Was the Spencer Davies Group the fathers of modern Heavy Metal? I have been listening to some of their classic songs from the 1960’s recently, and as far as I can tell, they were the first band to produce the amplified electric guitar sound that is the basis of hard rock. Just listen to some of the Spencer Davies Groups hits like Keep on Running and Somebody Help Me And they were doing it years before Steppenwolf sung of “Heavy Metal Thunder” in their 1968 classic Born to be Wild.
I suppose that whilst I am letting my social dinosaur out for a bit of exercise, before returning it deep into my inner psyche, the subject of women’s hair surfaces. I much preferred the character of Willow Rosenburg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she had long hair luxurious red hair. The helmet like short style she had from season 4 onwards did nothing for me. The same with the character of Cordelia, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first few seasons of Angel she had gorgeous black tresses. At the end of the series these were hacked of, and so was I.
What I am trying to say is I find women much more attractive with long hair, which means shoulder length or longer. There is something about the way that long hair frames a woman’s face, emphasising the feminine softness.
Way back in the 1920’s a similar paradigm shift in women’s hairstyling occurred in the western world as has happened in the past few years in their clothing. Before the genesis of the hideous cloche hat, a woman would not have dreamt of cutting her hair, unless she was going to be a nun. Then suddenly, to match the horrendous helmet like headgear the horrendous flapper dresses, in came the bob and the shingle.
I suppose this is why I look back so nostalgically at the late 1960’s. The fatal combination of long straight hair and short straight skirt does it for me every time.
And I wonder why I am still single?
Skirts: the part of a garment that hangs freely from the waist down.
For the vast bulk of History, women in the Western World only wore skirts or dresses. When I was a child this was begining to change. The wearing of trousers was no longer frowned upon, but the collective force of social habit kept most women in skirts and dresses. This makes me a bit of a social dinosaur; I prefer men and women dressed differently, men in trousers women in skirts. Thousands of years of social engineer means that a woman in a dress is more pleasing to my eye than one in a trouser suit. And yet, in the past few years there has been a sea change. Most women I know wear trousers all the time, especially if they are under thirty. As I see it, this change in attitudes can be traced back to roughly fifteen years ago, when the local comprehensive school started letting it girl pupils wear trousers as part of their uniform. Even yesterday, the hottest day of the year so far, most women in Treherbert had their legs encased in two close fitting cloth tubes.
I can see how impractical a skirt must be in cold weather, any hemline creeping above the ankle liable to let in all sorts of icy draughts. Which brings me to the most impractical garment in the World, the miniskirt. It hangs freely from the waist, but not a lot further. Even with thick woollen tights, these must be horrendously cold garments. Though as a bloke, I am mightily glad I don’t have to wear them, but by the same degree, I am mightily glad that women do. There is something about the way the hem of a pelmet length miniskirt sashays around the top of women’s the legs that makes the naked limb so attractive, shorts just don’t have the same effect for me, (I suppose it is the whole thing about women and trousers even short ones). I blame it all on being a toddler in the late sixties and early nineteen seventies, when they were everywhere. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the site of all those naked thighs was having a profound effect on me.
This is the first entry for this web log created on the new Beta release version of the Firefox browser for RISC OS. Those of you out there in PC Land might be wondering so what, Firefox is Firefox. This is not the case, this is the first truely modern web browser for RISC OS. Up until now, the browsers available for RISC OS have been a bit pants, always two or three years behind what PC’s can currently do. The problem has been because RISC OS is such a minority platform, very few people have wanted to spend time and money developing software for it. OK, so you get companies such as RComp Interactive who produce some marvelous softares, but these remain cottage industries when compared to the glory days when Acorn dominated and there was a BBC or an Archemedes computer in every class room. Most software on RISC OS is a labour of love. Which is where Peter Nualls and his UNIX Porting Project enters the frame. There is so much good quality software released for the various flavours of UNIX and Linux, under open source GNU licences, which can be adapted to run on RISC OS, why try to re-invent the wheel. So today the project has started to bare fruit, with the release of !Firefox.
If you didn’t know, Firefox is based on the Mozilla browser, with the Gecko rendering engine that was originally developed for Netscape. Ever since Netscape became part of the AOL/Time Warner empire, they have abandoned their own browser development, relying on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The original Mozilla software became open source, and has now emerged as Firefox, which in its Deer Park Alpha 1 UNIX edition has been ported to RISC OS. This is stirling work, and long may it continue. Of course, as I said, it is still a Beta release, much still needs to be done, by those who are initiated into the dark arts of computer programming. The best I can do is use what they release, and report any bugs I discover, in the hope that that speeds the project along. Thus far, it still looks and feels like PC software, with its pull down menus instead of the contest sensitive mouse click menus of RISC OS, but this work in progress can only go forward. So respect to Mr. Nualls who has done most of the donkey work, and good luck to everyone working on the UPP who will carry it forwards.
As the first series of the now massively successful re-launch of Doctor Who reaches its conclusion, with the final episode The Parting of the Ways set for broadcast on Saturday, impressive news about the second series is announced. The first three directors of Series Two (28)* will be James Hawes, Euros Lyn and Graeme Harper.
