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The time is 7:52 and this stop is Horsefairs SM.
The time is 7:52 and this stop is Horsefairs SM.
The time is 7:53 and this stop is Horsefairs SM
The time is 7:53 and this stop is Horsefairs SM
and so on…

I know people are accused of having short attention spans in this day and age due to the advent of TV and the constant interuptions of adverts, but last night took the piss as Bristol City Council seemed to being implying that people had the memory span of a gold fish.

A few months back a system was added onto certain bus routes to inform people when the next bus was due and how long a wait they could expect. This is a pretty good idea as it is more reliable than a bus timetable as it continually keeps track of where the buses are and how long you will be waiting.

Now it seems they have made an alteration to the service, note I am not calling it an improvement. Whilst at one of these bus stops tonight, twice every minute the display board would activate a speak and informus of the time and wherewe were and at the same time was providing no information when the next bus was due.

I am not overly discrinatory but sure if anyone needs to be reminded of what the time is and where they are every two minutes they shouldn’t be catching a bus! Inaddition the only result of this time checking was to reinforce how long you were actually standing in the cold and rain waiting for a bus. Now I could understand it if they used the speaker to announce that a bus was due to arrive in two minutes as that has a purpose, but multiple announcements have no purpose and just piss people off and have no point, on a lighter note when I ran a search to find a picture for this article and concluded I will have to take my own I managed to find this and I have to admit it does sum up First Bus (at least in Bristol) quite well.

Today has been complete bliss, I have had the house to myself all day as all of my housemates have gone off for the weekend. One of the advantages of not going home overly is that from time to time everyone else goes ome at the same time, now don’t get me wrong my housemates are lovely, but to have the house to yourself is wonderful. After all it means you walk around the house in a state of undress and leave the toilet door open so you can continue to listen to the stereo.

The sum of my efforts today has been the acquisition of a few albums through the wonder that is Bittorrent and watching “quality” TV such as some programme about a former member of Steps (H) going to the Royal College of Music which like a lot of trasy TV is strangely watchable in reality and keeps you on the sofa. I didn’t feel too guilty doing this as I don’t usually watch that muc TV but I have to admit I could get used to sprawling out across the sofa in my dressing gown for hours on end.

Seriously though it does make me long for the end of my student existence of house sharing with other people and having truly a place of my own instead of just a room, after all with a place of your own you can set it up the way you want it and dont discover the front room taken up by a housemate and their friends watching a DVD when you want to watch a programme, you can set things up the way you want them and not have to put up with any clutter except your own.

This year I had to leave stuff in storage as I have too much stuff for one room and currently m room is a little crampt in places due to my bookcases stuffed with books, a desk piled high under paperwork and a double bed. Ideally I would have another room to function as a study as I did a couple of years ago then my bed room could at last be a place to sleep rather than work.

But because I share a house currently I do not have the luxury of being able to spread aout the house and am largely confined to one room as I have little in common with the people I live with and we each lead our seperate lives within the same house.

Today is St Patrick’s Day and used the world over as an excuse for a party and having a glass or to of the black stuff. Oddly enough it is probably the biggest of the Saints days in the UK certainly in England, most people couldn’t tell you when St George’s Day is (23rd April) instead we choose to celebrate a day in honour of another country.

Now whilst I see no harm in a good old knees up and it is a joy to see some of the celebrations that take place across the world today I cannot help but ask why we neglect our own Saints day. I am British according to my passport, but I am also English and I view it to be a shame on how this is looked down upon. You can be proud of being Welsh, Scottish or Irish, but to be proud of being English is seen as somewhat of a crime.

The United Kingdom is exactly that, even if it sometimes it is more united than others. Each of the countries that comprise it still have their cultural identities and symbols and rivalry between them is rife; all over from sports such as the current 5 nations through to places like Bristol. Where due to it’s proximity to Wales there is a lot of English/Welsh banter some more good natured than others.

The problem is largely attributed to the claiming of such symbols as the St George’s Cross by far right groups such as the BNP and football hooligans, whilst I agree they hold a part of the blame I also view it as the fault of the majority to try and retain it as a positive symbol. As a result events such as St George’s Day had been sidelined and I imagine this year will see no difference in this.

