@bazbt3

It's fair to say that 2016 started badly, reached a crescendo of awfulness during the early-middle part of the year, and peaked in misery again towards the back end.

With only a few days from the 366 remaining it's anyone's guess whether the fates will throw anything else at us.

Now I use the term 'us' to indicate that I belong to and share the wishes of the class of beings we refer to as humanity.

In reality though I'm a part of the privileged class of folks who are comfortable but nevertheless find things about which to be appalled and disgusted, especially with respect to the impact on my life. And my family's.

But unlike so many people I'm not thinking of the impact NOW, no. It's what's coming up.

Before marriage and starting the family I led a life of mindless optimism. That eventually changed to Hopeful Pessimism them Realism.*

Some months ago though, prior to the final phase of the somewhat calamitous US Presidential elections and prior to that small percentage of the UK voting to leave Europe, I wrote that I was scared of the future.

Guess what.

*Thanks Tyson, very useful.

The Sex Pistols accompanied me to work this morning; MOST unusual, as I usually rely on the calming sounds of the car's ventilation fan to insulate me from the dullards queuing around me or indulging their moronic desires to occupy the bit of road my sensible car wishes to continue to exist unscathed in.

Oh yes, dullards.

Stuck behind drivers without the knowledge of how tiny their insignificantly-wide city car happens to be as they sit immobile before a gap through which my leviathan of a sensible family car fits with ease, I often ponder the meaning of life. Or wish carnage on the individuals around me. And their families.

So in my next life I should like to be a Time Lord; omnipotent, free of the petty restrictions polite society imposes, and with the ability to rearrange, er… things. (I'm assuming I'd work out the detail at the time.)

Every time someone intrudes, does something that bends, or breaks, the laws of British roads, I lose something.

Reasonable-ness? Benevolence? After this morning's commute am I the same as I was yesterday? I don't effing think so!

(sighs…) It wasn't BAD per se, but the stupid WAS strong today. Maybe The Sex Pistols helped me make sense of it. Not bad for a near-forty-year-old band.

`#message

If you're a certain age, grew up and entered your teens in a pre-Internet era, you'll have had a limited choice of music. Ok, I don't mean a limited choice, I mean it wasn't instantaneously there, at your fingertips.

Take your favourite streaming service, look at the breadth and depth of music; from classical to the latest ephemeral nonsense. Er… no, let's not let prejudice intrude here eh. Simply put, aren't we lucky? If there's nothing on a self-produced play list, pick a 'station' thrown together by someone else, find inspiration from RANDOMNESS - something not available even at the height of the anarchically-sited radio stations of the golden age of radio!

Yes, lucky.

Right now I'm not listening to my old stuff (late-seventies to early nineties), no. I'm instead listening to twenty one pilots' Blurryface album. Over and over again. Played loud on my rather nice Bluetooth headphones.*

A journey of discovery. So yeah, I'm 14 again and, do you know, it's not all bad.

*Bluedio R+ Legend. Look them up. They're comfortable, well-suited to my ears, maybe they have a bit of a heavy low end, and leak a bit around the edges… but heck, so do I these days!

Heading into the festive season most people would assume the worst of 2016 would be over by now.

It just got worse.*

It's been getting worse for some time, but…

There's one thing** that would lead me to believe there is hope for a brighter future: that the US President would attend Fidel Castro's funeral. Officially. Sure it'd upset a metric shedload of closed-minded morons, but for the rest of us…

I'm not talking here about an indicator or a signal, I'm not inclined to use the weasel words politicians use when they cannot bring themselves to explicitly state a POSITION. I'd like Barack Obama simply to state he's going to pay respects to another head of state.

We've been given only hope that lots of things will be brighter soon, we'll be more prosperous soon, enjoy greater safety in SO many areas… soon. Or eventually. And yet the political classes simply cannot state HOW.

So let's have the classy, though outgoing, President of the greatest country on the planet*** send an actual message to the future. No, he'd be better sending it to the present.

The message is a simple one: it's not about them and us, it's about us.

I for one want something rational, easily-explained, to be included in a process (even if it's to be spoon-fed an outline of the plans affecting my future, and something that can't be taken back, something that isn't vague promises or populist soundbites.

It seems though that 2017 isn't going to bring us stability, to benefit 'normal' people.

So, @POTUS, how's about a trip to Cuba?

What other indicators do we have that this modern age of enlightenment is NOT about to end?

*And, do you know, the year is not over yet, not by a long way.

**If you're interested I do have more than one thing.

***Hmmm… even self-proclaimed isn't right any more, the current message is about making it great AGAIN, implying it isn't now. What a sad admission.

