Welcome Home Mark & Sarah

happy birthday George Harrison

George Harrison - Old Brown Shoe Lyrics

I want a love that's right but right is only half of what's wrong.
I want a short haired girl who sometimes wears it twice as long.
Now I'm stepping out this old brown shoe, baby, I'm in love with you.
I'm so glad you came here, it won't be the same now, I'm telling you.

You know you pick me up from where some try to drag me down
And when I see your smile replace every thoughtless frown.
Got me escaping from this zoo, baby, I'm in love with you.
I'm so glad you came here, it won't be the same now when I'mwith you.

If I grow up I'll be a singer wearing rings on every finger.
Not worrying what they or you say I'll live and love and maybe
someday
Who knows, baby, you may comfort me.
I may appear to be imperfect, my love is something you can't reject.
I'm changing faster than the weather if you and me should get together
Who knows, baby, you may comfort me.

That love of your, to miss that love is something I'd hate.
I'll make an early start, I'm making sure that I'm not late.
For you sweet top lip I'm in the queue, baby, I'm in love with you.
I'm so glad you came here, it won't be the same now when I'm with you.
I'm so glad you came here, it won't be the same now when I'm with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eai6-Ao8Xps

Jesus Blood

Gavin Byers explains the tale

In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song - sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads - and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet". This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sBZpv97aPo

Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism.

Deano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIstkuso98&mode=related&search=

Our Deano has his heart in Cheadle, but also follows the Reds I believe. The other Deano seems to be singing the Man City song!

Robert Mitchum

Born in 1917 from Norwegian parents, his dad died when he was a baby, crushed by a train. He was a prankster at school, eventually being expelled at 14. He then rode the railways and was pretty much a vagrant, eventually being arrested for begging and ending up on a chain gang...which he escaped from. He then travelled to California and worked for Lockheed. He was discovered as an actor in the 1940’s and became a B-movie star. He was arrested for marijuana possession in the 50’s but the case was dropped when it came out it was a set-up.

His work is synonymous with film noir - maybe his two most famous films are Cape Fear in '62 and The Night Of The Hunter in '55. He died in 1992.

He is said to have had a photographic memory and claimed to have urinated on Ava Gardner with her blessing...

Mancunian

Great Mancunian residents








Chaim Weizmann was a scientist, leader of the Zionist movement for almost 30 years (1917-1946), and the first President of the State of Israel. Born in Russia he joined the Zionist movement in 1901. In 1904, at the age of 30, Weizmann emigrated from Switzerland to Great Britain, taking a position as senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Manchester
His most famous scientific discovery was how to find TNT in the bark of trees helping the WW1 war effort for GB. Later Balfour offered him a Knighthood he turned it down asking instead for a home for his people. That led to Britain's “Balfour Declaration” in 1917.

The declaration's main point stated: “His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” In 1942, when the United States joined World War II, President Roosevelt asked Dr. Weizmann, who was staying in London at the time, to come to the United States to help find a solution to the problem of manufacturing synthetic rubber for the war effort. Weizmann accepted this request.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations Assembly decided to partition the land of Israel.

In February 1949, on Tu B'Shvat, the day the Knesset was established; Weizmann was elected President of the state. Dr. Chaim Weizmann died in his home in 1952 at the age of 78. At his request, he was buried in the courtyard of his home in Rehovot.
Were did he live in Manchester? Didsbury of course!

Stamp Out The Beatles

Puzzlers
Three men decide to settle their argument with a shoot out Mr White has a strike rate of one out of three Mr brown 2 out of three and Mr black 3 out of 3. If Mr white goes 1st what should he aim at in order to maximise the chances of him surviving?

Something peculiar links all of the following words what is it?
Banana, Dresser, Grammar, Potato, Uneven, Voodoo

If you have never eaten a bug or an insect it’s often described as biting into a glazed donut filled with custard. Yummy.

There is a notion going around at the moment that we are heading for a moneyless society were soon all transactions will be done electronically either online or with a card, personally I think this is as likely as the idea of a paperless office. We just don’t think like the experts want us to think. Everyone loves having cash and you will never get us to stop writing little notes on post its and the back of ciggie packets, didn’t Paul McCartney write out the lyrics to Yesterday on the back of 20 Silk Cut?

