25.12.08 Blogging off ‘til early January

I think that you all deserve a rest from my ramblings so I am taking a break from blog posting. I hope to resume round about the second week in January 2009 if I can think of anything to say.
So until then Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to family, friends, followers and lurkers everywhere.

Of course if I think of anything meantime I reserve the right to write.

I will leave you with my favourite haiku (i.e.the only one that I know) written by John Cooper Clarke. There is no mention of mountains or blossom.

“To convey one's mood
with seventeen syllables
is very diffi”

14.12.08 Sunday - EfFin' Kulchur - John Cooper Clarke

Here are some of the other photos that I took yesterday. One house seems to be built between a huge piece of rock and the rock face on which the castle is built, the other sits perched upon a huge piece of the castle rock itself.
In one of the small gardens around the corner, there is a massive chunk of masonry which is larger than an average shed (not shown), which must have fallen from higher up on the castle rock face. I don’t think that I would like to live so close to a potential squishing.

When I was a student in the late 1970’s I remember going to see the punk poet or Bard of Salford John Cooper Clarke. He was pencil thin, dressed in a dark suit and big dark glasses, and with lots of black spikey hair. The crowd was a potentially difficult one, drunk students more used to a disco in the student union on a weekend night than a poet. He was also English with a strong nasal twang and an accent. His style of delivery was fast.
There are some live videos of him to be found on YouTube but many of them are from the last few years. He now looks rather wasted after his years of fast living. That he can remember any of his poems at all is astonishing.
Some of my favourites are Beazely Street, Hire car, Kung Fu International, Tw@t and Evidently Chicken Town

WARNING
Both these clips contain slight use of the "f" word and parental guidance should not be viewed by the under 18s. i.e not for mum and dad or the nephews or niece to watch.
The first clip shows John’s delivery of his poem “Evidently Chicken Town”


The second clip is Christopher Eccleston reciting Evidently Chicken Town in a film and is completely different. Fans who only know him as the last but one Doctor Who might get a shock. Which version works best?