I see no harm in being proud of one’s heritage after all, all cultures have achievements of which they should be proud just as they have other parts they would sooner forget. Part of the problems with this are cultural change, after all what was acceptable in England 300 years ago is not as acceptable now in many cases, but this is not just limited to English culture. All cultures throughout history have good and bad points regardless of the morality applied to them and as moralities change so do cultures, from slavery through to less serious issues such as smoking which has seen a huge change in acceptability from being cool in the 1950s to becoming increasingly reviled in the past decade.

Loyalty to ones country has always been an issue and it is this that I think is the cause of a lot of the issues to do with patriotism in the modern age as people increasingly do not define themselves in the old system. Due to immigration more people define themselves as being of a culture that is not traditionally English and I see nothing wrong with this. Using America as an example ethnicity is rarely as simple as just being American, many people are Irish-American, Italian-American, Chinese-American. Indeed the “true” Americans are not referred to as Americans but Native Americans. Now while I don’t think we will ever see Native English as an ethnicity in the UK I expect over time the current definitions will be supplemented with definitions based on ancestral descent. England is after all a mongrel nation with a population descended from invaders from many locations from Vikings to Romans and whilst we may not be facing a hostile invasion we are seeing the population structure changing, with pockets forming in some areas of immigrant populations. Again this is similar to America where many cities have parts that are defined by the population.

Immigrants have a lot to offer most cultures and often form a crucial part of the workforce and ultimately assume a place in the society becoming more integral over time. Unfortunately the media which is responsible for the media doesn’t paint this image which has led to scare mongering about Britain being under siege. The immigration of people and ideas is nothing new whether it be a sudden or gradual thing and judging by examples throughout history there is little to worry about in the long time as all that happens is assimilation and adaptation. Society is a enduring beast, just using English as an example although we have imported many words a lot of our language still has it’s basis in a time before importation became significant.

I imagine society will be quite like this changes will be made and I believe that is better than stagnation but the resistance is more based in a resistance to and fear of change and the unknown as the ideas we are familiar with are forced to change and inertia is a powerful thing and overcoming this requires effort.

Anyways, Happy St Paddy’s Day

Just beyond the gate,
A neat yellow hole-
Someone pissed in the snow

This poem by Issa in my mind epitomises part of my fascination with Japan.  Haiku was my first experience of Japanese culture and it’s heritage, we were taught about it in an English lesson, the structure of it appealed to me. It’s way of presenting a complex idea in such a rigid and simple structure enthralled me and so when as part of an exercise I had to attempt to produce my own I jumped at the chance as poetry like photography is a passion of mine.  The results of my attempts at haiku were simple such as: 

The wolf howls at-
The moon, bright in the night sky,
Is still and silent.

Now while not on a par with Basho;, considered the greatest writer of haiku it follows the similar rules to the haiku that he wrote back in the 1600s such as:

Among moon gazers
at the ancient temple grounds
not one beautiful face

The beauty of these expressions to me lies in their simplicity and the frequent surprises in them, they are frequently reverential in tone if not content as the poem by Issa I started with shows., a poem which is transformed by it’s last line which uses a comical image.  After all many people have pissed in the snow at some point although the unseen pisser in this poem is one of deliberate action as the hole in the snow he makes is neat rather than the usual result where people do things like write their name.  In fact when the opportunity presents itself I think I will see how possible it is to piss into snow and leave a neat hole.

Whilst looking through the news today I noticed an article from a couple of days ago observing the passing of Dave Allen in his sleep, at the age of 68.  A lot of his work was done before I was born I’ll admit but I have had the pleasure of seeing some of it after being introduced to it by my father.

His brand of humour appealed to me; the image of him sat down with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette for either hand making observances on life is an enduring one.  At the time he was considered groundbreaking watching it now, it retains its humour even if his specialist topics of sex and religion are no longer as taboo as they were and several of the jokes are as sharp as ever.

I remember first seeing some of his work and being stuck at it’s awareness as the little absurdities of life from phones than can accept multiple calls though to his dating of baths by the rings around it. (A joke that made me think of my Dad talking to me) and it is this kind of humour that I feel made him as liked by the audience as he was.  Certainly in the later stuff I saw of his he could in many ways easily have been a parent of grandparent of mine with many of his observations, unlike them however he turned the observations into jokes and stories as so became a much loved comic of a generation. 

Even with his death his humour shows as he once said he wanted his epitaph to read:

Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never -
I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.

Although of course he could be wrong, after all if God does exist, I am sure He will be wanting a word with Dave.