Category: music

Last orders at the bar

My lovely local bar on Fore Street in Exeter will be calling last orders at the bar for the final time this Saturday. I have a lot of good memories of this place and fond memories of the people that I met within it and the friendly atmosphere and smiling happy faces the greeted me in it. It is my number one place to go to unwind and sing a tune at at the end of the week on their karaoke night on a Thursday.

For a few reasons with which I will never truly probably know the exact in and outs of it has struggled at the moment which has effected foot fall and in truth became a little bit of a viscous cycle of potential decline.

Damien the lovely landlord would at time struggle to hire staff to help him with serving drinks or keeping the place clean and that meant people could come into the bar without knowing whether their particular drink would be being served or wether the toilets had been cleaned and supplied with toilet roll that evening.

Damien is the handsome pirate dude on the right

I did fear this day would come and so have been trying to find a nice bar in Exeter to go into once a week but nothing comes close to the Arcade really, when I make my last trip out this week I must try and remember to get peoples phone numbers that are not on facebook and make sure I try and keep in contact with them.

The one consistent thing that never changes about life no matter how hard you plan, hope or pray it won’t, is that people and places continue to evolve and change. Whether through circumstance within or out of our control and the closing of this bar is just another one of those constantly changing things.

Damien is a young man in his early 30’s, mind you and he is very much looking to his next pub venture in Exeter and he does a man with white van service for those looking to shift some stuff around and earn him some extra cash.

White van man Damien

So this Thursday I am planning on going to the Arcade for their last karaoke night in their present venue and look forward to also seeing the lovely pub dog Checkers.

Checkers the pub dog
Semisonic – Closing Time

Words can hurt or heal

So what did yours do today?

I have just watched the following speech which I would definitely recommend you watch too about the power of words.

Mohammed Qahtani – The Power of words

I love to write words and speak them at times, to change or influence a point of view or perception on reality or life.

A friend of mine discovered or invented the phrase “a social hand grenade” as soon as I heard it I thought what a cool expression, what it meant was to throw a word or phrase into a conversation that would have maximum impact and if you did it to the right person or people at the right time to blow their mind too. I thought to myself what a great concept.

Over the years I have tried to put words into a conversation so as to have a positive impact on the person that I am speaking to rather than a negative. Although more often than not in the sad and disappointing times of my life when I have been sad and angry I have said things that still haunt me to this day.

More often than not to women that I thought had spurned me or decided they were openly no longer or perhaps never even had been in love with me. I remember to this day not perhaps the exact words that I said but the memory of a moment in which those words were said and though they can never be taken back nor the moment vanish from time I do hope I have learnt from those occasions so that in the future in a similar circumstance I do not try to feed my own ego by trying to bring someone else down.

If life has hopefully taught me any lesson it is the one that conflict through words and deeds just for the sheer sake of it bears as much fruitful as a cherry tree in the desert with no water.

Gabrielle Aplin – The Power of Love 

Talking about money

I went out with a lovely woman once for a time, who did not have a lot of money, but when she would get drunk on our way home from a night out, she would give money and spend time with the homeless on the streets of Exeter and talk to them. I though it to be the cutest and most revealingly thing about her true personality and absolutely adorable.     

This decade has been a weird one so far if I am honest and this year in particular when people talk about inflation rocketing up, I and many others are really feeling the pinch this year. Cash goes out of my account these days quicker than I dare to imagine it ever could. I am fortunate in that I have a reasonably steady job on the highest wage I have ever been paid and they plan to hopefully continue to increase my wage year on year, it just takes the bosses and unions a long time to each agree what that pay rise will be. But I am finding things a little challenging and costs come into your life that you were not expecting and things have to be bought.

I had someone come back to my house after an evening out a local bar back in July and it made me feel a little embarrassed about how old and tatty my lounge furniture is, I have had it all for about 12 years and the furniture was second hand from a charity shop when I bought it new to me, so I have been thinking of getting rid of it for a while.

So I finally bit the bullet and splashed the cash and I am getting rid of my old sofa and chair this week and having a new one delivered next week. The following week will feel weird having no sofa or lounge chair to sit until the new one is delivered. Also my dad is moving to Taunton to live with his partner in October and so I am always hoping my place is welcoming enough and clean enough for family to stay here when and if they need to. So it’s a sofa bed that I have bought that hopefully friends and family can occasionally make use of if they need to stay.

