My nephew and his girlfriend had a baby recently, so yesterday I did the obligatory visit to see the new addition to the family (along with my daughter, her husband and my grand-daughter), we all partook in the ritualistic ohhing and ahhing and the well established game of pass the baby, who was particularly disinterested in most of it. Don't get me wrong, I like babies, I was one myself once, but I just think that they're all pretty much the same after a while, small Yoda-like bundles of humanity, pure of mind, body and spirit and just a blank slate for families to screw up the way only families can. I do wish them all the luck in the world and hope that everything goes right for them, it's just the natural synic in me coming out.

It was kind of strange visiting part of my family again, we haven't been as close for a while as maybe we should have been and definately could have been, but I suppose that kind of thing happens to some families. I had some interesting conversations with the different members of the family (my brother, his wife, their kids and partners) and left at just the right time, namely just at the point when we were running out of conversation. So all in all it was a good visit.

I must say that it left me feeling a bit tired (which isn't all together a bad thing as my sleep pattern has been somewhat erratic again recently), and questioning why we have grown so far apart. I love my family but for some reason we don't seem to have much common ground that we can occupy for too long. I do miss the way we were for a short period, where we all seemed to get along and see each other more regularly, but I think sometimes that it was all just something we did to make our parents happy and that once they were gone there was no reason for us to pretend to be that close anymore.

I hope that something like that doesn't happen to my kids, I don't think it will but it's difficult to be sure.

I found this one on another web site and thought it was a good one:

Where were you born? Hackney, East London.

How old will you be on your next birthday? 43

Who was the last person you e-mailed? Sandy

Who was the last person that e-mail you? Niki

Do you like white chocolate? Yes

Tea or Coffee? Coffee

What is the most embarrassing CD or album you have ever owned? A David Soul album, can’t remember the title but it was the one that didn’t have Silver Lady on it.

What is the worst book you’ve ever read? ‘The Dead Zone’ by Stephen King

What is the worst film you’ve ever seen? ‘The Day It Came To Earth’

What is the best book you’ve ever read? It would be either ‘I Am Legend’ by Richard Matheson, ‘The Light Of Other Days’ by Bob Shaw, ‘Behold the Man’ by Michael Morcock, or ‘The Guardians Of Time’ by Poul Anderson.

What is the best film you’ve ever seen? It would either be ‘A Time To Kill’, ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, ‘The Magic Bow’, or ‘The Warriors’

Do you own any cuddly toys, if so how many? Yes, four (The Banana Splits)

If you had to choose your last ever meal, what would it be? Chicken and Sweet corn soup to start, Stuffed hearts with roast potatoes and roasted vegetables as main course, and Apple Pie with custard and ice cream for pudding, with blue stilton, brie and Danish blue and crackers and a large coffee to follow.

Have you ever dyed your hair? Yes, a few times.

What secondary school did you go to? Moat Mount Secondary School, Mill Hill.

What was the last book you read? Knees Up Mother Earth by Robert Rankin

What is your all time favourite TV show? It would either be ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ or ‘The Young Ones’

What is your favourite biscuit? Custard Creams

What fictional character would you most like to be? Mr Benn

Have you ever had a crush on a famous person, if so who? Yes, lots of them but the first one was probably Suzi Quatro.

What type of car would you most like to own? A motorcycle

Do you have any tattoos? Yes, four

Do you have any piercings? Yes, five in my ears and one in my nose

How many pairs of jeans do you own? Five

Can you play a musical instrument, if so what? I can just about play the Bass guitar and can just about play a bit of rhythm guitar.

