nostalgic

In keeping with the assumption that everyone, to a degree, is mentally unstable in some form or another, yesterday I got the bus back home to Waterloo to buy a guitar lead, a new set of strings and some picks. The fact that I can barely play three chords on my SG is besides the point. It's not very often I give my beautiful guitar some much-needed TLC.

The music shop I went to is a stone's throw away from where I grew up, and the premises has seen past occupiers such as Thresher's Wines Stores, and long, long ago, a Tesco. And those small memories took me on a detour along St.Johns Road, which is Waterloo's second main shopping area behind South Road.

Everywhere evolves or changes over time, and not necessarily for the better. In St. Johns Road's case, I recognised just four businesses I knew from when I was a kid. And if it wasn't boarded up, the rest made no sense to me at all and neither tempted me to, at the very least, window-shop either.

I now know why our parents and grandparents are nostalgic for their pasts. And being from Liverpool, with that Celtic streak, we have an extra sense of sentimentality about everything too, which I possess in droves. There's a little kid inside me that still just wants to kick a footy against St.Faiths Church wall. I used to do it for hours on end. I didn't need a friend to play with. The ball bounced back from the wall. The wall was my mate!

I toy with the idea of doing an essay based on my experiences as a kid in Waterloo - because my memory improves over time when I think back to these halcyon days. But then I thought who'd want to read about fighting, football, paper-rounds, stand-offs, getting chased by the police, football, more fighting, football, evading more police, sitting in watching telly and listening to the odd good ELO album. School was crap, and I don't want to relive that very much thanks.

I got a 53A bus back to Aintree. It was double-deck, so I went upstairs and sat on one of the front seats watching out for....changes. Crosby, in comparison, never really changes. I've always said about Crosby that it's basically one big housing estate that people come to live in (because it's something to tell their family the other side of the city that they live in Crosby) and work elsewhere. The average Crosby householder probably couldn't tell you what the next street is to them, and the shopping centre of the town is dangerously under-utilised and empty. Again, the average Crosby dweller shops elsewhere.

So I don't go and visit home too often now, because the ghosts far outnumber present-day reality. It was a bit sad really.

wasted

Nowadays, I very rarely pay for the films I like to watch, the telly programmes that make me laugh and, most importantly, the music I groove along to.

I appreciate that the artists involved in all of our entertainment have a living to make, and some need it more than others. But I'm sorry, I've spent thousands of pounds of the last thirty odd years buying records, tapes, CDs, videos, DVDs, etc and I simply refuse to offer the industry any more of my hard earned cash.

For instance, and this is the obvious one, I bought Beatles albums when I was ten. They were perfectly playable, serviceable and the music they provided made me very happy, inspired and fulfilled. In 1987, the Beatles catalogue went onto the digital format for the first time in the form of CDs. Again, I bought most of them because I now had a CD player and I was under the impression that the sound quality - coupled with my improved sound system - surpassed crackly, jumpy, old analogue vinyl. And, I guess, in a lot of ways they did.

In 2009, the Beatles did it again - this time remastering all their old albums for a second time claiming a better audio experience than before. I thought, "haha, you can sod off!" and downloaded them illegally to listen to what all the fuss was about. And the truth, for an audiophile like me, was nothing seemed any different. In fact, there were still the same sequencing mistakes on some tracks from the 1987 reissues.

Like some people, I've come full-circle and gone back to the original vinyl, and I beat myself with an imaginary large bat for the money I've wasted. Some lessons take longer to learn than others.

redundancy

One major thing the blog has missed in the past few months is the fact I got made unemployed again. Yep, the nuts and bolt trade went tits up and I found myself back at square one. It wasn't entirely unexpected. I played my part in its' inception and downfall, so at the very least I'm a kind of visionary or twat. Take your pick.

But needs must, so I quickly sorted myself out with some agency work - order picking beer and spirits for DHL Tradeteam in Kirkby. This involved a 6am start in a vast, freezing warehouse, but I didn't stay cold for long - the work was heavy, fast-paced and relentless.

I'm no stranger to grafting, but this was another level. For the first time in my 44 years, I was acutely aware of my age and fitness level because the lads I worked with were a lot younger than me and there wasn't a bulging waistline amongst any of them. For a fortnight I slogged away - the early discomfort soon died down but didn't disappear - until one afternoon I received a phone call from a college near Ormskirk that I'd applied for a portering job with, asking if I'd come in? The pay was better, the hours more regular and the work was varied. So I started the next day. And I've been there ever since.

The only downside to it is I'm employed on a casual-basis for three months at a time. That means that I'm there as long as they think I'm needed. When I started it was in the rundown to Christmas when all the students go home, so it got very quiet by the beginning of this week, but the New Year brings the college back to pace and I'm assured things can and do get hectic.

My redundancy is being looked after by the good folk at the State-backed Insolvency Service. The first form I received to claim redundancy got lost, but the second one did get through. The delay hasn't helped with Christmas. Me and Jayne got everyone sorted except ourselves. Hopefully, they'll be a windfall very soon and we can treat each other to stuff.

I could write a book about the good and bad working in the fastener trade. If truth be told, I'd still like to be in it because I did enjoy it. But sometimes, you know, maybe out of this comes something better and a change may do me some good. Time, as always, will tell.

conundrums

1.30am......

So there I am, in that twilight world between sleep and awareness. And then I was bolt upright!!

The next three hours were taken up by being very awake, very aware of the shadows of night, and totally in tune with the metaphysical side of being. And the big question I had was this. Christianity tells us that the only way to have a relationship with God is through Jesus.

Now I'm just a mere mortal, and I know shite. But if the Christian faith is as good as it says it is then it should stand up to a little questioning. Why can't I have a direct line through to God? If God is all He is said to be and everything is possible, why do I have to go through an intermediary?

I'm not suggesting that Jesus is any less important than Christians tell us he is. But it's a little like asking me to form a relationship with Jayne's brother to get to speak with her dad?? I went straight to the main man there, why not with the main man up there?????

And another thing. The whole basis for religion is having faith in something or someone bigger than yourself. Yet, every minor to major religion has distorted this realisation by various ways and means for thousands of years. For what end? Because all that's happened is humanity is shit to each other, when the simplest reality is we all want the same thing.

After I'd wrestled with this two massive conundrums, I promptly went to sleep. Bliss.......