Farewell to the Online World…Its the Final Countdown!

Two years ago today I wrote a blog about the events of the previous day, it was harrowing stuff for someone who loves Dogs as much as I do to describe the final hours of our Labrador Bonnie. Its been two years and yet it still hurts to remember that day, that’s the price you pay for getting attached to animals I guess.

Writing that Blogpost was a bit of a release, it helped to have nice people comment on it and offer support, it was a good way of expressing emotions that had no other outlet.

But that was two years ago and times change, and with time comes the realization that even though the world we live in is very much an online one…we don’t have to live our lives online!

Like most people I have had accounts on My Space…Bebo…Facebook and Twitter as well as quite a few other Social Media experiments. They become an obsession in many ways, driving your days in directions that they otherwise wouldn’t take…from waking up and thinking that the most important thing to do is check Twitter or Facebook, your day is in the online spectrum.

This Blog very much became an escape for me, a chance to rant as well as allow others to enter a world that I was up to that point keeping very private. The world of Depression.

I read people making comments online about being depressed, but for many it is just sadness, sadness isn’t depression, its sadness…if you are truly depressed than the last thing you would be doing at that moment is writing about it online! You wouldn’t have the ability to turn on a computer to write anything.

I’m not making light of the issue here, because some people who feel sad do end up depressed, and if their sadness is heading that way then they need to seek the medical help to get them through it, because Depression is an illness, a medical condition and not just a feeling and it needs to be addressed as such.

I convinced myself for a very long time that I could fight what I felt myself, and in doing so I made things an awful lot worse for myself and those around me.

Depression is a cancer of the mind – I read that one day and it is a very good description of the condition…a cancer of the mind.

Being clinically depressed has cost me a lot, from having a good job and career, owning a flat, having a car and holiday’s abroad it has left me where I am today, with none of those things…and no immediate prospect of that changing. It has cost me friendships because I couldn’t be bothered to work at them and it has hurt those around me who I should have been concentrating on the most. It is a cancer of the mind and unless you have experienced the absolute low it takes you to then it is easy to dismiss and not appreciate the damage it can do.

I understand people who commit suicide, I get it…that feeling that you have let everyone down and the feeling that you cannot see a way forward that will make it better…I get it…and I know how easy reaching that point must be!

People who commit suicide aren’t cowards as some would label them, they are the strongest they will ever be at that moment when they decide to end it all, because a coward doesn’t kill themselves.

It is a month and a half since I took my last tablet for depression, I needed to get some control back over my mind and the drugs don’t allow that, and even though it is a day to day thing to fight it…it is a fight I am up for.

If the ‘me’ of twenty years ago could see the ‘me’ of today they wouldn’t recognise the person in front of them…the ‘me’ of twenty years ago was a lot more fun as a person to be around than today’s version…I wouldn’t mind a bit of that older ‘me’ coming back now and again although it might frighten those who are used to me these days.

And so as I survey the wreckage of the life I have around me I realise that things need to be different or they will just stay the same, and living a life online is something that can be changed and can make a difference…by not doing it!

Facebook has been great in many ways, it has brought me together with family members in far off places who I would never have been able to contact. Family research is a massive hobby of mine and I can trace my family tree back to the mid 1700′s…a great use of being online and something I will now be looking to go back into and work on again with the same enthusiasm that I did five or six years ago before everything really started to fall apart.

When Facebook has good uses it is a fantastic tool…it has also allowed me to make some friends online in far off places that I would hate to lose now, people who in some cases I have never met but who make me laugh and share similar outlooks on things as I do…Facebook did that and I am grateful for it.

But Facebook also brings into your day to day existence the happy lives of others and when you suffer from depression and feel like you have nothing to offer the happy existence of babies and people in great jobs and having fantastic holidays can be a real kick in the teeth…the desire to post hurtful comments to burst a bubble or two gets strong and is a genuine issue…that isn’t the person I am but I can understand how jealousy of others ‘perfect lives’ can really hurt a person who is on a down spiral.

The need to follow the day to day stuff is something that I am quitting, I have already deleted the Facebook App from my Blackberry and stopped checking the page when I am on the laptop, its not easy but amazing how much calmer not getting involved has made me these past few days. The next stage will be to strip the page down to just the essential people I need in my life, the true friends and family that I have around me…not being included in that may upset some people but those who really care won’t mind…having asked anyone who wanted to keep in touch to message me with their email addresses or whatever the fact that no-one did speaks volumes…those who know I am not going to walk away from them didn’t need to worry anyway, I already have their contact details…but some may be amazed when I am gone from their online world and they finally realise that the end has come!

