Snowy Peaks

Well, today Tuesday, I awoke to see snow up on black mountain; weird or what for October ?
Went to the mountains of Mourne at the weekend with some students from Queen's, however the weather was really bad; rain and driving winds. Some hill walking was done and that was about it!! This morning, on going for a fry (cooked breakfast) in a cafe in Botanic the girl there was rude and I had to ask her did she get out of the wrong side of bed this morning. "No" she curtley answered ;very cross young woman so I paid up and left. The famous Belfast poet Michael Longley will be taking the creative writers group at Queen's tomorrow afternoon which will be good; I met him before and he is a very congenial warm person with a mighty handshake and laugh. BBC N.I have put a couple of poems on their Get Writing website, which is great to get my work out there !

New Academic Year Commences!

Haven't been on my blog for a while due to the fact I was working and that. Well things have changed in the student house, more new people have arrived and have moved in. Most seem well mannered and sociable something last years residents were definitely not. Now I know that there were bunch of odd bods last year who were, lazy, dirty and unfriendly. Today a german girl Christine made brownies and offered me one, it wasn't too bad to be honest. Sammy the fella from the Isle Of Man is generally good craic and never gives his tongue a chance, i.e. he is always conversing. The American girl Mellisa is well mannered but seems quiet to me and maybe a little shy, but it is her first time here in Belfast and a long way from San Francisco. Luke the fella from London has just moved in but seems well mannered also. Tomorrow I recommence my degree after the summer break, looking forward to the readings etc.. Must say here in my blog this Summer was one of the worst I have ever beared witnessed to, it was wet day after day. Rain fell straight down continuously. But these past few days the sun shone !!! happy days :)

July is nearly over !

Nice beautiful full blooming Summer's morning, life is bursting at the seams !! Working hard these days up at Cafe Conor in the University area of South Belfast, working yesterday until near midnight, wow o wow wasn't it warm yesterday ? Our house was busy this morning people all running about half mad trying to get ready for work, uni or whatever. I rose at 9 am and had some coco pops and tea with toasted pancakes which was nice. Work men are again digging up University street which is the second time in two months, so they made a mistake and had to come back again and dig in the same place hmmm seems a little like a cluster f**k !

Work Rest And No Play

Today feels like Summer for the first time again since May, bright blue skies hold fort and the bright Sun sits in the seat of his ivory tower beaming down warmth onto the earth. Recently working in a cafe doing kitchen porter in South Belfast, need the cash and I enjoy the hard work to be honest it gives me a natural buzz to be in a kitchen where pots and pans are moving around either cooking food or being washed usually be me!!! Everyone I work with is sound as a pound and I am glad of the work because work is hard to come by, most lower paid jobs are being done by people from overseas, but I hope to be starting a good part time job at the University soon. Home life is quiet these days, Julia the Italian housemate has her sister over from Rome and I haven't really been talking to either of them for the past couple of days because I was busy. Flat footed housemate is back since Monday last week and every night he is there running up and own the stairs morning and night, he and his Polish girlfriend never go out during any week night or even the weekend, they are without doubt the most boring couple in Western Europe. Any way I had a bacon sandwich this morning with a cup of tea.

Atoms are indeed everything

Reading recently about atoms, to find out that that the elements in the perodic table have so many protons, nuetons, electrons is a revelation. Take a bar of gold for example it has so many ratio of the above mentioned -ons that make it an element thus then a bar of gold. If in the future we can manipulate atoms then the suppositition is that we can make elements hence maybe gold !!! ok ok i'm getting away with myself after all atoms tend to have random qualities sometimes they are there then not; jumping into the third dimension from somewhere else Oh how the mind boggles at the possibilites. At the writers group the other evening hardly anybody showed up but those who did and read there work and it was good, in one of my works Sleep Privy Do Tell met with an Okay response but it was highlighted that I maybe meant Prithee Do Tell rather than Privy which was the reality. So at home I worked on that one a little and dropped the second stanza keeping the first and make the third one second respectively. Bad grey day outside rather wet this last Friday in June, GLASTONBURY will become HASHTONBURY again.

