tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33186692024-02-28T12:04:20.441+00:00Simon SaysPut your hands on your head... Or just read my waffle.Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.comBlogger643125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-23830560873140399432016-10-28T10:53:00.001+00:002016-10-28T10:53:27.267+00:00Foreign correspondentStill alive...
So, this came in the post a couple of days ago:
Which is rare enough these days, but rarer still is that it came to me at work. From a customer I have been in correspondence with a couple of times in recent months about a bus stop. Now I don't know about anyone else, but when I go on holiday the last thing I would think to do would be to carry on a conversation Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-70929563331586452952016-02-07T20:30:00.000+00:002016-02-07T20:30:19.976+00:00Another year of booksSo, these posts seem to get later every year. Ah well. If anyone was actually waiting for it, here's the list of books I consumed in 2015. Pretty much every one a winner.
Amanda
Palmer
The Art Of Asking
Nick
Catford
Secret Underground London
Neil
Gaiman
The Sleeper And The Spindle
Randall
Munroe
What if?
Harriet
Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-43404050906156264962016-01-15T12:34:00.000+00:002016-01-15T12:34:23.501+00:00Sounds FamiliarWhat, where did the time go? For now let us just say that the depression came back and hit me like a hammer, to the point of having to take time off work to change medication and generally get back to reality (hello side effects, hello fresh scars from a spot of self-harming, hello therapy once more). I might write more about that another time, but let's think of better things for nowSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-46043802026898553962015-09-04T15:24:00.001+00:002015-09-04T15:25:10.038+00:00The new Friday feeling
And thus the habit of nearly 30 years is ended by
the whims of the record industry…
Ever since I was old enough to understand the
concept of album release dates and been able to find them out, Monday has been
THE day. It must have been somewhere around
14-15 when I started actually buying music magazines and perusing every page
rather than just glancing through them in the librarySimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-23200559157702540152015-07-29T16:24:00.001+00:002015-07-29T16:24:45.619+00:00Building therapy
After
a minor joke around my birthday time I am currently revisiting a childhood
obsession with Lego. I’ll be the first
to admit that I never stopped being interested in the wee plastic blocks (as
the presence of a couple of newspaper freebies and numerous individual minifigs
around the house will prove) but not to the extent that it has been filling my
spare time of late. I Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-84770389816093422512015-06-11T19:47:00.003+00:002015-06-11T19:47:53.830+00:00Coming up again
I’ve
been wanting to write this post for a couple of weeks now, but have
been a bit scared to do so in case the act of writing it destroyed
the mood. But it is something I want to get out in the open so
here we go.
I
think I am now safe to declare that I am coming out of the worst six
or seven months of mental turmoil I have experienced in the last 15+
years. It really hasSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-32501320522118482932015-03-05T16:43:00.000+00:002015-03-05T16:43:25.815+00:00Reading for reasons
Reading this blog post (and the original
article mentioned) about diversity in reading material recently got me thinking
about how my choices away from the straight/white/cis/male author arena stack
up. And as I have the last few years-worth
of reading handily listed in posts here it is clear I’m not doing very well! It does get a bit better when you throw in
the Selected Shorts Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-6794934387449625242015-02-01T20:37:00.002+00:002015-02-01T20:37:50.375+00:00Sound systemOops. February already. Still, finally written the 2014 music post...
No
list of all the records enjoyed in the year (and I will still call
them records even if they were nearly all CDs or MP3s) but the cloud
does cover all the artists I heard a whole album by and represents
their frequency of earhole assault. Much of the explanation for this
can be found in last year’s post on musicSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-1690106190954186342015-01-03T14:42:00.000+00:002015-01-03T14:43:23.021+00:00Here we go again! Books of 2014.
Another year done and the inevitable round up posts and hopes to post more often and more interestingly during 2015. So, let us start with books.
The full list of what I consumed this year follows, and as is traditional audio books are italicised. Not quite as many as last year, but I’m still quite pleased with the
total and can even remember most of them! There are aSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-69849279086429061452014-11-21T14:41:00.001+00:002014-11-21T14:41:42.242+00:00Adventures in La La land
I confess, I’d just about given up on me
finishing this so if anyone is still interested here’s the last few days
condensed.
Day 14 – Downtown LA and Burbank
A spot of sightseeing to see fill the morning
taking in:
The Colliseum – main venue for the ’84 Olympics
and also right next door to and aerospace museum that happened to have a 2-seater
Lockheed Blackbird on a stick outside, so Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-23355402503988869992014-10-27T17:18:00.002+00:002014-10-27T17:18:31.714+00:00Onwards and southwardsDay Twelve: San Francisco to Cambria
And so the last part of the loop back to LA began as we left San Francisco and motored south to Monterey for a short walk along Cannery Row. Lots of Steinbeck associations here, although as he is not an author I have read anything by these were largely lost on me! The old factories that remain have of course been converted into shops, hotels and Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-68560286323651579062014-10-08T16:13:00.001+00:002014-10-08T16:13:54.946+00:00Back to the coastOK, what happened to September? Been a bit busy but I am determined to get the account of this holiday written up for my own sanity even if nobody is crying out for it...
Day 10 - Modesto to San Francisco.
A fairly early start saw us on the Embarcadero at San Francisco by about 0930, with a cruise round the harbour and up to the Golden Gate Bridge timed for 11. So we had plenty of Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-42167464951436705272014-08-29T14:54:00.000+00:002014-08-29T14:54:00.161+00:00More holiday musings
Day Seven: Las Vegas
A chance to have a lie-in and lazy day for some, but we were
up early as usual for a trip out to the Hoover Dam. Made sense to get up there before the day got
too hot, and it was a sight that had to be seen, but a little bit of extra
sleep would have been nice.