The inclusion of Graeme Harper has caused a considerable amount of squee from the various internet forums I read. Harper is one of the gieants from the classic series, having first worked on Doctor Who back in 1971 on Colony in Space. Most notably he was the director of Peter Davison+s regeneration story The Caves of Androzani and the hugely popular Revelation of the Daleks. Many fans were disappointed that Harper was unavailable for the first series. Well this time round, he is directing four episodes.
I am also pleased that James Hawes is back for Series Two (28). His work on the two-part story The Empty Child was superb. I have heard that Hawes is once again being teamed up with the writer of The Empty Child, Steven Moffat, and that he will be directing the Christmas Special, in which Russell T. Davies will introduce the world to Doctor#10 played by David Tennant.
Also back for another year is Euros Lyn, the Welsh director who did such a good job turning modern day Swansea into Victorian Cardiff.
* Despite the fact that it is a continuation of the original 26 year run of Doctor Who, as it there has been such a long break, and production has moved to Cardiff this is officially Series 1 of Doctor Who. So, I refer to all the new series using the official BBC notation, but with the number it would be if there hadn+t been a 16 break in brackets. So this year there is Series One (27) Next year it will be Series Two (28) etc.
Exactly 38 years ago, I was born.
At 4.20pm, my father had just left a meeting at work, and phoned the Maternity Ward at Llwynypia hospital to see if there was any news about his wife and child. It was at this point that the staff on duty remembered the fact that my mother was in a side ward, and had been since 8am that morning. It transpires that the heavily pregnant sister in law of one of the midwifes had been admitted that morning, for the birth of her first child, and my mother had been forgotten about.
As a result of the phonecall, a midwife went to check on my mother, who had had comlications during the birth of my sister Janet, and should not have been left on her own. Immediately realied that something was wrong, and I was delivered in that side ward, at 4.28pm, blue and silent, with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. All my various health problems can be traced back to that botched birth, the Dyspraxia, the Chorea, the Asthma and the Epilepsy. It is amazing that either of us survived. Thank God my father phoned when he did.
Well, the first day of my thirty-eighth year is exactly the same as the last day of thirty-seventh. So, officially I am a year older, but I don’t feel any different. Age is just a number.
20six Comment
Dan Cool / (13.7.05 14:36)
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I wanted to fill a bucket to water my flowering cherry sapling this morning, so I turned on the tap that is on the other side of the wall to my kitchen sink, and nothing happened. After a few minutes hissing it began to dribble. Obviously an air-lock in the system. This sort of thing always happens when I am pressed for time. So I switched it off and went to work.
This tea time, I went in search of the air-lock. With the tap on full blast, I delved under my kitchen sink, an found where the outside tap separates from the cold water supply for the sink. Gave it a tap with the hammer. Nothing happened. Hit it again. It hissed and a could hear an increase in the flow of water outside. Hit it a couple of more times, and with a pleasant pop, water started flowing from the outside tap into the bucket.
So, I was able to water the sapling, which is currently sitting in a large pot on a pile of rubble that will one day be a raised patio overlooking my lawn. I got the sapling eighteen months ago, as a freebie when I ordered some plants online for my mother. It was a bit of a joke at first, a six inch stick with a single bud on one end and eight inches of root on the other. However, it has grown quite a bit since then. It is now nearly three to four foot tall, and quite sturdy. I am busily snipping out all the side shoots so that the trunk will be nice and straight and tall, not letting any side branches form until it is at least six foot tall. Last week I bought a six foot cane, which I rammed into the pot, and tied the sapling to it, to give it some support, as it was whipping away merrily when the wind blew. Eventually, it is going to go in the middle of my lawn, and it will replace the mighty tree that was at the bottom of my garden.
I have decided that I am going to review all the episodes of the new series of Doctor Who when the series finishes. However, it will just be my thoughts, I am dumping the summaries, as they are taking up more space than what I actually thought of the episode.
However, in the meantime, here are some brief thoughts on Saturday’s episode Boom Town.
The voters of the Netherlands have had a chance to democratically reject the creep towards a dictatorial European Superstate. A stonking 66% of the electorate turned out and rejected the European Union Constitution by 61.8% to 38.2%. This follows the rejection of the Constitution by the French on Sunday.
The people are not stupid, they can see that there is no advantage to them in establishing a massive federation from Porto on the coast of Portugal in the West to Zamosc in the East of Poland. This constitution would see more powers being taken from the governments of the Members States to be given to the European Commission, turning the National Parliaments into glorified talking shops. The fact that the French and the Dutch, two of the most Eurofriendly nations I can think of have said no shows how divorced from reality this document is. Ordinary people want closer ties with their European neighbours to facilitate business and to prevent wars, they do not want to be citizens of the United States of Europe.
However, the political caste, who seek greater and greater power are horrified that the ordinary people have said thus far and no further to Political Union. People like José Manuel Barroso, the President of the Commission say that ratification should continue. The fact that under the current rules if the constitution was rejected by one member state it is rejected by all means nothing to him. No Mr. Barroso, no means NO.
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