Tuesday, June 28, 2011









Borne aloft as carried on a long feared dream; now are the machinations come at last to fruition and laid bare before us. All this has happened before and now as the hand of destiny hovers to midnight so the clear divisions that beset all we strive to become; crystallise. We the clockwork organic machinery of a now dying world of commerce are at last to be set free only for it all to come to nothing but what has been allowed for us. The hands that control the fate of the world are few, but alas, they are too mighty to conquer in one lifetime.

We have lived and been reborn so many times but each step in renaissance has taken us back to the same place in existence. We are pawns in a cosmic chess match that has been played maliciously over aeons. Yet we will not bend or yield to the basest humanity driven avarice. For we realise that you invisibles who drive the world cannot understand all that came as gifts to us when the world was first birthed in cosmic forges and stardust formed, breathed and became life. It is our life not yours and we will decide how to live it

Friday, June 24, 2011

Here my luck has run out and after my 35 years the mill is closing...3 generations of Davies totalling over 100 years...sad really, but inevitable and the company is trying to do the right thing by us.
Key Historical Dates
  

June 1977 - Leave school Friday start work Monday at Hollins Mill
June 2011 - Hollins Mill begins 90 days of consultation with workforce
Oct 2012 - Hollins Mill forecast to close

See here



Monday, June 20, 2011

Duz tha speak Yarkshire

A Yorkshire man takes his cat to the vet.
Yorkshireman: "Ayup, lad, I need to talk to thee about me cat."
Vet: "Is it a tom?"
Yorkshireman: "Nay, I've browt it with us."

A Yorkshireman's dog dies and as it was a favourite pet he
decides to have a gold statue made by a jeweller to remember the dog by.
Yorkshireman: "Can tha mek us a gold statue of yon dog?"
Jeweller: "Do you want it 18 carat?"
Yorkshireman: "No I want it chewin' a bone yer daft bugger!"

A Yorkshireman's wife dies and the widower decides that her headstone should have the words "She were thine" engraved on it. He calls the stone mason, who assures him that the headstone
will be ready a few days after the funeral.True to his word the stone mason calls the widower to say that the headstone is ready and would he like to come and have a look.
When the widower gets there he takes one look at the stone to see that it's been engraved "She were thin".
He explodes: "'ells bells man, you've left the blood y "e" out, you've left the blood y "e" out!"
The stone mason apologises profusely and assures the poor widower that it will be rectified the following morning.
Next day comes and the widower returns to the stone mason:"There you go sir, I've put the "e" on the stone for you".
The widower looks at the stone and then reads out aloud:
"E, she were thin".

Bloke from Barnsley with piles asks chemist
"Nah then lad, does tha sell arse cream?"
Chemist replies "Aye, Magnum or Cornetto?"

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Portugal – The Algarve – Cabanas - The weather is hot and sunny nearly all the time with just the odd cloudy spell thrown in to cool you down. The flat is situated just outside Cabanas and is one of hundreds on a large complex. The complex appears to be one of the construction projects that were coming to fruition when the recession hit as probably 66% remain unsold. As June is ‘out of season’ the occupiers of most of the other 33% are nowhere to be seen. The result is what appears to be a set for ‘life after people.’ This has its advantages but at times it is a little eerie. So in order have been to

Sat - Cabanas – Small pretty harbour on a bay so to get to the beach you need to take a ‘water taxi’ got bitten by mosquitoes tonight. Typical they head straight to me. Think they are going to be itchy.

Sun – Pool day. Wow other people and from Oldham too. Nice couple with a baby on the way very soon and staying in his father’s apartment. Got the impression despite it all that they wished they had not bought the apartment now as the prices had since fallen by 25% but it's a lovely spot and you cant put a price on all those holidays. Had to go to the chemist for some cream for the bites which have come up swollen and red.

Mon Tavira – Large town reached by train (10min) with a beach again only reachable by a water taxi. I bought a mobile internet stick for 29.99 which i thought had 10 days use on but it turns out there was only 1 hour. So need to go back at some point. Well Vodafone need I say any more.