OK so I’m a sucker for a massive feat of engineering and
this sure fits that Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-62295808023900781242014-08-18T15:03:00.000+00:002014-08-18T15:03:49.803+00:00Vegas!
I'm sure the writing up of a holiday isn't supposed to take
longer than the holiday itself...
Day Six: Flagstaff to Las Vegas
From the relaxed to the frenetic, woodland charm to Sin City
and other such clichés. In some ways
this was the part of the trip I was least looking forward to - I'm not a
gambler and while I love a fantastic building and a bit of hustle and bustle
I'd rather seeSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-60882879716722096042014-08-08T12:52:00.001+00:002014-08-08T12:52:25.703+00:00Holiday Part two
OK, proper holiday days from now on (although some of them
will still be mainly getting from A to B).
Day Three - San Diego
A whole day of seeing the sights - and what a beautiful city
to see them in. Early starts (well,
earlier than we might have chosen when being on holiday) were to be a feature
of the trip, and we were on the bus by 0830 with a local guide in tow as well
as Alex forSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-64454824666816684402014-07-29T13:43:00.000+00:002014-07-29T13:43:26.704+00:00Holiday 2014 part oneAh, I seem not to have posted since February. Time to make up for that...
Where does the time go? It is now over a month since we started our holiday and I really want to write it up while things are still fairly fresh in the memory, but already feel that the details are slipping away.
As followers on flickr, twitter or instagram should have been able to work out, we took another Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-79160982937507138922014-02-28T12:58:00.001+00:002014-02-28T12:59:30.824+00:00Harumph
32/365 Rainy day observations, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.
I'm sure somebody out there can dig up statistics to show it doesn't rain more at lunchtimes than during the rest of the working day, but it sure seems that way to me right now. Not that I had any pressing need for a lunchtime wander today, I just like to get away from the office for a bit if possible. And yes, I could Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-62789454493299985742014-02-06T14:10:00.000+00:002014-02-06T14:10:11.072+00:00Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
Sometime in the dim and distant past, somebody
got a bit of translation from even dimmer and more distant times wrong and the
Roman vomitorium (big passage to enable people to get in and out of theatres
etc. easily) became the Roman vomitorium (special room to go and throw up in
between courses at banquets so as to make space for more food). The two don’t normally go together at all,
but Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-1348874488359198922014-01-14T20:56:00.000+00:002014-01-14T20:56:39.671+00:00Bite that tongue Ever had a real struggle to keep yourself quiet in public? Seeing Ian Lavender on Holly City tonight has reminded me of the time I met him. I may have written about this before but never mind.
We were holding a bus user meeting in Bury St Edmunds and he came along to ask about a bus stop near his house. He ended up talking to a colleague about it, who promised to look into it and get back Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-60596457173513805712014-01-13T21:38:00.001+00:002014-01-13T21:47:43.958+00:002013 books
2013 books, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.
So here we go again, another bunch of books consumed in a twelve month span. Audio in italics...Terry Pratchett - DodgerAlistair Maclean - The Golden RendezvousBarry Eisler (Ed) - 2:46: Aftershocks: Stories From The Japan EarthquakeMichael Palin - Hemmingway AdventureTerry Pratchett - Making MoneyJerryWhite - London In The 19th Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-22575335971771069882014-01-02T16:52:00.001+00:002014-01-02T16:55:13.529+00:00Who I listened to in 2013
2013 music, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned on here before that I don’t get as much time to listen to music as I would like, but the word cloud above is a good representation of what I have managed to get through in the last twelve months. (You can click it to go through to Flickr and then get to the full size version so you can actually read the smaller wordsSimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-73745945208987031132013-12-23T12:04:00.001+00:002013-12-23T12:07:03.547+00:00Another year nearly done
356/365 fairly lights, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.
OK, so it seems I have been a bad blogger once again this year. I did have every intention of writing more, but life always seems to get in the way of these things and the time to waffle on just evaporates. So, a few things that I wanted to write about at the time of the occurrence, but just never got round to…
CanadaWe had Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-51455096799165770132013-08-17T13:19:00.001+00:002013-08-17T13:19:30.637+00:00A death in storeSo I woke up at four this morning with the idea for a very short story in my head. it didn't go away when I finally got up, so here it is. Probably not very original, but fun to get down.
The spectre of Death drifted, unnoticed, down the High Street of a
busy market town. It had visited a bungalow on the outskirts in the
early hours of the morning but was now back to regular Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-50314894871837101642013-08-09T15:31:00.001+00:002013-08-09T15:37:02.045+00:00Hey! Hello!
201/365 Probable album of the year., a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.
Yes I know, it has been far too long, but I'm not dead just busy. And still got lots to say. So more posts soon, I hope.Anyway, I did something the other night that I haven't done for years. I sat down and listened to an album. All the way through with no interruptions. Just me, the music and the lyric Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3318669.post-60292274514320455942013-05-02T12:39:00.001+00:002013-05-02T12:41:32.677+00:00Done my civic duty.
122/365 Done my civic duty., a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.
So it is election day once again. As an employee of the County Council I am probably more concerned about the outcome than many. After all, barring edicts from central government, it is the people being elected today who are ultimately responsible for whether I have a job or not. Having been a Labour Administration when ISimonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02357929317301843307noreply@blogger.com0