Back from Berlin…

Inspired by meine bruder er heiBt David, und Katrine Brosnan who both went to Berli

…with a new pashion for fashion and all that’s hip, well not really I still like Cliff Richard though I also enjoy Kraftwerk “fun fun fun auf der autobahn” I also enjoy equally the works of David Hasselhof and David Bowie and their affiliations to the City of Berlin, who would win in a cage fight, there’s only one way to find out. Hasselhoff sang 20 years ago to celebrate the wall coming down what did Bowie do? a trio of albums a song about a couple he saw by the wall Station to Station..

 

Mark Wallington and the philosophical game of snooker

Leicester goalkeeper and PE teacher.

I was thinking about my interest in sport and how my parents decided to go and see Mark Wallington, my PE teacher and also ex-Leicester City and England goalkeeper (2 caps for England under-23s, and Peter Shilton understudy). Despite the fact I hadn’t booked an appointment for PE at their first parents evening, my Mum and Dad perhaps slightly starstruck and curious at my lack of interest in PE went to see him.

He said “Adam gives it a go but doesn’t seem to have any real interest in sports, does he play any sports outside of school?” To which they replied “Yes – he plays snooker.” Perhaps it doesn’t qualify as physical education, but Mr Wallington said: “That’s Good.”

By complete chance I was looking in a suitcase of old photos in Tat, a secondhand and random goods shop, and in amongst them I found a black and white picture of my old PE teacher, Mr Wallington, in his Leicester City playing days, and I thought maybe I should take up snooker again.

I was thinking about some of the things people say about my character and how snooker might help explain or be part of the reason I am who I am.
I was thinking about thinking and thinking about my love chance, decision maths, and knowledge of sporting stats that I don’t really care about.

Snooker is the answer.

A new snooker philosophy

The other day I played a game of snooker against myself and realised something’s not quite right, apart from the fact that with my glasses I struggled to see the long range shots, playing against yourself isn’t that much like life, or it is if you are an isolated, paranoid, and slightly confused person, but it did give me time to think.

The entrance to the old snooker club in Sleaford

I tried to imagine I was playing someone else, my old PE teacher Mark Wallington, former world champion Steve Davis, or my old  friends and rivals I used to play against at Sleaford’s Snooker Club. Those were the days… as I progressed and managed a break of 10 (red blue red green) I realised how hard snooker, and indeed life is and that life is more complex than a game of snooker against myself… I had to try and play against  everyone, perhaps everyone I’ve ever met.

Sleaford Cinema and Snooker Club before it became Flicks Nightclub before it became derelict

A new pair of glasses

If I’m going to be any good at playing snooker I may need a new pair of glasses!

Snooker is like life, at the start there are all these opportunities and chance sends them your way, and you then have to make decisions about which path to take, sometimes going one way might lead you to run out of position and you may be faced with difficult choices. You can either take the risk and go for the tricky red, play safe or look to build a strategy which you hope will find you back in the action again, and I think this is the point I am at in my life…

So therefore I have decided whether for art or myself to become a snooker player in the hope that by playing the philosophical game of snooker for non stop 24 hours I will find the next shot to take and my decisions will become easier to make simply by playing snooker against myself.

The game without break and without distraction can be seen as a meditation, a chance to think and play out the game of life with all the options on the table.

The Philosophy of the Snooker Table

I was thinking about my interest in sport and how my parents decided to go and see Mark Wallington, my PE teacher and also ex-Leicester City and England goalkeeper (2 caps for England under-23s, and Peter Shilton understudy). Despite the fact I hadn’t booked an appointment for PE at their first parents evening, my Mum and Dad perhaps slightly starstruck and curious at my lack of interest in PE went to see him.

He said “Adam gives it a go but doesn’t seem to have any real interest in sports, does he play any sports outside of school?” To which they replied “Yes – he plays snooker.” Perhaps it doesn’t  qualify  as physical education, but Mr Wallington said: “That’s Good.”

By complete chance I was looking in a suitcase of old photos in Tat, a secondhand and random goods shop, and in amongst them I found a black and white picture of my old PE teacher, Mr Wallington, in his Leicester City playing days, and I thought maybe I should take up snooker again.

I was thinking about some of the things people say about my character and how snooker might help explain or be part of the reason I am who I am.
I was thinking about thinking and thinking about my love chance, decision maths, and knowledge of sporting stats that I don’t really care about.

Snooker is the answer.

Snooker is like life, at the start there are all these opportunities and chance sends them your way, and you then have to make decisions about which path to take, sometimes going one way might lead you to run out of position and you may be faced with difficult choices. You can either take the risk and go for the tricky red, play safe or look to build a strategy which you hope will find you back in the action again, and I think this is the point I am at in my life…

So therefore I have decided whether for art or myself to become a snooker player in the hope that by playing the philosophical game of snooker for non stop 24 hours I will find the next shot to take and my decisions will become easier to make simply by playing snooker against myself.

Playing against myself because the only person I can beat is myself, or perhaps the only person you can better is yourself. The game without break and without distraction can be seen as a meditation, a chance to think and play out the game of life against yourself with all the options on the table.

wonderful life/a big lie

“As Ike and Tina Turner began practising re-enacting domestic violence of the 1960s in my front room, I realised – We all want to live in a big lie, maybe because we wouldn’t cope if we heard the truth the whole time…” (The Armando Ianucci Show, opening followed by 2 comedy sketches) then a train station announcer saying his truths about people, and a reality TV sketch…

So instead I resorted to Cliff Richard and the Album/film soundtrack to It’s a Wonderful Life’

Now in this film the title track has lines such as

“Go to the places that you’ve never been, see all the people that you’ve never seen, do all the things that you do in your dreams, and you will see it’s a wonderful life”

No great depth there but on the first song on side B he sings something along the lines of “you can go and see a film and you will see that the good guy always wins and the bad guy will lose and you will always end up with the girl”

And I thought thats a very similar thought, that to identify with someone or to become someone else was an escape from the real world because the real world all the time might be too much to take, everyone needs to chill out sometimes, my way of doing this varies but this weekend it has been watching comedy, and listening to Cliff Richard.

Octopus’s Garden

The idea for the song came about when Starr was on a boating trip with his family in Sardinia in 1968. He ordered Fish and Chips for lunch, but instead of fish he got squid (it was the first time he’d eaten squid, and said “It was OK. A bit rubbery. Tasted like chicken.”) Then the boat’s captain told Starr about how octopuses travel along the sea bed picking up stones and shiny objects with which to build gardens. Starr said that hearing about octopuses spending their days collecting shiny objects at the bottom of the sea was one of the happiest things he had ever heard, inspiring him to write this song.

Mimicking stand-up comedians, sit-coms, magpies, and What I read this morning

I read something this morning about how imitation is what makes humans different (though it also mentioned those silver shiny thief birds -I’ll remember it in a minute, and octopuses, who like to garden the ocean floor aparently) and that because that was part of what forms our identity, you have to be careful who you decide to mimick. This probably also includes mimicking old housemates for a comedy stand up routine, sitcom or sketch show.

Hello and Welcome

Hello World, is this just another time consuming activity that prevents us from experiencing the real world,  or is it just a way of documenting thoughts and ideas for the world to see, if the world or anyone should want to…