Oh, Shit! Boring Guitars Again …

Yup.
Any excuse.

In this case, the flimsy excuse provided by answering Istvanski's comment in yesterday's post (and a guitar porn email from Prudence last night).

Sadly, Istvanski, I am retired from the world of the tour bus, the bad studio coffee, the dressing room tedium, the arguments over money, the musical differences and the car park blow-jobs, though I still retain the partial deafness.
I've not spent any of my well-earned groats on a guitar this millennium; it all goes on train fares (a little over £10,000 a year).

But I can never resist the temptation to post guitar pornography, so here's my PRS draped pertly and seductively across my bed.


I don't have many guitars these days, just a trusted few, including Old Les.
Please follow the sidebar all the way down to the link called "Guitar" if you'd like to meet them.


They don't have names (unlike the admirable Barnesy); they're just "Old Les", "The Strat", The Martin", The PRS", and "The Brown Fender".

Here are some of them relaxing in my little studio.

Beachy

Earlier this week, Shazza posted a beautiful piece about the beach in winter.
Her photographs are amazing and evocative. The north east coast of the US looks almost exactly like that of Norfolk and when I get the chance I'll head down there and do a similar photo-fest.

Winter is my favourite time for going to the beach. Especially in storms.
Except maybe that one Christmas Day when Peahen, Helly, Joan, Vic and me headed out into the gathering darkness with the dogs after Christmas dinner ("Who fancies a quick walk on the beach?" … HA!) and hiked right up the north-east Norfolk coast into the teeth of a howling northerly gale, screaming down from the north pole (we are the first bit of land it hits) and lashing our faces with sleet and hail … Brr … It was high tide and the sea pounded over us and our faces were frozen into icicle-clad masks of pain … The dogs loved it, though.
As did Pea … she still does that for pleasure!

In the meantime here are a few shots of ridiculously calm seas at my favourite bit of East Anglian beach: Walberswick.
I did a post about a storm there once. In the bottom photo you can see the beginnings of the concrete breakwater that starred in that post.

You can also see Old Dive during my "beardy twat" phase, which is to bring you warning that I am hunting through my photographs for a photo of me with a ponytail for a post sometime soon on "What's The Worst Hair You've Ever Had?" and I expect all of you to do the same.
You have been warned.
Perms, mullets, conrnrow, whatever. Dig it out and get ready to be judged.

Even in good weather the coast round my way looks seriously trashed.

The winter storms are gradually winning and the sea is taking back the land.

These smashed groynes are a great place to find mussels. Yum.

Dive: the Robinson Crusoe years.

It's In The Attic

Hokay.
Enough already with the Latin.
Mea culpa … I acknowledge that you're all girly swots.

So …
Which of you überbrains can tell me (WITHOUT pasting it into a search engine or translator), what the Greek phrase means that I put under my well-earned Whore Church blessing logo down in my sidebar?
If you can't be arsed looking, it's "εδακρυσεν ο ιησους"

By the way, I just pasted it into Google myself to see what would happen and my own stupid blog came up on the first page, after some Greek sites, which is gonna freak out some poor, unsuspecting religious folk if they click on it when I'm having a sweary day.

Big hint: It's in Ancient Greek and it's from the New Testament, so if any of you have a copy of the New Testament in the original Ancient Greek, get searching!

There's a cookie for the right answer.
But you have to come get it.

Groucho, Ergo Sum Redux

Dammit!
Or perhaps that should be "Vae!"

There I was, giggling away at my last post title and nobody even asked me what it meant.
Is there not a Latin scholar or a Cartesian amongst you?
Where's the fun in being a pretentious twat if nobody gets it?

Well actually, I'm pretty certain Peanhen would get it but then she'd moan that I'm being "Too Radio 4".
Hey ho.

In case you were wondering (and I know you weren't), it doesn't mean "I am Groucho" … That would be "Ego sum Groucho", not "Groucho, Ergo Sum" and wouldn't be funny in the least.

It's from Descartes: "Cogito, Ergo Sum".
"I think, therefore I am."
Duh!

Anyhoo; since my Latin dictionary doesn't have a translation for "grouchy", I used the same route, from Latin via French that "cogito/cogitate - from the plain verb form cogitum" took and made up the new regular Latin verb: "grouchum" - to grouch/to be grouchy.
Ergo: First person singular, present tense: "Groucho".
See? Latin is not a dead language; it's still evolving. "Grouchum" is now in the public domain.

"Groucho, Ergo Sum" - "I grouch, therefore I am".

Well, I thought it was pretty funny for a grouchy post title.

I blame the dumbing down of television.
Throw that fucker out of the window and go buy a book.
Vae, vae, vae!

Groucho, Ergo Sum

February …
What the fuck's the point of February?

Just twenty-eight days of cold, miserable, shitty weather, broken down trains, twats who cough and sneeze and sniffle all over me on the tube, darkness, depression, howling gales, chipping ice off the car, inflated heating bills, more broken down trains, more fucking darkness and the unutterable misery of Valentines, the Hallmark Tax Day in the middle of it all.

And this year, some incompetent fuckwit decrees that we suffer an extra day of it!
Leap year my arse!
Just because some prehistoric dickwad couldn't count properly we have an extra day every fourth year.
How crap is that?
And couldn't we have it on the end of May, when the weather's nice?
Someone fucked up, that's for sure.

When I die, if it turns out there really is a God, I'm going to kick His arse so hard!

On the up side, that has to be my best post title since Iraqtile Dysfunction.

Grumpy Meme

Today has been one of those days, so I'll let Mister Grumpytrousers play with one of Maria's old memes that Terroni and Vic found:

Where is your cell phone? For the last time, I do not have a fucking mobile phone!

