Strange Face in Halifax.

Me & Cath went to Square  Chapel    Halifax  last night to  see  Strange face: Adventures in a lost Nick Drake recording
A full house .
Watch below a you tube video for background of the project.
Michael Burdett is a lovely bloke who talked and held the audience comforably for over two hours.
Ironically Amusingly.I had wanted to take a photo of Michael talking during the show ,but such things it seems are copyrighted...........
Instead ,I share a photo of me in Halifax in the early 70's (channelling my 'inner-drake' )I was one of those (very) rare souls who actually bought a Nick Drake album (Pink Moon)  in his lifetime.
Below ,some photos from  the past 2 days...........

View all this gallery here /

You can "borrow" this book for 14 days .Simply go here: for free download (it's copyright free)

sepia saturday 407

I take this week's sepia saturday    to be about bicycles. 

The sepia movie   was shot in 1952 (the year i was born & christened "Karol") 

Its called "how friendly are you?"
 It Stars a young lad called Karl

I imagine its purpose   was school/education -related?

A splendid evocation of that period.

Charmingly innocent.(although I worry slightly about all that "fudge"!) 

Whatever.An important & timeless topic.

I can imagine it was a good way into a subject that kids will always find difficult to acknowledge.

It's a pity nobody filmed the audience resposes......that would have been even more interesting than the film itself.

 https://archive.org/details/0038_How_Friendly_Are_You_14_48_41_20  

John Perry Barlow

https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/5-lessons-john-barlow-taught-world/
This week, Grateful Dead lyricist and digital rights activist, John Perry Barlow passed away. Although we mourn the loss of a great visionary, we will forever remember his lessons of free speech, personal growth, and marketing tactics. Here are five lessons we learned from the digital rights activist.
1. Freedom of Speech is important 
 Barlow believed that the world should be a place that “all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth… a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”
 This is probably due to Barlow’s humble lifestyle on a cattle ranch. Here the idea of being free and having a wide-open space for oneself developed. Barlow was an advocate for net neutrality and believed that the internet was where people could speak openly, having that wide open space as he did on the ranch.
 As he himself said, “there is a lot of room to define yourself. You can literally make yourself up.”
2. People appreciate familiarity 
 Barlow was not only passionate about self-development through the internet, but believed that putting one’s digital goods out there for the world to see and hear was the best marketing strategy.

 As the lyricist for the Grateful Dead rock band, Barlow developed a marketing strategy in which he let people bootleg the Grateful Dead’s concerts so people became more familiar and would flock to the music they learned to love. He believed that the secret to marketing was in the availability and familiarity of the product.
3. Live freely and without fear
  In 1990, Barlow took a stance against the government and created the non-profit organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). https://www.eff.org/
Here, he fought against the government for individual’s freedom of speech and personal liberties.
 He believed that people should have the opportunity to express themselves freely and that the internet was a great place for this purpose. It was because of this that he went to every measure to do so.He took a stand against the government and authorities for what he thought was right.
 4. Security matters 
Although Barlow strongly believed in the internet and all the good the internet had to offer, he was not blind to the darkness of the internet.
 He believed that people needed to have secure communication methods. He therefore provided, as part of the EFF, security measures through tips, tools, how-tos, tutorials, and software for safer online communications.
5. Stand up for what you believe in 
Barlow believed in an open internet, a free internet, and he held that belief until he died.  It is through Barlow’s strength and stance with the government that today we have the safety, security, and free music and movies to listen and watch. 
Today, as he can no longer do so, we must take the stance for ourselves and stand up for what we believe, just like he taught us to do. There must be someone from your friends or family who deserves to know what John did for our internet freedom.
 Share this post to let them know. https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/5-lessons-john-barlow-taught-world/

The Almighty Sometimes

[I quote here a piece Cathy has written]

"On the 15th Feb ( a significant date , for Cathy  )   we went to see a play at the Royal Exchange in Manchester,

 * a review of the play in today's Guardian*

 Daily Telegraph  

One of the actor's is Julie Hesmondhalgh 

She is on a branch of the family tree ( Cathy's side of the family).originating from Accrington/Clayton-le-moor.