We live in a fickle world online, and its a world I plan to leave as soon as possible…the use of the internet can be a fulfilling thing and an informative thing without the likes of a status or ‘friendship’ required to make it worthwhile. Some people who I genuinely cared about have gone from Facebook and not said a word, just deleted their accounts…and in a previous mindset I have often wondered how they could do that, just go without saying goodbye, but now I understand that need to clear the decks and stop living your life in the public arena online, and although I still struggle with the idea of just disappearing I can accept it. Needless to say I have adopted the long goodbye method but the end result will be the same.

Twitter is something that I will not be quitting, but I will be removing it back to the bare bones as well, because I use Twitter best for getting information and I don’t really need to interact with anyone to do that, the information is there if you just know how to find it…I check my twitter feed all the time as I am a self confessed news junkie and I love that aspect of it…the people who I have interacted with through that medium are pretty sound folk, and yes in the main they share my interests and views, that is what makes it a completely different thing to Facebook…and why it will survive the removal of my online existence although interactions will be severely reduced in the coming weeks as I find new uses for the time on my hands.

Privacy has always been an issue with the online world, doing a google search on yourself can sometimes throw up some things that you maybe didn’t realise you had placed in a public domain, not that I have ever found anything online about myself I wasn’t sharing anyway but the people who complain (and Facebook is a killer for it) about privacy setting etc need to just follow a simple thought…if you don’t want it made public, don’t put it online!! I learned that lesson with the news story issue a few weeks back I blogged about and it is very true…if you don’t put it online then it will usually stay offline!!

So anyway, I have had a bit of a ramble here today but the crux of it is that this will be the final post on this blog. I doubt anyone will care too much anyway and stopping blogging will just be one way I will start to remove myself from living life as an online entity…the changes on Facebook and Twitter will complete that process in the weeks ahead but the blog dies today…two years after the blog really took off it will quietly slip away just as befits an old friend…I shall remember the happy times and leave it at that.

And so, thank you if you have read all the way to the end of this post, and an even bigger thank you if you are one of the people who subscribed to the blog in the past couple of years…I hope I haven’t bored you too much with my rambling on…The final thought of the Grumpy Old Man is that he doesn’t want to be grumpy anymore…you get one shot at life and I have made about as much of a mess at it as I possibly can…hopefully there may only be one way to go from here!

Take care and goodbye….

Trainspotting….A lifetime love affair!

The Railways have always held a fascination for me, it comes from being the Grandson of a Railway Driver…or to be more precise a Locomotive Engineer as my Grandfather liked to be known!

Tales of crossing the Forth Bridge during the war pulling freight and passengers as the German bombers flew overhead on their way to the Clyde were passed on to me as a young child. Sadly my Grandfather died when I was only 5 and my memories of him are pretty limited but he instilled in me a love of the Railways just by the fact that it had been his life.

He worked out of Dunfermline as a driver of Steam Locomotives for the LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) and then latterly had driven the first classes of Diesel working for British Railways after Nationalisation. He retired in the mid 1960′s around the time of the Beeching Cuts…I still have his BR Cap…something I will never part with.

I just finished watching a 4 DVD set about the Beeching Railway cuts and couldn’t help thinking and wondering what he had made of it at the time. He did learn to drive the new Diesels so I guess he was prepared to go with the flow even as close to his retirement as it came about.

Growing up in Blairgowrie meant no access to a local railway as the line to Blair had closed in 1955 but the Station building survived until the 80′s and I often walked along the old lines through Rosemount as a kid. Depending on which way the wind was blowing it was still possible to hear the freight trains clattering through Coupar Angus each night on their way north to Aberdeen via Forfar or south to Perth until that line also closed in 1982. I often had my window open a bit to hear the night train going through before I felt able to sleep. My weekends were often spent in Dundee or Perth watching the trains and collecting numbers in my little Ian Allen Trainspotting guide, my Dad was responsible for keeping an eye on me as my Mum went off and did the shopping.

Trips away usually ended up in a model shop where something would be purchased to add to my growing model railway in my bedroom…It had started with an N Gauge layout that in fairness was really more my Dad’s, my first model was an Inter City 125 set I got one Christmas when I was 8…a simple oval track soon found its way onto a board and from there my model grew into quite a nice little layout.

The N gauge layout was sold off and the proceeds ploughed straight into the new OO Gauge layout. Everyone had a job to do…My Dad was in charge of finance…he paid for most of the layout…My Mum was in charge of Construction, she would sit for hours making up building kits and painting things for the layout and I was in charge of making sure the trains ran on time…Scotrail had nothing on me when it came to organising a timetable.

And so from the age of 8 to around 15 my model railway grew and then sadly life catches up on you and other things take over and the model was finally taken apart and sold off…well not all of it was…I still have a few of the engines that are no doubt worth a few bob these days given that the models of 30 odd years ago were slightly more sturdy than some on sale today for the inflated prices they command.

I really was Railway daft though as a kid, and if I am being honest I still am.

