12, 1947 - David Letterman - TV Host
April 12, 1950 - David Cassidy - Singer
April 13, 1743 - Thomas Jefferson - President
April 13, 1909 - Eudora Welty - Writer
April 13, 1970 - Ricky Schroder - Child Actor
April 14, 1934 - Loretta Lynn - Country Singer
April 14, 1939 - Claudia Cardinale - Actress (`The Leopard`)
April 15, 1843 - Henry James - Writer
April 15, 1933 - Elizabeth Montgomery - Actress (`Bewitched`)
April 16, 1889 - Charlie Chaplin - Comedian
April 16, 1921 - Peter Ustinov - Actor
April 16, 1924 - Henry Mancini - Composer (`Pink Panther`)
April 16, 1935 - Bobby Vinton - Singer (`Blue Velvet`)
April 17, 1918 - William Holden - Actor (`Sunset boulevard/Network`)
April 17, 1951 - Olivia Hussey - Actress (`Death on the Nile`)
April 18, 1857 - Clarence Darrow - Attorney
April 18, 1946 - Hayley Mills - Child Actress
April 18, 1947 - James Woods - Actor
April 19, 1933 - Jayne Mansfield - Actress (`Will success spoil Rock Hunter?`)
April 19, 1935 - Dudly Moore - Actor (`Arthur/10`)
April 19, 1949 - Pablo Picasso - Designer/artist
April 20, 1889 - Adolf Hitler - Dictator
April 20, 1941 - Ryan O'Neal - Actor (`Love story`)

I have always liked Dennis Quaid who shares my birthday on April 8th :)

S x

Cough.....

2004-12-06T19:10:00.000Z

HELLO!

So has been happening with me since, well a while really...
Well i spent alot of last week being unwell, there has been a `bug` doing the rounds here. I do not know many people who haven`t had this particularly unpleasant cold. I initially got it Monday, by Tuesday i was really feeling like utter shite - snotty nose, rheumy eyes, sneezes, headache, cough and splutter!! Oh dear...So i had Tues sick from work and stayed in bed all day and sweated, i would have been neither use nor ornament! Went back Weds, still feeling dreadful; but able to function. Most of the symptoms have generally gone now, though i have been left with a rather irritating cough - must get to the Dr to sort that one out! When i have a spare moment!
As for the rest, well i haven`t really been up to much apart from trying to eat well and rest up a bit - I have never watched so many movies in my life!! Would have been quite nice if i wasn`t unwell!

Listening to -

The Beautiul people - `If 60`s were 90`s`

Pulp - `We love life`

Martin Stephenson & the daintees -`There comes a time`

Doves - `The last broadcast`

Reading -

Tony Hawks - `One hit wonderland`

Alec Guinness - `My name escapes me`

Watching (sick in bed movies :) -

24 hour party people

Tea with Mussolini

The acid house

Shrek

Schindler`s list

Ok, now i will pop orff for a quick cough and then begin some overdue reports from work that need doing...

BIG X

Steve

another mad one...

2004-11-27T17:36:00.000Z

Hello :)

Well another very busy weeks ends...and so it was even though i had the last day as holiday....
Tuesday was RIZ`s leaving doo, he`s leaving work to travel with his lovely girl Leonie around the other side o the planet over 6 months. So i got a little tiddly and bade him a goodbye. We had a giggle and i met up with a mad guy at our college who i haven`t seen in loadsa years. Shame to see him leave, he`s a lovely guy and cool to work with...

Thursday night i worked very late to be involved with the work theatre group which i provide support and am involved in. Tiring, but a brilliant evening. It`s really quite amazing what supposedly `limited` people with learning disabilities can produce out o a blank canvas! Cool guys.

Pentek 26.11
Started the day having a wee lie in to catch up on a bit o lost sleep over the week....zzzzz...
By 1.30 pm on bus to the school i used to work at in Northolt, the grand reopening concert and a giggle meeting old pals. I adore Sylv`, she`s love especially and terribly dry in humour, very amusing :) :)
Later i joined Sarah me gorgeous Aussie gal to wish her and Simon goodbye. Yet another leaving doo! Now i adore this girl so this is a shame she`s going...:( And what a mad night drinking homebrew mulled wine (yummy) and shaking my ass to a very good dj dyke in a swank west end music bar! Most unlike so demure me :) Hey ho, it was a total laugh anyhow and a good way to see her onto the plane to Aus`.

Tonight i will be having a less racy night down the local gaybar celebrating it`s 10 years...

lol

S x

ooh bit of a headache...

2004-11-20T13:00:00.000Z

hello.....

It has been the busiest week ever! Well not in it`s entirety, but i have been running about a la headless chicken! That`s work for u...i will have to take part in an investigation as one of our service users (a sweet little disabled guy with cerebral palsy/epilepsy/learning difficulties), arrived at the day centre with a broken finger last week and since he can`t fully communicate how it happened.....thus the investigation.....so that will be fun...NOT!
Apart that work is, well; work really...it has it`s lighter moments.....
I was at the end of course dinner for the `Bitesize` program which teaches learning disabled people to cook. Lots of parents and service users and a few staff all sitting down to a nice meal prepared by the service users when a service user passing through the dining hall let out an enormous fart...several of the parents really didn`t know where to look! A couple found it hysterical and one elderly parent almost choked with laughter...as i say, lighter moments :)
To my pal in Atlanta, keep it going girl! U seem to be dealing with all the crazy stuff happening admirably and your Mum is a cool dude and sounds terribly funny too...big x

It has gotten bloody cold here all of a sudden, so all the stupid tabloid newspapers have dusted down the perrenial headline `BRRRRR`, how fuckin` original!

Listenings -

Chumbawamba - `Uneasy Listenings 86-98`

Annie/Eurythmics - `Remixes` (courtesy of K )

Readings -

Alec Guinness - `My name escapes me`

lol

S x

Hungarian week draws to a close...

2004-11-06T20:05:00.000Z

Helllllooooo!