[plus:] Saturday's Guardian Magazine

ßack from Lancashire.

A photo I  took  of Cathy in The Shoulder of Mutton in Mytholmroyd tonight at 9 pm.

We had just returned from Lancashire,visting a relative.

Report & tons of photos soon. 

Isnt life exciting!

Bill Boards is Innocent

a London Poet uses billboards to get his message across. I like the idea and ,more importantly ,I like his words.
 I lived these streets for 4 years in the 70's 80's (mainly Newham) living in grotty East End bedsits and teaching in the schools there.It was so rough there,even the Kray's had to walk around   in pairs.....
"he who is tired of London..etc.etc.."(as Sam once said).
I still have (nice) dreams about where i used to live.......
 Also .Something else I came across today.
Can I give a wee plug to The East End in Colour 1960 - 1980 by David Granick . (£16.95)

This is one of my 'temporary posts
In a couple of days ,me & Cath go over the Pennines to see someone on her ( and my) Family Tree.
  ♪ ♫just like my dreams they fade and die.....♪ 
 As well as 'billboards' I also talked about R.D. Laing  last week
. This movie 'about' him  .starring David Tennant looks rather groovy
 ( I wonder if  they will show  Mary Barnes  smearing her shit  on any walls?  I suppose if they do , it will have to be multi-coloured and  psychedelic in this Post- Weinstein era........)

i might be wrong but the building shown at the start of this clip looks to me like Ironmongers Row swimming pool & turkish baths in Islington?

the name is "Zimnoch". (barking up the wrong tree.........)

Rest  Well John Perry Barlow

• a fine Guardian Obituary

•  a John Perry Barlow Archive

In the Shepards Rest in Sowerby Bridge tonight with my Godson Bryn.

Me & Cath went to Hebden Bridge Picture House this morning to see 'Three Billoards Outside Ebbin Missouri '.
I sat there imagining , if someone gave me 3 billbords ( in ,let us say ,the middle of Halifax ) to give the population messages for 12 months...what would i chose to display to relect my concerns.....? 
 At this moment in time, I think I'd pick a few ditties by  R.D.Laing

 That's the "Laing" who was a psychologist,not the "Laing" who is a gay country & western singer (that's K.D.....)
Not that that's a bad thing.only....she never wrote Sanity, Madness & The Family  like wot Ronnie did.....
Anyway.........today's film  should well win a shed load of Oscars .

It's the first great movie of The Trump Era ?

The ending , in particular , could have been The Rust-Belt going off to vote...... 

 I dont understand the Guardian's comment that
"......the critical backlash to this film: a feeling in some quarters that for all its powerful and compelling female lead, the movie appears obtuse on race and blackness by making it a subsidiary function of the white characters’ moral journey...." [read more:]  
 I dont get that at all.......I mean,it doesnt have anything to say about Polaks either.So what?
Bravo Performance,Frances McDormand .

Then I went out on the lash in Sowerby Bridge tonight.

ßréxitérs aré as thick as fuck

 

Buy T-Shirt Here:

If your a bit thick,here are some of my previous posts you may also enjoy:

• slow train coming (2013)
• in the olden days , people had to make their own trees? ( 2011)

If your very thick, you will love this video.Taken from my 2011 post how to hate the working classes
Some people are ultra literal,arnt they?
They dont see things in a wider context .
Anybody who reads my blog knows i dont "hate" the working classes ( if I did ,I would not  say so,would i?).
In my book. If you cant see irony,context,third-party views..then,yes you are as thick as pig shit ,non?

• For the record. I,m not a "Remainer".

•  I believe the E.U. is deeply flawed.

• I dont wish for a second referendum.

However "Brexit" is different from"Leave".

Brexit has been hijacked by a bunch of right wing/nationalsocialists such as Farage

& Mogg. Now I dont want to be ruled by "faceless beurocrats from Brussels".

But I neither do I want to be governed by Trump.