As well as the odd unexpected large item to buy, I do really notice this year more than most how utility bills and food bills have just rocketed up this year. Some of my friends are on benefits and out of work for a variety of genuine employment and health reasons and I do fear for their finances more so than my own. The government is not nor has it ever been geared up to help and support people in any great capacity it merely assists many that cannot work through employment or health reasons to survive and not actually live.

I will always do my best to stay in work, maintain my own health as best I can and look after myself and my work colleagues due to the simple truth that I cannot afford to be out of work. I am so privileged to have a housing association property that keeps my rent down, but there are many bills that we must all pay the same for. If I was on benefits and out of work I have no idea how I could pay for both a mobile phone and Wi-Fi at home. Both very much staple necessities of a modern life but how you pay for them on benefits I just have no idea.

The idea of being in my home 24/7 with no work, phone or Wi-Fi really is a scary poverty fearing potential reality for me if I ever were to become unemployed in the future. Both my parents love me very much but neither are in a position to financially support me if I were to get in trouble and so I very much do my best to support myself.

Though this should in no way be a poor me post, I have my health, a job that I enjoy that pays enough to keep the wolves from my door and a little bit more.

Money’s To Tight (To Mention) By Simply Red

China and back again a Jacket sale!

Not quite an epic Lord of the Rings tale to tell more of a searcher of the shops internet sale. I ordered a coat back in January 2023, and somehow it turned up on my door step today for the second time! I had been searching for a good, waterproof winter style coat in my size. How hard could it be to find something like that you might think and say. Well I’m a big feller and so my size for a coat is a UK XXXL that not a Chinese size or American or European size but UK. I have been this size for over 8 years now and though I would love to shift some weight I am also struggling to try and make sure I don’t put any more on.   

So I had been using the digital ecommerce unholy trinity of Amazon, Google and Microsoft to try and search and purchase a new coat, again waterproof, warm and the right size and my efforts resulted in me purchasing what I thought was a US made and sized coat that looked nice on the advert and also allegedly on sale for what I thought was £70 so not cheap but not too expensive either.  

 When the coat arrived I knew straight away it was sadly too small and also not great quality. So was either going to donate it to a charity shop or return to sender? After discussing the issue with my ma we both though I should send back to supplier. So I emailed them and found out how much it would cost to send back to them and the address I needed to send it too.

I posting it back to China for £26 and including the £19 I was charged for postage and insurance originally this venture has cost me about £120 so it was not a not unusable coat to purchase for me. But I would be prepared to pay that amount if I could actually wear the darn coat in my size and not have to post it back to get my £70 back.

I posted it back to China with a very exact and detailed postal address and also a small letter inside stating my name and address and order number so as not to avoid any confusion to ensure I got my refund. The item was posted international royal mail and arrived in china within a week or so but then sat in the depo awaiting collection buy the business that I had purchased it from. I contacted them sending evidence of where the coat was in China and by April this year I got my £75 refund for the coat. Job done I thought and that was that.

Well that is until this morning when I get a knock at the door from the postman and he has a parcel in his hand for me from China, it’s the exact same parcel I posted to them back in February this year with a little Chinese label on it saying it had been refused to be accepted by the people that I had purchased it off. So it looks like it is still going to the charity shop as a donation after all.

It just so happens I have a charity collection here this Friday to pick up some clothes and a chair so they will be able to have the coat at the same time, its unused and should make someone a nice gift (so long as it fits them!) Even thought this coat has yet to find an owner it has already done more travelling around the globe than me, travelling from China to me and then back to China and back to me, in its short little lifetime its done quite a few miles. I’m a little jealous of its ventures but also quite impressed.

K T Tunstall – Other Side Of The World

Holiday on Ragland Road – Ireland

Me and Dad in a bar on Ragland Road in Tramore Ireland August 2018 I love this photo of my dad, in this picture there is a white sign which reads ‘Parents are responsible for their children at all times” I think we both looked after or acted responsibly or irresponsibly in equal measure on the holiday.  

When we travelled to Ireland for the holiday we stayed in Wexford, Tramore, Dublin and Leopardstown. One of the reasons we went to county Wexford was because it was where Dad went on his holidays by the beach as a boy. We also stayed at the Faye Guest House in Wexford Town and then travelled by train to Tramore and went off to see the horse racing there too.  