Saturday.Dateline London...11/04.
Well me lovely poof K left today which is always a shame, he is such a love and we always laugh `Aww bless`. Hopefully he will appear again over xmas. He made me music again :) and i did manage to get a couple of nice fings, hence -

Eurythmics - remixes (chronological)

and

Younger younger 28`s - `Soap`
Doves - `Last broadcast`
Eels - `beautiful freak`

:)

Adrienn is still about, she`s staying with another pal til tommorrow. So That`ll be a giggle.

S x

Today be friday

2004-11-05T18:23:00.000Z

Greetings!

Hello!
So my mad week of MANY visitors continues.....
Sunday i was entertained by the lovely Doug, over from Budapest for a few days, we wondered around Soho and had a lovely meal and a little drinky. He is a dear and it was a giggle as always, got loads of B`pest gossip...
Had Monday off work which was cool and worked tuesday and weds. Adrienn, my goth pal (also from Budapest), arrived and we have laughed lots. She is hysterically funny. She`s off to meet a goth pal as i write. Kristof the lovely is also in town, from.....BUDAPEST, where else!! I am inundated with Hungarians! Had a cool meal with him at a pals y`day, what a funny night! He made me a brilliant cd o Eurythmics/Annie Lennox dance mixes which has been permanently on my cd player ever since. Totally cool! :)
Off to see the boyf` soon :) :):)

kiss

S x

Saturday..

2004-10-30T19:54:00.000+01:00

HELLO!

Well another week has strode by, it seems rather quickly this time! It has been another busy one at work, when is it not!?! Good news is that i have 3 days holiday next week, so i will have ample time to chill down a bit. Though i will still be busy nonetheless, with this thing on Monday at the school i worked at being re-opened. Should be good. I`ll wear my new black velvety jacket and look Fashionably gorgeous (ahem, cough).
My pal Doug is in town tommorrow, haven`t seen him since March when i was last in Budapest. So we will meet and have lunch and a troll around Soho`s gaybars etc. He`s a darling. I rememeber when i 1st met him over 8 yrs back when i was living with Chris, my ex in Ealing. Now Doug is also Chris`s ex from many yrs back and he was a bit worried about introducing me as his new boyfriend. But we got on straight away, he`s a lovely person. Actually Chris got bored and went to bed and Doug and i sat up to about 4am chatting about all sorts; music and suchlike and getting stoned...
Kristof is also visiting from Budapest all the coming week, it`ll be lovely to see him again - he is also a luv (`Aww bless`). MUST try not to spend TOO much money on cd`s when we do our usual cd shop troll through central London!!
And finally Adrienn, who i used to work with in the kindergarten in Budapest is here in London this week, she is staying with me on Weds night and as i am off work Thurs we can hit the gay bar around the corner Weds night. Lovely to catch up with her again! :)
Oh and at some point i have to see JP (boyf`) at some point, probally Thurs/fri...haven`t seen him for a bit - cuddles needed! ;) tee hee...

`This week i have been mostly listening to` -

Nirvana - `Unplugged in New York`

Echo and the bunnymen - `Ballyhoo - the best of`

Eurythmics - `Revenge`

Marianne FaithFull - `Broken English/Strange weather`

And reading mainly -

`One hit wonderland` - Tony Hawks

Well that be enough From little olde moi,
Big squashy XX`s to u all!!

S x

It the weekend...

2004-10-23T15:01:00.000+01:00

Good day !
As my pal Ryan hinted, it`s the weekend! Yay! Thank _uck or that!
Actually it`s not been toooooo bad a week really, though with lots o reviews at work etc it has been a might busy. It`s been like that recently. I will also be undertaking a new `session` group at work too, so that another load o prep` to do, but it should be good. All blags up the cv nicely~
Had an invite to attend the opening o the rebuilt school i used to work at in Northolt. Should be a giggle, Gordon Brown (the chancellor), is doing the reopening thingy and Ann Keen MP is attending too, she`s an old pal so it`ll be lovely to catch up with her again :). ooh what shall i wear.....
Last wo days were alright as it was training days, riday being a real giggle as we were all chilled in each others company and being silly. Much nicer than actually working! Titter!
Now shall i have a chilled Sat eve` or shall i go out?? Hmmmm.....

S x

helloooooo

2004-10-18T16:40:00.000+01:00

Well i haven`t written or a bit...last week was super busy at work, lots away on holidays/sick leave so the remainder o us mere mortals had to `cover` = LOADS o extra work!! AAAARRRGGHHH! ..... No, well it wasn`t THAT bad, but it was mega busy all the same.
Had a pleasant weekend, the usual...nip down the gay bar, gay bar - drinkies and a bit o chit chat etc. Nothing terribly exciting really.
Haven`t seen me man recently, he has been ill and is now away working again...me misses ;(
Back to work today, I`m just home now and pretty knackered - another busy one...hey ho..

:)

S x

Robbie Williams

2004-10-05T21:34:00.000+01:00

;)

The new Robbie Williams single - `Radio`....is just terrible, it sounds like a bad cover version (yes C i know you will notice the allusion to our rather better than him chaps ;), in an obscure early eighties album and poorly done at that!
O dear Robbie, and you are kinda cute too...well i would do ya

S x

AAARRGGHHH!

2004-10-02T02:14:00.000+01:00

So hideously busy this week, well it is just scary to be honest! **(

I love my (poorly paid), job, but sometimes hate the time it takes up...so i will be devoting this weekend to me...sleeping, chilling and catching up.

Happy Birthday to my ex, he`s 32 now and still lives in Budapest; the lucky bastard.

back to bed now

S xx

Tues and the living is decidely chilly...

2004-09-28T21:00:00.000+01:00

Autumn, not a time o year i particularly despise; is upon us. I generally enjoy it really, the colours are all golden and sumptuous and the aternoons are divine oten. But as you may well have noticed (!>not?< o dear then are illiterate!), my `f ` key on my laptop has decided NOT to work anymore!
Indeed, a pisser!
Hell now i have to go shopping or some bizarre thing i know bugger all about that will clean me contraption, in a strange space age can...
hey ho, at least its only the `f` key!