I cannot walk past a moving train, I always stop and look no matter where I am. I was never particularly mechanically minded so it must be the aesthetics, who knows! All I know is that I still like trains, the highlight of today’s dog walk was the three trains that passed beneath me as I crossed a bridge over the mainline here in Edinburgh.

The hours I spent as a kid in Perth Station having paid my 6 pence for a platform ticket (those were the days!) were happy hours…wandering around the platforms waiting for the next train to arrive…I was easily amused as a child!

I collected everything I could get my hands on to do with railways, I had magazines everywhere, and books…life was pretty simple!

Whenever a steam engine was running an excursion locally I had to be there. The Union Of South Africa was a popular locomotive on the tracks around that time and my Dad also took me to Perth to see The Flying Scotsman…an amazing sight for a young trainspotter as I was then!!!

The 24th of November 1984 was the day we headed to York for a day trip to the world famous Railway Museum…the date I remember well as it was the same day that St Johnstone beat Partick Thistle 7-3 in Glasgow…I remember not being able to get the score anywhere whilst in England…no mobiles or internet in those days…and it wasn’t until we got back to Perth and my Mum collected us from the station with a copy of that evening’s Sporting Post along for the ride that I got the result…strange the things you remember!

The journey home was also memorable as the lights on the train failed at Newcastle and we travelled from there to Edinburgh in complete darkness…pitch dark in the carriage bar a little light from the moon…never forget that!

Its nearly 30 years now since I visited the museum in York…I must go back sometime!

We travelled to Cupar to visit the model railway exhibition on a regular basis and I also got to help out the Perth Model Railway Club when they attended an Exhibition in the main hall of Blairgowrie High School one year…it didn’t get much better than that for me!

Of course I always dreamt of working on the Railways, it almost came true in the late 80′s when I applied to join BR as a guard (no conductors back then…you were a guard!).

I was interviewed at Perth Station initially, an interview that was ticking along fine until I was asked why I wanted to work on the Railways…I mentioned my Grandad and also the fact that I was wearing his watch that was given to him when he retired and had been left to me when he passed away…one of the men interviewing me asked to see it and after a quick couple of questions it transpired that he had known my Grandad when he first joined the railways in Fife as a young man himself…after that the interview consisted of a chat about him and my Grandad and I was passed on to the second stage of the process.

A letter soon arrived in the post with two free return tickets to Glasgow for the two day course I had to attend…The first day was all about co-ordination tests and observation which I passed with flying colours…it felt like a dream was within my grasp…then came day two!

A few weeks before I travelled to Glasgow for the BR tests I had suffered a severe dose of pleurisy which had pretty much floored me for a couple of weeks…I thought the worst was behind me but on day two of my BR tests I had to sit a medical…the doctor handed me a tube attached to a machine and asked me to blow into it! To say my lungs were shot to bits would be an understatement and I could barely blow into the tube for more than a second or two before I felt a pain and then had to cough…and that was it!

The train journey home that night was just a numb feeling…having a dream shattered is painful…in this case it was both physically and mentally painful…and when the letter arrived a few days later to finally kill off my dream I was in absolute bits about it. I could have waited a couple of years and re-applied…but life moves on and it never happened!

Where would I be today if that day in Glasgow hadn’t happened as it did…what if?

There is a saying ‘What’s for you won’t go by you’…I guess it just wasn’t meant to be! But my love of the Railways didn’t die that day in Glasgow…that was for sure!

When I lived in Ireland I managed to take the train from Limerick to Dublin on a couple of occasions, Iarnród Éireann as a Railway operator is how I always imagined British Railways was in its heyday, basic but functional! Sitting in some of the older carriages they used back when I travelled (they have upgraded a lot in the past couple of years) was like stepping back in time to the 70′s and 80′s of British Rail…nostalgic to say the least!

And now, well no model railway exists but there is always the Train Sims on the PC to pass the odd hour when I am bored…but no matter what happens to the network I will always stop and watch when a train passes by.

People laugh at ‘trainspotters’…but its no different to any hobby and everyone comes to it for a personal reason…mine was my Grandad and my fascination with the job he had done…I will never apologise to anyone for that…in a way he was my hero, I just never got to know him well enough to tell him that!

Is this what Journalism amounts to these days?

This morning I found out about the death in Algeria of someone who I knew of…someone who wasn’t a friend, someone who I didn’t attend school ‘with’ but who was at the same High School as I attended for a period of time that I was also there and someone who was known to many who lived around the town I grew up in.

The person involved died at the hands of terrorists…murdered by those who have no regard for human life.

He died just doing his job in the middle of the desert…

In response to hearing of his death I wrote a short item on my Facebook page and included a tweet on my twitter account offering my condolences to his family and friends…his true friends…those who knew him well and grew up with him.

