Guitars and Life

... and I'm annoyed with myself over it. Another post by a brave soul out there has prompted me to post this.  I snapped yesterday getting heated in an argument with a person at my place of work I find infuriating.  That is no excuse frankly is it.  Well I don't think so, I only have to work with the person, they really in my grand scheme of life have a tiny tiny corner of space just at this moment and that will pass and they will move on or I will and that will be that gone, not important. This person though is a black belt in obfuscation.  Ever issue grows and grows around him, he has a knack for over complication never simplification.  Yesterday I told him something that I'd understood pretty much from day one of the eight months I've been here - the next financial year is a zero based budget.  i.e. even if you have a project that is continuing you have to rebid for the money, any money not spent this year goes back into the pot to be redistributed....

Ok - having admitted defeat on trying to fix the old 12 string.  I bought this today a Vintage VE2000GG Gordon Giltrap signature 12 string. I tried the new Paul Brett Parlour 12 string which was hugely impressive, but the 14th fret body join, general dimensions of the Gordon Giltrap and the superiour (to my ears) plugged in sound meant I had to get this.  Give me a week or so and I'll do a bit of a review...

Well the summer does seem to be here - two days of cloud free skies, the Furtheron family braved planning for BBQ for Sunday lunchtime.  All went well and a lovely alfresco meal for the three of us. Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon I sat glued to the box watching the culmination of the Premiership with the championship final between Harlequins and Leicester Tigers.  Now whilst I don't avidly support one particular rugby club I have to acknowledge a place in my heart for Harlequins - I've always liked them and there are one of the closest top clubs to my home as well. Anyway a great final and a tense last few mins as Leicester seemed to be likely to overcome a significant points difference in the last few secs with them camped on the try line a converted score would have pushed it to extra time and possibly drop kicks to decide but luckily Quins held on.  Surprisingly for such an historic club they have never won the big one before and also given they finished the season o...

Just like a cork shooting out of a champagne bottle my post the other day has released a lot of bottled up tension.  Firstly thank you to all who commented etc. your kind words meant a lot to me. Here is the thing - see I often get to the point of taking it all inward that it is only me who gets like this etc. etc.  I internalise, I don't see the wider picture, I get on a downward spiral of negativity and find it difficult to break out.  But I know the things like "first things first", "don't try to fix all your problems in one day", etc. etc.  I tell this stuff to others enough in the rooms of AA or on their blogs!  But can I easily do it myself - er... in a word NO!  But as I say the release of finally getting it out there has been a real help to me. So a new attitude etc.  Almost instantly there has been a meeting about funding and projects and at least one of the big ones has biten the dust.  On the other ongoing work I had two meetings th...

... disappear.  Honesty time folks.  Boy...   Here I am again, hugely troubled by work.  It really bugs me this, it pervades the majority of my thinking, it makes me sick inside, I get snappy with people close to me, go distant and isolate etc.  So what the hell is up?  Me - I'm "struggling" at work.  I seem to be using that word too much "struggling" - what do I mean by it?  See above this doubt, this taking over my conscious state too much.  I started here back in September last year.  There was/is a big reorganisation underway in my department.  Therefore when I started I was a little bit out on a limb, shunted to the left a little for want of an analogy.  I said to people then, I should relish this time to get to know stuff.  I've learnt some undoubtedly but I don't feel it is enough.  I picked up that there is loads and loads to do, actually more than realistically we can achieve with any real sense of c...

I've been to a meeting this evening, my regular Wednesday night group which is a small group.  A girl who on Monday celebrated 3 months sober was there, crying, drunk and repeating over and over how she had "fucked up". My heart went out and I was nearly in tears with her too.  She said to me "I've struggled every day".  Oh my do I remember those early days of recovery - 9 months it was for me when every day I had those thoughts and that desire to drink.  Why didn't I?  Frankly at times I don't know, fear, totally mad stubbornness, great support from those I was talking to in AA, making myself share, going to loads of meetings, telling people all my movements so I couldn't escape etc.  but I still know often in those months drinking would have been frankly so much easier in that instant to quell the pain I felt inside. I can be ungrateful, full of self-pity still these days, self-reliant to a point of craziness but drink doesn't these day...