How many jobs have you had since leaving school? Five proper jobs and numerous other ‘jobs’ in and around the music biz

What is/was the best job you’ve ever had? Singing in a band

What is/was the worst job you’ve ever had? Porter in a medical research facility

Have you ever broken a bone in your body? No, but I have fractured my wrist twice and my ankle once

What phrase do you use the most? It changes, sometimes it’s ‘…and stuff’ and sometimes it’s ‘that’ll be it then’, sometimes it’s other things depending on how I feel

How many people’s phone numbers are on your mobile phone? 40

Where did you last go on holiday? Rye

When did you last go on holiday? About four years ago

What person do you most admire? It would be a choice between my friend Chris Kelly and Stephen Hawkin

What person do you least admire? George Bush Jr

Do you have any allergies? I have Hay Fever and an allergy to cardboard dust

Where were you the last time you laughed out loud? In my bedroom

Where were you the last time you cried? In my living room

What is your biggest fear? That I will die alone and no one will remember me

What is your greatest hope for the future? My two greatest hopes are that mankind will one day discover a way to live together in peace with each other and the planet, and that they will also realize just how untalented Eminem is

I have been thinking about my blog and the fact that sometimes there are no comments left on my posts no matter what I put in them and I can't help but wonder if I am just committing an act of mental masturbation by posting anything on here. Is it just another way of stroking my ego and making myself feel better about my problems simply by writing them down, or is it, as I had hoped, a way of reaching out and touching people who I would have no way of conecting with otherwise? Does anything I have to say or any opinion I have about anything, including myself, really mean anything or matter in any way to anyone other than me? I feel that I have a lot to say about a lot of things, both personal and wider issues, but I need to know that there is any point in actually putting them down in writing or else it all just seems futile.

I don't know how much if any of this is going to make any sense to anyone including me.

I am unfocused. Partly (and I know this is going to sound cheesy and possibly a bit odd) because my new lady has had to go away for the weekend due to work comitments, but also for other reasons. The strange thing is that I couldn't tell you exactly what those other reasons are, I just know they exist. Because of this feeling of being unfocused, I have had a strange mental chaos raging through me all day and it has meant that I have found it difficult to do anything of real importance. In fact the only thing I did do was make it to my sons school rugby match, where I stood watching in the driving wind and freezing my balls off, but all the time there was still this 'stuff' going round inside my head.

My life seems to have been a long list of mistakes, either made by me or happening to me. That isn't to say that there haven't been good things in my life, but whenever somthing good has happened I have managed to make mistakes in dealing with it and eventually screwed it up beyond all help. I know that everything that has gone wrong in my adult life, and some of what went wrong in my life childhood, was my fault and I have no one to blame for where I am but me. I am a great believer in the fact that what anyone does to you does not affect the direction your life takes afterwards, it is only the way you react to their action and how you allow it to affect you that can change your life, and so any problems I have in my life (be they mental or physical) are down to me and how I have dealt with things and then allowed them to change my life.

My son, who is now sleeping soundly, is the only really great thing I have ever had any part in creating. I influenced the upbringing of my daughter but I cannot claim to have done more than that, much though I would like to. I am proud of both my children and all they have and/or will achieve, they are good people with big hearts and minds of their own and I know they will always be there for each other. I love both of them dearly and, although they may not be aware of this, they are the only reason that I am still around today.

Sometimes I feel such an anger inside me and I don't know where it comes from. I am not a violent man and I have never really been a fan of violence in any form, but sometimes I just want to smash everything and scream and destroy, and I couldn't say that if I did it and someone got in my way that I wouldn't do the same to them as well. It scares me a little but I have always managed to control it, in fact it was the feeling that I was loosing control of that anger that made me go to get help for my alcohol problem in the first place.

There is so much darkness inside me and it seems like sometimes wherever I look inside myself I catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my minds eye and get worried that it is starting to close in again. I keep pushing it back and others (friends, my kids, and my new lady) help me to keep it at bay, even if they don't know that they do, but I still have this fear that one day I won't be able to hold it back any more.

Long live paranoia!

