Tag Archives: Birdy

15/01/2017

When the world is full of guff

By hairygoose

I had the exquisite pleasure just the other day to read about the Aston Martin DB11.  It was a joyous moment as I opened an article on the wonderous BBC website that promised photos and blurb of what I was expecting to be a very sexy beast indeed.  The pride of Britain as it used to be and the latest in the David Brown line as it were.  then this twat appeared………

By Matthew Phenix
23 September 2016
I generally despise first-person car reviews. Particularly when the vehicle in question is expensive, or fast, or both, these stories can quickly devolve into oily billets-doux of the writer’s preternatural giftedness behind the wheel. Or, worse, they become obnoxiously self-deprecating confessionals of their doubtful worthiness in the face of such blinding automotive majesty. So it is with no small amount of consternation that, after stewing over the Aston Martin DB11 for weeks after driving the car, I have decided to approach my take on it from the shameless first-person perspective.

 

Well Matthew Phenix – seems to me that you are something of a cock, bordering on complete fucktard.  This was the first paragraph of your Aston review and quite frankly – it was so shite that I never even made it to the first picture.  That’s the modern day equivalent of buying a copy of Readers Wives and only looking at the ads in the back for blow up dolls !!!  Younger readers will not understand what Readers Wives is all about – god bless the world before internet porn !!!

I was left scratching my head and not only thinking ‘WTF have I just read’? but also ‘WTF did it mean’?

Now it’s not enough that these weedy little tossers get to fool around in such nice cars while the rest of us have to suffer  (or enjoy in my case) £300 Volvos but they also have to spout a complete load of bollocks in order to try to make themselves appear more educated than the likes of you and me.

I blame Top Gear, and even Jeremy Clarkson.  See, these wanky little farts would just love to be a top line car journalist.  They have watched the likes of Hammond, May and Clarkson having bucket loads of fun over the years and making a mint whilst doing it.  Then all of a sudden, the top slots are free and available.  Every wanna be journo is creeping out of the woodwork with big fancy words and foolish comparisons.

To really keep them on edge, the initial replacement presenters (or two of them at least) were shit and most likely need replacing again !

Now you see, I much prefered 5th Gear and the ever so saucy minx Vicky Butler-Henderson.  I had the pleasure once of meeting said VBH at Le Mans maybe 15 years ago – she was ever so much the minx in real life as she was on the TV.

Drifting gently out of my dream sequence with VBH, back at my laptop..

 

So Journos – stop with the shit and speak English.  It’s the same in the damn iTunes store when you are looking at the review of an album.  I once read a review of a new Skunk Anansie album a few years back.  They had just reformed and were sounding sublime as ever but some fool had to write this crap

screen-shot-2017-01-15-at-21-52-29

 

I think I better go and listen to some Birdy and calm down

 

 

See back in the day, I can remember if you drove through Newport Pagnell at the right time, you would see the men at Aston Martin pushing a body shell from the body shop on one side of the road, across through the traffic and into the engine shop on the other side.

Body panels hand rolled and each engine bearing a little plate with the name of the guy that built it from scratch.  Now that would be more satisfying than a years subscription to Readers Wives.

 

Ahhh – Back in the day !

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21/11/2016

And the winner was……….?

By hairygoose

Me I hope – generally, after all isn’t that what it is all about?

It was a tough few days I can tell you.  Some times during my more thoughtful moments, a sickly feeling appeared in the pit of my stomach. Yes, I know, something of a cliché but it was true.  Right up to my midday deadline and even 3 hours past it, I still didn’t know which way to turn.

I wrote two acceptance emails in the hope it would push me in a certain direction but it didn’t.  Careful not to send one of them by accident, I saved them as drafts – after all, I would be needing at least one of them right ?

My self imposed midday deadline approached and a song came over my speakers that would give me the all needed surge into one direction.  A stunningly beautiful song, performed by a rather class act.  The lyrics also seemed to fit so well.

The song reminded me of those rare moments you get at sea.  You landies just wont understand but I will try to explain.

