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.
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)
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
There are many things that fascinate me about what it means to be alive and the one that I will touch on today is our love of and ability to interpret life and be interpreted by an expression of singing and the sounds we make when we sing a song.
I nearly always try to put a video of a song on my blog posts when I type one and one of the reasons I do this is sometimes because there is a particular song rattling around in my head that inspires a post or at other times a particular post I write inspires a song or both the post and song just somehow seem to fit.
When in my teens I used to love creative writing although I never have had an ability or gift to write songs. But I have always loved the appreciation of a good song and liked to tap my feet, when younger I used to dance too but now as I get older I have over the last few years got into singing in bars on karaoke nights.
I really do love doing this it’s such a great way to express yourself and have fun and show people that you have a life and a voice! I also love to listen to other people sing live and depending on my mood or where I am sometimes much prefer to listen to others sing than get up and sing myself. I do get nervous before I sing and in my local bar there are normally only about a dozen people listening of which half of them I might know and so I can manage my nerves easier in those situations rationalising to myself that as its a small group I’ll be ok and not judges if I make a mistake or sing badly. More often than not the people I sing in front of are very supportive and kind to me often complementing my singing which I really do appreciate. I’m no great singer but I am not bad too.
So last week some friends went out to a different bar which also runs a karaoke night and i decided to put a song in and get up and sing. I slowed down on my drinking as I did not want to get up there drunk and still wanted to give it my best shot. So an ahour and a half went by and I checked with the DJ if he had called my name out and he said that he thought my name was “You” not “Huw” and thought I had already left. So I was then the next one up on to sing. So sing my little heart out I did to a song by a band called Fun called “We Are Young” it went really well the crowd loved it, joining in too and I remembered the words too, so long as I kept my eyes on the screen and I seemed to hit the notes and sing at the right times and a good night was had by all.
The pub had a much bigger audience than I was used to singing in front of, but it was such a good experience I do hope to go back there again to try and sing my little heart out once more.
I think I will try and sing the song that I have placed below, when I can in the next busy karaoke bar I go to.
Just voted again for the green party this week and so pleased to see how well they are doing in Exeter and across the UK as a whole. In Exeter with 6 councillors they now are the second largest party on the council behind labour who have a large majority.
The Green party did win overall control of its first council in the UK in Mid Suffolk District Council, which is a huge achievement. I would love for them one day to be running my local district council. They also doubled the amount of councillors they had that were up for election in England with an increase of 241 councillors with 481 in total elected on the day.
To have some sort of chance of surviving the current and future climate crisis we need forward thinking green politicians in power that focus on long term growth of the environment and not growth of the pound in peoples pocket.
UK ELKECTION RESULTS KEY PLAYERS MAY 4th 2023
LABOUR PARTY
2,674
+536
Labour elected 2,674 councillors 536 councillors gained
CONSERVATIVEPARTY
2,299
-1,061
Conservative elected 2,299 councillors with 1,061 councillors lost
LLIBERAL DEMOCRATE PARTY
1,626
+405
Liberal Democrat elected 1,626 councillors 405 councillors gained
INDEPENDENT COUNCILLORS
874
-80
Independents elected 874 councillors 80 councillors lost
GREEN PARTY
481
+241
Green elected 481 councillors 241 councillors gained
The economic model of growth for growths sake for an economy is a busted flush on a world with finite resources and will only lead to long term environmental damage and therefore a new way of managing and caring for the environment and the people that live within it is desperately needed to enhance our chance of survival, rather than simply pandering to money markets and capital.
Social justice and the birth of the labour movement were very much needed at the beginning of the last century and it feels like and I hope that now is the time for ecological and environmental justice in political parties and progressive people and protestors alike.
Though as with all political movements, views, perspectives and opinions we might not agree on all things concerning what is broken and what needs fixing and how to go about fixing it but at least by thinking, voting and expressing and enacting ecological and environmental views and voting in those that aspire to solve and tackle these very real issues there is a great chance of survival for people and planet and surly that can only be a good thing.
Trying to find a solution to a problem is sometimes like trying to find the needle in a haystack and when you find a solution to the problem it might sting a little bit at first as a result of trying to get to the point!
My boss resigned last week after over 1 year of being in the job and after 1 month of being on sick leave for a variety of reasons. She simply lost the will to work at the council anymore and her understanding and interpretation of the situation meant she had valid reasons to seek out pastures new and ensure she could do something else that would enable her to heal and not continue to be unwell.