MOGGIES

I managed to finally get some photo's of my weekend away in Surrey and here they are:

This is me with the first of the females that were fighting over me, her name is Morg

and this is me with the other female that was fighting over me, her name is Emily

MEMORIES

I've been thinking a lot over the last couple of weeks about my past, I can see clearly now just how much various members of my family screwed me up when I was growing up. I don't hold any grudges against any of them for it, some of them were just trying their best and others had their own reasons for what they did, and I don't need to hold on to any of it any more. I have finally realised that I no longer need the approval of any one in my family for anything I do and I can move forward without looking behind at the shadows of my life. During my life I have met some wonderful people (of course I've also met some idiots as well) and am happy to be able to still call some of them my friends, since my family has splintered and in some cases passed on I have been lucky enough to have some very good friends that have helped me through everything, some of them financially and some of them just by letting me know they are there and they care, they have become my new family and I feel closer to them than I do my siblings. For everything they have all done I feel humbled and I thank them, I owe them all far more than I can ever repay.

Of course, having just started on the unsure road of a new relationship, I have also been thinking of my life with my ex. I know that there were good times and I will never forget them, but I also have to be aware that for our entire relationship I was a drinking alcoholic and that influenced my feelings, my decisions, and my entire life to some degree or another. I have carried many feelings of being inadequate throughout my life and they have permeated every sexual and emotional relationship I have had, until now. This new relationship with Niki just feels so right at every level and for the first time in my life I feel that we are both getting just as much from it as each other which is a great feeling.

SEAHORSES

I have just heard on the news that customs officers have stopped a shipment of Seahorses from being smuggled into Stanstead airport and that the Seahorses are recovering from 'their ordeal' at Colchester Zoo. All I can think of is 'Why?' Is there some huge black market for Seahorses that I had previously been unaware of?

So here I am, back home after my hippy-esque adventure and I suppose it's time to be a bit less cryptic about what's going on.

I've met this fantastic woman, called Niki, via the internet. Things are great. We are getting on brilliantly and everything feels right. She makes me feel better about myself and life in general than any other woman ever has. She can do some amazing things and I've never met another woman who reacts to my touch the way she does. She meets all of the two main criteria I look for in a woman (namely she's a large breasted brunette) and we appear to be a match emotionally and mentally. She owns her own small business and leads, with her friends, a fairly bohemian lifestyle, and to top it all she's eight years younger than me (which makes her ten years older than my daughter).

This is a picture of her, it was taken about two years ago (I haven't got any more up to date ones yet as she hates having her photo taken)

Well I can't think of anything more to say about things at the moment, se y'all soon

So I'm still here at this strange, yet soothing weird place in Surrey, surrounded by cats, rabbits and hippy-esque living conditions. A solid fuel stove to heat the kitchen and an old fashioned gas range to cook on, lots of very old furniture all made of solid, real wood, and stuck somewhat strangely in the middle of it all a large computer tower connected to a 17 inch flat screen monitor. Isn't life odd sometimesD

I've only had one small problem since being here and that was having to break up a fight (now this will freak out everyone that knows me off site) between two females who were going to fight over me. One is a brunette with ginger highlites and a bit of a fiery temper the other has white, brown and black hair and is a lot quieter. The first one always wants to sit with me when ever I go into the living room and the second one wont stop trying to touch me every time I walk past her. I don't know exactly what my new girlfriends view of all this is, but she does keep telling me that she doesn't believe me when I say that women don't normally find me attractive.

I have decided, and I'm sure that most people who know me will agree with this as they have probably known it for ages, that I think far too much and I am having to fight with myself to stop me from argueing myself out of this new relationship. I can come up with a million reasons why it won't work and why she shouldn't be interested in me, but the good thing about it is that she's just as screwed up and paranoid as I am so she keeps telling me not to worry about these things while all the time worrying about the same kind of things just as much herself. This is going to be fun, I think

Before I go I just want to remind everyone that today is the anniversary of the discovery of Pluto (the planet not Mickey Mouse's dog), so lets celebrate!!!

See ya

So, here I am, wasn't sure if I'd be doing any posts while I was away but decided to do one today.

