Last minute erection

This is one tiny bit of what you missed if you didn't make it down to Gig in the Garden on Sunday.

Outside of the marquee it was blowing a hoolie that was swinging in from the SW, that was carrying very cold air from some place in the Arctic circle, but inside our weather beaten old marquee things were far from cold. Cool maybe, cause that's what we like to present at these affairs, hot bands playing cool music born in the Furness peninsula, with a micro climate that the weather man/girl always manages to not to predict.

Let me take you back.

I watch the forecasts for these outdoor events very closely, you have to, because we live in England, what's more we live on the north west coast of England. These days they've got pretty sophisticated gubbins to tell us what's going on, and I'm up on isobars so I keep a close eye. Three days to go to Gig in the garden and we've got a low pressure system that's hanging over Iceland and heading our way, sinking slowly towards a high that's due in on Saturday. Hour by hour it's bringing a cold front and strong winds, but it looks like we'll escape the worst of it until Sunday night around about seven. Just about squeeze the gig in before we get the worst of it, that's Thursday prediction. I check the BBC site, I check, accuweather, I check wunderground and the met office, I'm a weather guru, they all say the same. Morning sunny, turning cloudy, overcast, then as the wind picks up it turns to rain at 7pm. It's the same forecast right up to Saturday morning.

So I decide we can get away with the open air stage and so we set that up on the morning of Saturday. We decide that we'll move behind the trees to gain shelter from the wind and leave Ford Park to go and do some shopping. We meet Virginia in town who asks if we've put up the marquee as she's just seen a forecasts that predicts heavy rain all day. No, I said, I've seen the forecasts and it's going to be fine till 7pm.

At 5.30 we catch the Granada weather. This confirms what Virginia has said heavy rain from 2pm, seems that the cold front has accelerated and is due earlier than predicted. SHIT!!!!!!!

We should have put up the marquee, but too late now at 6 pm the night before the GiG. I go through the thought of cancelling, that's the simplest solution, just call the whole thing off. Putting up the marquee at this late hour is a non starter. It takes at least eight people, of some strength, to get the thing out and erect it, and there's only me and Jackie. I decide that if I could raise 8 people I could still rescue tomorrows gig.

Now it's a big ask on a Saturday night at 6.30 to get people to wrestle with a load of canvas, the size of the Cutty Sark sails, heavy steel poles and giant metal stakes, but I start going through my phone contacts. I get lots of voicemail boxes, which is no good I need people now to commit to being there at 7pm as it will take at least 2 hours or more to put up.

I start at A, and soon get to Alex from UCAN who is willing and has a friend who'll come along. OK I'll come back to you, I need eight, and we're now four. Colin, our chairman in his 70s and his wife can help, thats six, but everywhere else I draw a blank until I phone Rees, one of our trustees. He's got family up for the weekend who are out in town at a pub, but he'll see if they're willing. He calls back with positive news, they can help, so now we have eight, and we arrange to meet up at Ford park as close to seven as they can. I call the other volunteers and at 7.30 we're all on site and under my instructions they miraculously manage to get our marquee up just as the twighlight turns to dark at around 10pm.

The next day at 10am we have just four volunteers to finish putting up the stage, the sides to the marquee and the gazeebos for the food and drink stalls. For some reason our usual trusty crew of 10 volunteers fail to surface bu somehow we manage and by 1pm we're all set for the audience and bands to arrive. It's been a very fraught 24 hours, and the north wind is blowing hard, but the rain is holding off.

The audience trickles in, much slimmer than on better days, but in the marquee is cozy and the music kicks off with Blast Furness playing in the shelter of the marquee to welcome people to our afternoon of live music. The bands are brilliant, the audience are enthusiastic and the food and drink flows.

Lots of our audience tell me this is the best line up we've ever had, the atmosphere was electric and they all loved the intimacy of the marquee.

We struck the last chord at 6pm and at 6.30 it started raining, just as we were packing up.

It was a close call at  6.30 on Saturday night but thanks to our impromtu erectors we had the most brilliant of afternoon of home grown live music.

Thanks to you all for making it happen. Christ you know it aint easy, you know how hard it can be.   

