Why I hate this Country

A woman who contested her parents' will after they left their two million pound estate to the RSPCA won her legal challenge on Friday.

Christine Gill, 58, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, launched her legal battle in July last year to challenge the will, which she claimed her father coerced her mother into making.

After her mother's death in 2006, Gill discovered her parents, John and Joyce Gill, had made wills leaving their 287-acre farm to each other and then to the animal charity when both died.....

As an atheist it is at times like this I wish I could believe in the afterlife, to watch her burn in hell for ever after her few years of life on earth with some cash.

Image via Wikipedia

I find this country to be one of the meanest and most unpleasant in the world..... So, why don't I emigrate, because my partner can't even get out of bed because she is ill, so I have to put up with a mean and unpleasant land, though the hymn tells me it is a green and pleasant land.

If you are an immigrant, just don't bother, this country is full of tight fisted racist morons and it really isn't worth the effort, as soon as I can I am out of here.

Chasing music

John Cooper Clarke via last.fm

There I was all set and ready to get some writing done. I decided to just catch up with someone on facebook and three hours later I still hadn't started writing what I had intended.

First of all there was something on Joy Division, which led to a youtube video of an old clip of Joy Division which happened to have as the intro and outro a poem by John Cooper Clark. A great punk poet, which of course meant I had to go and find out if he was still about. This led to a few more videos and then time to find some of the genre, which of course didn't quite go according to plan as I saw a link to a new online audio mixing tool, which necessitated my joining the site and having to play with that for a while.

I can't believe I only wasted three hours, but was it wasted?

No, I came back to write, energised and enthusiastic, managing to get four articles written in short shrift.

Chasing music can be good for you.

Do what?

This video has been doing the rounds and I am as flumoxed as many by why this video was ever made.

The message is don't copy software, delivered by a klingon???

Currently No1 in the list of worst anti-piracy videos ever made or not?

Paper airplanes

Some days just don't get going as they are expected and today has been one of those days.

I know this as I ended up watching a video about how to make a paper airplane. At least I haven't made it ...... yet. But who knows on a day like today.

Just in case you wondered how to make the world record breaking paper plane, here goes...

The video plays after the advertising message.

Strictly come dancing launch date

Click image to enlarge

As I think I mentioned in the last article, I have one or two interests and as a result of another blog I was contacted about an event coming up.

Well, one thing led to another and so I have some information about a Strictly Come Dancing, which I am passing on.

The first episode of Strictly Come Dancing will be on 18th September starting at 20:00 and finishing at 22:30.

The non competing celebrities will be dancing a Mambo, choreographed by Shelley Ballas.

To follow the latest Strictly news follow @bbcstrictly on Twitter, Or sign up for text alerts:

The image at the head of the article of the celebrities, isn't widely available just yet and was kindly sent over to me by HeadStream PR.

Desire and complacency

Sometimes my spectrum of every day life does wander towards more serious issues. I wondered about posting this on a different blog, but it just seemed right here.

As some of the 'oddments in a vacuum' readers know, I have political blogs, news blogs and tech blogs in addition to this one, but I also have a myriad of other stuff on the web ranging from trees, art deco, collecting, guest writing, muscle development, internet marketing and so the list goes on and something I did five years ago then dropped, but have now restarted with a completely fresh start: music, well to be more specific, indi

Image by kimberlyfaye via Flickr

e bands of whatever style. That is in addition to consultancy, so you will guess that sometimes my 'oddments' cross my life as I come across a myriad of people with different interests.

But it is the Indie Bands that has drawn me to write this article. I set myself a goal on oddments of not being angered but reflective, which is why I struggled as to where to write this article.

I will skip the tutorial, but when I start something new, I like to market myself and I do this under many different guises, not to be secretive, but does someone who is interested in the latest beauty industry news, necessarily have any interest in my views on police abuse of power?

Anyway, enough of the intro..... This new blog, which is focused mainly on new and emerging bands....