`_uck it!`

Kisses

S x

Todays lyric...and it`s a gorgeous one!

2004-09-20T21:20:00.000+01:00

`Andromeda Heights` by Prefab Sprout

We're building a home on the side of a mountain
Above the clouds, next to the sky
And after our labours the stars will be neighbours
We'll take our place with them in space
We're not using concrete or plaster or wood -They'd lower the tone of our new neighbourhood
And mortar will crumble with age and neglect
We're building our home upon love and respect

And when we've built it we'll call it andromeda heights
When we've built it we'll call it andromeda heights
When we've built it we'll call it andromeda heights

We're building a home on the side of a mountain
Above the clouds, next to the sky
Our plans are ambitious - a blueprint of wishes
That will come true and when they do...
Folks in the valley will look up and say"you've finally built it can we come and stay ?"
And cynics will marvel and say "we confess -There were times when we thought it was just an address

But now that we've seen it we know it's andromeda heights
Now we've seen it we know it's andromeda heights
Now we've seen it we know it's andromeda heights.

"We're building a home on the side of a mountain
Above the clouds, next to the sky
And after our labours the stars will be neighbours
We'll take our place with them in space

How totally fabulous is that!

S x

Annie & Eurythmics...

2004-09-19T16:40:00.000+01:00

Annie & Eurythmics ~ favourites as of 19/09/04

So my current fave songs of the above are -

Wonderful
Here comes the rain again - club mix - (suitable for the weather!)
Beethoven
Angel (live i think - a different version and very lovely)
Into the west
Who`s that girl
My, my, baby`s gonna cry
Pavement cracks (remix)
The hurting time
Shame
You have placed a chill in my heart
Precious
Little bird
Why (live/acoustic)
Sweet dreams (timeless classic)
When tommorrow comes (just perfect)

So guess what i am listening to now? Hmmm....

S x

So the last week...

2004-09-18T19:34:00.000+01:00

Hello

What a knackering week it`s been, one of those that seems to drag on...and on...and ON. Though i can`t i haven`t had fun at work also...but hey!

As i sit listening to me music (Pixies), autumn is beginning to close over; chilly mornings blah blah. Dean is coming over from India for another visit very soon and expect some Hungarians over in Oct`/Nov`...including my ex possibly. So that`ll be a giggle!
Hopefully see me Frenchie this weekend which will be lovely :)
Cornelio has made me a gift of EBTG `Five fathoms` which a cool tune, so i`ll look forward to hearing that :) and i will be on the lookout for a few wee things for - yes cd`s of course!
Anyways, time for melon - yummo.

Listening to-

The Pixies - `Trompe le monde`
Dr.Robert - `Keep on digging for the gold`
Army of lovers - `Les greatest hits`

Reading-

Mark Haddon - `The curious incident of the dog in the night-time`
Rory Mclean - `Stalin`s nose`

Looking at - a mirror reflection of myself in my sunglasses...eeek!

S x

hellooo

2004-09-16T21:19:00.000+01:00

O dear...it was Amy the lovely Kiwi`s last day at work today! Bah! What a shame as she is a sweetie and very nice! Boo!

S x

hmmm...

2004-09-11T20:25:00.000+01:00

...listening to depressing music as usual...

.....

2004-09-03T21:28:00.000+01:00

As the Young Ones said....

BORED! bored! bored!

S x

A stinking cold.....

2004-09-01T14:05:00.000+01:00

So had a quite nice final bank holiday weekend for this year...
Friday was an outrageous work outing to West 5 gay bar, where as usual far too much voddie was consumed and dancing was done! Does an old fart like me look silly these days strutting his stuff among the twinks? Do i REALLY give a shit? Hmmm, answers on a postcard...But it was a giggle of a night, to celebrate my friend/colleague Cath who has landed a job at Broadmoor detention centre - lovely.
So due to the outrageous of Friday, Saturday was generally quiet, just popped out for a quick one locally in the latter end of the evening and otherwise just pootled about at home.
Sunday i was with Cath again for a gentle few drinks and a bite to eat at a `gastro` pub newly opened in Brentford. It was a pleasant enough place, i had steamed clams which i adore. But i was beginning to feel niggly snotty-ness in me nose...and LO by Monday morning i was in the full blown throes of my August bank holiday cold! Disaster! I ALWAYS seem to get a cold for this particular period. Funny...
Had to go in to work for Tuesday though, many things to do, particularly a service users review in the afternoon and i wanted to see Poornima as it was her final day at the centre - shame as she is a love and a pleasure to work with - bye mate!
But today being Weds...well i just couldn`t...woke as usual just after 7am feeling like a bus had parked on me head! Scraped my head off the pillow (literally) and tried to phone to say i wouldn`t be in....SHITE! No credit on my phone! So had to wearily get dressed and drag myself down the road to the phonebox and ended up leaving a `sorry won`t be in today feeling like crap` message on answerphone...so on return worried for awhile that it wouldn`t be picked up and work would think that i had just not bothered and think me a total bastard. O bugger...finally got to sleep again around 945am and have just awoken again. My snot is green and my throat is spotty...pass the antibiotics! I must go back to work tommorrow, not least due to boredom, but the need to get money...

Listening to - (very quietly) :

`Big Calm` - Morcheeba

Reading - (morosely) :

`Stalin`s Nose` - Rory Mclean

General activities :

Feeling sorry for oneself and losing green snot.....

luv

S x

My best deus song

2004-08-23T18:45:00.000+01:00

The Ideal Crash

Stay by my side, it's over
the ride isn't what I told you
the painkiller-side of this life
is to not look behind
it's over

I have been told about longing
feeling so old, it's dead
I must have been misled
so stay by my side, I'm sorry.

I'm drawing myself the ideal crash
but I know I won't believe me.
There'll be a time you'll leave me.
Stay by my side, it's sexy
the way that we talk about stuff
the way that we laugh with love
the way that we're falling off.

