I saw Bronson last week. I look like Bronson, without the pee-pee, except my mo is white and I have long hair.
Did you see Watchmen - Billy Crudups little blue pee-pee, well Bronson has a little white one, it was in many many scenes. The actor was emoting with such earnest intensity and all I could do was look at the little limp pee-pee as it bounced around.
I guess Bronson was a movie stuck in the prologue, we left wondering when it would get started, or when Picard would ask for tea, Earl Grey,hot.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
The List
- See the Pyramids and climb inside one
- Climb to Macchu Pichu
- Go to Istanbul and have tea & haggle with a carpet seller
- Walk from Coast to Coast - St Bee’s to Robin Hood Bay (190 miles)
- Walk part of the Camino de Santiago
- Write a story & have it published
- Have a photo I took published in a book or magazine
- Learn to paint/draw
- Learn to play an instrument – piano/guitar/bass/violin (haven’t picked one yet)
- Spend a year working for a charity in a third world country
- Run a small pub that has live bands
- Cruise along the Nile
- Take a trip on the Orient Express
- Go for a balloon ride over Cappadocia
- Attend a dawn service at Gallipoli (I've been to Gallipoli and stood on the pebbly beach of Anzac Cove in the pouring rain, but I'd like to go back for a dawn service)
- Go to the South Pole
- Learn to pull a pint – properly
- Walk the streets of London
- Take the Trans-Siberian railway
- Brew a batch of Scotch that tastes good
- Elope
- Get lost in the British Museum
- Go on a dig
- Learn Spanish
- Go to Stonehenge
- Keep a close friendship for 20 years or longer
- Learn to belly dance
- Have my portrait painted
- Be the most important person in someone’s life, even if it’s for a short time
- Kiss the Blarney Stone
- Walk across the Giants Causeway
- See the sun rise from Mount Sinai
- Spend a winter in the Highlands of Scotland or on one of the Orkney Islands
- Go to Jerusalem
- Take singing lessons
- Learn to recite Yeats
- Visit the Andes
- See the Himalayas
- Go to Easter Island and see the statues (I've seen one in Chile but havent been to Eater Island yet)
- Fly over the Nasca Lines in a small plane pretending to be aliens
- Go on Safari
- Watched a meteor shower
- Learn to make my own ear rings
- Venture into the jungle to see Mayan and Aztec ruins in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize
- Go to Rome
- Spend some time in a concentration camp
- Milk a cow
- Ride a camel into a desert
- Make someones wedding cake
- See the Pope (JP II)
- Take a gondola ride in Venice
- Go to China & see the Statue Army and Great Wall
- Say ‘I love you’ and really mean it - unconditionally, with all my being
- Get a tattoo
- Followed my favorite band on tour
- Live on a canal boat for a month
- Fly over an active volcano
- Attend an Olympics
- Take a trip down the Amazon
- Make a short film (been the subject of one, but havent made one yet)
- Take a pilgrimage to Lourdes
- Get a masters degree before I’m thirty
- Visit the big galleries of the world – Musee du Lourve in Paris, The Prado in Madrid, Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Egyptian Museum in Cairo, The Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, Musee d’Orsay in Paris, Tate Modern/Britain in London, The Kunsthistoisches Museum in Vienna, The Vatican Museums in Rome
- See an Ashes Test at Lords (been there, seen the urn, stood on the balcony, supped in the long room but not seen an Ashes test there yet)
- Pick up and move to another city knowing no one, just to start over
- Walk through the ruins of Pompeii
- Visited all 7 continents in the world (Australia, Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, South American, Antarctica)
- Swim in all 5 oceans of the world (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, Arctic)
- See the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)
- Float in the Dead Sea
- Be invited to join a Board of Directors of a company
- Spend more than a week in Paris
- Visit Buckingham Palace & stand on the garden party lawn and have tea
- Make paper
- Walk on a beach watching the sun rise, having not been to bed yet.