I made some attempt to find out about some bands and listened to what they were doing and made contact, I also offer on the blog a way to contact me. Of 115 UK, US and South African bands that I was interested in writing about and contacted, a grand total of 6 responded, of whom only 1 could be bothered to answer my queries. I have however been contacted by 8 PR firms about UK bands or events they are promoting. Off their own bat I have been contacted by 37 bands from South America, 6 from Europe and 4 from Asia.

Are what I will loosely term 'English speaking bands' more complacent? Do these bands employ PR agents and Managers so they can ignore direct contact?

Without trying to get in to a political agenda, I have noticed a stark contrast between those who have English as a second language and make contact with those who have are natively English/American speaker and who appear to just expect everything to fall in place.

I was about to type a statement of contempt, but it wouldn't help. I am saddened by this stark contrast and I wish it wasn't so.

Update.... I have received an email query as to why I didn't link to my blog.
A. The post wasn't to promote the blog but to express how my life makes me tick, no still no link

Food

I was thinking about making this a post about my mother dying sometime recently (No I genuinely don't know when), but I got a little bored with that, so I thought I would head off to a cooking issue.

We all know that food with basting tastes better the day after we make it.

So this evening, I was going to cook a Chinese I had cooked and prepared the day before and the question arose.. You have the spices in their which tastes good on the first day, better the second day, so how would it taste with a 24 hour marinade plus a new spice this evening.

Well living in a village going shopping at 21:00 on a Saturday evening often draws a blank, there are three food shops. I kind of guessed they were shut, but I felt the need to explore, but they were all closed.

I cooked, the food was well received, but would a second spice have made for more flavour? I ask as I have for a long time believed in the 24 hour rest. Would further spice add value or kill it?

I must try one day, but I don't know when. I would however be intrigued to know, from those in the know, is a marinade enhanced by another spicing?

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Oops spam in my comments

I know I said this wasn't going to be business related and really it isn't.

I just wonder sometimes about the headspace in which spammers live, or perhaps I should wonder more about the mentality of those who run with it.

I had a track back here, its all jargoneese, but hey. Someone pointed at my website with a load of old bull, in the fond hope I wouldn't notice it was nonsense.

On a seperate issue, but kind of related, because I now have this link to my site, Google thinks I am a bit spammy possibly, though Matt Cutts, from Google, kind of knows this happens.... I digress, bear with me.

Oh, did I mention Cutts is the head of spam with google has a blog you really should read if you want some inside Google stuff from time to time.

Anyway, the spam comment got me to thinking, why do people think there is a world in which riches are made from ripping people off?

I guess that spammers still bother to send out their Nigerian Scam letter, Cialis, Make a million tomorrow, your email address has won the Moscow state lottery et al, because there are people greedy enough to believe it all.

I despair of human greed every day




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In honour of those around me

Image via Wikipedia

Having succesfully failed over the weekend to catch up with admin, I am now faced with the options of actually getting something done this afternoon, or spending time on admin. I guess that is more a reflection on my mindset than how I could look at my choices.

As someone who struggles to deal with almost anything repetitious, this dilemma is a daily part of my life and I am sure I don't live in this quandary alone.

Housework, washing-up, shopping, administration, re-reading articles, planning a holiday, thinking before acting, are but a small example set of the activities I classify as time-wasting.

Reading, writing, exploring, getting it wrong, acting on a whim are all time effective activities, to my mind.

I can see the argument that if I planned more before I acted, then perhaps there would be a better outcome, but would I be happier? Those wasted hours on forethought send me into a cold sweat.

Does the trail of chaos in my wake cause me sleepless nights? No, but the idea that I may have a waste of time activity to pursue the following day does.

This goldfish like focus has left me with a wake of half finished projects, picked up and developed by others.

