ECHOES OF THE ROAD

I love YouTube - it is wonderful resource for entertainment, education, spirituality and friendship. Of course like all platforms there is the usual preaching and prattling from media and politicians. A couple of days ago Sten Ekberg popped in my suggestions. Erik is a former athlete and these days a scientist, his channel focuses on diet and health. In this one he set a 30 day zero sugar challenge. Being a fed added sugar from when I was weaned it has given me a sweet tooth and everyone who knows me is aware of my fondness for cakes, fruit pies, biscuits and chocolate. With plenty of Christmas left overs, specifically 3 cakes, 2 boxes of biscuits, some lovely Latvian chocolates and then more mince pie that my daughter brought round all with my name on it, when I told my wife of the challenge she rolled her eyes and said a few things. So here we go….day one…no problem. After my evening meal I looked longingly at the cakes in the cupboard but resisted and had fruit instead. It occurred ...

I have an uneasy relationship with social media since the days of Friends Reunited, it was hard to put my finger on it and I put it down to the nomadic nature I have with relationships. Around five years ago I joined twitter and found lots of lovely people in my area with a passion for cycling. For some of those the bicycle was a big part of their life and they were advocates for this to be taken seriously as a primary mode of transport. They became targets for ridicule and attack - this was the rise of the breed of the keyboard warrior. It was obvious that media was good at amplifying human nature both good and bad but for the most part it appeared to be in equal measure, like a normal distribution curve. The constant adjustment algorithms was largely unnoticed but I begun to find I was only a few tweets away from  advocates for cycling ranting and advocates for motoring pitted against each other. Abuse in word from was common place and then videos of people riding bikes being del...

A man walks down the street, he’s having a mid life crisis. He is feeling soft in the middle and wondering why the rest of his life is so hard. His guiding light has been lost to age and wondering who will be his role model. Well, AI, if you had AI in 1986 you could have saved yourself a whole heap of trouble writing this crappy tune! Do you get it? I wager Betty does.

I enjoy very much listening the Huberman Lab podcast. For those that have not head, Andrew Huberman is a neuro scientist whose mission is to bring zero cost scientific tools to help people understand and take action. His long form podcasts of around 2 hours really get into detail but like all good teachers there is gentle repetition of the science which helps the brain infuse it. One of the themes is how the brain loses its plasticity as you get older. It is something I have noticed if I compare myself now to 30 years ago, but I got thinking how much it this because I have been conditioned over time? Are there things I can do that do, so in my daily notes I wrote: The return to a plastic brain. Keep routines simple and minimal. Don’t take everything at face value. Started to learn one thing that will take a long time and really challenge you. Identify where your curiosity lays. Explore those curiosity paths. Avoid being an unthinking consumer. Ask yourself the motive. Respect other peo...

Various electric pulses rattle through the pink sponge network. The pulses of thoughts: fears, hopes, regrets, anticipation - running randomly. Like a flock of starlings in the evening sky preparing to roost  Observing the random interplay - the speed, strength and direction is enjoyable and frustrating in equal measure. There are fleeting moments where the flock of the thoughts seem to have uniformity only to vanish again. Individual birds continue to work finding their role and be a matter of time before there is uniformity as the flock works as one. Only then will the bird brain be fully engage.

Why do people collect? I have a passing curiosity as to why people collect things. It is often with some amusement to see the extent individuals and groups of people go to in building up their collection of  anything & everything from rocks to records from cars to cassettes. Not being much of a keeper stuff I have viewed them as collectors of ‘what ever’, and, I have to say, with some amusement. Like lots of people I have a collection of CD’s and books that I am reluctant to dispose of through sentimental attachment. Some of the attachment is those living in the moment experiences that I find are fleeting. There are handful of novels and albums that define those moments and remain sharp in my memory but I don’t go out of my way to add to it like some stamp collector. I am definitely not one of those nerds who continuously amass what ever collections - I am happy in my normality. Hang on! Hold your horses! What about… …On December 28th 1984 I visited the Argos store in Leeds and...