CRASH
you're life's gone sucking
cause you wanna messaround, can anybody down you with a
CRASH
another way of saying that you like to make it up
as you move along.
If it's a lot, show them what you got.
Stay by my side,
I want you
continue the theme that's u
seven though it's only lust
the painkiller-side of this life.

I'm drawing myself the ideal crash
and I know I won't believe me.
How can a man kill gently
how long before it's all done
how can he leave someone
how can he do it softly ?

CRASH
you're life's
gone sucking cause you wanna messaround,
can anybody down you with a
CRASH
another way of saying that you like to make itup as you move along.
If it's a lot, show them what you got.
CRASH
you're gonna go to hell with a certain inclinationtry and make it sell
and then you
CRASH
you're gonna have to take yourself out of circulation
If it's a lot, show them what you got
right now I need my hands,
to cover this shit up
I need my eyes to see were I'm going,
and I need someone.........

Stay by my side, it's sexy
the way that we talk about stuff
the way that we laugh with love
the way that we're falling off.

Now many would say this song to be rather sad and depressing...sorry but thats is crap :)
I find it rather uplifting but then i always have got that from `mood music`. But it does have a `soft energy` i like in it...try dEUS they are fab...

thoughts....

sordid
familliar
warmth
quirkiness
bars
smoke
spring
desire
divorce
sultry
endings

S x

...again...

2004-08-21T12:49:00.000+01:00

The Best Of You

The best of you is wonderful
The rest of you so terrible
The best of you is wonderful

The best of you is wonderful
The rest of you so terrible
The best of you is wonderful

I miss having you around
Aggressive and ninety pounds
But after an hour or so
I wait, wanting you to go
To where a thought's left alone
In ventures through icy zones

The best of you is wonderful
The rest of you so terrible
The best of you is wonderful

You've done it for me again
And frankly I'm stirred again
With mouthfuls of sour grapes
I try telling mirrored shapes
Perhaps for a little while
A war's on in Israel
A citizen's feeling ill
A stain on a gorgeous dress
Bless me bless you

Just in time I found you out
Just in time (time's not just)
You showed signs
Of leaving me
Count to nine (Count it! Count it!)
The best of you has always been wonderful
Bore me bore
The rest of you has always been terrible
Well kind of ... well

The best of you is wonderful
The rest of you so terrible
The best of you is wonderful

Of letters I have kept and read
The one that you sent me bled
At edges, at odds with sense
And still I sit on this fence
Perhaps for a little while
Knock out -- I'm on the floor
(The floor, the floor)
Knock out another door
I'll never stay in your way
All you have to do is say

Just in time I found you out
Just in time (time's not just)
You showed signs
Of leaving me
Count to nine (Count it! Count it!)
The best of you has always been wonderful
Bore me bore
The rest of you has always been terrible
Well kind of ... well

The best of you is wonderful
The rest of you so terrible
The best of you is wonderful
The best of you
The rest of you
The best of you
What's left of you

The Associates - from the album `Perhaps`

This gorgeous, dark song was originally recorded in the mid 80`s as a duet between Billy Mackenzie and Annie Lennox. As released for the album it was only Billy singing, apparently the duet version does still exist somewhere...i would LOVE to hear that version featuring two of my favourite singers!

S x

...

2004-08-21T12:33:00.000+01:00

Wild and Lonely

And through the beams
Of a cherry car
Cut through the night
To a lonely bar
And standing there
With a broken key
To an open door
God it's only me

It all begins
With Santa Claus
And brilliant men
With brilliant flaws
The floor you prayed
On takes away
A safety that was yesterday

Wild and lonely
Wild and lonely

Through the beam
Of a cherry car
Cut through the night
To a lonely bar
And standing there
With a broken key
God it's only me
God it's only me
God it's only me

The Associates (Billy Mackenzie)
1990

http://www.billymackenzie.com

2004-08-16T21:27:00.000+01:00

Eurythmics > Savage (1987)

> Shame

Now there's a lifestyle With painted lips
Now there's a lifestyle
Everybody wants it
But it don't exist

And I said shame...
In the dancehalls and the cinema
Shame
On the TV and the media
Shame
We loved you

Now there's a lifestyle
With fashion chic
Now there's a lifestyle
Everybody in it wants To be elite

And I said
'You with yer brand new shoes and
You with yer greasy hair and
You with yer mother's pride and poetry
Don't you want to feel the shame?"...

In the dancehalls
Can't you feel the shame?
And the TV
Can't you feel the shame?
We loved you...

Shame
In the dancehalls and the cinema
Shame On the TV and the media
Shame
We loved you
At the Lido and the opera
Shame

At the races
And the theatre
Shame
We loved you.

And they said all we need is love
All we need is love
With the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Day after day
Day after day.

Thoughts....

Beautiful
Elegiac
Tempting
Lush
Elegant
Melodic
Hypnotising
Witty
Warming

yum

S x

Hello..it works...

2004-08-01T13:00:00.000+01:00

I have been trying to get my blog going for awhile now, but for some reason it hasn`t been doing it`s normal stuff and has refused to publish...seems it`s back!
It`s been a busy week, lots of social occasions, i`m a bit knackered to be honest!
Spoke to my lovely Frenchman, he is in France doing family stuff until Thurs...am i missing him?
YES!
As for the rest of life, well it`s ok. Feeling a bit on the empty side of things again, but hey that seems to be a regular with me so i am used to it. Work is ok, just ok. Life trundles on....everything is just ok...hmm...

Listening to -

`Lost Souls` - Doves
`Bare` - Annie Lennox
`2o-2o sounds` - Dark Star
`Darkdancer` - Les Rythmn Digitales

Reading - (not much really, somehow and unusually not in much of a reading mood lately , strange)

`Modern Nature` - Derek Jarman (well selected bits anyway)
`3 Stories` - Alan Bennett (very good!)

S x

Done and dusted :)

2004-07-22T21:26:00.000+01:00

Thank you to the lovely Cuntessa Vee for guiding me in the html process and now it all works properly! Even the links actually link - i think!
Bless her and all who may sail in her!

S x

Balls...