Living and working with this mindset is I am sure a nightmare. But I have been fortunate in that my colleagues and partners have accepted this as part of my make-up and to my colleagues over the years I extend my thanks.

wrong door

Two letters have been delivered this week through the wrong door, which should have been delivered somewhere else.

The location is a village, the relevant addresses are about half a mile apart, all they share in common, beyond being in the same village are the house number an the first letter of the Street name. Beyond that nothing.

It set me to wondering how many people never actually get that all important letter they have been waiting for because it has been delivered to the wrong house. I am pretty sure the first letter, which arrived on Monday, was on the 'wonder where that letter is' list for the intended recipient, as the logo and stamp of a firm of solicitors was emblazoned across the front of the envelope.

Today's letter, just a plain handwritten envelope with two stickers on the back which say 'text me' may be personal, but it is evidently important from the senders perspective as they have even sent a reminder to get in touch before the letter is even opened.

As I am in a rural location and know exactly where the letter is meant to be sitting just now, it isn't a problem for me to drop that off for them this morning. Were I away on holiday, then the letters would be delayed. If I drop them in to the post office for delivery, the letter of today probably wouldn't arrive until the middle of next week, as a postal strike is about to commence.

I wonder how many letters are posted through the wrong door and languish in the wrong hallway and how many of those letters never make their intended destination?

about books

One of my friends on facebook sent me a link with a list of 100 books, many classics, but some more modern ones too. The BBC came up with the suggestion that most people had only read six of the books on the list, not quite sure where they did their research, as most people who responded had read upwards of 30 of the list, but it got me thinking.

Six books on a must read list...

So I came up with my essential 6

It all starts out with the clock


A classic piece of work


An astute observation of the late '70's, it also just happens to be about the early punk years and would be my '1 book list' choice.

Had this been written with the benefit of hindsight, I am not sure the ethos of Western Philosophy would have been better laid out.

Selecting from a shortlist of 4 this was a shorthead winner.


A childrens story? A superbly written story beats the socks off Aesop

Be great to know your six essentials.

No dead flies on the car

I was driving along today, quite bright and sunny with quite a few butterflies about.

I know there were quite a few butterflies around 6 died on the windscreen and it got me wondering, as you do. Have flies become smarter?

In the mid '90s I drove regularly, long distances on the motorway, following my hobby of mountaineering and climbing, another story another day.

After most of these journeys the car headlights and windscreen would be a mosaic of dead flies and sundry insects. Now when I drive, I rarely have more than one or two insect corpses on the car.

Is the fly population decreasing, are car shapes less conducive to fly collisions, or have flies just become smarter?

The dead fly syndrome isn't one I miss, but just want to clear up in my mind.

The twists and turns of the recession

I needed to get some food shopping done today and headed over to the nearest deli, in this part of the country that is 7 miles away.

I hadn't been there for a while, so pulled up outside the shop expecting all to be as normal., except I noticed a property rental board and a notice in the window. The business had closed as of 31st July.

My next point of call was the local farm butcher, about 14 miles away ('local' in East Anglia is a relative term), I am still not used to the 24 hours easy access of London that I have recently left behind.

The butcher, Brian was looking well and happy with life and was delighted to introduce me to a new butcher they had recently recruited to the farm because of expansion.

Brian said they were pretty quiet today and had been much busier yesterday, but between the three of us in the queue, over £200 changed hands, in all of about 20 minutes.

The recession is running a strange tornado path through the country, some people and businesses continue to thrive and grow, others are being cast to the wind.

In my experience today, two pretty similar operations, one a deli with a meat counter the other a butchers with a deli counter, no more than 20 miles apart have in the past month seen completely divergent paths. One expanding, the other closing.

The failed business in the centre of a Stilton, a small-town or large village, depending if you are half full or half empty glass person, the other expanding its business, sits in splendid isolation a couple of miles from the nearest small village.

Was it location, the business model or pure luck that these two very similar operations had seen such divergent fortune. Would it have made any difference had their premises been reversed?