You do these things without really thinking of the aftermath…you do these things because it is something that feels right to do…you do it because you care!

Just after lunchtime my sister texted me to ask me why STV News online was quoting my tweet and calling me a ‘family friend’.

To say I was surprised was an understatement, nowhere in the tweet or anything I had posted online did I claim to know the person as a friend, I knew them as someone who attended the same school, who I knew to see in the street and no more than that.

Upon looking at the website concerned not only was my tweet quoted in its wrong context but the whole article consisted of my tweet, another tweet attributed to the local MP (who may or may not actually do their own tweets or may delegate that to a member of their staff) and a large part of the article was attributed to a ‘spokesperson’ for an organisation the deceased had been a member of in which they had spoken of him in very personal terms…this information was lifted directly from the organisations Facebook page and put into the article word for word…the person who wrote it although using a public forum obviously didn’t write it as a ‘spokesperson’ but as a personal friend and it wasn’t designed for use in a news article.

This is journalism today…this is what it amounts to…no permission asked to use quotes or information…nothing checked for accuracy…just cut and paste…CUT and PASTE!!!

The article that was put on Facebook has been removed, at the request of the family after unwanted press intrusion is the reason given…so those who knew the deceased cannot even express their condolences in that forum now thanks to the reporter for the STV online news who earns a salary for CUTTING and PASTING!!!

I sent an email to STV News as soon as my tweets’s inclusion was brought to my attention…I made clear that I was not a family friend and had never claimed to be, merely someone who knew the deceased at school…not even a school friend!

The family of the deceased didn’t need to read quotes from people being reported as family friends…people who they have no idea who they are…it was distressing to me to think that anyone in his family had read that and wondered who I was and why was I making quotes to the press claiming to be a family friend.

STV got my email and changed the text of the article…they changed my tweet’s details to say that it now came from a ‘former school friend’.

How they managed to come to that conclusion after I had explained how I knew of the deceased staggers me…again his actual school friends might be right to wonder a) who I am and b) why am I claiming to be a friend from his school days! We are not even the same age!

I emailed them again and demanded that the whole quote be removed straight away before any more distress was caused to those grieving for a friend and family member…they should have deleted it after the first email I sent…it took two before the reference was finally removed from the article.

The remainder of the article remains online, very little fact and a lot of information that was never meant to be placed on a news website under any context.

I doubt the family and friends will read this…if they do then I want to say a heartfelt sorry for any distress or distraction that I have inadvertently caused. My message was one of condolence for their loss, no more and no less!

STV News should be ashamed of itself for this level of journalism…it does them no credit to make up articles from sources such as twitter and facebook…it shows a lazy attitude to the truth…the person who wrote it…sorry…the person who ‘cut and pasted’ the article is not a journalist…they are the lowest of the low!

Today may well be the day my attitude to Twitter and Facebook changes…I know my privacy settings on Facebook mean that only those I know can read what I post…although there is always a chance others can ‘cut and paste’!!!

My Twitter account is now private, and will remain so…and those who receive my tweets will be checked and as soon as I can I will remove any ‘journalists’…I will not be a source for their lazy attitude to the truth.

I may even delete both…today is a day I feel that to have a twitter and facebook account is just not worth it.

Once again…my heartfelt condolences to the true friends and family of the deceased…today I have learned a lesson and it is one that I will need to consider closely as I decide whether continuing on Twitter and Facebook is worth it given the outcome I have witnessed today.

It hasn’t been one of my better days for sure!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eyewitness – Or Bullshitter – You Decide!

So today a Helicopter hit a crane in London and crashed…sad story, tragic accident and a couple of fatalities!

Enter stage left a breed of people who I quite frankly loath…Eyewitnesses!

What is going on with these people…they see a TV camera at the sight of a disaster and they just disengage their brains and talk absolute and utter bollocks to a TV camera…absolute bollocks that under the slightest bit of cross examination would be torn to shreds as the complete crap it is but under rolling TV News rules it has to be broadcast to turn the disaster into a watchable crisis!

Twitter went mad this morning as the accident was reported, people posted pictures online showing the scene…it was quite informative if they just posted a picture, when they add their spin it becomes less informative by the second!

But the masters of bullshit don’t usually take long to get on the scene…BBC/SKY and the rest of them…and then the fun begins…

‘what did you see???’….’tell our viewers what happened?’

And then the brain’s disengage!

One man claimed that the Helicopter hit the building where he was standing…maybe it had…lets question further…oh he took a photograph on his phone so he will have a real close up of the devastation given he just claimed it came within feet of actually hitting him…oh, hang on…the picture shows the scene of devastation right enough…about 1000 yards away!!!!

Now at this point I want the reporter to say…’Sir, you are obviously talking utter bollocks, that helicopter didn’t hit the building where you were… just missing you…it crashed about half a mile away…why are you wasting my time with your fantasy story?’