- Catch a fish, cook it straight away and eat it
- Live in a quaint little village
- Own a bookstore and run it the way I imagined
- Own a house with an attic, a long kitchen, a library room and a magic walled garden
- Learn how to build my own webpage
- See a ghost
- Make a difference in someone’s life
- Be content within myself
- Walked in the rain
- Study at Oxford or Cambridge
- Visit Shakespeare’s birthplace
- Make someone cry of happiness
- See a play at The Globe (been there a few times but not seen a play yet)
- Raise a child
- See Petra
- Go to Glastonbury Music Festival
- Drive across America
- Have hair down to my bottom - once
- Do my family tree
- Own a new car
- Read the books of Charles Dickens from start to finish
- Travel around the Lakes District
- Watch my nephew play guitar on one of the big stages of the world
- Go to a Rugby Union World Cup final with the Wallabies
- Live with no regrets
That was fun, I struggled a little at the 80 mark and had to think a little harder about what I really wanted to do, but I'm pretty happy with the list.
I've marked the ones I've done in Purple
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Planning a list and giving a lecture
I’ve been thinking alot recently about all the things I’ve done and all the things I really want to do with what years I have left. There is no immediate mortality threat, theres been no incidents or recent deaths, I just dont want to have regrets.
So in my spare moments I’ve been working on a list of things made up of all the things I wanted to do or see or experience or be before I die.
I think its also linked to the reflection and redirection that I’ve been pondering a lot lately too, you know when you have a career and a certain kind of lifestyle and you get to a point where you start to think, I’ve done enough on that one now, I don’t think there really is more that I want to get out of it, its time to make some changes before I start to fall into the ’rut’ then ‘rot that I’m too scared to change’ way that engulfs so many of the miserable sods you see around you everyday – bugger off miserable sods I say.
Anyways back to the list, a list needs to be specific, I like lists, I always do lists. I think lists help you feel better, ie I think I’ve done nothing but have actually achieved stuff – “see crosses on my list”. The beauty of a good list is to make it achieveable and specific, airy fairy fluffy lists are silly, freak you out and send you to bed “too hard, I cant do it, give me a drink!!” Lists with things crossed off make you feel good.
I like to feel good.
Grocery shopping lists don’t count – anyone who can go grocery shopping without a list and doesn’t forget anything is a freak, or a liar.
I shall ponder my list further over the next few days. In work speak, I'm whiteboarding as we speak.
Whilst I’m pondering, consider this. I am terribly tough with myself and brutally honest, I don’t see the point in lying to myself or anybody else for that matter, that is me. I’m the same with the people around me; unfortunately there are some people that I come into contact with on occasion who cant seem to handle this. They are attracted to me by the bright lights and the excitement of my confidence and the inner strength (big ego here folks – yep, I know) but crumble at the first signs of honesty being directed back at them – lots of people are attracted to me but the weak ones, the needy ones, the insecure ones cant cope and don’t stay - it always ends in tears. I offer friendship easily but it becomes very clear very quickly that its more than likely going to end in tears. I like people too much, I enjoy people too much, I get so much enjoyment out of people that I just let the friendships form. I'm a hopeful, I'm always hopeful, and then they fall and the friendship breaks. And they disappoint me, they dont make me sad, they just disappoint me.
Yes I know please don’t start that argument, I don’t have the patience for dealing with those constant needy needy moments, the treat them softly softly or you’ll make the cry moments, the lie to then to keep them happy moments, but really, I don’t have to do I. (I originally put a question mark here but changed it to a full stop, its not a question for me, I just don’t have to).
I don’t see how lying to someone is ever going to help them help themselves to get themselves out of whatever pit they are in? Agree?
Pandering to their neediness, continuing to support their own lack of ability or true want, to sort themselves out for themselves - I cant do this to people, I respect people too much to do that to them. And seriously, the only person who can ever get themselves out of whatever pit they are in is themselves - we can lower down the rope, we can guide them to whats the best available option to get them out, we can encourage and listen to them, we can send down food and water, we can help pull them up at times but its them that has to climb the rope, not me, not their parents, not their friends, not the governments, not society, not god(s), no-one....they just have to do it for themselves. So when you read this, that would be YOU.
You.