The senior management are already circling what is left of my team asking questions such as what should we do differently? Who should we hire next? Who do we need to hire? What problems are we going to get? What solutions can be found and finally what can they afford to do to solve the problems?
One of the crazy things is the team that we work for and causes me and my colleagues the most problems is one in which generates an income stream on its own through collecting of fees and processing payments, the problem is that there are not enough staff to process these payments efficiently, accurately and in a timely manner and at times such as school holidays and bank holidays like Easter then the staff want to book time off to recover, recuperate and enjoy themselves with their families leads to there being even less staff around to process those applications and take the payments. A member of that team also handed in there notice to leave today too and that will make things worse for me and my team as well as the team she is leaving.
So with all this going on and me thinking I am doing ok and ready for bed I go to bed feeling wide awake and write a to do list for myself for work and then start writing this blog post because I still cannot sleep.
I am the most long serving member of my team and have worked for two managers who have no left and 5 further members of staff since I started working there in July 2020, considering our team only has about 3 to 4 people in it at any one time that is quite a high staff turnover.
With the potential changes coming into force I am not sure yet if they will get a new manager for the team and the senior management team might just decide to split what is left of the team and allocate us to different areas to act directly as support staff to other manages rather than a central team of support staff. It could work well but if they are doing it as a money saving exercise rather than a problem solving one then their thought process will be flawed. So I have jotted down my ideas for a restructure on an email to myself for work and will forward them to a senior manager to look at in the morning.
I hope this post has managed to exorcise a few of my present demons so that I can try and get back to sleep now. Luckily I did not have access to the temptation of cigarettes or anything else to smoke tonight nor have I tried to do such things for what must be nearly some 15 years now, alas those where the days long time passed now!
At first this sounds like this is a really good news story for humanity. To finally have an opportunity to be born into a body that could live forever. Where science faction meets science fiction and the old enemy death is finally slain. But on a planet where when it comes to fairness, loyalty, equality and treating people with respect and dignity as a species it seems we still don’t know are ass from our elbow, a rude phrase meaning to be stupid and unable to understand very simple things.
I do often wonder why people are not kind, why people do not care and why people act selfishly and meanly. To me it seems counter intuitive and you can lose more by being hostile that you can gain from being respectful and caring. I feel somewhat naive in having this view as I don’t really have that much so don’t have much to lose, for example I don’t have a partner, a child or things or people that I have created myself to protect or invest in and therefore perhaps have this kind or be good to others as it’s the right thing to do attitude still inside me.
So why am I taking about kindness and benevolence when it comes to science faction or science fiction. Well because it matters. Actions have consequences a benevolent immortal is going to be a hell of a lot more supportive to humanity than a self interested and self serving one. If only the wealthy can live forever it could cause division and strife with those that cannot live forever a new class system based on how old you are allowed to be.
I always hoped and feared that such a breakthrough could be made within my lifetime and feared what it would mean for humanity and what it could mean for me. I quite like the idea of dieing of old age one day and joining my relatives and reviewing my life and seeing how well or bad i did and beign at peace. But the idea of what I might miss out if I don’t stay around is also an interesting and desirable concept to live longer than what we perceive to be a natural life span.
Ray Kurzweil who has made the predication about immortality also predicts that AI will become exceptionally intelligent within the same time frame as us developing immortality. Again will an intelligent AI seek to enhance humanity or deceive it, or seek to deceive some whilst assisting and rewarding others?
Could a power struggle like none seen before result in the wiping out of life on earth just at a time when immortality is possible for humanity. Well I guess no matter how dark the potential of negativity to occur or might be considered, you always have to hope for a higher plan and path for life on earth. Existence just as we are born into this world from a single fertilised egg or seed strives to be alive and grown and develop and evolve.
A once small acorn will one day under the right circumstances grow into a mighty oak. So in many ways we must aspire and hope, nurture and aim to grow humanity through into a direction and under circumstances that can enable the growth and development of us into our greatest potential just as the acorn grows into a mighty oak of sorts. A plan of a spiritual or god like venture where being given an opportunity to be birthed into the spiritual plain can then transcend into the physical one. A weird and deep thought going on here, what I am trying to say in a clumsy way is that I believe in life after death and the existence of spirit prior to during and after life and death. This spirit or omnipotent God has the desire, will and ability to do great good and though bad things happen and evil is manifest in this world does not mean that evil will triumph and that bad things will be our ultimate outcome on this plain of existence.
But again all metaphysics put aside for now if a soul can live forever is the soul then trapped in this plain of existence or is it freed and empowered on this plain of existence?
You must be logged in to post a comment.