Heading into the festive season most people would assume the worst of 2016 would be over by now.

It just got worse.*

It's been getting worse for some time, but…

There's one thing** that would lead me to believe there is hope for a brighter future: that the US President would attend Fidel Castro's funeral. Officially. Sure it'd upset a metric shedload of closed-minded morons, but for the rest of us…

I'm not talking here about an indicator or a signal, I'm not inclined to use the weasel words politicians use when they cannot bring themselves to explicitly state a POSITION. I'd like Barack Obama simply to state he's going to pay respects to another head of state.

We've been given only hope that lots of things will be brighter soon, we'll be more prosperous soon, enjoy greater safety in SO many areas… soon. Or eventually. And yet the political classes simply cannot state HOW.

So let's have the classy, though outgoing, President of the greatest country on the planet*** send an actual message to the future. No, he'd be better sending it to the present.

The message is a simple one: it's not about them and us, it's about us.

I for one want something rational, easily-explained, to be included in a process (even if it's to be spoon-fed an outline of the plans affecting my future, and something that can't be taken back, something that isn't vague promises or populist soundbites.

It seems though that 2017 isn't going to bring us stability, to benefit 'normal' people.

So, @POTUS, how's about a trip to Cuba?

What other indicators do we have that this modern age of enlightenment is NOT about to end?

*And, do you know, the year is not over yet, not by a long way.

**If you're interested I do have more than one thing.

***Hmmm… even self-proclaimed isn't right any more, the current message is about making it great AGAIN, implying it isn't now. What a sad admission.

It's fair to say that 2016 has been a bit of a shocker for most, both in celebrity deaths and in the confounding of many's preconceived ideas of normality.

In the main I follow like-minded social media accounts. Ok, like-minded people. But there's a downside: my views are confirmed in by those from whom I take my barometric measurements.

I've decided that, to ensure I'm better-prepared for the nasty surprises (and those nasties I'm EXPECTING!) during 2017, I shall look outside my comfort zone. Proven psychic ability, especially in the arena of celebrity death precondition, I've an open mind about.

If you understand and you've any recommendations I'm all ears.

Equilibrium, please.

I've already established that I cry when we go to the movies. I cry when we watch movies at home. My personal record is the afternoon we watched 'Up' and 'Toy Story 3' back-to-back.

I LIVE the film, the novel, the rolling saga, the trilogy in seven parts, I live ALL of it; it's the only way I know to approach storytelling.

Well, it seems that there's a second medium to add to my waterworks-provoking repertoire: the novel, spoken out loud.

I've been reading J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' to my daughters for a while now; this evening we reached the chapter of this blog post's title.

Boy, is this good stuff! I'm there within the cosseting gloom of bedtime, doing all the voices and then… I simply could not continue. The emotions of the tragic scene unfolding before us, after LIVING the preceding tale spilled over and…

After a few false starts, and Just as I'd managed to compose myself, my youngest daughter, oh-so-nearly 7, wondered aloud if maybe I didn't know how to pronounce the words on the page, and offered to read on my behalf.

And yes, that kindness again stopped the story reading in its tracks; I had to excuse myself, promising to restart the chapter following evening.

And so I shall.

Earlier this year I wrote about my favourite film, 'Armageddon'. If you scroll back through the archive of my posts 'Patch' is easy to find. Now might be a good time to scroll; I think it is about time I explained why that ragged, singed, bit of cloth - the patch - means so much to me. And why I cried at the end of the film.

Vanishingly-small numbers of people have ventured into space, more have helped make their passage safe by testing, retesting, and doing it over and over again so the chance of failure is reduced.

One thing to remember though, the ability to send stuff off our planet isn't easy. In fact, though essentially we're still relying on explosives developed from Chinese firecrackers, to propel the aforementioned stuff out there is extraordinarily difficult!

Let's face facts; whether or not you believe the somewhat facetious comment made about a typical US spacecraft - amongst the most complex mechanical devices ever assembled and machines in which generations of astronauts have trusted their very lives - is built by the lowest bidder, the word 'difficult' doesn't even come close to how, er… difficult, remote, intransigent, space is.

Unless one sits and thinks about the unforgiving nature of the vacuum, cold, radiation, and sheer unpredictability of space, it's all a bit esoteric, remote, almost-science-fictionish isn't it. White-coared experts and gung-ho spacemen, right?

The thing is, I've been very lucky to travel to the USA, to both the Houston Space Center* and The New Mexico Museum of Space History. The Houston site is awesome, but an exhibit at the NM museum - one past which most will walk without paying much heed - grabbed my attention immediately. Mission patches.