I am at an amazing place in the semi-wilds of Surrey. It's kind of like a squat/hippy comune/rabbit farm/cattery. What amazes me is that I feel so comfortable here, maybe it's my underlying hippy personality or maybe it's just the company, I'm not sure but then again I don't really care.

I have discovered a number of strange new worlds, none of which I had previously been aware of but they seem to follow some similar paths as the worlds of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll that I know only too well.

If only I had money then everything would be great. That's the only problem with getting away from the gadget driven rat race, it costs so much money to do.

Well, I don't know if I'll be posting again while I'm here but I may do, a lot of it depends on how much time I spend non-horizontal

By the way, if you haven't tried it get yourself a bag of 'Roasted Chili Corn', it's bloody brilliant.

See ya

I'm going to sart off by posting a couple of pictures that I took of a fox in my back garden today. It was about 1.30pm and the fox was just standing there, it ignored me for a while then watched me as I took some pictures, and then it walked slowly accross the garden and back before laying down in the flower bed where it stayed for a couple of hours.

Now to the main part of todays post. There really is only one word I can say about the last 24 hours; YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

I'm going to be away for a few days now but I'm going to try to post something from where I am, see y'all soon, and to sign off here's a song:

QUIZ

I saw this on lyndlj’s blog yesterday and thought I’d give it a go.

Do you have any pets? Not now, not allowed to, I used to have two rats

What was the last book you read? Knees Up Mother Earth by Robert Rankin

Do you like to cook? Yes, but my abilities are limited

Whats your favourite food? Chicken or anything spicey

Are you good at cooking/swimming etc? I’m not bad at cooking. Can’t swim.

Are you married or single? Single (but legally still married)

Do you live in a house or a flat? Ground floor flat.

Have you ever lived in another country? No, I’ve never really been out of this country

Have you ever met a famous person? Yes. Dave Hill and Don Powell from Slade; Randy Castillo (he was Ozzy Osbourne’s drummer at the time); Cronos from Venom; The guy who played the vicar in Dad’s Army; Ronnie O’sullivan; Gary Moore; Spike Milligan (sort of, he swore at me from the window of a car); Blaze Bailey (singer with Wolfsbane and Iron Maiden); Steve Harris and Nico McBrain from Iron Maiden; Buster Bloodvessel; I’m sure there have been a few others but I can’t remember

How do you spend your free time? I have very little other than spare time, I listen to music, surf the net, and drink coffee

How tall are you? 5 foot 8 and a half inches

Tell me about a favourite event of your Adulthood? The birth of my son Scott

Tell me about a favourite event of your childhood? Can’t remember one

What do you do on Sundays? The same as every other day normally, bugger all

What is your motto? It used to be “Have a good time, all the time” but now it’s “One day at a time”

What is your Religion? I have my own set of beliefs which are not really part of any religion as such but if I had to give it a name it would probably be ‘Universalism’

What kind of people do you like? I like everyone until they do something to make me not like them (and that can be the very moment I meet them or ten years later)

What kind of people do you not like? Bigots; ignorant people; thugs/bullies; and cretins

What languages do you speak? English and jibberish

What two things could you not do when you were a child but can do now? Voice my opinion and have it taken notice of; and I can’t think of anything else (apart from things that I wasn’t allowed to do then by law but can legally do now)

What’s something you do well? Put myself down

Who do you live with? Myself (and my demons), a few spiders and my part time lodger Chris.

Who do you respect the most? Anyone that lives their life doing something they enjoy without hurting anyone else.

Who has had the most influence in your life? I can’t think of any one person that has had a major influence on my life but there are two things that have influenced and shaped my life a lot, they are music and alcohol

Would you like to be famous? Yes, but fame is a very subjective thing. It’s not just a matter of being famous, it’s to what level you want to be famous and how that fame manifests it’s self.