But they don’t…they suck up the bullshit and then show it over and over again!!

WHY?

When I see an eyewitness to a disaster I want to see shock, and maybe even blood to prove how close they were…Any normal person seeing a crash would be quite shocked initially and maybe for a good while after…anyone who dives in front of a TV camera to tell everyone what happened should be immediately struck off the list of people put on air…but the wilder the fantasy they tell, the less they are challenged on the facts and the more their utter crap is broadcast!

It must be quite distressing for those who maybe have relatives injured or killed in a disaster when they hear these people talking from the scene…especially as they are desperate for information to understand what has happened to a loved one or friend…and instead of hearing some facts they are treated to the wild eyed fantasy rantings of a lunatic who just wants to get on the TV.

The whole issue of eyewitnesses needs regulated…until the Police have taken a statement (and believe me they would soon know the bullshitters and dismiss them) then no-one should be allowed onto a broadcast to make a statement…lets see how the news organisations deal with that! They might actually have to do their job and report some facts rather than making a sensational piece of television in the hope that people will stay glued to their rolling coverage.

Its just a hate of mine…some folk maybe like watching these goons…there are enough clips of their wilder rantings on you tube to suggest that some like listening to them…I just don’t think a serious news organisation should give them airtime and oxygen when relatives of the injured and dead might be watching!

Now…did I ever tell you about the time that I witnessed a plane hurtle out of the sky, bounce 50 times across a lake before doing a loop the loop and landing tail first on top of a man who was eating an ice cream!!! It really happened, I saw it with my own eyes!

In appreciation of genius…Luis Suarez!

I notice the media are back to making up their usual destabilising stories about footballers in the transfer window…As usual they like to turn their attention to Luis Suarez at Liverpool…and I reckon they are completely wrong on this one!

Their story is thus…without the Champions League Liverpool cannot hope to hold on to Suarez! But they simplify matters because I actually believe irrespective of how this or next season pans out that Suarez is going nowhere.

The guy is a footballing genius, simple!

But more importantly than that…he seems to ‘get’ Liverpool and what the club means to its supporters. He is the star of our team, and he seems to thrive on that status…look at how he reacts to the younger players like Suso and Sterling when he is around them…they idolise him and he in turn spurs them on…look at his reaction with Steven Gerrard when Stevie had played a sublime ball to him into the box the other night for him to score against Sunderland…the looks on their faces said it all…they play well together and they do so in a way that works for both!

Lets get the ‘racism’ issue out the way here…I don’t believe, and never have, that Suarez is a racist! We love to simplify matters in this country and our way is the only way…its why so many Brits bugger off to Spain to live because they actually cannot stand living here but when they get there they like to insist that the Spanish conform to their ways rather than their native ways…Its been going on for years since the ‘Empire’…and its the tiny minded attitude that fails completely to accept that other countries and continents have different customs and language…and because they don’t conform to our way they MUST be wrong…its petty and stupid and it sums up the attitude to the Suarez incident with Evra perfectly!

I cannot stand the ‘N’ word…never use it in conversation…but I am open minded enough to accept that it can have different meanings in different continents and even the tiniest bit of research can bear that out…its just the small minded who cannot be bothered to do that research and scream racist as they jump on a media bandwagon!

The club got slated for its response…but for me its only crime was not explaining why it responded as it did…it allowed the media to set the agenda and lost the whole point of why it supported the player.

Anyway, thankfully the player has been able to put up with the narrow minded attitude of white van man and his ‘S*n’ paymasters and Suarez can now be viewed for the on-field football rather than anything else.

And its on the field that Suarez has become King, he has pretty much single handedly dragged the side to the transfer window where help and reinforcements  are now on their way…and for that he deserves the appreciation of every Liverpool supporter.

The team are starting to perform exactly how I imagine Brendan Rodgers wants them too, and its just inconsistency now that is holding them back…and the consistency will come as the squad takes shape! Players like Jordan Henderson are starting to find their way at last, Sterling and Suso are incredible prospects for the future who are already shining at a young age week in week out…Joe Allen has potential and Lucas is just needing some luck to avoid any more injuries. Agger and Skrtel at the back are what they are and the young lads who are getting experience alongside them will learn an awful lot in that defence! Enrique has been growing with each week and once this injury is behind him he will continue to be a vital part of the team. The signs are all there…Brendan will get this right if he is given the backing and finances when required.