 OK .I,ve explained myself. You cunts  can all go and just fuck off  ,s'il vous plaît

buyhere:

Although , you would be a bit soft to pay £15 for any T-shirt....and even softer to wear it in Public?

"A seemingly pregnant woman would not be suspected of stuffing her clothes with pamphlets, Resistance newspapers, or even weapons."

Italian women  partisans on the Castelluccio front (1944) .Waiting to go on patrol with the US  5th Army.

Italy, Women in the Resistance during World War II

Late in the winter of 1943 ,three British SAS soldiers were dropped into (still) fascist occupied Italy.deep in a remote mountain region.

The  3 Brits were sheltered by villagers& partisans  in the remote hamlet of Gessopalena

One local must have  'grassed' on them?
Anyway, they were soon arrested, taken away & tortured by the Germans.

As punishment for trying to protect these English Squadies, on 21st January 1944 the  Luftwaffe bombed Gessopalena and completely destroyed  it.
Now ,perhaps different nations react differently to grief?

The Poles In Warsaw, they rebuilt an identical copy of their city after WW2.
However ,Italians( seeming to love ruins.)... kept Gessopalena's damage complete & intact......

They did bury  the bodies ,but otherwise  did nothing.....other than to move the undamaged  church bell .
To this day , nothing else  has ever been  moved!
 Clothes, toys furniture ,books ,mirrors....etc.remain  in exactly the same spot they were on the day the Luftwaffe called..
Somekind of  permanent record of what  " normality." might once have looked like for the victims.?
These days ,its rather weird when you hear that original  church bell call  the new villagers  to Mass in the new church in "new" Gessopalena which was later built a 100 yards away...............
I scratched my head and tried to  work out which was the "real"village and   which was the "replica"......

My son Chris.    Our friend Mick   & myself in Italy in 2010

 ( i briefly owned a ruined cottage in the Abruzzo mountains at the time ) Damien Rice: Montreal 2017(famous blue raincoat):Jackson Browne: Osaka, Japan; October 23, 2017:(late for the sky)
This is a sepia saturday post.The themes this week are Dance : Performance : Costumes : Stage

i found this photo in 2009 in a junkshop in Lanciano.I was told these are firemen .....Ironically!  looking like a bunch of girls........!

https://theconversation.com/forgotten-resistance-the-italian-freedom-fighters-dropped-from-our-history-books-34891

Fuck your sharia court : your fatwa: your old testament gods.....

Manchester 2nd feb 2018

"You don't divide up an empire with a handshake. You have to cut it with a knife"Robert Saviano.

"Saviano took the reader inside a world of moral rot, where values were upside down, love was replaced by hatred, life with death, and people were turned into guinea pigs to test drugs. Basic human decency had been lost. Many of those who lived in that hell had started to accept it as normal. It was not, Saviano told us......." Read More:

Roberto Saviano (the author of the book it was based on);  Live at the Bristol Festival of Ideas. 

Wednesday's on Sky Atlantic at 9pm sees the start of Series 3 of " Gomorrah". Shakepeare with an automatic rifle. Try catch it.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(TV_series)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Saviano

Me  in a Pennadomo cafe.( i failed the audition) +here -->some old images of me in Italy

Below.Full political interview with the author ,in Bristol.

Manchester 2nd Feb 2018.
https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Manchester-2nd-Feb-2018/ 

drinking in dirty dick's:

I went drinking in Halifax tonight with Phil the X-Fireman & Comrade Ken. Hurrah! If you can push past the child drunkard,you will see a slideshow of tonight's photos.......