Entrance to Faye Guest House – Wexford

It was the first time me and Dad had gone on holiday to Ireland together and there was a little racing, drinking, eating and also a chance to see one of my all time favourite bands called the Waterboys sing whole of the moon on a moon lit night in Leopardstown.

Waterboys Band

It just so happens that it is my dad’s birthday tomorrow the 13th August and when we were in Ireland we planned the holiday so that we were there for his birthday too.

I am such a huge fan of Ireland with the music, the people and company and culture. As well as the food, drink and hospitality. They love to party and enjoy the company of good people as well as a pint of Guinness and a punt at the horse racing – what is not to love.  

Sinead O’Connor singing Raglan Road

Proud to be on the right side of politics!

If and when historians look back on Trumps time in and outside of office it will be with great shame and distain and yet in America it appears at present the more that prosecutors reveal about the former president and the more he shouts out that its all lies and their all out to get him like the commies that they are, the more people love and support Trumps point of view over that of members of the judiciary.

I hope and like to think that if this sort of circus had happened in the UK (which to some extent it did with Boris Johnsons proven incompetence at the time of him being in office during Covid-19 that we would have ousted him out of power (which we did, eventually). Where as in America the populace seem to be hell bent on putting Donald Trump back into power. Almost as a means of cutting of your political nose to spite your face.

I sometimes read on WordPress the views of people that at times I have followed their blogs closely or had my blog followed closely by, saying that the lefties are in some way unchristian (verging on satanic at times) to true Christians’, and this form of worship and belief appears to have appeal and widely spread across Christians who are Republicans across the USA and that those that support the left are to belittled and condemned as not true followers of the faith. This to my mind is in fact a most unintelligible or right wing republican indoctrinated position on the teachings of Christ.

‘And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.’

I am not even a Christian and yet I have far more faith in the above teachings of Christ than I do a republican in the US today. I love Christ, I accept his teachings as a historical figure, but not as a god or as the son of god. All teachings should be put within the context of the time they were brought into this world and how they can and do impact on a society and a person within that society within the context of today, Christ could not teach on global warming as in the context of his time on earth it did not exist.

To me the ethics of Christ are to say do not exploit the teachings of god as merely a means to make money and cast aside the true meanings of Christ that of love of all and being charitable to your fellow man and women and not casting others aside to suffer for the sake of your own greed and need. Christ is not a Republican and in my mind the USA should not be telling its people they must continue to breed because it is ungodly to have an abortion, even when they cannot afford to raise their next child, or tell the lone gunman to keep buying those guns to go on and kill because it’s a profitable industry of which the death of further citizens, is just a by product of and of course the solution to those deaths is to buy more guns right.

Global warming is bound to be in the line of fire for republican law makers it is just a question of time and money. Republicans seem to vote at the altar money and profitability and greed consistently (described as being ok because it’s a capitalist ethic right) at the expense of even greater suffering and the demise of America as a once great nation, while the world watches on in despair on the side lines. Is the American dream now a long forgotten thing that to many has become a nightmare and like the rise of all great nations such as with the Roman Empire with its eventual decadence and demise is America blindly preparing the foundations for its own fall by re-electing Donald Trump into the White House?

Faith No More – Epic [Official Music Video], Full HD (Digitally Remastered and Upscaled)

What’s up

So I went to karaoke last Thursday and sang some songs that I had never sung before, I also sang a song that I had sung before but did it much better this time. Due to a number of reasons I had a mixture of emotions while singing but I hope I did the songs justice. Sadly Sinead O’Connor had just passed away a day before, so I tried to sing ‘Nothing Compares to You’, a song in honour of her passing.

Two of the most empowering and awesome female singers in the world and from Ireland are now no longer with us that is Dolores O’Riordan former lead singer of the Cranberries and also of course Sinead O’Connor, they and their sweet sounding musical talent will be sorely missed and I also sang for the first time ‘No Need to Argue’ by the Cranberries which went down well too. The bar was quite, which I like when it is like that I feel like I’m singing to friends on nights like that.

I never got to see the Cranberries or Sinead O’Conner sing live, I assume that they have not sung in the South West of England that often or if they did it would have been at Glastonbury in a year I was not at the festival. With regard to Irish bands that I have seen though I got to see The Waterboys briefly sing at a race course on the outskirts of Dublin once, they even sang ‘Whole of the Moon’ with the moon out and visible, it was a really special time to be there too.