Most of the time I am sailing in shit weather.  Its wet, cold, dark, big waves trying to wash me off the boat every ten seconds or so. The boat is rolling from side to side at such angles that washing machines no longer work, taking a shower becomes impossible, taking a dump without covering yourself in it becomes the second biggest challenge of the day – second only to trying to stay alive.  If you’re trying to sleep and the boat is cresting sizeable waves, you lift off your mattress, just like when you drive over a hump back bridge a little faster than you should.  Conditions are so rough you either sleep in your clothes or spend 20 minutes trying to dress yourself in the most basic of gear.

And you get that for two weeks at a time if you are unlucky.  Two weeks of relentless pounding, walking the boat holding on to anything you can find, like a drunk trying to get along the bar to his taxi at the end of the night.  It can be a constant fight for survival.

Until you have those moments of clarity.  Sure, they don’t come very often.  Alone on the deck, helming at sunset and a random song comes on.  Purely by coincidence, it is the perfect sunset tune.  It happens maybe once a year.  It’s that moment of clarity that makes it all worth while.  Perfect timing with the sunset and that random song make for four minutes of absolute bliss.  Now I don’t mean absolute bliss as those twats that claim to be ‘living the dream’ might proclaim – let’s be honest, they are the same twats that post photos of burgers on their Facebook feeds and claim the same.  This bliss is beyond a level they could comprehend. The battle is not yet won, just survived – there is another battle not far around the corner. Always know where your life jacket and rescue beacon are.

The song ends in perfect harmony with the sun disappearing over the horizon, your mind clears and you focus on night time duties.  Keep everyone safe, and arrive at the next port of call.

I can’t imagine those moments being anywhere near as spectacular from the inside of a bridge on a Motor Yacht as they are standing behind a wooden helm on an open cockpit.

I have Birdy to thank for that – stop reading and have a listen to this…..

Suddenly all of the pain, struggle and strife of the last few thousand miles disappear and it is worth all of the grief. The ocean calms and your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness.  The hard earned spoils of offshore sailing drift away waiting to be discovered again like a long ago launched message in a bottle.

 

It was also that same fight for life, that clamber and struggle to dress, the 6 hours a day in the weather of an open cockpit, surprise squalls with excessive wind speeds that threaten to tear the rig in two, a boat constantly leaning at 15º for days at a time that made me think a little harder.

For all the romance, beauty and style of a sailing yacht – it doesn’t offer stability in turbulent waters.  Imagine being able to shower at any time, to have a poo with out clinging onto your towel rail.  Getting dressed with the light on in less than 20 minutes  because you dont have to worry that you will wake your cabin mate up who has just had an equally harrowing watch on the helm.

Yes, Motor Yachts are typically vulgar floating masses but that mass offers options.  Options like your own cabin, your own shower or better still, your very own toilet – no more cleaning up other people’s mess.  There is also the benefit of a full size engine room, stand up head room everywhere, two huge V16 diesel engines with 7000 horse power between them and two big 175 kW generators to keep me company.

Add into the facts that it is a little better paid, has 90 days paid leave instead of 60 and paid in $ – it had to be the better option right?  It seems writing two acceptance emails actually did pay off.  Seeing everything written down for clarification made the two roles stand out.  No more getting dressed in the dark, no more head hitting in an engine room to small for an elf (a bit of irony there).

Even with that clarity, as I hit send on the acceptance mail draft, I still had that ‘oh fuck’ moment where I doubted myself.  One thing I am certain of – if I took the sailing yacht job, the first time the weather got rough, or I stubbed my toe on something or twatted my head in the engine room – I know I would have been cursing my choice.

After the end of my last relationship – it’s time to move on to something different, after all, if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you always got.

 

It’s Quiet Company

 

 

 

 

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08/02/2016

Terrible Love

By hairygoose

January is over – a vicious month for Cancer.

As I plugged along on my very muddy 10k run this morning I had plently of time for thoughts.  If I am honest, the run itself was far from perfect.  The tow path was a mud bath and the woods at the back of Abbots Farm almost had me on my arse twice.

Time wise, it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, not quite 2 minutes slower than my best on that route but it was muddy!

I slipped into thoughts.  Lets talk about Apple for a moment.  I read an article this week on the BBC that their latest iOS software for their phones has been permanently disabling phones that have been for repair by independent phone shops.  You send your new phone away for a screen replacement or a new home button and it comes back with ‘error 53′.  You might think this is not the end of the world but in iOS9 – this now means your phone is useless – it will never work again and any info on it is lost for good.