One life to live

Just back from a couple of weeks in  the Dominican Republic, my spiritual home it seems these days. I always find inspiration for another song. They just pop out of thin air when I'm there and here's one that popped out this time. We don't have any fancy video gear so this is recorded on my smart phone, which seems to do just about anything. We had to be on the beach at about 7am before the breeze started blowing which make a dreadful noise on the built in mic.
Good to discover I'm no longer a town councillor, I'll have to change my strap line at the top of this blog.
Still suffering from jet lag and lack of sleep so will maybe comment on my 8 years at UTC another day. As for now it's Col the songwriter and beach bum here to entertain with my new uke.

Keep Colin and carry on

I know I posted here a couple of weeks ago a blog entitled "That's all folks" but just the other day I found out that the candidate that the conservatives have pitched against me, is, wait for it..................  Helen Irving!!!!!!.

So all you North warders, .

 Take time to ponder on this before you blindly vote blue on May 3rd.

I had the street lamps painted when they said there was no money to do this

I persuaded the Council to enter the 21st century and have a website

I lobbied to cut the amount of papers we were sent by post which are now sent by email.

Soon New Market St will become traffic free on market days when Brogden St one way system is reversed,
that will happen because I made a song and dance about it.

I have been at the forefront of developing Ford Park from a derelict site to a beautiful park.

Me and Colin H. steered the Sir John Barrow monument project to successful conclusion.

Doesn't sound like a lot, for 8 years, but ask Helen Irving what she has achieved in her four years on the council when she comes knocking on your door.

Keep a Colin and  carry on

New music for old people

Ok lets be honest, I've just turned 64, which if your young must seem pretty ancient, well I suppose it is, but not if your 64. It's a sort of cruel trick that life plays out on you that in your head your forever young. Even though I've only got about six of my own teeth left and my bald patch is growing faster than my hair, my laughter lines have become permanent fixtures, and I walk the valleys now instead of heading for the mountain tops.
But the one place where I know I've aged is when I try to find some decent music to listen to on the radio or on the net. Ok, I thought that being a musician I would always be hip to what's happening but to tell you the truth I lost the will to keep up a long time ago. Hip-hop, Techno, Garage, Dubstep, House, grunge etc. etc. has passed me by and left me cold, stone cold, and I hear my father echo in my ear. Where's the tune, I can't hear the words, or if I can they're rubbish, or just too offensive/aggressive crap.
This I realise is just a syndrome of growing older, and with age comes a certain mellowness. Not that I don't like a tune with a bit of fire, a crashing of guitars now and then but I must admit to these days liking stuff thats easier on the ears. Mind you I was always a sucker for Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills and Nash, Jackson Brown, The early Eagles stuff, so maybe I'm just returning to my roots. Problem is when I want to find that sort of new music, I turn on the radio and it's not there, or very rarely I bought the Elbow album last year, now that was great, and new, but it's so difficult to find. So what does a man of taste do to discover new stuff that turns me on, as they used to say back in the days of peace and love.

Lets put new music for old people into google and see what we get. OMG. The kirkgate centre in Cockermouth, which I've played at with the Lakes Blues band back in 2000 was putting on a series of over 60's nights, and what were they going to be presenting. A evening of swing band concerts, SWING!!!!, that really floored me. The swing era was dead and gone before I was born in 1948, Ok maybe it hung on by it's fingernails till the early fifties but for me it was dads music, hey we were the new generation and we had Rock n Roll, we didn't do swing, for gods sake. So who on earth was arranging these evenings, some 30 year old who thought that 60 year olds would want old peoples music. NO, we want proper music, Heartbreak Hotel, Goodness gracious Great balls of fire, not In the bloody mood. wrong wrong wrong!