Parting company

Ignoring the rest of the world as I walked away from the chemists back to the car, I heard a crunching sound and noticed a caravan slewed across the road.

Sounds like a dramatic accident, but it wasn't anything of the sort.

A car, with a caravan on tow had just gone over a speed bump and evidently unhitched itself from the car towing it.

Something I found amusing anyway, so I thought I would share, with a grainy photograph.


A trip to pick up a prescription and those all important drinks, somehow led to a traffic jam for about 15 minutes while the caravan was reunited with its owners.

It all seems to head somewhere...

Having just started a new project with some other people, I thought it would make sense to see how it was all fitting together and that was all I intended to do.

I got caught up in the moment and set about with some internet marketing yada yada...

As a result of a response I put on the project board, I received a reply, which led me to read another group conversation that happened last night on skype. I think I was into a bottle of fizz at that time, anyway...

It reminded me I had set up a traffic bug activity linking to a couple of blog posts. I mentioned traffic bug yesterday (reminder to set up search area on this blog) and I was able to determine that one of the urls I had copied and pasted was wrong. How I managed to do that is anyones guess, well it may have been due to the fact that the bottle was looking pretty empty at the time.

Anyway, despite the randomness of it all, I found an error I was able to correct this morning, which leads me off to do something else that this article has reminded me of. I need to get some more drinks in.

As the title suggests, it all seems to head somewhere.....

Wondering about John

I have a great friend, who lives by the maxim that you only live once with the catch phrase 'party on'. John is a similar age to myself and unlike me, works in a physically demanding job.

I have now finished writing those articles I mentioned earlier, which were about healthy lifestyles and not suprisingly it drew my mind to wondering about John. I will link to those articles one day, but just not now, but I digress.

On Friday I went out for a drink with John in the evening and he eventually made it home sometime after pub closing time. The following morning, he was up and out and working by the time many of us are just getting round to thinking a fry up would be a great start to the day.

That evening, John took the opportunity, as he had Sunday off work to go out, just for a change. His home time arrival was a little shrouded in mystery on talking to him.

Mid-morning on Sunday, I received a call from him asking if I could give him a lift to a pub about 20 minutes away at about one o'clock. I left him and two other guys at about 1:30 as I had to get back to do some more writing.... Too much writing I think in this life of mine.

We originally arranged that he would call me at about 7 as he had to get back to work at 6 the following morning. At some time after 10pm John called and I gave him a lift back to his home.

Of course he made it in to work today, but sometimes when writing gets me drawn in to its claws, I find myself wondering about John.

Old habits die hard

Despite the randomness of it all, ingrained behaviour just wont disappear sometimes.

I thought to myself, I'll write my first post, then get back to what I was doing. But no of course not. The internet marketing head comes on and I just can't avoid doing a spot of social bookmarking.

Which has taken me so far away from my 'plan for the day' that I am now going out to get some shopping and perhaps when I get back...

Well, I doubt it either.

But I do have some other people relying on me to get some writing done today, five articles in total, so I had best get on with it.... sooner rather than later.

A hash of ideas

Woke to a list of objectives, number one being write some stuff.

As with all days, the number one objective has slid a little down the list as I concentrate on researching some information to enable me to write coherent articles.

Strangely this then led me on to deciding to look at some videos on article writing, which led me on to traffic bug, a way to imrove the visibility of your website far and wide.

For some strange reason, I thought, hey why not write a blog about the randomness of life.

If you are looking for philosophical arguments on the behaviour patterns of humanity, this isn't the place to read.

This is just snippets of random linking.

I mentioned traffic bug so it seems sensible, for anyone with the least bit of interest in the subject, to at least link provide a link to the site.

Here is the url and it isn't an affiliate link, whoops monetization of a blog. I'll get on to that later, anyway here is the link

So here goes, first entry written and welcome to the unravelling of oddments in a vacuum.