Puzzler Answer
Mr White would be best missing them both deliberately, this way he will not been seen as a threat leaving brown and black to shoot at each other. If brown kills black he then has a 50-50 chance of hitting brown, any other way he will defiantly be killed.

As to the words they are just a few examples of words that if you switch the 1st letter to the back they say the same backwards!

There is another notion in the world of philosophy regarding methods of communication one day it is said we will not only not need money or a paper filled office but words themselves will become redundant.

The two hemispheres of the brain can function separately and communicate silently through the corpus callosum; presumably one day we can connect two separate brains this way so that communication can be more direct and faster. Like a Siamese twined brain, the pathways from one set of neurons to another fusing over time into a complex method of communicating. if its one day possible to connect two human brains this way could it follow that one day you could connect a human brain to another animals brain, blending together two forms of thinking. If this was possible we might one day be able to know what it was like to be a dog, but since it can’t speak maybe it will be that we gain more of a sense of what is dogness without being able to describe it. Then maybe we will take brain burgers off the menu.

Haikus

Jack's Haikus

ONE-

Prayer beads on a holy book
my knees are cold

TWO-
In my medicine cabinet the winter
fly has died of old age

THREE-
Well here I am two PM
what day is it?

FOUR-
The tree looks like a dog
barking at heaven

God's Funeral

Thomas Hardy
Born: 2-6-1840
Birthplace: Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England
Died: 11-1-1928
Cremated, Westminster Abbey (excluding heart, buried at Stinsford)
God's Funeral by Thomas Hardy

I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar Following in files across a twilit plain A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.
II
And by contagious throbs of thoughtOr latent knowledge that within me layAnd had already stirred me, I was wroughtTo consciousness of sorrow even as they.
III

The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,At first seemed man-like, and anon to changeTo an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV

And this phantasmal variousnessEver possessed it as they drew along:Yet throughout all it symboled none the lessPotency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V

Almost before I knew I bentTowards the moving columns without a word;They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: --

VI

'O man-projected Figure, of lateImaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?Whence came it we were tempted to createOne whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII

'Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,We gave him justice as the ages rolled,Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII

'And, tricked by our own early dreamAnd need of solace, we grew self-deceived,Our making soon our maker did we deem,And what we had imagined we believed,

IX

'Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,Uncompromising rude realityMangled the Monarch of our fashioning,Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X

'So, toward our myth's oblivion,Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and gropeSadlier than those who wept in Babylon,Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI

'How sweet it was in years far hiedTo start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,To lie down liegely at the eventideAnd feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII

'And who or what shall fill his place?Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyesFor some fixed star to stimulate their paceTowards the goal of their enterprise?'...

XIII

Some in the background then I saw,Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,Who chimed as one: 'This is figure is of straw,This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!'

XIV

I could not prop their faith: and yetMany I had known: with all I sympathized;And though struck speechless, I did not forgetThat what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV

Still, how to bear such loss I deemedThe insistent question for each animate mind,And gazing, to my growing sight there seemedA pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI

Whereof, to lift the general night,A certain few who stood aloof had said,'See you upon the horizon that small light --Swelling somewhat?' Each mourner shook his head.

XVII

And they composed a crowd of whomSome were right good, and many nigh the best....Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloomMechanically I followed with the rest

Sly-stoned

Click here

Notes From The Edge-continued

IRAQ-Jala Talabani-President

On a recent visit to France Iraq’s president stayed at a hotel, the suite cost $13.000 per night the final bill was $500.000. On the flight home as is his tradition he gave envelopes of cash out to all the people on board from the security guys to the press as much as $100.000 in cash.

In Baghdad he lives in Saddam Hussein’s brother’s mansion, the guy was executed in January the noose ripped his head off.

The president’s wealth mainly comes from the oil revenue he got smuggled out of Iraq between 1991 and 2003.
In 2005 a coalition government was formed with Sunni, Shiites and Kurds. The new prime minister was Maliki who was backed by the Shiite militia leader Al-Sadr. His army took control of Saddam City which of course he has renamed Sadr City. He has resisted by armed struggle the Americans and is financially backed by the Iranian government.