I'm pushing my luck here a bit!This week's sepia saturday

is around 'rooms' & 'interiors '.......I visited a haunted pub in Halifax tonight.
I realise I'm stretching things a tad!
On a positive note , you can buy  here:

a sepian postcard of 'tony the child drunkard' to amuse friends,family & postmen across the world........

click here for all tonight's photos Dirty Dicks is a well-known Inn in the centre of Halifax for ghost stories and hauntings. It was mentioned in the book Haunted Halifax by Kai Roberts.
 “Most notable is the spectre of an unknown woman wearing seventeenth century Puritan or Quaker dress, who had been vividly witnessed by a customer around forty years earlier. The second presence was imagined to belong to the son of the last landlord of the original pub, prior to its demolition in 1929. This unfortunate young man is supposed to have burnt to death when a sparkling ember from the hearth set his clothes alight”. 
 The pubs third otherworldly resident, whose history is not connected to the pub, but with the ship from which it was built. The third ghost is a spirit of an unfortunate seaman who was fatally injured when the ordnance he was moving aboard the HMS Newcastle exploded. ........"

.. Read More:

download here :copyright free"Temperance melodies consisting of English Welsh and American airs adapted to the temperance movement"

Saturday is Holocaust Memorial Day .It might be worth saying that British politician Nigel Farage and his (former) party UKIP.are really just a rebooted brand of National Socalism.The very ideology that informed the Holocaust.The smell lingers on......the ghosts remain......
Postscript: Sunday 28th January.I just got sent (unsolicited) this:  Job Spec for a post in Devon.Sounds really interesting.Might  lure me out of retirement? Right up my street!

A Freelance Oral Historian .

"The Beaford Archive is a photographic record of people and community in rural north Devon containing more than 80,000 images covering the 120-year period 1870 to 1990. 
 According to the Royal Photographic Society, it is “…a unique body of work, unparalleled, at least in this country, for its scale and quality”.
 However, few of these images are currently accessible to the public. ........ a major conservation and digitisation exercise that will curate and publish online around 10,000 unseen images that together illustrate the late 20th Century social history of rural north Devon. ............. 
• Digitising, cataloguing, archiving and publishing to the web approximately 10,000 existing 35mm black and white negatives from the James Ravilious and Roger Deakins Beaford Archives • Production of a new fully searchable website to provide a showcase for existing digitised work, newly digitised images and audio, and new work as it is produced 
• A programme of oral history, learning and community activity which will create new work and engage people in learning and education... 

I have family down in Devon ('could even be really cheeky and ask for a Reference!)

What could possibly go wrong? 

https://twitter.com/yunghusky

when i leave ,you will be dancing on my grave.............

I just booked two tickets to go see Young Fathers at O2 Ritz in Manchester on Friday 23rd March.  
wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Fathers
Great to see that the splendid Afro-Edinburgh hip-hop band Young Fathers have a new tour & album out.
They have been giving a wee silence recently.
Me & Cath saw them play live in March 2015 ,around the time they were awarded the Mercury Prize.
My photos& videos from that gig can be viewed here:

one of my photos.

  https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/young-fathers-in-my-view/

the resurrection men

A cine film taken in either

1965 or 1966: In Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh.

Pictured are my late Mum & Dad.

The third person seen is the Kirkyard's caretaker.Even then,  it was "closed" both for burials and for visting.He had come  specially to unlock the area & show us around.

Some of my maternal relatives are buried here.You can see from the inscriptions on the grave stone that they are buried 8 -.Deep.

 Greyfriars Kirkyard is famous as the scene of some of the early trade & work of the murderers & grave robbers Burke and Hare Of course,it is quite poignant,me watching this silent film..........

This is a sepia saturday post.See other contributers here

a photo i took inside Brompton Cemetery, London.

 

....Read More

Sugar Ray Leonard

Helping the police with their enquiries ;)  (with Nodge & Steve).No doubt i will write a post sometime about the times I have  tangled with the Police. several  funny ;several not so. As a taster,did you know i was interviewed by two detectives during the Yorkshire Ripper search? Anyway.That's for another time......i certainly feel i want to be more autobiographical here, this year.......fuck the 'mystery'!