Tue - Monte Gordo – A large town with high rise hotels which is unusual here. Planning laws must restrict the height of new developments to preserve the atmosphere of the place. This does however have a promenade and a beach.
Wed - Seville – Obviously in Andalucía, Spain. Took a day trip on a coach (2hrs) on Wednesday. Nice city with a huge gothic cathedral and lots of winding streets. Very hot place though and I was glad to get back on the coach again after a few hours. What was amazing was driving past acres of orange groves laid out in long straight lines and full of ripe Seville bitter oranges.
Walked into Cabanas after the coach dropped us off and saw 2 snakes in the stream by the path. Managed to get a photo of 1 of them.

Thur - back to Monte Gordo for some sunbathing. Unfortunately it didn’t work out as the beach was freezing. Then to Tavira for a 10 euro top up on the internet stick. Money has all but run out and there are still 3 days left to go so we are going to need some cheap entertainment till we leave.

Fri – Up early and at last the internet is working again. Although to be honest most of the time you look at crap to pass the time. Wonder how the dog is getting along at my brothers. Well will know Monday. I hope he is behaving himself and not being too much of a nuisance...he’s very boisterous. Spent the day on the beach and had pasta with a vegetable tomato sauce for dinner which Jennifer made...very nice.

Sat – Spent the day on Cabanas beach again – very hot. Really too hot for me even tough I brown off quite easily. I think my ideal temperature is about 22-24 degrees. Got a Frango (chicken) for dinner and had a full roast dinner as best we could – especially given the limited cooking facilities.

Sun – Last day today...nice here but I want to be home now among all the familiar things and see little dog. Not looking forward to work again though. I haven’t missed that one little bit. Think we are going to the local town of Tavira for lunch and then home to pack. It’s a hot day and a mosquito manages to bite my ear and make it swell up.

Mon – Ah and so back into Britain and the cool, cloudy weather. The first thing I notice is all the posters in the airport that tell me what I cannot do here. That sounds about right and head for home past the sniffer dog at customs. But I’m brown as a walnut, just as wrinkled and itchy...must have been a good holiday!

Pictures to follow

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Dirt cant hurt me


Grapes too far north


Mutant Horseradish

Perhaps there is a part of HE 1523-0901 in the stardust that makes up us all. We are after all just a collection of molecules of encapsulated time that presses on through the relativity that is the cosmos. We are each for a better word soldiers of time living and dying for mother universe. It is probably a war without end, so there will be no armistice, no surrender, and no dawn after a bloody night. The peace is always to be lost and as conflict rises we sail through our second in time knowing we make up the spatial day..
After the Big Bang, the Universe consisted of mostly hydrogen, some helium and a little lithium, so the first stars to form would have contained only these elements. It was the first generation of stars that converted these lighter elements into heavier ones like carbon, phosphorous, iron and lead - collectively known to astronomers as metals. When those stars exploded they "polluted" the cosmos with these heavier elements, which themselves went into a later generation of stars - like our Sun. The existence of stars with zero or very low metal content has been predicted for decades, but none has ever been found, leading some to suspect they never existed - until the discovery of HE0107-5240. The star was spotted in the outer reaches of our galaxy by Norbert Christlieb, at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and colleagues. It lies in the direction of the southern constellation Phoenix, at a distance of about 36,000 light-years. The star has just 1/200,000th of the metal content of our Sun. Recent cosmological studies show that the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago. The metal-poor star HE 1523 formed in our Milky Way galaxy soon afterward (cosmologically speaking: 13.2 billion years ago)
How old are the oldest stars" astronomers recently measured the age of a star located in our Galaxy. The star, a real fossil, is found to be 13.2 billion years old, not very far from the 13.7 billion years age of the Universe. The star, HE 1523-0901, was clearly born at the dawn of time.



Amazing photos from http://www.eso.org/public/