The president feels if he can get Syria on his side and the Americans can finally militarily deal with Sadr he is home dry with just Al Quade to worry about.
We shall see.
The president has been involved in politics since the 1940s he made deals in the sixties with Saddam, has fought as a terrorist in Palestine proclaiming the Jew as the enemy of the Kurd. and becoming a Marxist. His hatred of America stemming in no little way from the massacre in 1998 of 5000 Kurds by chemical gas, at the time America supported Iraq and blamed Iran for this atrocity.
He lives a very complicated life of switching sides in order to keep his power and wealth. The Americans deal with him as he’s all the've got.
If the violence can be quelled by further violence the hope is to divide Iraq into three with an independent Kurdistan the middle for the Sunnis and the Shiites in the south.

In A Magpie's Eye

a Puzzler

Three men decide to settle their argument with a shoot out Mr White has a strike rate of one out of three Mr Brown two out of three and Mr Black three out of three.

If Mr white goes 1st what should he aim at in order to maximise the chances of him surviving?

secondly


Something peculiar links all of the following words what is it?

Banana
Dresser
Grammar
Potato
Uneven
Voodoo

If you have never eaten a bug or an insect it’s often described as biting into a glazed donut filled with custard. Yummy.

There is a notion going around at the moment that we are heading for a moneyless society were soon all transactions will be done electronically either online or with a card, personally I think this is as likely as the idea of a paperless office. We just don’t think like the experts want us to think. Everyone loves having cash and you will never get us to stop writing little notes on post its and the back of ciggie packets, didn’t Paul McCartney write out the lyrics to Yesterday on the back of 20 Silk Cut?

The puzzlers revealed


Mr white would be best missing them both deliberately, this way he will not been seen as a threat leaving brown and black to shoot at each other. If brown kills black he then has a 50-50 chance of hitting brown, any other way he will defiantly be killed.

As to the words they are just a few examples of words that if you switch the 1st letter to the back they say the same backwards!

There is another notion in the world of philosophy regarding methods of communication one day it is said we will not only not need money or a paper filled office but words themselves will become redundant.

The two hemispheres of the brain can function separately and communicate silently through the corpus callosum; presumably one day we can connect two separate brains this way so that communication can be more direct and faster. Like a Siamese twined brain, the pathways from one set of neurons to another fusing over time into a complex method of communicating. if its one day possible to connect two human brains this way could it follow that one day you could connect a human brain to another animals brain, blending together two forms of thinking. If this was possible we might one day be able to know what it was like to be a dog, but since it can’t speak maybe it will be that we gain more of a sense of what is dogness without being able to describe it.
Then maybe we will take brain burgers off the menu.

Notes From The Edge (Week 3)

Smithereens
I love the incomprehensible, for instance “I will blow you to smithereens “does anyone know what a smithereens really is.
Perhaps the best response to such obtuseness is admitting you don’t know. Apparently sandpits in play grounds are making a come back after years of being seen as a litter trays for rodents and therefore beyond the pale hygienically for toddlers, child psychologists have stated “sand is an important play element because children learn how to shape their worlds” when this was put to the guy laying out a new sand pit he shrugged and said “I don’t know what that means”
By the way smithereens are a host of broken fragments (Noun Plural). If that makes you any the wiser.

Google
Another word what does it mean well in one sense it’s a business, and this business
is currently scanning thousands of books a week from libraries around the world its intention is to scan every book ever published; nobody knows how many books there are maybe thirty two million? Google think the task will take ten years they already employ10.000 people and recruit 5o new employers a month. Their founding partnership of Brin & Page are worth 14 billion each. So the cost to scan 32 million books would be around £800 million which Google can easily afford.
The dictionary definition of the word Google is "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

Quark
"Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." This passage from James Joyce's Finnegan’s Wake, part of a scurrilous 13-line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Tristan legend, has left its mark on modern physics. The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds, and the poem is a squawk against the king that suggests the cawing of a crow. The word quark comes from the Standard English verb quark, meaning "to caw, croak," and also from the dialectal verb quawk, meaning "to caw, screech like a bird." It is easy to see why Joyce chose the word, but why should it have become the name for a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter? Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who proposed this name for these particles, said in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary that he had been influenced by Joyce's words: "The allusion to three quarks seemed perfect" (originally there were only three subatomic quarks). Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with (ô) not (ä), as Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such as Mark. Gell-Mann got around that "by supposing that one ingredient of the line 'Three quarks for Muster Mark' was a cry of 'Three quarts for Mister . . . ' heard in H.C. Earwicker's pub," a plausible suggestion given the complex punning in Joyce's novel. It seems appropriate that this perplexing and humorous novel should have supplied the term for particles that come in six "flavors" and three "colors."