And the main man is Luis Suarez…

Suarez is thriving on being the star of the team and its one of the many reasons why I think he will stay…yes he could play on a bigger stage but he seems to believe he can get there with Liverpool and as he inspires the lads around him I reckon he may be on to something…Liverpool may be seen as struggling, but the football at times this season has been brilliant to watch and as the bits of the jigsaw fall into place they could easily go on a run that takes them into the top 4 and a Champions League qualifying spot…if they are this close given the inconsistency in the 1st half of the season then there is no reason why they cannot achieve more once the issues are ironed out…all Liverpool fans could name three defeats so far this season that shouldn’t have happened…if they hadn’t lost those games… the potential 9 points thrown away… Liverpool could have been sitting third now!!!

I don’t get this feeling of despair I read from some on my twitter feed and on the forums…I understood it fine when Hodgson was the boss but those days are gone now…I believe Brendan Rodgers can turn this club around and put it back into the top positions in the league…maybe not title challengers for a season or two because that needs finance which the club is held back on by the size of Anfield etc but success breeds success and as the team competes so the better players will want to come back and before long the team could easily be chasing the silverware again.

And at the heart of that team I believe will be Luis Suarez…the media are lazy, they want to write something so they will write the negative…but I think they are so far off the mark with Suarez as to be laughable! He is worth a lot more to Liverpool on the field than the finances he would bring if sold…and whilst I am not naive enough to say that a stupid offer might not prise him away I just don’t think he is in a mind to leave…look into his eyes when he scores, look at the smile on his face…look at how he reacts with the players around him…he ‘gets’ Liverpool…he could be one of the all time greats and I think that is exactly what he is looking for.

 

 

My Kindle Year in 2012 and what’s ahead in 2013…

So…A Blog about books, or more precisely a blog about what’s on my Kindle…books I have read in the past year and those awaiting my interest in 2013.

Throughout 2012 my brain managed to consume 71 books…some long, some not so long and some as part of a series! Each offering their own little world to enter on the nightshift of life as my insomnia took hold!

I have said it before and will say it again…I love my Kindle…(Amazon’s tax position aside) I would be lost without it now. I used to read books but not many, tending to dip in and out of them and read the bits that appealed to me, gaining the knowledge I wanted and discarding the chaff…but since getting my Kindle I have learned to love reading again and especially novels!

I have no interest in the ‘classics’, that to me is a tedious way to spend time, no for me its thrillers, political and military as well as crime!

When I was still reading paper books it used to be Tom Clancy novels, then I moved on to Vince Flynn…but all the time I tended to revert to ‘real life’ books like commentary on historical events or biographies!

I started 2012 with the aim of reading one authors novels as a series throughout the year mixed in with anything else that took my fancy…the novels I chose were those of Jack Higgins and his series based around the exploits of his ex-IRA enforcer Sean Dillon…19 books in total of which I read 13 before losing interest…the remaining 6 stare at me each time I look at the menu on my Kindle but I doubt I will read them, when an author loses their reader with repetitive writing there seems little point in continuing! My gripe? The use of certain phrases that seemed to me to be lazy writing…sometimes when you read a novel and the story starts to get complicated the bits of it where a character might offer a recap of a situation during the story often help to remind you of the complex bits…Jack Higgins doesn’t do this, when a character recaps something to another character in his novels he flies past it with the phrase ‘and so he told him/her/them’… and he moves the story on…it happened so many times it started to annoy and then he lost me as a reader! Others may like to skirt past the repetition but for me sometimes the recap is good, not always but sometimes!

Anyway that was Jack Higgins…

I don’t want to make this a book review blog, that is something I might do later in the year depending on how I feel, and this isn’t school!!

So what have I enjoyed?

Well there were a couple of Vince Flynn novels that were eagerly read as soon as they appeared, he is a really good author and captures a reader from start to finish and his Mitch Rapp novels are fantastic pieces of escapism! The first novel to become a film is due to go into production this year with Bruce Willis seemingly involved as a tough CIA trainer character called Stan Hurley…if it transfers well from the page to the big screen it should be a great film and there is a whole franchise of films then waiting to be made!

In real crime I read ‘The Bus Stop Killer’ about the murder of Milly Dowler by Levi Bellfield…harrowing stuff…as was ‘3096 days’ the story of the childhood kidnap and captivity of Natascha Kampusch in Austria! I also enjoyed Tony Lambrianou’s ‘Inside the Firm – The untold story of the Kray Twins’… sometimes real life makes as good a story as any author can find in their imagination.

I read a few Biographies – ‘Memoirs of a Fruitcake’ by Chris Evans and Rob Lowe’s ‘Stories I only tell my friends’…a good biography well told can happily fill a few hours for me!!

In Sport it was ‘The Death of Ayrton Senna’ by Richard Williams as well as ‘Brian and Peter – A right pair’ by Maurice Edwards about the relationship between Brian Clough and Peter Taylor.

But all that aside…my top books read in 2012 were as follows…

Mike Gayle’s ‘My Legendary Girlfriend’ and ‘Mr Commitment’…never thought I would enjoy male angst novels but Mike Gayle is superb and funny as well as being spot on!!!