When do you feel best? At night, and in the arms of someone I love, or when I’m with good friends

What could you do as a child you can’t do now? I can’t think of anything, although obviously I was fitter then so I could run around more but I don’t really want to do that now

Who is your next door neighbour in your home country? Dan and Lou live next door, and Kelvin and Carol live upstairs, they’re all fairly cool people and we get on alright

How many times did you move as a child? Once, from Hackney to Edgware

Are you a task orientated person or a people orientated person? I’m definitely a people person (although I hate that phrase).

What is the profile of the wife/husband you would meet? Someone who would love me for me and accept all my faults, and not want to change me, someone that I would feel comfortable enough with to be myself all the time and not worry about things with.

What kind of woman/man would you like to marry? They would pretty much match the answer to the last question, oh yeah and they would need to be a large breasted brunette as well

SMILES

Well, I'm feeling very happy today. Things is going good and, although the dark forboding git that sits in my head ready to destroy all my happiness is waiting to pounce, I think it's going to be getting better. We shall see. I'm smiling a lot and giggling too, I think I've regressed to being a teenager (oh my god, how sad am I..lol)

Well, I can't believe that i haven't put anything on here for what seems to me to be ages, so much has happened inside my head over the last week that I feel like it's next month already.

Having read back over some of my past entries (not something I should do often as I start to realise just how odd and screwed up I really am) I have realised some things about the nature of my behaviour.

For some reason, and I truely do not know why I do this, I often fix on one small, almost insignificant thought or feeling that I have at any one time and start to expand it in my head. It then grows incredibly quickly until it becomes THE most important thing in my life, and as far as I am concerned at the time it will be forever and I will be unable to move on from that point until I resolve that dilemma. Then a day or so later I realise that it is in fact just a small problem that can easily be overcome by myself without it causing any problems what-so-ever. As a case in point I refer to my previous posts about being obsessed with a certain woman that i 'had to' have in my life and also my ridiculous projections regarding meeting women via the internet. The problem is that it is always the bad things, or at least the negative side of good things, that I become obsessed about.

Now, I have met someone via the internet, someone that I am incredibly happy talking to and make me feel great. We haven't actually met yet but we are planning to and I'm really looking forward to it. My one fear, and I'm trying not to obsess about it, is that I will become obsessed with the possiblitiy that it might not work out and then get depressed about it, even before we have met.

I'm going to leave with a question and a plea for information that has nothing to do with the main subject of this blog.

Can anybody give me a difinative reason as to why it is that ALL races that are run on an oval or round track are run anti-clockwise? or does anyone know of any races that are run on an oval or round track that are run clockwise?

This is not just me obsessing again, it's something that I have been curious about for years. I have worked out a theory for it but would like to hear other peoples ideas, so I wont tell you what my theory is yet.

Thanks

It's been a few days since I posted anything and all in all I don't know why. I have found it difficult to focus on anything this week, my mind seems to be stuck in some weird limbo world halfway between 'awake', 'asleep', and 'who-gives-a-toss-where-I-am-because-I'm-not-being-used-properly-anyway'. It's a strange thing but I sometimes feel like I just want to shut my brain down and re-boot it and wipe all the memory so that I can start again, oh for a mental fdisk programme.

In my head I'm sitting in the corner of a small room with a huge speaker in each of the four walls and they are all playing different music at the same time (so a bit like modern jazz I suppose). I am a stain on the floor,no more than a large oily puddle of ooze. I can feel the outside world but don't know where it is or even if it really is, or if it's outside me or I'm outside it.

Well, here I am again on another Sunday evening,listening to some classical music on Radio 2 and feeling pretty good. It's been a bit hectic for the last few days, what with my son being here and this being my brother-in-laws second home, and visits from my daughter, her husband and my grand-daughter, it's nice to sit in a calm flat with just the sound of Hyden on the radio and the humming of the computer to deal with.