2004-07-22T19:49:00.000+01:00

Balls, i have boobed big time by changing the template for this rather posh looking one. Lovely though it be, but i have lost all my links to everything from the old one. POO!
Now i keep trying to get it all back and it won`t. O fish. Nah, oh FUCK!

S x

Hello it`s Weds...so what!

2004-07-14T20:24:00.000+01:00

I am becoming slack with my blogging, naughty me.
It`s weds today, so i catch up with u lot awhile. Cornelio came over for a whole week and we met on a few occasions and laughed, shopped and generally had a nice time as is usual. Come back soon luv!
I have been seeing lots of me lovely Frenchman, JP. He is a total love so at least romance is going well at the moment! God knows i deserve it, not been my most fortunate avenue up til meeting him, all of 7 weeks ago now! Can u believe! Gorgeous little sweetie... Me happy on THAT front ;^)
But, BUT! My EX-landlord, bastard, cunt, wank stain on the face of (gay) humanity has decided that because i could only afford to pay the deposit when i moved to his spare room over a year ago in a series of instalments....that HE will now refund my deposit (after falling for me and kicking me out coz of it!!), in a series of instalments, by cheque!! Cheek, the sad face like a slapped arse old fuck. Just because i didnt wanna shag him!!

hey ho..

S x

Barbeque

2004-07-04T17:32:00.000+01:00

Saw Sarah and Simon yesterday, they popped by and we had a giggle and a couple of drinkies down the London Apprentice pub by the river. Lovely.
And today is a house barbie, so that will be nice. Sarah and Simon are coming, Kristof, Mands and maybe Mark and Piedro. So it should be a nice fun little group of nice people. Hope the rain keeps of and sun pokes it naughty little nose out! After all we are not that far from Wimbledon!!
Oh and i rode a bike today for the 1st time in AGES! Fun, fun, fun!

love
S x

Yawn!

2004-07-02T22:03:00.001+01:00

I am sooooooooooooooooo tired this week, i feel as if i have worked 10 days in 5! `Burnng the candle at both ends` i hear you utter...well yes, a tad i suppose..but it`s worth it, BUT HEY! Saw me lovely JP Monday and tuesday, he is working 7 days then off to France for a family doo so i will not see him for more than two weeks! How will i survive? Answers on a postcard...
So tommorrow is Saturday, i will sleep in as much as poss` to regain my lovely complexion and in the afternoo` meet Cornelio, who`s over from Budapest for a cd/book shopping extravaganza...god help the poor old bank balance! Met him from gatwick on Weds, an awful journey due to the tube strike..again, BUT HEY!
Ryan from America (who i met in Budapest), is also over in the UK for the 1st time! He is in Cambridge studying strange smelling old books, but will come down to London for a big gay night out! YAY!
So it`s all go at the mo`!

lol
S x

%-)

2004-06-20T14:12:00.000+01:00

O neglectful me that hath not blogged for awhile!
Well the move was successful, Isleworth is FAR nicer than gloomy old Hounslow and i walk to work across the rolling parklands of the local national trust house at Syon Park and alongside the Thames. All very pleasant, when the weather is...I think i will get a bike when i get some cash together. Then i will be all bronzed by the sun and fit as a fiddle all in one!
I AM completely broke though, but hey it can`t be that bad. Once i get my deposit, or most of it back from the last place (CP Towers to those in the know), then i will be a bit more fluid finacially...
Jp is still lovely, seeing him later.. ;-)
Mands mum passed away last weekend, which is terribly sad. She had fought various forms of cancer for over 10 years. A lovely lady who i have known (along with Mands), almost as far back as i can remember. The funeral is on Tuesday, so i have booked a day off for that. Saw Mands last Wednesday, she seems to be coping well considering how very close they are.
Still haven`t totally sorted out my room, a couple of un-opened boxes to go yet, haven`t had alot of spare time this week. But generally it`s lots nicer (and much cleaner!), than the old place. The room i have is a bit bigger and more `user friendly` and i even have wireless broadband into the bargain, which is fab!
Someone burned the new Morrissey cd `You are the quarry` - it`s the best thing he has done in many years!

ttfn

S x

Moving day!

2004-06-12T12:55:00.000+01:00

Today i move to Isleworth...nuff said...

:-)

S x

COMMENTS!!

2004-06-03T21:57:00.000+01:00

I have now managed to find the time to add a COMMENTS bit at the bottom of each posting...so now you can discuss my bizarre, shambolic (what a nice word!), and peculiar life and moanings...do enjoy, but be sensitive to this battered sole/soul......

love
S x

O BUGGER! .....and other tales.....

2004-06-03T21:27:00.000+01:00

O Bugger! The week has been chopped in half with the realisation that i am now NOT going to get any more cash from my old job at FUCKIN` O.W.L. and that`s that! Which has caused me to have to consign my plan to live in my cutesy attic in Ealing to the dustbin of history.....BUGGER, balls, bollocks etc...
So having have to let that go, i was AGAIN potentially homeless (and 160 quid retainer gone with it! BAH!), and also now much less cash to play with to find somewhere new...
UNTIL the delightful Beccy from (new), said `I`ve a friend in Isleworth who has a spare room!`. Salvation! So now i am moving to a much nicer than Hounslow (where isn`t!?!). It`s only a skip round the corner to `The London Apprentice`, one of the oldest, nicest pubs in London that sits right on the Thames...gorgeous summer and winter alike...local gay bar too and it`s quite close to Richmond too...
So me FINALLY happy! :-)
Cornelio told me about this book called `Londons Disused Underground Stations`. It looks totally fascinating and i want it...Anyone feeling generous??
I see JP tommorrow!! ;-)

S x

Hellooo!!!!!! (out there...?)