Ian Rankin’s ‘The Complaints’ and ‘The Impossible Dead’…more of him in a minute!

‘Riding Rockets’ by NASA Astronaut Mike Mullane.

‘I am the Secret Footballer’ by ‘The Secret Footballer’!!!

‘Sink the Belgrano’ by Mike Rossiter.

‘Killing Kennedy’ by Bill O’Reilly

And my favourite read of 2012…’die Stunde X’ by Shaun Stafford!

Now this was an odd choice, a book about the alternative history of the Nazi’s winning World War 2 and the story of the resistance to them in 1994 occupied Britain! It grabbed me on page one and didn’t let go until the final words at the end…well written, researched and gripping in its storytelling…I can’t recommend it enough and once your mind gets used to the German words for various streets and towns you settle into it and enjoy the ride…it is gruesome in parts, graphic throughout but the main characters draw you in to them and you start to root for them as they battle those who rule them…its worth the tiny download fee from Amazon anytime!

And so to 2013…what is in my reading next folder on my Kindle…

Well my chosen author this year is Ian Rankin! Having read two of his newer novels in 2012 I decided to go back to the beginning of his Inspector Rebus novels and work my way through them during the months ahead…I started in late 2012 and so far have read the first 5 with his sixth novel ‘Mortal Causes’ my current read!

I haven’t really watched the TV adaptations so the stories about the gritty Edinburgh cop are all new to me and that makes it more enjoyable. I will maybe watch the DVD’s once I have read the books but they come first! Sadly I can’t stop myself picturing Ken Stott as Rebus as I read them (skipping the fact that John Hannah played him in the early TV series)…it’s a curse but doesn’t distract from my enjoyment of the books! Its great to read about Edinburgh, the city I live in, through the eyes of Rebus as well as other local areas around Fife and Scotland that I know so well…Five read, sixth one being read and a further twelve awaiting my attention…Cannot recommend Ian Rankin highly enough to anyone looking for a good crime novel with believable plots and characters.

I also intend to stay in Edinburgh with another smaller collection known as the ’44 Scotland Street series’ by Alexander McCall Smith…I haven’t started the first one yet but look forward to it having read some good reviews.

I have Mike Gayle’s third novel ‘Turning Thirty’ ready for when I need a bit of light relief from the gritty Edinburgh life and I am also working my way through the fantastic work about the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989 by Phil Scraton…a book well worth revisiting in light of last years revelations about the cover up and lies told by the police during that sad and completely avoidable disaster.

And the first completed book of 2013?

‘Diary of a Grumpy Old Git’ by Tim Collins…Could have been written about me!!!

 

As one door shuts…another one slams behind you…Goodbye 2012!

 

So here we are…December 31st 2012…another year (nearly) over and a new one (just about) to begin ((apologies to John Lennon))

What can I say about 2012 that won’t spiral me into another depression…

Actually not very much but its nearly over now and dwelling on it, other than for the benefit of a final blog post of the year, seems a bit futile really!

Its been a funny old year really…the intense build up to the end of the world and the crushing disappointment for some that it didn’t happen will be a personal highlight for me…the world needs the gullible more than the gullible need the world.

2012 brought us the London Olympics…the greatest show on earth…until the next one!

The sport was good, the hype and all that went with it wasn’t. If the BBC thought for one minute they could get away with it then we would still have a 24 hour channel on freeview dedicated to the best bits…on a constant loop…reminding us of a ‘fantastic’ summer of sport where we all came together as ‘one nation’…they would…I just know they would!

But the BBC is distracted now, by Jimmy Savile, disgusting specimen of a human being and strangely the saviour of the BBC who surely will never allow the likes to happen again!

Thankfully the fury felt over Savile has probably saved us from the BBC’s planned second 24 hour freeview channel called ‘The Jubilee – the year we became One Nation cheering old Queenie’…yes I am sure they probably planned that one as well!

Truth is we aren’t one nation…we haven’t been one nation for years, fractured mostly since 1979 when Thatcher (the bitch who stole my school milk) began her reign of terror amongst the poor and disadvantaged!

Our current Government is doing all it can to finish her work…

The saddest thing about Thatcher these days is that the bitch is still breathing good air, air that could be far better used in my opinion! We get the odd scare transmitted as Breaking News that the cow is close to death but she is still among us…maybe 2013 will do us at least one favour and cut off that particular air supply!

Some find is distasteful that so many of us…and I do mean many…wish to see her gone…you wait till she does cack it and see the joy on the streets, and it won’t have anything to do with tasteful mourning I promise you…no union jacks will be deployed on the streets of London the day she heads to her hole…but the smiles of the masses will be genuine!  She destroyed the lives of millions, those that love her and fawn over her will find out just how many they are outnumbered by when the day comes…brace yourself if you are a Thatcher fan…and stop reading my blog please, I don’t want you anywhere near it!