The Naked Brothers

It had to happen I guess children playing pop music.

The band was formed five years ago when the two brothers ( Nat & Alex) jumped out of the bath together and began singing. I kid you not. There 12 and 9 years old now. Nat is the keyboard player and songwriter he wrote this tune when he was six Alex is the drummer. Look just watch it you think I am making this up don't you?

An Ode To The Cockroach

Cockroaches are fascinating they can bite and fly and they have the ability to regenerate limbs and have been know to live for a month without their head. Not sure if they would actually survive a nuclear war, but you never know.

Anyway here's a poem I found about the beautiful insect.

The cockroach

ST. ROACH by Muriel Rukeyser from The Gates, McGraw-Hill, 1976

For that I never knew you, I only learned to dread you, for that I never touched you,

they told me you are filth, they showed me by every action to despise your kind;

for that I saw my people making war on you, I could not tell you apart, one from another,

for that in childhood I lived in places clear of you,

for that all the people I knew met you by crushing you, stamping you to death,

they poured boiling water on you, they flushed you down,

for that I could not tell one from another only that you were dark, fast on your feet,

and slender.

Not like me. For that I did not know your poems And that I do not know any of your sayings And that I cannot speak or read your language

And that I do not sing your songs

And that I do not teach our children

to eat your food

or know your poems

or sing your songs But that we say you are filthing our food

But that we know you not at all.
Yesterday I looked at one of you for the first time.

You were lighter than the others in color, that was

neither good nor bad.
I was really looking for the first time.

You seemed troubled and witty.
Today I touched one of you for the first time.

You were startled, you ran, you fled away Fast as a dancer,

light, strange and lovely to the touch. I reach, I touch, I begin to know you.

The Saddest Song Ever Written

Lone Again Naturally

a tribute to Gilbert O'Sullivan. Is this the saddest song ever written. I think so. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCZGqcMZ6Jw

Within a little while from now
If I'm not feeling any less sourI promise myself to treat myself
And visit a nearby tower
And climbing to the top will throw myself offIn an effort to make it clear to who
Ever what it's like when you're shattered
Left standing in the lurch by the church
Where people saying: "My God, that's toughShe's tored him up"No point in us remaining
You may as well go home
Cause I did on my own
Alone again, naturaly
To think that only yesterday
I was cheerful, bright and gay
Looking forward to wouldn't do
The role I was about to play
But as if to knock me down
Reality came aroundAnd without so much, as a mere touch
Cut me into little peaces
Leaving me to doubtAbout God and His mercy
Or if He really does exist
Why did He desert me
And in my hour of needI truly am indeed
Alone again, naturally
It seems to me that there are more heartsbroken in the world that cant't be mended
Left unattendedWhat do we do? What do we do?
Alone again, naturally
And looking back over the years
When everyone stands and fears
I remember I cried when my father diedNever wishing to dry the tears
And at sixty-five years old
My mother, God rest her soul,
Couldn't understand why the only man
She had ever loved had been taken
Leaving her to stop with the a heart so badly broken
Despite encouragement from meNo words were ever spoken
And when she passed awayI cried and cried all day
Alone again, naturallyAlone again, naturally

Notes From The Edge (Week 2)

What’s going on in Russia?