Exclusive:watch a video of Nigel Farage's latest thoughts on Brexit :

Why on Earth is that prick Nigel Farage still being interviewed  on TV News?
 He is no longer UKIP's leader.
He has stood 7 times for Westminster and never been successful .
He's just a  Mussolini-in-tweed.
Although, I recall,Benito was also well hung 

I was due to be going out drinking in Sowerby Bridge tonight with Phil & Ken & Bryn.Unfortunately,Phil rang to cancel until next week (worries around snow).
So I,m sat at home having "the few beers " I promised myself this morning.Hence the Smörgåsbord  of a post this will ,no doubt,become .....!
Ihavnt had a drink in ten days & 'have swum 5 miles this week.. Enough Goodness!

 previous Cask & Feathers

I go to see Bob in Bacup on Monday .We are arranging a curry with him,Nodge,Jim ,Steve,Ken ,Phil etc in Ramsbottom in a few weeks time.
on the way home I have an appointment to do some heavy-breathing with my Asthma Nurse in Hebden Bridge.


. Also on the cards ,in the next couple of weeks,another curry in Rochdale with Daz,Jim S,Tony T,Martin (Thorpe) the Landlord of The Cask & Feathers (who's name always escapes me).Hydn,Phil & Ken
Also next week ,I visit a contact of my friend from Halifax,Israr Hussain.( i first met Israr via Halifax Swimming Pool) I am buying and promoting  Dates & Olive Oil produced in Palestine.The proceeds go to support a childrens charity there.
No doubt here & on facebook i will be reporting about the fine work the charity does in Halifax
(nb my brother Zyg has put an order in for oil & dates and the possibility of wine?)

Chris liam from Portland Oragon donated the track specifically to this blog..The other track"Museum of Childhood" is sung by the late  Jackie Leven.One of the nicest people i have ever personally met

  

Israr Hussain.( image from a portrait displayed at Dean Clough Gallery, Halifax )

Israr is a lovely bloke (he went to Crossleys School). He's told me some really funny stories about his various travels. He concides, he doesn't have the most "airoplane-friendly" 'look' post9/11 !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Leven

Over the last few weeks this blog has been bombarded with hundreds of threatening messages (this is the least of it). I have ignored up until now, but maybe i can smoke the person out? I will post here ,in this thread, any future messages....."Clutch " away,honey!

Myth Of Sysiphus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus 

OK. This week's sepia saturday
is themed around 'BRIDGES : BUSY SCENES : TRAMS : TRANSPORT : STREETS'
i suppose my obvious choice might have been 'Hebden Bridge' my recently ex-hometown.
But rather, I have picked a photo from my childhood in Halifax.
no trams,no bridges,no people...just  a single lonely kodak-hintered street of the 1960's.
Significantly for me ,a row of buildings long demolished.
I bet most Halifax people would be hard-pressed to recognise this perspective now.
It's King Cross Street.(just near where Wynsors Shoes now searches for fresh footfall.......)

in the 50/60/70's I lived with my mum & dad & brother Zyg nearby (left of photo..and out of shot....)
These long gone shops included two Chip Shops :a hardware shop:Halifax's only off-licence:2 Paper shops( one of which i delivered newspapers 1964-1966)

Although.In my Minds-I , i remember this road as being steeper...as  I carried my big bag of newspapers up it....
I dont know about you  .But I still dream of wandering such architecture.
A bit like a phantom limb or the gap where a tooth used to be.......
God Bless & long live these Kodak Sponsored Dreams!

Are you leavin' Bein' alone

 Always made you so sad 

I got memories of the city Followin' me everywhere I go

 Are you mad with heartache Got a country home And you a Parisienne 

Gonna take all your sorrows 

Right along with you when I'm gone And I got to go away

 Only need a couple of days I got one more chance to sing it And I ain't gon' waste my time 

'Cause everything including you Is on the line 

 Are you troubled Feelin' bad And no one seems to care

STEPHEN STILLS 

Brexiteer spotted on  Corn Market today , Halifax.

"......We all live lives afflicted to greater or lesser extent by sin; but it isn’t our state of being that makes us sinful; it’s what we intend when we do things, to ourselves, to others, to God."
Fr Alec Mitchell
Manchester
Guardian Letters:Saturday 13 January 2018  

*....an intended victim writes. although, knowing it occurs doesnt stop it still happening to others....*.