Vehicle? Small, black, sexy.

Hair? Making a pretty darned successful bid for freedom.

Father? Roistering in the Halls of Valhalla.

Your favorite thing? My old Gibson Les Paul. We've been together and in love since 1969.

Dream last night? One of my regular ones, which involves chatting away with various people while ENDLESSLY packing away mike leads and equipment after a gig.

Favorite drink? Water/Coffee/Green Tea; depends on my mood. Or scotch.

Room you are in? My office in Westminster. Looking out the back window I can see the spire of St.Paul's Westminster (The RC Catherdral) and out the front, the tops of the Eye and Big Ben and Victoria Tower.

Your ex? Ming The Menstrual. Thanks for sixteen years of physical and mental abuse. I've learned to live without it now.

You are? Old, tired, grouchy. Roll on death.

What do you want to be in ten years? Dead and gone.

Who did you hang out with today? A bunch of snoring, drooling people on the 5:40AM from Norwich to London, a bunch of sweaty, coughing people jammed into a tube train and a bunch of boring colleagues at the office.

What you're not? Pretty, witty nor gay.

Muffins? Bollocks. Plain croissant every time.

One of your wish list items? For it all to just stop.

Where is the ____? Fucked if I know.

The last thing you did? Sipped some green tea and started typing this sentence.

What are you wearing? Black.

Your pet(s)? A wyvern. Plus I think I have a ceramic toad somewhere.

Your computer? An ever growing army of Macs.

Your life? Filling in time, waiting for death, as are all the rest of you.

Your mood? Black as my sweater, but nowhere near as soft and fluffy.

Missing? The body I had thirty years ago.

What are you thinking about right now? What a fucking stupid question that is.

Your shoes? Black.

Your work? Designing girls' schools.

Your summer? Hateful but for two days.

Your favorite colour? Black (you couldn't guess)?

More Filler Photos

As I'm busy today - okay, I'm too lazy to think of anything to post - let's finish off the snow photos from Saturday morning.

The wind had blown almost all the snow off the Castle mound.
Pretty soon that's going to be just a mass of daffodils.

This is the same thing I photographed for a post last week, but considerably chillier.

This pretty old house has always been known as "THE HERMITAGL" as the top part of the last "E" got knocked off the sign and they never got round to replacing it.
It's one of the few thatched houses left in the city.

More Boring, Cold Photos

More photos from yesterday's slippery slide around Norwich:

The little path under the old cedar you could see in yesterday's photos.

There are several little side-chapels hidden away at the east end of the Cathedral.
Check out these photos for more on the Cathedral, including the interior.

I used to walk to work past this every day. Spiffy, huh?

The cloisters are currently closed for maintenance but I'll take some photos there later.

Bloody Ice

Brr …
Well, at last we got our first snow flurry of the winter.
Driving home from the station last night in a northerly gale and one hell of a blizzard I thought the village would be snowed in this morning, but …

Hey ho.
It stopped snowing during the night and the wind blew most of it off the fields and roads leaving just a dusting.
It's still bloody freezing, mind you. I've slid as far as I've walked this morning as everywhere is just sheet ice.

Walking alongside the river it was like an ice rink and to stop myself falling arse over tit I put my hand out and grabbed hold of a wall which had what looked like two inches of soft snow on the top …
Fuckity, fucking fuck!
And "OW!!!"
There was blood everywhere.
What looked like soft snow was solid and very sharp ice.
Buggrit!
So, bandaged with a handkerchief, I slid about the city taking photos.

Here are a few shots of the Cathedral:

Looking across the playing fields from the riverside walk.

Same thing again only closer.

The lovely old cedar at the east end.

I took a load more before heading for breakfast with Rugby Guy, but I'll save them in case I can't think of anything to post about later.

Toodle pip!

And As For emails …

While I still have my ranty trousers on I might as well moan about emails, too, and expand a little on my comment to Kate from the last post.

Stupid emails are the bane of my working life …
(not personal emails; those are nice, although I'd much prefer handwritten letters).
F'rinstance: After yesterday's meeting (a £15million contract that promises to overrun in an amusingly litigious way), I got home to type up the minutes only to find twelve "URGENT" emails on points raised at the meeting, all requiring instant answers on subjects ranging from valid points of contract law to fuckwit imbecility.

In "the good old days" before emails, contract law gave me seven working days to provide a written reply to any points raised.
Legally I still have those seven days but the pressure is such that- de facto - emails that are not replied to instantly tend to invite claims for delays and damages.

There is no such thing as an in tray anymore (well there is, but mine just has a couple of camera lenses and an old firewire cable in it); just the constantly nagging inbox.
This morning I am trying to work.
To be productive.
But before I can start I have fifteen more emails - including nine replying to my replies from yesterday - all flagged as "URGENT" to wade through.
Plus eight phone messages (so far).
It has got to the stage where I am unable to do my job before ten in the morning and I'm working twelve hour days at home and at weekends just to catch up.

Letters were nice.

Getting the post around coffee time and having a couple of days to reply meant that the good old days were indeed good. Far less stressful and litigious and far more productive.
And the buildings I designed got built just as quickly but with far less hassle than they do today.

Construction contract law is not evolving at the same rate as modern instant communication with the result that I spend far less time being productive and far more time arguing niggling points of law with fuckwits than is consistent with my remaining sane.

What would be nice for starters is for Apple and Microsoft to come up with a little doohickey that senses when a total imbecile is about to label their worthless, time-wasting drivel as "URGENT" and administers a sharp and amusing electric shock.

Or perhaps I should just give up and go live in a hole.

Please can we start writing letters again?
I have lovely handwriting and I don't get to show it off any more.

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong stupid century.