Anyway I have moved off topic, 2012…where were we?

Obama was re-elected, and hopefully now with the shackles of standing for election again removed he will become the leader many hoped for back in the heady days of 2008…the world needs a bit of leadership now…step forward Barack and do the job fella!!

The world is actually in a complete bloody mess for millions, no jobs, no money, crumbling standards of daily life…its a big task to fix but someone needs to…because the default setting of capitalism when its theory hits the shitter is war…and if a distraction is needed it happily sacrifices the lives of many to cover for its failings…beware capitalism with its back to the wall…its dangerous!

On a personal level I am happy to see the back of another year, getting older hurts but not as much as having regrets at the world you live in…2013 can always be better, it starts with a clean slate and plans (but never resolutions!) and we take it from there…It needs to be viewed as the opportunity it is, albeit a starting point that is pretty much in your own mind but a starting point all the same…a more positive outlook might be achieved, who knows…time will tell.

Tomorrow has one big advantage in Scotland…it means the Independence Referendum is ‘next year’…it doesn’t seem so far away then! Just long enough for the Conservatives in London to screw us over some more and drive in a bigger wedge…another 18 months of what we have had and it might turn out closer than some think!

I want Independence because I don’t think the nation that has exported learning, invention and literature around the globe should be afraid to stand on its own and be a nation (again)…I don’t hate the rest of the UK, I want the good folks of England, Wales and (all) Ireland to be Independent too…run your own affairs for your own people without anyone dragging you down…we are not ‘better together’ its just a myth…be bold, be brave…be yourselves!!

Today is the day known as Hogmanay here in Scotland, I am long past getting excited about it now, those days died with Scotch & Wry ending on the TV as our end of year highlight…New Year’s shows that were filmed in October are as fake as our ‘one nation’…we can do better, and in an Independent Scotland we must insist on ‘LIVE’ shows at Hogmanay from 2015 onwards…it should be number one in our plans for the future…Others don’t get how the Scots feel about New Year, sadly I am losing the feeling too…we need to claim it back again and not just as an excuse for a drink!

Alcohol may be my problem…tomorrow it will be 2 years since it last passed my lips, 729 days and counting and I feel no need to bring it back into my life…I will celebrate the advent of 2013 and day 730 with nothing stronger than coffee and orange juice…so on reflection alcohol isn’t my problem with New Year…maybe I am just getting old!!

2012 did at least turn out to be a good year for the Hillsborough families as justice moved a step nearer and the truth was told…as a Liverpool supporter it means a lot to me that the injustice of 1989 is finally coming to an end and the lives of the 96 who died that day will hopefully be remembered without a stain on their memory…we always knew the truth, now the world has finally caught up and it is an important thing for all supporters of all clubs that this blight on history is finally put to rest!

Liverpool FC have had an interesting year to say the least, its all about change and transition…it will get better, it may take a bit of time but it will get better…of that I am sure!

And my Scottish team St Johnstone…well, let’s hope 2013 sees the back of the idiot who claims to be a manager but proves his grasp on reality is sadly on a different planet everytime he opens his mouth…I am always tolerant of managers, but any manager who claims that a small club like Saints getting into a European competition is an ‘inconvenience’ deserves all he gets in my opinion…a club that size qualifying for a Europa spot is probably a pinnacle,  for many supporters it may only happen a few times in your life…the fans deserve those little rewards, and even if the club had played its youth team because it was ‘short’ on players as he seemed to be claiming then they would still have enjoyed the trip abroad to support the team…Steve Lomas seems to think its all about his own career…its not Steve…its about the supporters who pay week in week out to watch…they deserve the European trips, your job is just to get on with it and shut up!

So here we stand on the cusp of a new year…no ‘big’ events seem to be on the horizon…just surviving will be the main thing!

We are thankful that those we care about are still around, and if they aren’t, then we think of them and remember the times when they were!

I want to thank everyone who has bothered to waste a few seconds of their time reading anything on this blog during 2012, it is time you will never get back…so thank you!

If you agreed with any of my ramblings then read on, if you didn’t then  fair enough, I don’t need your feedback, this is my blog and my thoughts…if I wanted to read your thoughts I would read your blog…and some I do!!

I hope that as the clocks tick over around the world into 2013 you all have a peaceful and prosperous New Year, keep those you care about close and in your thoughts…help those who need it and don’t judge everyone in their shoes by the words of a few who would rule by division…everyone is just a conversation away from having no job, no money and hardship…if you have a job, and money, and a good life then don’t forget that!! Those you judge today might be your equal tomorrow!! How would you want others to think of you in that situation…

Happy New Year to you all…Peace and Love!