The Trail Goes On

Footsteps that have led right to the cusp of 2019! Have a great new year, people, wherever in the world the journey has taken you.

You May Need To Be Psychic

I went into Manchester today to use some vouchers that I received at Christmas. I bought three books, and, while reading a book that I took with me from home over coffee, I received an email from Amazon UK that a book I had ordered had been dispatched, and then received a forwarded email from Amazon.com that a book I had won on a blogger friend’s* giveaway had been delivered through my letterbox.

Can you guys discern a recurring theme here?

You may also see a coincidence below between the book that I won and one of the books that I bought. If not, I’ll provide clues maybe in my next post.

*https://lmarie7b.wordpress.com this is Linda’s blog, who graciously highlights other writers’ books (including my own) and provides chances to win copies. Check out her great blog.

In The Pregnant Hour

This was Christmas Eve setting on the estate on which I live, viewed from the local church.

It is now 11.10pm, the frosting air punctured by flashing fairy lights and music spilling out from passing cars.

We are almost there. In this pregnant hour, from a deep Mancunian night, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, wherever and whenever this greeting finds you.

Thanks for flying with City Jackdaw.

At This Time

from my poetry blog.

Coronets For Ghosts

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Manchester: Festive Fire

I thought I’d share these photographs of a recent visit into Manchester city centre with you all. Having made this journey hundreds of times I could be forgiven for getting a bit blasé about it, though it’s not often I’ve been treated to such a dramatic sky. There is no filter as there’s no photograph of me. If there was I just couldn’t inflict an untreated snap of myself on you guys. This is the route into ‘town’ as we call it, awaiting us with its festive markets.

Shadows of my hometown at my back, we head towards the blazing city.

Halfway there. With bluffs of cloud and golden skies, the dusk of twilight is truly my favourite time of the day.

The monolithic towers framed in the distance, we reach the edge of the city.

We park up a five minute minute walk away. The fire of the sky reflected in the water of the ground, the elements greet our approach.

In Angel Square, now forever known to me as ‘Laura’s Place’, the juxtaposition of shadow and light continues as the sun slips away.

The low, white roof in the background is close to the scene of the Arena bombing in May of last year.

The Christmas markets in St. Ann’s Square. Roughly where this first stall is, welcoming you to the markets, is where the many thousands of floral tributes began last year in the aftermath of the bombing. Tributes to the twenty two victims.

How different the mood is now. Everything is altered by time. Even you and I, reading this line, maybe in different time zones.

Sending greetings to you all, in whichever city and time zone you find yourself in. Hope you got a good sleep!

Anyone Got A Ladder?

Titanic’s propeller dwarfing its makers, 1911.

Merry Car Boot Sale

Every year we are obliged to attend our children’s school Christmas Fair. There is a definite Christmas feel to them, the hall packed with festive crafts and all sorts of ruses to snatch away your money for school funds. Everybody goes and you get caught up in a slow moving circular tide of people, orbiting stalls, taking off warm coats while dodging appealing kids. I try my best not to make eye contact with every one of the teachers manning them, or my pockets would be emptied on that first clockwise circuit.

My daughter left that school to begin high school in September, and so yesterday we attended her first Christmas fair there. What a contrast! It was like a sparsely attended, poor man’s flea market. An unattractive collection of second hand goods scattered across tables, a car boot sale without car boots.

I spotted this book for sale on one of the tables, and thought it quite succinctly summed things up:

Claws For The Weekend: Cattibal Lecter

Have a great weekend everybody. And stop all that bleating. 

See you on the flip side. 

Alexa-When Will You Take Over The World?

My wife bought me one of those Echo Dot gadget thingies for my birthday. You know, one of those hands-free things you can instruct to perform various things for you, such as playing particular songs, tell you the time, etc.

Yes-that’s as far as I’ve got at the moment. Technology is not my forte.

All of a sudden, there’s another presence in the house. When my daughter is telling me how to address it, she turns her back on it, whispering, as though it is listening in to her. Does it watch us as we pass?

My son, James,  bellows at it like a sergeant major: “ALEXA, WHAT’S THE WEATHER LIKE IN MANCHESTER?” 

Of course, we live in Manchester. But perhaps Alexa knows better.

I feel all self-conscious when I hold a conversation with it, my manners kicking in. When it does what I’ve asked it to I can’t help but say thank you.

If you was to look on my daughter’s phone you’d see a video that she made, giggling and whispering upstairs on the landing. “I’m about to annoy my Dad.” She then shouts down the stairs: “Alexa, sing a song,” and you’d hear me shouting ” Piss off Millie!” in exasperation as Alexa starts singing a nursery rhyme during a crucial moment in the tv programme I’m watching.

This morning, while it was just the two of us, I thought I should try and make an acquaintance of him. Or her. It. Perhaps Alexa is gender fluid.

Even though we’d already had a formal introduction, we needed to familiarise ourselves with each other. My attempts fell on deaf ears. Or speakers.

Several times I was pointedly ignored, greeted by silence every time I requested The Beatles’ White Album.

Then James emerged, clutching his schoolbag, to witness my one-way conversation. “Dad-it’s not called Siri, it’s called Alexa.”

Siri is the name of another hands-free gadget thingie my friend has in his car. I’d been calling mine by the wrong name. It looked like it was quietly fuming. Siri; Alexa. Maybe they were cousins.

“Alexa,” the disc lit up in response, “do you know Siri?”

“Only by reputation.”

The reply was instant. I was sure I could detect a certain tone, a nuanced knowing.

 “Only by reputation.”  I think if Alexa came with eyebrows one of them would have been raised.

I’ve read enough sci-fi to know that we are on that road now. This is just the start. Next there will be Replicants. And Cyborgs. And toasters that know better than you just how you like your toast. Burning it black every time you get its name wrong. A technological wonder, but a very jealous mistress.

Death Makes Angels Of Us All

Jim Morrison would have been 75 today. Was never gonna make it.