2004-05-31T18:37:00.000+01:00

I`m having a funny old few days...
It`s weird (but is it really...?), i am soo sensitive to what people say...sometimes i LOVE that, sometimes i hate it....i suppose in real - REALITY i am massively glad that i am that way inclined...i would really..well, HATE it that i WASN`T sensitive towards others. It just seems the norm to me...and that`s all...
I am REALLY missing Jean-Pierre too, what does that say? Am i ``in love``...it would be nice...and prolly needed! I LOVE being IN LOVE, that`s it...It makes me feel secure...special and wanted and it`s always what i need. `Coz i do not usually feel that way. He`s a sweetie, he really is. I just hate being so bloody English and incapable of truly expressing what i feel...and want. O, it`s crap really...but hey!
My good friend was peed-off with me too, sorry but i can`t help being me...

lol

S x

%-)

2004-05-30T14:24:00.001+01:00

I miss my lovely Frenchman...he`s away working until Thursday, i will probaly see him then or on Friday...aww poor me...

S x

hello!!

2004-05-29T13:54:00.000+01:00

I am a naughty boy and haven`t blogged for a bit - i slap myself WALLOP!
Actually been pretty busy on several fronts, new job at a Day Centre for learning disabled is good. Boyfriend (the sexy Frenchie - Jean-Pierre), is fabulous and could well develop into something more than a short `fling`, i hope so!! ;-)
But have also been searching for a new flat share as have to leave current one by June 12th due to landlord falling for me (O what have i done to deserve this?). So i have found a bedsit in Ealing which will do admirably. It`s in the roofspace, so has `velux` windows and although it`s on a main street is fairly quiet because it`s high up on the 3rd floor. I like it, it is cute and cosy. The kitchen and bathroom are shared with the rest of the flat, but are clean and decent enough. The others in the flat seem nice enough too. So i really can`t wait to move and get settled in....

S x

It`s been awhile and now i SMILE!

2004-05-17T20:59:00.000+01:00

Well i have not `blog-etted` for over a week. WHY one asks!? Well wasn`t feeling too well Monday..so early night...Tues too. But on WEDS, I went out for what can almost be called a `blind date`. It was organised through gaydar and somebody else (ta C !).
So i went to `The Birdcage` in Chiswick, initially not noticing the handsome French guy in the corner. THen my mobile rang and a rather sexy French accent said `I`m in the corner`.....I went over, sat down, giggled alot nervously and at the end of it all after chatting and laughing until closing time (we were last to leave!), we had got along famously and were outside the immediate front of the bar. So we were saying goodbye etc and i decided `fuck it` and snogged him...very nice too! He`s a very good kisser which i always approve of!
So basically i appear to have got myself a rather lovely and sweet and also very sexy French man for a boyfriend - yes i said BOYFRIEND!! :)Me happy.....
On the other paw though...My flatmate/landlord has become ``obsessed/in love`` with me and has given me 1 months notice to move out!! A bit cheeky considering i have done nothing to warrant this treatment myself. So now i have the added hassle/shit of finding a share cheap enough and in the right area...so if in a few weeks i dissappear from the airwaves briefly you know what`s occurring!

hey ho...

lol S x

HMMMMMMM......

2004-05-09T21:50:00.000+01:00

I Really MUST find out how to put a `comments` bit on here...then people can, well make comments on the crap i put up on here! Now wouldn`t that be fun! :-)
Oh and now i have a sore throat again!! Bah!

S x

Top 10 allbums!

2004-05-09T16:32:00.000+01:00

In response to Cornelio i give u my top 10 favourite albums.....In no particular order.....

1/ `Outernational` - Billy Mackenzie

2/ ` Savage` - Eurythmics

3/ `We Love Life` - Pulp

4/ `She Was Only A Grocers Daughter` - The Blow Monkeys

5/ `Sulk` - The Associates

6/ `This Is Hardcore` - Pulp

7/ `Beyond The Sun` - Billy Mackenzie

8/ `Revenge` - Eurythmics

9/ `Realms Of Gold` - Dr. Robert

10/ `Technique` - New Order

O sod it! One more for luck!

11/ `Different Class` - Pulp

Love S x

More songs.....

2004-05-07T22:49:00.000+01:00

How many sorrows
Do you try to hide
In a world of illusion
That`s covering your mind
I`ll show you something good
When you open your mind
You`ll discover the sign
That there`s something
You`re longing to find

The miracle of love
Will take away your pain
When the miracle of love
Comes your way again

Cruel is the night
That covers up your fears
Tender is the one
That wipes away your tears
There must be a bitter breeze
To make you sting so viciously
They say the greatest coward
Can hurt the most ferociously
But i`ll show you something good
If you open up your heart
You can make a new start
When your crumbling world falls apart....

Miracle of love-Eurythmics

Love me Love me Love me say you do
Let me fly away with you
For my love is like the wind
And wild is the wind
Wild is the wind
Satisfy this hungriness
Let the wind blow through your heart
And wild is the wind
You touch me and i hear the sound of mandolins
You kiss me and with your kiss my life begins
You`re spring to me
All things to me
Don`t you know you`re life itself
Like the leaf clings to the tree
Darling cling to me
For we are like creatures of the wind
And wild is the wind
Wild is the wind
Wild
Is the wind

Wild is the wind - Various (Nina Simone/Billy Mackenzie/David Bowie)

Who loves you
Who wants to go through this life
And have you here
Who knows what you are afraid of
Who knows that life is cruel
Who knows it best
Who knows you

Who goes through what you do
Understands the worlds contempt
But wants you - just for you
Who`s here alongside you
Who does it best
Who loves you

I`ll go with you

I`ll go with you
Through stations, through
Places filled with millions who cause distress
Who knows what will become of us
Why wouldn`t i want you
Who else is there that loves you

Who loves you - McAlmont

More later on..........

S x

Bank Holiday Monday - whoo!

2004-05-03T21:43:00.000+01:00

Not the most exciting of b/h Mondays. I was expecting to meet friends in the latter part of the afternoon - of course the phone didn`t ring or ping so that didn`t happen. It has been a most dull day. The only living creature i spoke to all day has been `Warszawa`, one of my flatmates cats! Even he was disinterested and scuttled off sharpish....o dear, i am a bit maudlin today. As i was walking back from the supermarket i saw Jakub (last boyf`), walking towards me. He obviously saw me and managed to dart into a sweet shop. How nice of him to avoid me so obviously.....what a c***t.....haven`t had a single email today either.....feel like i`m dissappearing!
It can only get better.....