I don't have a thing for patches, no.

One in particular stood out. Or didn't. The Challenger patch, there symbolising a small part from the rich history of human endeavour, but nevertheless an extraordinarily poignant moment within it. Failure doesn't come easily to those in space programmes the world over, and especially not from an overlooked, almost-insignificant part of a much larger whole. The tragedy of loss of life is deeply felt, especially when the hopes of mankind rest on the success of the many facets of space exploration and utilisation.

Now, the bottom line here is this: without the constant evolution** of the spacecraft, the dedication of those designing the hardware and systems, and those preserving the history of the… Ok, ok, there's something both symbolic and very real about the struggle to not kill people in space.

A typical space programme is at the pinnacle of human achievement. It's the culmination of hundreds of years of experimentation and research, layers of improvement built on top of each other and of records faithfully retained against the day someone should attempt the actually-impossible.

Remembering what others have tried though should be no bar to trying to make a better space widget. As the saying goes, the impossible sometimes takes a little longer.

You might have expected at this point that I'd inject something political here, referring to 2016's apparent forgetfulness in the area of human evolution… Yeah, down the snake towards the worst excesses of human against human we go. And to think I cry at mere films.

*Intentional spelling.

**This.

A Toblerone bar has the enviable position of being a luxury product for a lot of people; velvety-smooth with chewy sweetness on the tongue, idiosyncratic in design, and with a long, long history.

There's the expectation that, once one figures out how to open the box, breaking off a piece of nougat-speckled chocolate will be difficult. The ever-present fear of broken teeth, the danger inherent in inexpertly wielded knives whilst attempting block separation; it's all part of a process distinct from eating any other chocolate.

But tradition is a powerful thing.

As the cost of production and ingredients inevitably increases, and the pack size reduction is touted, spurious, as bringing health benefits, companies invent ways to cut corners, mainly by decreasing pack size whilst maintaining the amount the customer pays. In reducing the manufacturing costs the logical choice would have been to reduce the length of the bars. Competing 'staple' bars have already set a precedent.

But no. The company looks to have removed every other peak from the bars. The result is frankly ridiculous.

Its obvious whoever signed off on it had no idea of the repercussions. Premium products surely mandate price increases?

If, for instance, the Coca-Cola company decided to alter the recipe there'd be uproar. Ok, that's a bad example; whilst the Toblerone recipe may not have been touched, generations of gift-givers and receivers have expectations of CONTINUITY.

Tradition, continuity, expectation; killed at a stroke.

I'm not impressed. I'll be interested to see whether there's an embarrassed climb-down in the near future, or whether the brand'll simply disappear - rationalised out of existence by the parent company as a product of a bygone age.

Toblerone: 1908-?

On Monday evening I participated in my first Trick-Or-Treat outing. Important: that's Trick-Or-Treat, not Hallowe'en.

I'm over forty-ten years old and have a young family, so it might be appropriate to mention I'm English, living in a country that borrows the very best from the cultures of the world. Well, it makes a change from attempting to take stuff by force, right?

So I took the girls and Ruby dog and we walked the streets, the girls knocking on doors or ringing doorbells in the hope of getting sweeties. ok, candy! They did really well; I'm proud of the way they conducted themselves.

Knock/ring once, wait a respectable length of time, leave the eggs at home in the fridge, you know?

Our neighbourhood did the modern tradition proud. Loads of homes decorated with pumpkins, ghoulish apparitions swaying at doors, even a smoke machine to add, yes, authenticity to the proceedings. There were people of all ages dressed in suitably scary attire and make-up (though my costume and features on the night would win competitions anywhere!)

This year (hopefully the foundation for next) my girls got dressed, applied make-up to appear even scarier than normal, and we went out in what turned out to be the perfect evening, spending that very enjoyable hour-and-a-half going from door to door.

I'm sure my two brought genuine pleasure to at least 2 households others had passed by, it was really great to see.

Amd to think this curmudgeon didn't want to go out, to be sociable. Indeed I'd been dreading it all day.

Eeeee, when I were a lad we never had owt worth mentioning. We got wood once a year and…

… we collected bonfire wood for weeks before Bonfire Night and secreted it away, hopefully out of sight of our rivals. We'd ask for a "Penny for the guy" - a vaguely-humanoid shape supposedly representing Guy Fawkes, but in reality a pile of rags and stuffing to be tossed on top of the woodpile and burnt with as much ceremony as young lads could.

To be honest though, I can't remember if we ever burnt a guy. I recall us burning wood but the predominant memory is the disappointment of having our stash robbed from under outer noses.

Happy days!