Amy Macdonald – What’s Up? (Amazon Original) (Official Video)

Wish me luck!

So I have had a much needed wonderful restful weekend after a busy week. Yesterday I also attended the wedding night of one of my colleagues. What a great time with good people at a lovely venue for a celebration of a wonderful couples union.

Tomorrow gets busy though and more complicated, in work a great deal of staff are either on holiday, have left permanently or are being trained up to assist in supporting team members more. I need to try and reach out to others to get help tomorrow as I am well out of my depth with having too much on at the moment, but there are kind people that should and can help out if I ask.

I think I might have slept too much today and have too much on my mind tonight to sleep well. So much is going on in life at the moment and the world is certainly spinning madly on. I get nervous at times like this, reflective and anxious but try to enjoy the good moments as well as fear what might go wrong while hoping to work towards what could go right too.

The Weepies – World Spins Madly On

Happy birthday vibes, good times with good people

I swear when it comes to writing my posts of late I mainly want to write about what’s happening in my life or what’s revolving around in my mind and even though there are not a huge amount of readers there is a wide variety of people to consider as an audience. From kind people that regularly read my blog from across the world, to friends across the UK my home city and colleagues in my workplace and not forgetting my mum too.

Well I went out to sing last Thursday night to my local bar and something completely different happened to me that has not happened to me in many years, I almost thought it might not happen again and was not expecting it to happen last Thursday either. But I met a very beautiful woman who I liked and I hope and like to think she liked me too.

I caught a glimpse of her on the side of my eye as she had just walked into the bar and she had then decided to leave because there was no bar person serving. I waved over to her and to the landlord of the pub and said that he could still serve her if she wanted a drink and so that is how we met. It turned out it was her birthday and seeing as how it is my birthday on the 12th of July too I was very happy to wish this beautiful woman a happy birthday and start talking to her.

I then got up and sang at the bar and so did she, with a beautiful voice. I did not want the night to end, even though I was working the next morning I thought I wanted to stay out later and see where the night would take us. So me, a few friends and the wonderful birthday girl went onto a nightclub. It was soon just me and the birthday girl left and we danced and talked and drank until the early hours of the morning when I then walked her to a taxi rank and she got safely home and I got safely back to my place too. Wow what a lovely night.

Again if she gets to read this I do wonder what she will think about me for writing it, she is a friend on Facebook now, so if I were to post this there, I don’t know if she will be pleased or upset to see what I have said. She is a single mum and was firm with me on the night we were out that she did not want to meet up with me to go on a date in the future, again I don’t know why and did not push her on this, but hoped and assumed this was due to her circumstances and not due to anything that I had said or done. I would love to meet her again but that is something I need to try and work out for myself and tell her and perhaps not kind of be writing about on my blog!!!

Stereophonics – Dakota

Singing in a bar called The Ship again

Well me and a couple of friends headed out last Friday to a bar called the Ship in Exeter and they had their Friday karaoke tunes being played and sung to. My friend Michelle was the first person to get up and sing and sung ‘Take My Breath Away’ by Berlin and really did such a powerful and yet emotionally beautiful version of the song it really was amazing to listen to, she did herself, the audience listening and the song proud.

I then put in a request for a song and got up and sung it, I was very nervous and sung a song called ‘all the things that I’ve done’ by the Killers. I was a little shy and not sung this song in a bar in many a year and found the words racing ahead on the screen where I would be then trying to catch-up and sing along to what was coming up. I managed to get through the whole song and people were very kind and clapping and cheered at the end of the song when I had finished which was great, I look forward to going back there and having a go another time.

I would like to try and sing the following song if I had a little more confidence and if the DJ had the song top sing which is by the cranberries and called ‘no need to argue’. I don’t think it would be suitable for the ship as that is more power ballads and rock and pop anthems where drunken crowds join in, but I might be able to get away with trying to sing it at the Arcade see if Damien has it as a selection.

The Cranberries – No need to argue

The album this song is on is also called ‘no need to argue’ and it came out when I was 18. It was beautifully sung and gently expressive song on an album that I found really helped me bring about calmness in my mind at a time in my life when I was a hugely sensitive and emotional person. All happy, hippy go lucky one minute, in love the next and then heartbroken after that! Listening to the song still to this day and it reminds me so much of when and what I have found and had, loved and lost and thankfully recovered and then been able to move on and prepare for the whole lot of madness and shenanigans again.