The murder of a Russian journalist Politkovskaya and the former KGB agent Litvinenko last November put the spotlight back on Putin’s regime. Over 13 journalists have been murdered in Russia in recent years as well as other dissenting voices to his rule, especially anyone who dare condemn the 2nd Chechen war. Since the fall of communist rule brought in a period of reform but incredible decline and break up of the Soviet Union, the chaos years of the eighties and nineties have been taken over by extreme order and power. Russia now is pretty much a dictatorship run by the KGB with Putin the Tsar. Its rule is based on fear of a return to the communist state. Since its break up and the selling off of state assets a dozen people have become multi billionaires while the rest sent into abject poverty, social and health care have all but disintegrated. The average life expectancy of a male in today’s Russia is 59 younger than Pakistan or Bangladesh.
Since such recent chaotic times stability is everything and damn the cost. Control is the guiding slogan.
Now economically for the first time in years Russia feels powerful again it produces 30% of the worlds gas, it no longer looks to the IMF to bale it out since Putin came to power the gold reserves have gone from 12 billion to an incredible two hundred and seventy billion.
But still the country is dying, the population presently stands at 150 million, the rate its been falling over the last 10 years suggests it will be less than 100 million by 2050, as a result of the AIDS epidemic, mass poverty, and raging alcoholism.

What’s going on in India?
I fell asleep the other evening and I slipped into a dream woven into an analysis on India’s environment. I was swept away into India. I floated down a river flowing from Deli a polluted scum covered river like an open sewer. Which ended up being the main water sauce for 50 million people. My boat cut through the thick foam on the surface like cutting through ice.
I learned how India is self sufficient in terms of food; I wandered through a mustard field. Then I was in an allotment that was so big you couldn’t see the City that it was the centre off full of lush fruits and vegetables huge colourful plants.
The trip was 1st class with the BBC correspondent. Then went into a middle class house big ceilings 3 cars outside. We interviewed two children aged 7 and 9 who knew all about Einstein and world culture. They did a survey and seemed to have answers for all them worlds’ problems. The talked about how people needed to work together to save water because without water life would be tough.
In the end I got home and picked up my friends from the airport when they returned from their India trip and made them guess were id been the week before. The most vivid of dreams.

The Unaligned Countries

Ever wondered about those countries who dont bother with alliances or wars or just cant be bothered to be political or join monetry or economic unions, well suprisingly there are quite a few.

My favourite has to be Cormoros mainly as I have never heard of it, apparently its a collection of Islands off the coast of Madagascar population 70,000. Marvelous.

Heres the full list!
Afghanistan Algeria Angola Antigua and Barbuda Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Botswana Brunei Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia
Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Chile Colombia Comoros Congo
Côte d'Ivoire Cuba Democratic Republic of Congo Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic
Ecuador Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Grenada Guatemala
Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras India Indonesia Iran Iraq Jamaica Jordan
Kenya Kuwait Laos Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives
Mali Mauritania Mauritius Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal
Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea Oman Gambia Pakistan Palestine Panama
Papua New Guinea Peru Philippines Qatar Rwanda Saint Lucia Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines São Tomé and Príncipe Saudi Arabia Senegal
Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Somalia South Africa Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname
Swaziland Syria Tanzania Thailand Timor Leste Togo Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia
Turkmenistan Uganda United Arab Emirates Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela
Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe

Panda Sneeze

The Puzzler
Three men decide to settle an argument with a shoot out. The men are Mr Black, Mr Brown, and Mr White.
Mr Black has a hit rate of 1 out of 3. Mr Brown 2 out of 3. and Mr White 3 out of 3.
If they shoot in turn and Mr Black has first shot who should he shoot 1st if he as any chance of winningAnswer soon
The shortest day this year by the way is March 25th when the clocks go forward and we lose an hour making it a 23 hour day
check out this Panda sneezing

Oliver North on the Jihad

Part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ki75TYXFI
Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ki75TYXFI
Part Three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ki75TYXFI
Part Four
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ki75TYXFI

Notes From The Edge (Week 1)

In Florida yet another voting scandal: 18,000 votes lost in a November local election. The culprit? The e-vote machine that 5% of Americans use when casting their vote. Here on You tube is what can happen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JESZiLpBLE

Apparently Japanese tourists to America want more than anything to spend an evening with a typical American family in their home to sit down to a family meal; no family has yet taken up the offer despite the tourists promise to wash up after!

Apparently to be a real thinker of note these days it’s not good enough to think “out of the box” because true intelligent thought requires you to see there is in reality no box!
How about the story of the twenty pound note, a girl notices one in the street and asks her father permission to pick it up he refuses with the explanation “if it was a real one someone would have picked it up by now”.