S x

Hmmm.....

2004-05-03T00:37:00.000+01:00

It just occured to me that the pills i have just taken taste of `purple`....not entirely sure why (!!??!!)
Strangely `nothing` sort of day. What did i do? Well i did a little bit of highly un-exciting food shopping this afternoon, bumped into an aquaintance and had a brief drinky (a glass of very nice white wine), and sat in the sunshine for a little while. Made dinner, tidied up me space and chatted awhile on Msn to me lovely friends and met lovely Mands et al in the evening. Now i adore Mands, shes probaly my oldest friend. But it didn`t feel `right` for some unknown reason. Don`t know why.....
So now i`m listening to Lamb `Fear of Fours` - one of my fave` `chill` albums having just popped me pills....and i STILL feel a little odd, kind of uneasy...but god knows why...do i self anylise too much? I dunno......

S x

Europe expands...

2004-05-01T12:40:00.000+01:00

The European union expands to 25 today, as usual all the twat Brit` press can do is `warn` us of the apparent hordes of Eastern Europeans that are `flooding` over to `take our jobs` (i`m surprised they don`t add women as well!). The press here is so ignorant and sensationalist. The expansion eastwards can only really be benificial to all...so to me it is a historic and important day. Welcome .

S x

Strange fruit

2004-04-27T13:04:00.000+01:00

I had a `Sharon fruit` - it was revolting....

I love my friend...Doc`s tommorrow

S x

Favourite Lyrics.....

2004-04-25T13:19:00.000+01:00

A selection of bits of songs that are beautiful...

`...he lives by the sea,
the sea gives him everything,
he`s ever dreamt about....`

Nocturne IV - Billy Mackenzie (lovely phrasing..:)

`Sanctuary, sanctuary
All i want is some peace of mind for us baby
We can never let go
of the dreams that keep us together
Making sense in a world
where possessions maketh the man
and ambitions bloodthirsty hand
keeps the pressure on you...`

Sanctuary - Dr.Robert

`...I wish i was invisible
So i could climb through the telephone
When it hurts my ear
And it hurts my brain
And it makes me feel too much (too much!)
Dont cut me down
When i`m talking to you
`cause i`m much too tall
To feel that small...yeah
Love is a temple
Love is a shrine
Love is pure
And love is blind
Love is a religious sign
Im` gonna leave this love behind
Love is hot and love is cold
I`ve been bought and i`ve been sold
Love is rock and love is roll
I just want someone to hold

You have placed a chill in my heart...`

Eurythmics - SUBLIME :)

`There`s something i gotta say
Can`t wait til tommorrow
A whispher still beneath my breath
You know it`s hard to swallow
I follow you inside my mind
The neighbourhood`s no stranger
Loving you can be sublime
But it`s all wrapped up in danger

Give me time
Been around the world trying to find myself
And i`m not gonna go with someone else
Give me time
Been around the world trying to find myself
But i`m not gonna go with someone else
Give me time

Come on and be mine, come on and be mine
Been around the world trying to find myself
And i`m not gonna go with someone else
Give me time, oh gimme time
There`s something that i gotta say
It can`t wait til tommorrow
Oh, give me time..`

Give me time - Billy Mackenzie

`...Yeah, the Trees
Those useless Trees
Produce the air that i am breathing
Yeah the trees
Those useless trees
They never said
That you were leaving....`

The Trees - Pulp

`I wanna have you
Cause you`re all i`ve got
Don`t wanna lose you
Cause it means alot
All the joy this world can bring
Doesn`t give me anything
When you`re not here

Idiot me
Stupid fool
How could be
So uncool
To fall in love with someone who
Doesn`t really care for you
It`s so obscure

But i feel
Wonderful
Yes i feel
Wonderful

(Come on)
God it makes me feel so blue
Everytime time i think about you
All of the heat of my desire
Smokin` like some crazy fire
Come on here
Look at me
Where i stand
Can`t you see my heart burnin`
In my hands
Do you want me
Do you not
Does it feel cold baby
Does it feel hot

I wanna hold you
And be so held back
Don`t wanna need you
But it`s where i`m at
Thinkin` bout you every day
How come i was made that way
It`s so surreal

But i feel
Wonderful
Yes i feel
Don`t you know i feel
Wonderful...`

Wonderful - Annie Lennox (describes itself, just wonderful!)

`I just got your message baby
So sad to see you fade away
What in the world is this feeling
To catch a breath and leave me reeling
It`ll get you in the end, it`s god`s revenge

Oh i know i should come clean
But i prefer to decieve
Everyday i walk alone
And pray that god won`t see me
I know it`s wrong
I know it`s wrong

Tell me why is it i`m digging your scene
I know i`ll die baby

They put you in a home to fill in
But i wouldn`t call that living
I`m like a boy among men
I`d like a permanent friend
I`d like to think i was just myself again

Why is it i`m digging your scene
I know i`ll die baby....`

Digging your scene - The Blow Monkeys (Prolly my favourite song...ever..)

I that is enough....

S x

Back to work...

2004-04-22T22:15:00.000+01:00

Well it`s been an illness week - bah! I have had Tonsillitis yet again (WHEN will the crap NHS finally deem my throat important enough to have the fuckers removed - I hate my tonsils!). So spent most of the week indoors recuperating. Being ill is deathly dull and can bring me down so much - too much time to sit around and think.....
Had interview today, wasn`t so bad, dunno what i was panicking about really...then again i panic about everything!
But today has been a weird one, i have had a headache ALL day, didn`t want to take a painkiller in case in interferes with the antibiotics for my tonsils.. so i have grinned (not) and bared it. I have felt so weird today - listless and as if i am about to burst into tears all the day.
Went for a walk mid-evening, but Hounslow is such a dreary place that it only really made me feel worse.....
Why am i such a miserable bastard at times? I don`t always feel like this, in fact it is fairly rare. But when i am low, i am LOW...
Back to work after illness days off tommorrow...at least i`ll be occupied...god, that makes me sound like a public convenience!!