Remember that Daughter-of-Futheron and I did the Swimathon ?  Well I don't for one!  I've only just today ventured back to a swimming pool for the first time since then and the pain of that last 20 lengths will be with me for a long long time! Anyway the offiicial results are out and yours truly managed to be 2,219th overall!  Yes thank you; thank you I was 1,236th Male and 263rd in my age group.  However D-o-F was 288th overall, 95th female and 19th in her age group!  In the top 100 women over 5K in the largest swim in the UK - you have to be pleased with that...   Yes she was out, showered, changed and collected her medal before I'd finished!  My goals for next year?  Still to be under 2 hours, to complete the whole 5K and to live... not necessarily in that order :-)

You know how it is - there is a special thing coming up, there is the build-up, the anticipation of it, then the day is here the fanfare briefly sounds, there are smiles and all that and then, it is over and it is the next day, or the next and it all seems a long time ago and a bit of an anti-climax in retrospect.  And that is how I am a little bit at the moment - post "birthday" blues.  I remember having this big style on my 1st sobriety anniversary.  I was presented with my 1 year chip from my home group, another friend in the fellowship is a month or so younger than me in sobriety gave me a very precious gift that I was very touched by and then back to daily grind...  I then suddenly knew that I was off kilter, because?  Because I'd been up to then thinking back to the year before, my first year I kept thinking - oh this time last year I was... blah blah and I could see the change if not any growth.  The beginning of that second year was very hard for me...

Today is my 8th sobriety birthday.  I suppose different people have different definitions for that day - I know some for who it is the day they first had without a drink at the start of their recovery, for others the day they first attended AA.  For me it is actually the last day I ever drank. Here is an extract from the My Drinking Story page on this blog... ... (Mrs F and I) had some good news and my wife texted me a simple line "tonight we can celebrate". I saw that last word, considered this great news and thought - "My life is still utter shite" and I went off on an all day bender. At home that evening my long suffering wife instead of ignoring me finally bit back and we had the most almighty row which is not how our relationship functions - we don't row. In the middle of that with the swearing and threats etc. I gave up. I lay down and cried and cried. I just wanted it all to stop. That was the moment I made the decision that I had to do something dra...

Son-of-Further on is now a famous photographer!   His photos of Starlings over Aberystwyth have been the basis for a feature in the online version of the Daily Mail!!! There is the article .  He gets credited on all the photos and a mention in the article!  Fantastic

Right folks you are all much better with words than I.  I'm looking for a novel, new, insightful description of my music - up to 4 words let us say.  Something different to make people prick up their ears and and want to listen. Below are a selection of my songs.  Listen to these and others either on Reverbnation or SoundCloud and then enter your entry as a comment.  The prize?   Well I'm working on a new release at the moment - I'll use your slogan/phrase/description on the artwork for that and send you a free signed copy!!!

To be honest after writing the post yesterday about my drinking dream I felt a bit better.  Later in the day I had the chance to call two of my good good friends in AA and talked about it.  Funny one of them I know had shared at a meeting a couple of weeks back he'd had a disturbing drinking dream - it knocked him off his balance too and he is over 20 years sober.  It never leaves us, it is an insidious thing gnawing in our heads and hearts - the compulsion to drink may be lifted whilst I work the programme of recovery, I may have the desire to stop drinking but in my head and my heart it stills weedles away trying to find a way to catch me out.  Non addicts and alcoholics can never probably fully appreciate that or the feelings associated with it.  It was a sharp reminder to me to stay on the right path. "Cunning, baffling, powerful" - Bill W could not have found any other 3 words to better sum it up. Feeling less "unbalanced" and having had a "family...

I had a bloody awful drinking dream last night.  It has been some time since I had one, but since I clambered out of bed this morning it has been replaying in my head and that isn't good. So what was this dream then... okay here is the unlikely scenario... I was sat on a table in a very spartan room, just two tables in the room which was just a very grey plain room.  The tables were black topped steel legged things.  One table had two chairs - similar to the tables the other table had just one chair.  I was sat at the table with one seat on my own.  The other table was about 10 feet away at most.  Sat there was Ewan McGregor and someone else - unknown, not relevant...  I was just focused entirely on Ewan.   Ewan and his buddy were having a whale of a time laughing, slapping on the back all the bonhomie stuff you'll be familiar with Ewan for if you've ever seen his travelogues on the bikes etc.  They were drinking vodka, loads of the stuff....