I saw a review of the new film about Johnny Cash over the weekend and I must admit it doesn't look bad, but what I started to wonder was just how long it would be before there are people everywhere going on about how big a fan of Johnny Cash they've always been and how wonderful he was. It was the same when the Doors movie came out and has also been the same with high media coverage of people like Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, and Sun Ra. I just find it funny that these people think that the rest of us are so shallow that we believe them. It's when you get other media types or so-called 'celebrities' banging on about how they've always loved so-and-so's music when you know very well that a year ago they might possibly have owned one album by them that they haven't played since they bought it. I just don't see the point. Yes Johnny Cash did some songs that I liked but he did a hell of a lot more that I didn't, so whilst I would like to go and see the movie I can't see it changing my views on his music.

I don't know why but I seem to be finding it very difficult to stop my mind from wandering at the moment, my thoughts are doing silly things at the moment and I'm finding it all rather odd. How many ballons, fully inflated of course, do you think you could fit in the main auditorium at the Royal Albert Hall? Why do my arms feel lighter than my legs(and I don't mean that they weigh less but they feel lighter like they might start to float)? Where is that little blue thing that I had the other day? And Mores to the point, What was it?

BYE!!!!

It's been an odd few days.

The hospital appointment went alright, and my doctor has told me that they won't operate before I am happy for them to do so unless it becomes a necessity, so that made me feel a bit better about it all. It still amazes me that when I go to my GP (which is basically a converted house in a normal street that is in need of repair and isn't really big enough for the amount of patients that the doctors have) they have scales that go up far enough to weigh me without any problem, but when I go to the hospital (which seems to have been refurbished at least three times in the last five years and houses one of the leading cardiology units outside of the London chest hospital) they don't have any scales in the entire place that are capable of weighing me properly. Still everything was ok, and I was only there for about two and a half hours so it was pretty good all round.

My son is staying with for a few days again because he is involved with a play at school which they are performing at night and I live closer to his school than my ex does so it's quicker and easier for to stay here. The trouble is that after he'd been here for about an hour the place was basically an extension of his bedroom, with his stuff all over the place and things just left were they fell. Add to that the fact that my brother-in-law was here for most of the day yesterday (I love him dearly but I'm not sure if he comes to see me as much as he comes to use the computer and drink coffee), and it's all been a bit hectic compaired to my normal 'bugger all happening ever' lifestyle.

Well, as I missed a few days blogging recently I'm going to try to post twice today so I'm going to sign off now.

By the way does anyone know anywhere that I can download a copy of a song called 'Gonna Type A Letter' by Billy Fury for free?

Well, I'm about to go off to bed as I've got to get up early tomorrow but I need to get something of my chest before I do. To give a bit of background, I have angina and have already had one heart attack, I need to have triple bypass surgery but at the moment they cannot operate as I weigh too much and the chances of me not coming round after the operation are higher than the chances of me having a fatal heart attack. I know what people will be thinking, it's simple just loose the weight so they can do the operation, that's easier said than done especially when I have a problem motivating myself to do it. It's a little difficult to explain but it's only been over the last six months (if that) that I've cared enough about staying alive to actually want to do anything about this situation. Anyway, I'm going to the hospital tomorrow to see my heart specialist and I have realised that I'm actually feeling quite pleased by the fact that, although I've lost weight, I haven't lost enough for them to operate, and the reason for that is that I am scared of having the operation. I find it really odd that I can honestly say that I'm not scared of dying (although I'd rather not die) but I am scared of having the operation. I'm not sure that I understand what's going on in my head but it kind of freaks me out a bit that I keep finding things that I'm scared of, I just seem to be becoming more scared and paranoid about things every day.

Maybe I need to see someone about my mental state, and these increasing fears, I don't know, but I do feel better now that I have got it out of my system. This is one of the problems of living alone, there's no one to talk to about this kind of stuff when it really hits you, like late at night or early in the morning. Although I have some really good close friends who support me and are there for when whenever I need them, I sometimes feel more alone now than I have ever done in my life. Sometimes I just need someone to hold me and tell me not to worry (my god what a sap I sound).

Well, I'm of to bed have to be up before 7 and with the way my sleep normally goes I'll only just have gone to sleep when the alarm goes of if I don't go now.