31 Dec 2009 2:06 AM

Hi there,

I have just found our latest choir video songs, that has been posted on youtube.

If you want to have a look at it please go to youtube and type in barnsley u3a.

The latest film clip is Christmas 2009:wmv

John.

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23 Dec 2009 10:57 PM

My family and I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

By for now.

John.

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20 Dec 2009 1:06 AM

Hi there to all my friends in 'Blog land.'  At the moment, as I look out of my bedroom window, over park land, everything is white with a good covering of snow.  It is bitterly cold, below freezing, and I have elected to stay indoors after going to the shops for a few essentials.

People, in this country, are slow to catch on, when the weather is inclement, and it had to be seen to believe what antics drivers were getting up to when trying to park up in an untreated icy car park. 

Two people, without looking properly, almost reversed into one another and you would not believed how many drivers thought it would be a good idea to drive round the car park the wrong way and almost drive into people coming in the proper direction.  I suppose the bad drivers are less noticeable in good weather conditions. 

Drivers, taking longer journeys, never think to carry extra clothing, in case they have a breakdown or a puncture, and the old shovel, standby seems to be a none starter these days.

Having said that, communications, for people that have broken down cars, are much improved today and not like they used to be when I was a young man.  Of course, when I was younger, there were fewer cars on the road then but the cars were less reliable than than they are today. 

I can remember the first motorway being built and, once in place, vehicles that were not built for speed broke down more often; they were simply overheating.

I often wonder if different car manufacturers build a particular car (Let me say, for argument's sake, the new Ford Fiesta) to withstand the extreme heat temperature of the Australian heat and have a different build quality for England.  I have no idea!  In fact, when it comes to cars, all I seem to know, these days, is how to check the oil, tyres and petrol. 

With all the new technology ,that goes into the new cars, you would think there would be easier ways of maintaining them and easier ways to get off and put on new tyres.

I once remember seeing, on T.V., an expensive car no longer providing a proper spare wheel.  There was a temporary spare but you could only drive it at slow speeds and must have the old wheel sorted out as quickly as possible.  I am pleased to say that the wheel system it did not 'catch on.' 

Another leading car manufacturer is having problems with people complaining about their wheels cracking.  The part of the wheel that accepts the tyres!  The manufacturer has said that it has nothing to do with the wheel it is the pot holes in the roads.  Correct me if I am wrong, on this point, but haven't we always had pot holes to cope with? 

Having said that, the car of today is far advanced than the ones I used to hire when I was a young man.  There are back up brake systems and anti skid braking systems and all manner of on board goodies to make the drivers' lives easier to cope with as more and more vehicles take to the roads.

We all are aware of 'global warming' and that car travel appears to be a contributor to it but no one seems to be in a hurry to do anything about it. 

I live in between two cities and the people that cannot find local employment travel, by car, to the cities each day.  What has been happening, until the so called 'credit crunch,' is people have found the cost of living, when trying to get onto the property ladder,  too expensive in the cities. 

I have a teacher friend, who had a large detached farm house and she wanted to move away from the country to work in a major city.  For the same price of her large detached house, in the country, she could only purchase a three bed roomed semi-with no garden or outlook-in the city.  It does not make sense.

Instead of moving home, and taking on a huge mortgage, to live in the city, she stayed where she was and purchased a huge car to commute to the city each day.  Quantify that kind of life style up, by the thousands of people that are commuting further, and it becomes easy to see why we are now having poorer air quality than we used to. 

The pollutants, in the way of CO2s, affect everybody but pollutants, in the past, were more centralised.

When I was a young man, when everybody had coal to fuel their fires, we were used to having very thick fog banks (Locally called 'Pea Soupers.')  The fog was so thick, at times,  you could literally not see your hand in front of your face. 

One year, in the city of London, a 'Pea Souper'  languished over the city for a couple of days and ground everything to a halt.  Something had to be done, for people were being taken ill and could not breathe properly. 