xx`s

Steve

Gloomy Sunday (Szomoru Vasarnap - excuse the bad spelling)

2004-04-18T13:23:00.000+01:00

It`s wet and gloomy outside (why do i like the word `gloomy` so much?). I still don`t feel that well, throat is sore, headache slightly...o dear i am sooooo bad at being unwell. Partly due to the fact that it keeps me indoors, i like to get out of the flat daily to get some air if i am not working. But i feel i should stay in and rest...i force myself...
Didn`t go anywhere yesterday, apart from a brief run to the supermarket around the corner for the neccessaries. Chatted to friends on Msn msger off and on, watched a vid` with my flatmate later in the evening which was pleasant. Then drifted off to bed, actually slept pretty well for once! Though i had to take a pill to aid this, hey ho!
I have been reading off and on - `Seduced and abandoned ~ Essays on gay men and Pop music`by Richard Smith. It`s mostly interviews with various groups/bands etc cullled from articles in Gay Times from the 90`s. It`s quite a nice read and at times most interesting...

S x

Thigs i like (with aplogies to Victoria Wood)

2004-04-17T20:01:00.000+01:00

I like the following -

Music (esp` scouting around dusty cd shops for rarities)
Reading
Sex (don`t get enough!)
Talking
Friends
Sad movies
Chatting on the net
Salad
Travelling
Nice people
People buying me flowers
Chest hair & other parts of the male body ;-)
Walking in nice places
Head massages
Sunglasses (for me to hide behind).....

to be continued.....

S x

I have a sore throat..... :-(

2004-04-17T10:44:00.000+01:00

I have a sore throat :-(
So it looks like i am coming down with the cold my flatmate has had for the last few days - bah! I have been taking LOADS of vitamins/echinacea etc to try and avoid this. but to no avail obviously. O poo...
I HATE being unwell, i have the LOWEST tolerancy for pain in the western hemisphere and it can really bring me down....o well..
Legushka - has put some lovely pics of the indoor picnic he had last Sunday! They are very nice! I look almost human :-)

S x

Back to life...back to reality...erk!?!!

2004-04-14T01:16:00.000+01:00

I feel i have been bad, not writing a THING for the last few days! An outrage indeed! Actually it`s been a fun few days really...a tad tiring, but nice...
So Cornelio has been over (as u will realise i collected him from Gatwick etc). He made/gave me lovely gifts of home burnt cd`s full of Annie/Pulp goodies which are all fab (cheers luv!)...we then met Legushka (a sweetie) and JC at Victoria and popped into Soho for a drinkie, which was most pleasant fun..haven`t been for ages! Though i do find `gayland` all a bit much at times, but very nice occassionally...
I worked next two days :( so not much to say about that! On the Saturday i worked with Nick who as always flirted outrageously with me...it`s his `game`, he`s a love really, but not my bag...
Met up with Legushka and Cornelio again Sat` afternoon for a couple of hours, though i was totally tired from work and not in the best of moods...Spent an outrageous amount of cash on some fab cd`s (my life!)....

ie...

ACT `Laughter, tears and rage -The anthology`
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie `Five`
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie `Hammer and tongs`
Dr.Robert `Realms of gold`

I LOVE cd shopping in Berwick st!! It rocks!

Sunday i (totally BLACKMAILED by Cornelio!), went to a party at legushka`s, which turned out to be a really nice event...met lots of cool people and had a nice time, though i was a bit scaredy of meeting so many people i didn`t know ALL at once...help!
Monday i met Cornelio at Kings X and we hung out and got yet more music. ...he seems to be my lucky charm as far as finding music thats hard to get hold of, hence these that i`ve been trying to find for ages -

Dear Janes `No skin`
Les rhythmn digitales `Darkdancer`

He also made me a lovely gift of the Eurythmics `We two are one` vid`, which is very good indeedy.... :)
Then we repaired back to my flat in deepest West london, chilled, ate...etc...and i sadly saw him onto the plane at Heathrow...aww bless...bye again!
Then i pretty much collasped from fatigue...coz i am ancient.
nice few days of jollity :)

i worked today...nuff` said!
And tommorrow i do `sleep in` which means i will not be back til Thursday afternoon - bah!
Work ruins ones social life!

tata

S x

Work is tiring.....bet u never knew that!

2004-04-07T19:24:00.000+01:00

Just back from a NINE hr day at work during which my feet almost never touched the ground! I hardly sat down for a minute! So...guess, yes i am KNACKERED! But hey, i must go out to Ealing to meet Ali (over from India) and Mands. Probaly my two oldest pals. So its best foot forward...blah blah blah...
Tommorrow i can sleep in a bit anyway, only clothes washing to do really then off to meet Cornelio at Gatwick in the afternoon, which will be nice fun.
I have gone back in time musically having found an ancient tape of `Swing out sister`, forgot how much i liked `Breakout` and `Surrender` he he he....am i mad? No! Just bizarre.....

xx`s
S

2004-04-06T22:22:00.000+01:00

Rain (etc), has finally stopped! what a weird weather day! Sztormy!
Chatted on Yahoo msger coz Msn msger went mad this evening and wouldn`t work for ages! C suggested downloading it again, i did and it worked finally...bloody technology sucks. Cheers C!
have to work from 9-6 tommorrow - o dear i am really HATING it at the moment! Still off on thursday (my 33rd birthday!!! AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!). But Cornelio comes over then so it will be nice to see him and hang out together, at least i will be able to have an intelligent conversation with someone - god am i that much of a snob!?!
Cj has been emailing lots from New York too which is nice, he`s a love and tommorrow have to meet Alison. She is over from India for a few days (where she lives), one of my oldest friends - known since i was about 4!
God it sounds as if i am the worlds biggest socialite. Not really, too very often my phone(s) never rings (isn`t that an old Deacon Blue song?), i spend my evenings sat on me bed listening to music/reading/on laptop/whatever and wishing it would. I HATE my own company - he said cheerily!
Better go beddy-byes, have to be up for 7.00am

tata

S xx