The Turin Shroud is one of the great enigmas of religious history.  Rarely viewed in public and even more rarely examined by experts who have largely declared it to be, if not an outright fake, at least not what it is claimed it is.  Even simply the age of the cloth appears incorrect by carbon dating for example.  Its very secretive early history adds to the mystery. This novel is actually a murder mystery with a totally unique rewriting of the Shrouds origins underlying the modern thriller.  I don't want to spoil the plot for you but there are two threads to the story and you wonder how they will tie together at the end.  When they do, it wasn't in the way I expected them to.  As a thriller this ticks all the right boxes, competent cops battling against sinister forces with long histories of murder to protect their secrets.  Some globe trotting to add to the fun, a series of murders you feel must be connected with the other line of inquiry and a rev...

Yeah I know I know, living the dream or what?  You must all be so jealous of my luxuriant life style.  Seriously though compared with 90%plus of the worlds population what the hell do I have to be ungrateful about? We went to the Rochester Sweeps Festival on Monday.  This is a bit of an odd event combining ages old May Day celebrations with maypoles, morris dancers, Jack-in-the-Green etc. with an old holiday the chimney sweeps of old were granted.  According to Medway Councils site... F estival origins The sweeps’ holiday was traditionally held on 1 May each year. Locally, they used to mark the occasion by staging a procession through the streets of Rochester. Medway’s annual Sweeps Festival recreates the joy and laughter enjoyed by the chimney sweeps at their traditional holiday: the one time of the year the sweeps could leave the soot behind and have some fun. Their fun continued with the Jack-in-the-Green ceremony, a seven-foot character that ...

Those of you who pop by here regularly will already know I rather like the doom/death/heavy metalers who hail originally from Halifax.  I saw them on the recent UK tour and you can read a review if you care to. Having seen the boys in concert and heard three new tracks off the forthcoming album at the gig I pre-ordered the CD from a well known web retailer that has no direct connection to South America.  It duly arrived through the letterbox on the day of release and has been a regular listen since.  Ok so what have we here?  Firstly this is very typical Paradise Lost, the vocals are delivered by Nick Holm in commanding style, I like that he has a variety of delivery, this isn't all shouty or growly or whatever - he sings, he growls etc. as appropriate to the track.  All delivered on this with great aplomb. This is probably the most "doom" that Paradise Lost have been for many years, their early material was in this vein but then they branched out including...

Recently a few events have led to me looking at some stuff - some stuff that had been swept by me back under the carpet - but the carpet was lifted, I could have just laid the carpet back down or swept the stuff further under a bit not lifted but I didn't this time.  This is tough stuff for me.  Some people talk about the onion of recovery, you peel of one layer only for another to be underneath needing peeling - I like the onion analogy as well since when I peel onions I cry - this stuff has a similar effect on me. Firstly - my Dad.  A couple of times recently relationships with fathers etc. have come up and caused me to look at my relationship with my Dad.  My Dad retired early (in his late 50s) when the local dockyard was shut by the Tory govt in the 80s.  He had worked there 42 years - gave his bloody life to the service of this country did my Dad.  He had major issues with his hips through work stuff, he'd had a nasty fall when I was very little and ...

Hi all... bit behind on book reviews, hey hardly anyone comments but they get some of my best reader stats so here are the three I owe you. Devils Elixir - Raymond Khoury This continues with the main characters from Mr Khoury's previous two "Templar" novels (Last Templar & Templar Salvation) namely Tess Chaykin and Sean Reilly.  This time something/one from Reilly's FBI agent past comes back to haunt them.  Reilly gets a call from an old flame in desperate trouble.  The body count grows rapidly as chaos ensues as an evil drug baron believed to be long dead by the authorities tries to get his hands on a potent drug formula derived from an ancient South American Indian recipe. One thing to say is that the style of this book is odd, many of the chapters are written in the 1st person from Reilly's point of view but then others, where he is not present in the action, are written in a typical 3rd person narration style.  I can't remember any of Mr Khoury...

I had a day off yesterday.  I'd screwed up the leave request as I meant to have last Monday off, which I did but I thought I'd canceled this Monday until my boss pointed out last week I was off on a Monday again... he thinks I'm unable to get to work on a Monday at the moment!  I could have canceled it but decided having had the Swimathon I'd have the day off anyway.  And there were a few things to do, including that flipping tax return that has been sat there gnawing at my mind.  Do you know I should give up work I had a fantastic day.  Here is the list of things achieved Went shopping - the weekly grocery shop to help out Mrs F - I don't like the "new" Tesco, they changed it just over a year ago when I was just getting back to work and stopped going regularly, it isn't the right layout - the fruit and veg are at the back in the middle, the dairy in the far corner, booze as you first walk in - which I thought was against the voluntary code of cond...