Another link and I find that somebody is catering for older people, they've started a radio station for the over 30s'. The over thirties, they're not old they're hardly out of nappies, They say there's just no good music about these days, not like the hay days of the 80's, so there you go another blow to being old, now I realise I'm really ancient, almost fossilised.
But then I find out that there's about 77 million of us out there, were the baby boomers and the media thinks that we've gone away, drifted into a world of pipe and slippers and the antique road show. Well let me tell you we've still got a lot of living to do and that living needs a soundtrack to live by. I for one don't want to dig out all my old vynal records and replay them to relive the memories of my youth. Now and again it's nice to revisit them now and again but what I need is new music, new music that is a bit like my old music, I suppose.  That's the rub, I want interesting stuff by accomplished musicians doing songs that have, what we used to call soul, something in there that touches my heart, makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise, or just moves me enough to rock gently back and forth in my rocking chair. No I don't have a rocking chair, and I don't move as well as I used to, in fact thinking about it I never did move too well, but you know what I mean, dancing was never my forte, even at 20 I danced like a granddad.
So here I am at 64, rehearsing with my band, The Beat Combo, and about to cut another album of original tunes and I'm thinking there must be loads of us out there. We're still writing songs, moving in our own time, and reflecting the world as we now see it. A world in all it's hideous complexity, it's irony, where what was once possible is now tinged with the acceptance of wisdom, that things might not work out like our innocence of the 60's thought they would. Love Love Love, turned into endless stupid wars, and all those protest songs in the end achieved nothing, the rich got richer and the poor carried on being poor, and the world turned.

All I wanted was to find that oasis of talent that is touching 60 or even seventy that was still out there treading the boards, making music that I want to listen to, to help me cope in the madness that we create. I know that we are here, there must be millions of us, baby boomers, who never graced the top twenty but who still have a tale to sing, a story to tell. It's just that we're swamped by the now generation. The young are easier to sell to and so thats where the money and the media go to target their pointless products. Us oldies  have seen it done it, have got the "T" shirt and won't get fooled again. So maybe that's why there is so little music for us to discover on the radio, or on the net, there's just no money in it. Money makes the world go around, that clinking clanking sound.
New music for old people, That's a radio station I want to hear, there's enough stuff out there for the kids, it's about time we boomers stood up and shouted, where's our stuff, cause we need that soundtrack all the way to the grave, and it's not swing or even nostalgic 50s' and 60s' we want now music for now oldies. Thank you for listening.

That's all folks

Soon it will be local election time, I think it's May 3rd and if all goes to plan this will be my final few weeks as a town councillor. I'm standing as a candidate in North ward, which is staunch conservative, and which was Colin Hodgesons' ward for many years. He is no longer with us, but it's highly unlikely that I will get elected, unless of course they like voting for a Colin to represent them.
The fact that the local elections for town councillors are decided along party political lines seems a complete nonsense to me, but that is the reality.

When I first walked through that oversized door into the big room, where we all sit to debate and wrestle with the big questions of the day, I was struck by the layout of the seating. This arrangement of a semi circle of school desks divided by a central aisle with the conservatives on the right and Labour on the left struck me then as archaic. In fact the furniture is certainly archaic, probably turned out somewhere in the distant past of the nineteenth century, not even the 20th.
And then there's the dias where the Mayor of the day sits with their deputy to one side, lording it over us like a courtroom judge on a dilapidated throne and on another piece of outdated oak furniture.

The "chamber" as it's pompously  called has seating for, oh I don't know, about 40 or more councillors and a back row that can house perhaps another 20 people. This last row is often reserved for members of the public but on 99% of our meetings you'll be lucky if you see anyone in these seats. Oh, now that's not quite true as we do seem to have a couple of regular ladies, of a certain age, who come most weeks. What they find more exciting here than on radio 4 I've got no idea, maybe they both have a highly developed sense of humour and find our deliberations somewhat amusing and exciting. I was going to say perhaps they should get out more, but perhaps they do, this being the start of their week, they then build up slowly through the week with a literary group, a poem and a pint, culture at the Coro, and finish up the week on Saturday night at some rave or perhaps more apt, a wild ceilidh. Sundays will be spent in meditation no doubt, at the priory before starting back on Mondays with our lot.  Although as we only do every fortnight, I wonder what they do on that fallow Monday, stay in with a bottle of gin perhaps, and contemplate the minutes of our last meeting.
Only joking Ladies, at least you bother to come which is more than can be said for the rest of the population.