Thankfully, when the clean air act' came into fruition, the air cleared and the respiratory illnesses were soon on the decline but at a cost to the environment, long term, for we all went onto gas central heating systems instead of the smoky coal fired systems. 

What of the future then, will we still be driving, like Lemmings, here, there and everywhere, to do nothing other than visit someone or go to work, or will there be another method? 

Years ago, I learned that we could, now that we have computers, work from home and would not have to commute, but that one seems to have 'gone down the pan.'

One of the computer facilities, I wanted to see 'up and running,' for everybody to use, was the 'web cam' service.  How lovely it would have been to be able to see and hear my family and friends instead of having to travel, in bad weather, to see them. 

I know 'Skype' have a system in place but the technology only works if both parties have a Web Cam. 

Seven or eight years ago, I used to set up 'web cam' conferences, between English and American students who were studying Spanish.  There was only the time factor, between the two countries, to take into consideration.  The rest was easy and everybody enjoyed the two way conversations.  Why this system was not developed to make the 'video conferencing' easier to use and cheap to use, is still a mystery to me. 

It would be lovely to look and listen to my sister, who lives at the other side of the World, instead of having to undertake time consuming typing, for emails, or thinking about a visit.

Maybe, 2010 is going to be a start of times when people, if they want to get things done, do not have to venture out of their homes.  I doubt it for we seem to be using technology in ways that work against us rather than for us.

The latest 'brain wave' is to do away with the chequebook and do all banking on the Internet.  It sounds good until something goes wrong.  Getting something put right, not of your making, on 'the Net' is something that I personally do not want to do.

Not so long ago, without consultation, my usual bank, a bank  I have used since I left school, decided to no longer use a 'pass book system,' where you could instantly see what was in your account, the new system was to be a small piece of plastic that could easily be misplaced and, so we have found, easy prey for the 'scam users.'
 
Not for me thank you and I pulled out of the bank as soon as it was possible.

Voting with my feet, as they say, did nothing to reverse the situation-for the book system has not come back to the said bank-but it has made me feel safer by pulling out of the plastic card system.

If someone had told me, a few years ago, that I could have sent an instant message, to the other side of the World, I would have thought them to be a little bit 'gar gar' but here we are sending information, across a huge web system, as if we have been doing it all our lives.  I wonder what the next 20 years of technology with bring and if it is going to be beneficial to us rather than being another problem we are expected to put up with under the guise of progress?

By for now,

John.

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4 Dec 2009 12:57 AM

They say that a 'man's best friend's is his dog.  How can that be, it sounds like a load of old rubbish but is it?

In the news, of late, we here about dogs that have gone berserk by maiming children and adults alike.  I have to say that my heart goes out to anybody that has had to stand the force of a medium sized dog's teeth for I have succumbed to this kind of situation, when I was a boy, and I still have the scars to prove it.
Well, the truth is, I do not have answers as to why a dog moves from docile to becoming aggressive but I do know that my best friend was my wonderful dog Ben.

I have mentioned it before, in one of my earlier blogs, that our domestic situation precluded us from having any pets, we simply did not have any room for a dog to move round in. 

One day, when my son would be put off no longer, I found myself looking round all the usual kennels  looking for a dog to become our household pet and, on one occasion, we saw a dog that we liked to the look of.  Its black coat shone like glass but the kennel volunteer said that this dog, Ben, did not get on with other dogs.  Never the less, we wanted to look Ben over and he was brought out to us.     

We often said it, and still believe it, that Ben chose us not the other way round for, in no time at all, the dog had his head on my wife's knee and also finished up lying down on my son's feet.  No matter what reservations I might have, about this beautiful animal, my family were not going to listen to me and, in the end, we went out of the kennels with an animal that did not even look at me.
We decided that Ben, because of him always being full of energy, would need lots of walks and we were lucky enough to have fields, to walk in, all round the area we lived in.