I have been experiencing similar bullish tactics with my Mac after recently upgrading to El Capitan.  You see , the biggest problem with computer updates is you are always told what they have added but they NEVER tell you what they have taken away. If you knew which functionailities were removed, updating would never be an option for most users.

So now, if I want to email you a photo, I can no longer use the attach button from my mail browser and then go into my photo library and find it – nope, Apple want you to buy into their Cloud product, that lets you share easily (or more easily than the way they force you into if you won’t pay), so instead now I have to open the photo app, drag a copy to the desk top and then attach it from there.  Hardly progress from what is one of silicone valleys’ giants now is it?  The last software was better.

It doesn’t stop there.  iPhone users that have the latest software will find that airdrop has changed too.  No longer can you open air drop and make your phone visible to only people in your contacts list as with the older software, no, privacy on airdrop is now only available if your contacts are in the cloud.

Of course, there is a price for using the cloud.

As my Mac gets older, slower and clunkier and needs some financial input I find myself questioning the rational for moving back to a windows based pc and an android phone. See, a pc of the same tech specs as the Mac will be around half the price and comes with the freedom to source ‘stuff’ from outside of the world of the manufacturer.  Its getting to be an easier choice to make. There was a time when I would have used that line of thought as a down side though.  Have you ever been on the end of a windows based problem where the hardware manufacturer blames the software and the software manufacturer blames the hardware?

It did make me think though – some time ago the EU ruled that car manufacturers had to make all of their car computer diagnostics plugs the same as each others.  The reason was to allow independent garages not to have to invest in different computers for all of the makes out there – or to put it in very basic terms, to allow more competition as to where you as a consumer can spend your money.  I can’t see that this is any different than that?

Hark back to better times, when Apple products were wanted because they were revolutionary.  Those days died with Mr. Jobs. Cancer affects more of us than you might believe.

Of course, a lot of Apples problems come from the ‘hipsters’ that just have to have the latest stuff.  I was looking on iTunes the other day for info about Birdys new album when I noticed that although the release is not due for another month, 11 people had left reviews for it.  The ‘I am so trendy crew’ had got there before the record company have even cut the final disc! Dont believe me?  look at the screen shot below.

Screen Shot 2016-02-07 at 11.56.48

I got into a debate on the Apple help forums the other week with a guy called Terence Devlin.  Terence suggests that people should stop complaining about when things change for the worse or stop working completely with Apple products because people aren’t running the very latest software.  His solution was to ‘upgrade – its free’  As our debate raged on, I mentioned that over 50% of the product reviews on the Apple store for its last iOS release gave it 1 star out of 5 with the majority of those recommending that you don’t install it at all (more 1 star reviews than 2,3,4,&5 added together).  Terence then suggested that those negative reviews should be ignored because people like to complain.  At that point, I gave up with the fucktard and left him to his little world of what I suspect is a very wealthy family that pay for whatever his little hipster heart desires.  I also suspect that he doesn’t work for two reasons.

  1. He is always camped outside the Apple store to be the first to get whatever is new that week.
  2. Daddy pays him a jolly good allowance each month so the reality of earning a living is left to the serfs and peasants on street level

 

So back in the UK for 10 days.  It is cold and wet here. Sure, the South of France gets cold too but it is dry, the air is dry which makes for a different, almost warming kind of cold.  Add to that I have allowed myself to be bullied into going to Bike Park Wales on Wednesday with The King of Touching Cloth himself – Mr Yates.  The very next day I have my ships medical to give me the green light to set sail for the next 2 years and then early next week, a funeral – but more on that later.

I am expecting to sustain some physical damage on Wednesday, not only from being miserable from the cold and wet for hours but also because of the tricky or even treacherous conditions will lead to mishaps I am sure.  Fingers crossed, it will be Yates this time.  While he is in a bundle of pain on the floor, I will pull along side him and gleefully jib, ‘see you at the bottom dick wad’ as is the norm for our outings – I like to think of it as the ‘Top Gear’ style of caring for your chums. I have little choice though – it will now cost me as much to back out of it as it will to go – and I hate wasting money.

The world needs a bit more Birdy

 

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