I once suggested that we should get rid of these pews and replace them with something a bit more modern. At this suggestion one Tory councillor almost had a heart attack. You can't do that it's part of our heritage, it's our tradition. It's old and tatty, that's what it is. It is arranged in such a way that if the public should choose to attend they have to talk to our backs. Oh I know they are supposed to be addressing the Mayor but it has always felt rude and disrespectful to me, I always shift around and try to make eye contact, or at least let them know I'm listening to them.
And the fact that we have about 2/3rds of the seats empty doesn't look too good. This arrangement may have worked 50 years ago when we were Ulverston Urban District Council but today we only have 18 councillors in total, and the number of times we've all been present I could count on half a hand. I don't see any reason why we couldn't have a big table where we all face each other, at least we could then hear what we are saying. What we all seem to be doing is talking to the wall, not each other, apologies to the Mayor there, I didn't mean to implore that you were a wall, just my opinion of the archaic set up of our council chamber.

The one glaring thing that has stood out though is the lack of public participation. But then no wonder. Who knows that we're even meeting? There's some inconsequential bit of paper posted on a message board inside the town hall where nobody goes, or hardly anybody goes. We should have an "A" board outside on the pavement telling people that there's a meeting tonight. Oh but hang on, we may be contravening some bye law about blocking pavements, can't do that. Hey but we do have a web site now though, and it's all there, I suppose. I was responsible for that, one thing that I did manage to achieve, although how many people use it I don't know.
No, we're in a way a secret society, beavering away on your behalf, making very little difference to your lives. God knows, we try to be a force for good but often our suggestions are ignored by the big boys, and girls at SLDC who seem to steam roller through any policies that we disagree with. It all makes for a very frustrated bunch of councillors who over time just loose the will to fight with any real vigour.

 Most have been there too long and seem to understand the protocols too well, that all they can ever suggest is that we write a strong letter, which ends up at the bottom of some in-tray at SLDC, or Cumbria county councils offices.
I really believe that we should have limited terms of office for town councillors. I think two should be enough, that's eight years. Would you believe some have been there for thirty years! That's far too long, your bound to get tired, we need vim and vigour, we need new blood coming in all the time, people with a passion who can make things happen, have new ideas, turn things around, be engaged.
Yes eight years is enough, which is why this May I don't want to be elected, , I've done my bit and now it's time to say goodbye.

When I'm 64

When I get older losing my hair many years from now, ......was how the lyric went in the year when I was just 19 years young. Oh what a distant unknowable concept was that, a time I would no doubt never live to see as we were all gonna die before we got old. Grand children on my knee, and holidays in the Isle of Wight, if it wasn't too dear.
So here it is, here is the very day when I'm 64. I've poured myself a glass of pink bubbly, and lit a cuban cigar, vanilla flavoured, and savouring the moment. I've had not one card, but this is the age of facebook, and I've had over 50 happy birthday wishes, and over half from people I actually know.
Have an awesome day, some said, and although I haven't done anything special, today has been a very special day. Today I went to get the result of my blood test which I had been waiting for for just about a week. The test had been arranged to confirm that my operation in November for the removal of my prostate had been a success. I had had to wait these three months to see if the out come was going to be positive, and at about 9am I received the news I'ld been waiting to hear. Your blood test is normal, completely clear, completely normal, not a trace of cancer.
Well you can't get a better birthday present than that can you.
It's been a long three months, always hoping for the best, but fearing that your going to be the one in a thousand where the op fails to cure you. So whoopeee.
So today, at 64 I'm getting ready for new adventures, to sail away into the sunset without the dark cloud of the big C hanging like a hammer. So thank you NHS and here's to many more years.
Ok the cigars and the alcohol may get me in the end but for now I'm enjoying the moment. Happy birthdays have never felt so good.

United Utilities, I don't think so

United Utilities are not exactly united when it comes to their various departments and computer systems communicating with each other. This has a tendency to frustrate and eventually infuriate their customers.

Take a rather large leak of water that we have had at Ford Park.

Lets start back at the beginning, a very good place to start, as Julie Andrews once sang in doh rey me, but I digress. It was Friday, not last Friday but the one before that, the 27th of January. I was walking the fences around our yet to be opened play area when I noticed rather a lot of water had gathered inside the mounds we had formed around the swings. In fact what we had were a couple of sizeable duck ponds. There was also water flowing through the play tunnel so I traced this back up the field and found that we had a flow of water coming out of the ground just above the play area, not just a trickle.