Apparently we are heading for financial melt down again (see Karl Marx) a quote on modern economics stays with me. “Markets are meant to be greedy not fair. Efficient not sufficient. Good at short term allocation of scarce resources, nothing else. They were never meant to tell you how much is enough or how to fulfil the higher purpose of homo-sapiens.”

Apparently the latest scientific studies seem to show modern humans all descend from one woman living in Ethiopia 200,000 years ago. It seems she was a coastal dweller living off sea food, she journeyed probably with just one male across the red sea which at the time you could walk over say around 100.000 years ago, were she ended up in Israel from there here descendents crossed to south Asia and Australia around 60.000 years ago, another branch of her family made the journey 30.000 years later when what had been a dessert became passable and they could make their way up through Iraq to Turkey and hence to the rest of Europe. So Africa is the birthplace of civilization and in fact the first world after all not the third world. Curiously modern science seems to be dove tailing with the bible here with tales of an “Adam & Eve and crossings of the red sea. Just a thought.

Apparently a 28 eight year old white American Muslim convert is now Al Qaeda’s main spokesman. His father was a hippy singer, he himself as a teen was a keen death metal fan and even recorded some of his own music. Until he discovered the Koran became a Muslim and eventually went off to Pakistan and now somewhere in Afghanistan he broadcasts stuff like this. The geek who turned to Mecca.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N0tCriSjgc

Brains

Cheadle Town have had a Vinnie Braine, but how about actually eating a brain?

Brains are apparently a delicacy in parts of the USA; fried cow brains with scrambled eggs for breakfast. I know Bloom in Ulysses eats offal for breakfast so I guess it crosses the cultural divides.

A fried-brain sandwich is generally a sandwich with sliced calves' brains on sliced bread. Thinly sliced fried slabs of thinking matter on white toast.

Speaking of Ulysses, it is James Joyce's birthday this week (Feb 2nd). I'm on a Joyce pilgrimage this year, but more of that another time.

James Joyce, 115 Today!

Happy Birthday Mr Joyce for February 2nd! You would have been 115 today! This year I shall be going to Dublin for 'Bloomsday' to see his birthplace and to Trieste were he lived most of his life and then on to Zurich to see were he died. A personal pilgrimage which I will blog.

World Cups 2007

The answer to the puzzler: the shortest day of the year this year is not the obvious 21st of December, but the 25th of March, when the clocks go forward. We lose and hour so its a 23 hour day!

I am getting nostalgic. I was remembering the other day when BT was the Post Office and they used to have a telephone service caled DialADisc where you called a number and you could listen to any chart single. Those were the days when electricity was on a meter with a coin slot (not like today's top-up cards) which allowed you to make 50p "casts" in plasticine, fill the indentations with water, pop it in the freezer thus giving you perfectly-formed 50p ice pieces which you could then slot into your meter, letting you get free electricity. The beauty being the ice would melt taking all the evidence away. That wa before the meddling beurocrats stopped all the fun.

Onto the main topic of this post. The Six nations starts tomorrow which for me marks the beginning of this years sports callender, its non stop sport from here on in next up Cricket World Cup (March 16th - 28th April) by which time the footy season will be coming to a climax. Alas, the Gaelic Hurling and Football seasons start in May, around the time our football cup finals are held, which is great because that takes us into the summer. On June the 7th the West Indies come to Old Trafford for a test match, followed by Lancashire v Yorkshire on 8th of July. Then we're into July...Wimbledon, The Tour de France (which also starts on July 8th in London!) and then the Golf Open on 19th July.

On August 19th Shane Warne is at Old Trafford for a four day game. By August Cheadle Town will be back in the FA Cup and the football seaason with one more major event to come: The Rugby World Cup (Sept 7th - Oct 20th).

Should be a great year for sport, and this blog will be there, just in case you were wondering what we'll be up to this summer....

Dhani Harrison

Three stunningly funny videos from Liam Lynch , but whos the lad in the hat and isnt that him playing guitar with Liam!

Mashed Potato, Macca Style

What a way to kick things off...Paul McCartney making mashed potatoes!