On our very first walk out with Ben, the whole family, we were out in the open when Ben decided it would be best to stick to my wife's heels as if his life depended on it.

The novelty of dog walking was soon over and yours truly undertook the task and it was at this point that Ben and I slowly began to bond.  The bond, as time went on, was to become so close that the animal and I used to know what one another were going to do before we did it.

Walking, on nature reserves and down the fields, was always a pleasure with Ben but, the problem of Ben disliking other dogs never left him and we always had to be very careful when we saw another dog walker coming our way. 
I tell a lie for there was one dog Ben loved, a 'b***h,' and whenever we saw Ben's friend, getting him to come back to us was always a long drawn out task but  we did not mind for when Ben was running and chasing he was burning off some of his excess energy.  Had we entered him for a dog race, we felt he would have won, hands down, and gone back for more. 

It was difficult to say how old Ben was, when he came to us, but we guessed he must have been about 18 months of age.  We asked for a dog that had gone through the puppy stage, for we felt we needed a pet that was house trained.  Not only was Ben house trained, he used to let us know when he wanted to go out. 

He soon became a tender and loving dog and, no matter how hungry he was, he would always sit, when his food was being put out, and never go towards his food until told to do so.  He did not like being up stairs and, when there were any fireworks going off, the poor animal fretted and shook as if his whole body was having a nervous spasm.   

For weeks, when he came to live with us, Ben made no attempt to bark but, one day-while we were watching T.V-, he heard a prowler.  He sprang to his feet and barked so loud that we all jumped up off the seats we were in.  From that day on, no one, unless we wanted them to, could ever get near to the outside door without him barking his head off at them. 

Once we let anybody in the house Ben went into his wagging tail mode and became the life and sole of everybody's hand stroking.  He loved to be made a fuss of but, when he had had enough, he used to move away and lie down in his favourite place under the window of the living room.

Soon, whenever I was not working, Ben and I became inseparable.  Were ever I went, Ben went too and when we went on holiday, our pet went with us.

Ben's perceptions, as to how we were feeling, became very strong too.  Once, when my wife had been in hospital, he never left her side but made no attempt to pester her until she was feeling better. There was a time, when we were on holiday, Ben tried, time and time again, to jump over a wire fence  we prevented him from doing so.  A few weeks later, we learned that an old man had been part of a party of walkers and had not returned to the bus and he was not seen alive again.  It transpired that the man's body was found in the area we were trying to prevent Ben from going to when he was trying to get over the wire fence.  I always regret not letting Ben jump the fence.  If there was a thunderstorm coming, Ben always let me know by coming to me, shaking and beckoning me to let him go into the pantry where he must have felt safe.

When we were able to purchase our first car, when I was in my fifties, my wife said she knew when I was coming home long before I arrived for his tail started to wag and the closer I came to home the quicker the tail beat went.
Ben was always pleased to see us, and, as soon as we had made a fuss of him, he used to lie down in his favourite spot.

Has Ben grew older, he slowed down a little but could still out run any dog in the area and when he came to tall grass, he used to run, back and forth, through it as though he was a racing dog.  He never tired of long walks and, one day-completely without any prompting-he did his usual running on in front of me, with his nose to the ground, and, as if someone had told him to, he sat down and looked up into a tree.  When I arrived at the spot he was sitting, he looked at me then up into the tree again.  When I looked through my binoculars, I saw that Ben had been looking at a bird he wanted me to see.  When I had finished looking at the bird, I looked down at Ben, thanked him and when he had wagged his tail he ran off in front again.  From that time on, Ben often sat and waited for me to see a bird he had picked out for me.

Ben, although he looked fierce and had a bark that would make the hardest of people shudder, was actually a softy with people.  When he really liked somebody, he would wag his body and tail so much that you could have been forgiven for thinking that he would hurt his back. 

More about Ben later.

By for now,

John.   

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