I called our trusty water engineer who came to look straight away. He reckoned that we had a mains water leak somewhere close to the wall, near to the Hospice. You need to call United Utilities, which we did, on the Friday. 'We'll get somebody out tomorrow to have a look, we'll call you when they're on their way'. At 3pm on the Saturday we called to ask when they would be arriving, only to be told that it may be Monday before they could come. Jackie had a few sharp words at this point as this leak was damaging our 72,000 pounds worth of new play ground. A few minutes later they called back to say a man was on his way from Lancaster. Why they didn't have somebody in Furness we didn't even ask. At about 4.30pm a man arrived with a long listening stick who told us we had a leak. Well we knew that but where is it, we asked. He came on to our field and prodded about with his listening stick in a spot that seemed very boggy. Suddenly water started to gush out of the small hole he had made. "That's annoyed it" he said, the leak is around here. It's on private land, this leak, so it's not our problem you'll have to get your plumber to repair it. He tried turning off the valve in the street just to prove that he had nailed the problem, and then he left, back to Lancaster, leaving us with an even faster flow of water than we had before he came.

We called Andy from Hydrojet and told him the tale. He said it would take a few days to organise things, he would have to get a mini digger to investigate and he could start on Wednesday 1st and could fix it.

So on Wednesday morning Andy starts digging where the United Utilities man had said the leak was. Within about fifteen minutes he unearthed a broken land drain and water was now cascading into the play area and across our fields. But this was not the source of the leak. He wanted to investigate nearer to the wall. An hour later we had another big hole and he had found, not a two inch pipe, which UU had said we had but a four inch steel pipe with a very bad fracture. The water was now gushing into the air a bit like the fountain at lake Geneva.
Andy tried to shut the valve down, identified by our UU man on Saturday but found that it wouldn't close completely. He didn't want to force it because if he broke it then UU would be very unhappy with him and would probably charge him for breaking their stuff.

So, we make arrangements for him to return on Friday with the bits to repair the said pipe and we would contact UU to have them turn off the valve at the same time. This is where things start to go slightly pear-shaped. Jackie has a conversation with a man called Dan at UU emergency leak line. The good news is that they tell Jackie that they can repair the leak for free under some scheme or other. She asks him to confirm that this is in fact so three times. Three times, like St Paul and the Jesus thing he says that he will fix it for nowt. He even gives her a job number. We trot off to tell Andy not to bother going to Penrith for the part as UU will fix it for nothing. He'll come back and fix the land drain after the nice man from UU has repaired the leak for free.

They will be in touch in 48 hours to tell us when they are going to come and fix the leak. 48 hours come and go. It's now Friday, one whole week since the leak was spotted. Jackie calls UU, but it's bad news. Seems as though Dan was wrong about the free fix as its a private pipe, and they don't fix private pipes for free. Jackie goes a bit mental down the phone and in the end they promise to send someone out on Monday to review the leak.

The weather turns to freezing and the water running across the drive has become treacherous with ice, then over the weekend it snows. A nice man from UU comes to visit on Monday 6th, today. He has a look and seems to be quite senior, and the sort of man who can make decisions. He decides we've had a lot of agro from UU and that it will be fixed for nothing, and fixed tomorrow. About 1.30pm we get a call to say that the job has been actioned for tomorrow, Tuesday.

But just when everything seemed to be going right Jackie picks up a message left on her answer phone to tell us that the job has been cancelled as they won't repair our pipe for nowt as its on private property. As we don't pick up this message till about 6.30 pm Monday we don't know which message came first. The one that said they would fix it, or the one that says they wont. Tomorrow is another day, and we wait with baited breath to see which bit of United Utilities is running the show.

Is it the software, or is it the engineers in charge, search me, meanwhile thousands of gallons of unmetered water is escaping onto our park. No wonder our water bills are sky high with this level of incompetence and miscommunication.

United Utilities, I don't think so.

Watch this space for the next exciting instalment......