Mobility scooters for everyone

Quite recently i was down town and outside Mcdonalds i seen two people on mobility scooters parked up looking on in a fit of pity while inside chavs fed their fast food addicition. On first look I thought both might need the scooters but then it clicked in my mind. They don't need the mobility scooters at all they are in fact morbidly obese lazy adults. In about ten years time i can imagine the streets of Belfast being packed with fat people on mobility scooters pushing double whooper burgers into their cake holes while guzzling on rivers of flat stale coke, beeping the horns on the scooters shouting "get out of the way." What a sight i can almost taste the fat clogging up various heart ventricles right now. The reality is in western Europe and more closer to home people have been living off the fat of the land for so long now that big heavies are taking over. Forget ailens and little green men, attack of the fatties is already here. This morning i had an apple, a cup of tea and two slices of toast with peanut butter, not unhealthy at all. Later i will go to the creative writing group and read out some of my recent work with others. Next week is graudation week and i'm working for the University in which capacity is unknown as yet.

Last night on reality t.v

Last night i happened to be channel surfing when i put on big brother for a few minutes whereupon i heard a blind guy say that he didn't wash his 'willy' in a cup in the bathroom but just poured some water over it. Honestly i have indeed heard it all now, i remember t.v was such a joy when i was a kid. Saturday's with Ian St John and Greveasy, the friday movie maitnee for kids just home from school now it is has sunk to a new low with a guy talking about a cup and his manhood. I'm sitting here and wondering if the t-shirt i am wearing was created by 6 or 7 year old hands in some sweatshop and i don't know is the truth. We go into shops excepting a good moral product and in the end they are a bunch of crims , anything to cut corners !! Anyhow must go and have lunch soon, might be a ham sandwhich and tea or a curry; i have yet to consult my stomach on the matter.

bad weekend for sunshine

The weekend saw rain fall down rather heavily, there was no mistake about it this was a rare return to heavy muggy summer rain felt days of yester year. My house mate Juila and a few of her student friends went to the mountains of mourne and got soaked; i myself sat in the house over the weekend because i got so interested in a book i couldn't put it down. It is about science and physics it is pretty basic stuff but i enjoy finding out who found what first and then for e.g Carl Scheele (Swedish Scientist) he used to try and taste everything, which why at 43 years of age he was found slumped at his work desk with a pallid look on his face.

Two days of rain then the sun shines

This morning i had rather bad hayfever and sneezed loudly, so loud in fact i thought nature might hear me. Yesterday i met a friend down town, she is always on the go and never can sit down and chillax which is a combination of chill and relax. She had to go to Zara then of course nothing suited then it was after having a coffee it was off in a mad rush to waterstones to buy a couple of books. I said to this young woman that it would be ideal if she didn't drag me from once place to another quickly like a lap dog, because i am a fella of simple pleasures and walking along the street slowly is one of them. Anyhows, breakfast this morning was noodles, instant noodles in fact; weird i know but that's what i wanted oh yes and a cup of tea.

Tuesday isn't Wednesday

So, this morning i woke at 8am which is for me recently is quite positive however i didn't get tp until 9 am, i lay there in my bed listening to Chris Moyles on the radio. The radio show he conducts is rather a good laugh but some of the muisc they have as a playlist is terrible, very loud and sickly pop songs. Brekfast was cereal, and then topped off with a hayfever tablet which tasted of chalk and dust (always drink with liquid!) Later i wrote a short story but to describe it on here would take ages, however it detailed a true account about a man who worked as a grave digger years ago. Last night on Euro 08 Germany scored a great free kick it was a pile driver !

Yesterday the Sabbath

Well yesterday i had a nice meal up at the Welly on the Malone road, after that i took Juila (housemate) to see some wall art on the Falls; she laughed seeing the George Bush ones and said he looked so much like a monkey ( i agree he indeed is one). This morning the weather is odd, at present it is sunny but grey skies hang over in the distance shifting the day's sunshine to a less definite reality. No breakfast as yet but just a glass of grape fruit juice which was very cold as it rolled over my tongue and slipped down the throat easily. Housemate, the fella who can have the heaviest feet in the world is back, he seems to be finished University so is it a Summer sitting in the house ? I hope not because he will be so full of energy that isn't being used he will be running about like a headless chicken in our house, up and down the stairs morning noon and night. There are a couple of books i should be reading at night that sit on my bedside table at present but to be honest they don't beckon me to lift and dive into; however tonight i'll try and read a little bit more of SlaughterHouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut (so it goes).

Friday is the weekend !!