No one else.
Just you.
Lecture over.
On a lighter note, I cried like a stupid baby last night when Iato Jones died in Captain Jack’s arms – I knew he would, I knew it was happening, I knew how it would happen, but I still cried like a soppy silly baby.
Confidence, inner strength, brutal honesty, massive ego AND emotionally sensitive – what a catch !!!
Listening – Deaths & Entrances - My Latest Novel.
Reading - Darkmans - Nicola Barker (dont say still, I know but its over 800 pages long and I’ve been trying to go slow on it as its so good and I don’t want to stop)
So in my spare moments I’ve been working on a list of things made up of all the things I wanted to do or see or experience or be before I die.
I think its also linked to the reflection and redirection that I’ve been pondering a lot lately too, you know when you have a career and a certain kind of lifestyle and you get to a point where you start to think, I’ve done enough on that one now, I don’t think there really is more that I want to get out of it, its time to make some changes before I start to fall into the ’rut’ then ‘rot that I’m too scared to change’ way that engulfs so many of the miserable sods you see around you everyday – bugger off miserable sods I say.
Anyways back to the list, a list needs to be specific, I like lists, I always do lists. I think lists help you feel better, ie I think I’ve done nothing but have actually achieved stuff – “see crosses on my list”. The beauty of a good list is to make it achieveable and specific, airy fairy fluffy lists are silly, freak you out and send you to bed “too hard, I cant do it, give me a drink!!” Lists with things crossed off make you feel good.
I like to feel good.
Grocery shopping lists don’t count – anyone who can go grocery shopping without a list and doesn’t forget anything is a freak, or a liar.
I shall ponder my list further over the next few days. In work speak, I'm whiteboarding as we speak.
Whilst I’m pondering, consider this. I am terribly tough with myself and brutally honest, I don’t see the point in lying to myself or anybody else for that matter, that is me. I’m the same with the people around me; unfortunately there are some people that I come into contact with on occasion who cant seem to handle this. They are attracted to me by the bright lights and the excitement of my confidence and the inner strength (big ego here folks – yep, I know) but crumble at the first signs of honesty being directed back at them – lots of people are attracted to me but the weak ones, the needy ones, the insecure ones cant cope and don’t stay - it always ends in tears. I offer friendship easily but it becomes very clear very quickly that its more than likely going to end in tears. I like people too much, I enjoy people too much, I get so much enjoyment out of people that I just let the friendships form. I'm a hopeful, I'm always hopeful, and then they fall and the friendship breaks. And they disappoint me, they dont make me sad, they just disappoint me.
Yes I know please don’t start that argument, I don’t have the patience for dealing with those constant needy needy moments, the treat them softly softly or you’ll make the cry moments, the lie to then to keep them happy moments, but really, I don’t have to do I. (I originally put a question mark here but changed it to a full stop, its not a question for me, I just don’t have to).
I don’t see how lying to someone is ever going to help them help themselves to get themselves out of whatever pit they are in? Agree?
Pandering to their neediness, continuing to support their own lack of ability or true want, to sort themselves out for themselves - I cant do this to people, I respect people too much to do that to them. And seriously, the only person who can ever get themselves out of whatever pit they are in is themselves - we can lower down the rope, we can guide them to whats the best available option to get them out, we can encourage and listen to them, we can send down food and water, we can help pull them up at times but its them that has to climb the rope, not me, not their parents, not their friends, not the governments, not society, not god(s), no-one....they just have to do it for themselves. So when you read this, that would be YOU.
You.
No one else.
Just you.
Lecture over.
On a lighter note, I cried like a stupid baby last night when Iato Jones died in Captain Jack’s arms – I knew he would, I knew it was happening, I knew how it would happen, but I still cried like a soppy silly baby.
Confidence, inner strength, brutal honesty, massive ego AND emotionally sensitive – what a catch !!!
Listening – Deaths & Entrances - My Latest Novel.
Reading - Darkmans - Nicola Barker (dont say still, I know but its over 800 pages long and I’ve been trying to go slow on it as its so good and I don’t want to stop)
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