Well well well, first reports are that Ireland's people voted No or NIL for the Lisbon Treaty, which was a European nightmare of policies that were not clear enough. Ireland desire to remain neutral in future wars was something a friend of mine in Dublin was an ardent supporter of. 42 days detention for fundamentalists has been on the news, radio, t.v, newspapers; it feels like 42 days to me with all the hype. Why don't they just get on with their work then ? Nigel Kennedy the violin player was on The Poitics show last night with Andrew Neil, to be honest Kennedy looked like a hippy which to me caused some amusement for i knew the rest of the people on the programme would be snobby to him and they were, Diane Abbot M.P looked on in disgust when Nigel spoke. This morning i had cereal (cornflakes) , tea and bacon with toast with my old fav red sauce (Tomato sauce to you more cultured folks). Euro 2008 was on last night but to be honest i haven't seen a good match thus far, there is a lot of diving going on and taking away from the fact that it is a good game; but now full of pop star look alikes who can't take a good bat in the bake (a North Belfast expression there, means a dig in the mouth). Queen's University seems so odd now that hardly any students mill about in droves like bees gathering the honey, now the odd student walks around looking for a class, a lecture, anything ?

Thrusday isn't Summer friendly

Last night i went to the barbecue with members of the Queen's writers group (Thanks Michael for hosting)and i have to say that it went down very well apart from the quiz, when the team i was in tended to leave the mantel of answering questions to myself. Ok so maybe i knew some of the more literary answers but classical music composers was slightly out of my musical genre. The host Michael has a love of nature and animals, as he has rather a large garden with a maze of trees and two donkeys, a large white horse(where was Lady Godiva ?) and hens and dogs and cats. One dog sat and hungrily eyed me when i was eating a burger for a good ten minutes, i wondered did these dogs get fed at all ? (joking there). Later Michael turned cave man and desired to start large fires around his home, i don't know if this was to the vino he was increasingly putting away or he felt a return to man's red fire would extract some chanting of a literary kind, thus dancing wildly and beating our chests, only if we had a saber toothed tiger to hunt and drag back to the various hoots of delight from the women who huddled around the brazer. This morning i got up late at 11am and had tea with toast, i searched for a choc biscut as i felt the need for something sweet but alas i had none, later i'll have to get some shopping in as i'm getting low in the food department. First port of call will be the butchers on the Lisburn road who sell good quality of meat for rather good prices.

bar-b-q ?

This morning i looked out upon South Belfast and see that Summer sunshine is not served upon toast with warm buttery golden sauce, grey skies adorn the heavens. So is it rain ? i think so but yet i am to attened a barbecue this evening and rain wouldn't be at all welcome what with sausages, rocket salad, and burgers with tomato relish. Last night after Euro 2008 where Spain literally thrashed the russians i read a story from 'The Man Upstairs' by P.G.Wodehouse given to me by Julia the Italian housemate who is a PHD student may i add. Wodehouse is not a writer i would naturally gravitate to but she had asked me to read at least one story. The tale 'Something to worry about' reminder me of Joyce's Dubliners, middle class morality but extremely well executed in its compsition. The radio is on and Jo Wiley (radio BBC1) is mentioning everyone at her house has hay fever and how she feels luckly not to suffer, i concur she is lucky indeed but my own suffering and sneezing has subsided somewhat. Had a granny smith apple for breakfast (first course) it was fresh and cold, each bite crunched pleasingly . Next i'll go for tea and toast with either peanut butter (smooth) or chesse melted.

Post hayfever arrival

Today or rather this morning i slept heavy in my comfortable bed, i didn't hear fellow housemates leave for: work, uni, whatever. Usually i hear one guy (who will remain nameless) slap his big flat feet (that is a supposition) on the stairs like a newborn baby elephant getting used to walking down each step, walk is the wrong term this guy rushes. If he got up earlier he wouldn't be rushing but as i am finding common sense and intelligence isn't compatible. Soon lunch is coming up, i am in two minds will i have the old scrambled eggs on toast (one of my favs, the eggs have to be golden and fluffy) or will i go for an omelette ? Not sure but tea is a definite article and toast with Kerry Gold butter, which is in the foil and not in a tub as the former has more of a flavour spread on wholemeal toast.Cornflakes this morning with plenty of cold milk. On the radio so called Christians ring in on radio ulster's Talk Back programme with David Dunseith, one old woman feels it important to identify herself as 'East Belfast Protestant Lady' So she becomes abbreviated to EBPL will she set up her own quango ?

Atoms for breakfast Yesterday Monday the 9th of June 2008, hay fever struck !!!! cue fits of sneeezing so powerful i could feel my hole body reverbarating in one mass of Summer pollen ineptitude even now as i type that dastardly pollen tickles my sinuses in an act of june tom foolery. Tomorrow antihistamine (no relation, say married to unlcehistahis) will be took early after bowl of cornflakes with ice cold milk, must remember to draw the blade across the jaw and shave; a day and a half worth of stubble growth adorns the lower mandible.