On Holiday —-Sort Of!

Hello Mother, hello Father – Iv’e arrived at camp pajama. Well of course that’s not right and I am not that old and probably neither are you (You may be able to ask someone.) Back there in the blog. I mentioned Peter S and I guess this is the time. But as I frame and flash back  it may make no sense, so all will eventually be mumbled out and no conclusions made. I have none myself but this is sort of how it happened…… What were you doing in  the summer of 1983? I have a letter. kindly forwarded to my by my Father that I sent to them, Mum and Dad.( I received this in 2010 and have been staring at it ever since. right up to the point it took me two days to find.) Dad was an adventurer and I am sure much to Mum’s disquiet paid for my 1983 Inter Rail card. For you North Americans one month of unlimited rail travel all over Europe, I am sure you can  imagine, (Well sorry, I guarantee all your  imaginings fall short,  I don’t have a word for what It, it was weirder. Your imaginings will be short of the mark. Most of what you are thinking has been over done. (By lots of uncouth Americans ,lol) (see modern language sneaking in). Exploding trousers! (Pants, well either or are quite alarming, we will leave that for another day, I will unedited, unexplained and without a safety net re-veal all.( I mean I will type it out as written only adding photos and the like to illustrate. To you I leave the burden, of making any sense of this at all,   Dear Mother and Father, I thought it was about time I wrote to inform you of all the events that have taken place in the last two days. On the night of the 12th July or the morning if the 13th.Peter suffered some form of heart problem, he had difficulty breathing,his pulse dropped and he was  going unconscious. A  local dude I found up the carriage could speak English, he had some medical knowledge. He gave Peter a heart massage and he improved a bit, we stopped the train and were taken to the local medical center. Peter was given an injection and some tablets,...

The Ghost of New Years Past

  So here we are New year 2016, Christmas is finished and I look backwards! Well that doesn’t sound right I think I don’t look too bad for an old duffer like our new dog Diego who joined us in March 2015 I in solidarity sport a set of almost magnificent whiskers. Any new year resolutions or recommendations for this year  nope the Grumpy Elf has had his editorial rights rescinded and its just me. So to follow the theme boldly set out here is Christmas present.   Here is the Tribe 2015 and yes #1 Son is 6’5″ and #1 Daughter is 5’9″ and Diego well he is shorter, I will have to admit this is the second attempt at a Family photo the first for some reason made me look like a right fat batard, there are rumors as to some sort of resolution that fixes that but apparently I can’t eat cheese, white bread, drink wine or eat curries. (So good Luck Enforcing that then.) Well 2015 was the year I started putting my name on things my Flickr and Instagram account so the Funky Nomad not so incognito and in that spirit I give you the Millennium Falcon (Sorry about that I actually mean the Millennium in the Falklands, because that’s where I was when 1999 rolled into 2000 and all the computers kept running.) With Star Wars coming round once again I thought I would have to get on that band wagon. As for music not listened to much or bought anything in the last 12 months Just classic stuff Ramones, Green Day; dookie and Getz/Byrd Jazz Samba. It also began to dawn on me how awesome the Rolling Stones are and while I was busy being  a rocker it turns out Mod stuff was pretty good as well I have to admit to Liking Paul Weller and I do have  two Specials albums. Which feels disingenuous in light of Lemmys passing. I saw the Bomber Tour and was at the No sleep till Hammersmith gigs and at one point had started embroidering the Hawkwind Spaceritual album cover on my denim jacket only got about one fifth of the way and I will have to admit to removing the Thin Lizzy ( Not sure what that was about.)   So found some negatives from personal...

Bleaklow & The Rambling man

So the Rambling man returns,climbing his way back on to the interweb and this here Bio-Blog. The Funky Nomad is revealed as no other than…… Now hang on there a tic, maybe just because I have told the Old Man and his friends where to find my Ramblings is no reason to actually come clean. Well I hope not because I like being one of the many alternative me’s out there, where would we all be if along our journey we were not allowed to re-invent ourselves now and again. I had thought to mysteriously reinvent myself as the West Riding Tyke but I have already offered that to a friend should he ever become a radio presenter. Some of you may have spotted the overuse of the word Rambling, not just in this post but posts leading up to this and if you read other posts you may discover words foreshadowing posts to come and why not as it usually takes a year or so for all the pieces to come together. This one in particular has had a longer birth than most it has been probably up to 80 years in its making. Allow me to take you on a journey that ended up here at the bridge with ‘No Berries on the Tree’.     So without further ado I will turn you over to the antics of these four merry men, now I am not claiming that they have as much fun as Compo,Clegg, Foggy and Wally but I have my suspicions. From left to right we have Peter, Malcolm, My Old man and Robin. Like me but in an old school way they mark there passing through the world with a bound journal each year edited and prepared by Malcolm. So here is my Old Mans explanation of what they are doing at the foot of Jacobs ladder.   ‘NO BERRIES’      On August the 20th the gang of four the two Peters, Malcolm and Robin set off from Barber Booth to walk to Harvey’s Rowan Tree planted by his friends in 1995. Although the tree looked very healthy, mysteriously NO RED BERRIES! We couldn’t understand this as similar trees lower down the track were laden with fruit,we decided it was a case for Alan Titchmarsh. ( And so it should be, I...

Footprint

Footprints left in the snow or on the beach or on your soul, record of your journey through the times of your life and the times of those who carried you or you carried in return. They are there even if you don’t want to believe me. Not just talking about your electronic footprint your transactions or social media postings but your physical and metaphysical footprints. Yes I know this all smacks of a theme and yes I have read ‘And Did Those Feet’ but what did you expect a retrospective to be, and knowing the importance of footprints to my family history you should not be surprised. (If you have no idea what I am talking about  stick around as I ramble my way through some what ifs and probably stride through some so whats.) I also have a couple of Ideas why Generation X is a little bit angry and pissed off and probably a little inwardly focused. You can forget all about Gen Y,  being selfish I would like to consider Generation Z (That’s my kids). They are where it’s at. Far more collaborative and civic minded than any generation since the 2 wars, don’t believe all you are told they will lead us into the great future they will be hero’s the like of which we have not seen for generations, I can see it in my children. They have been promised nothing and will achieve everything they appear not to carry our burdens and will make lighter footprints than I. They will lead each other into future and shame our leaders and they will do it because it is right and not for self aggrandizement and power and Ego. How can I be so sure I hear you ask? I have faith an old fashioned belief that does not need proving to me, because its time and because I would dearly like it to be. However lets get on with it, the Footprint I am talking about is Footprint Tools and possibly Footprint Wrenches  in particular, an all purpose wrench, being used extensively in plumbing and general pipe work applications. The world famous Footprint wrench was invented by Footprint’s founder Thomas R Ellin in 1875 and since then more than 15 million have been sold across the world.       And what does...

Show the Rod show the Sole

So I know its supposed to be spare the rod spoil the child, and I might have something to say about that but I am not that sort of controversial Blogger. Here in the Canadian Prairies the summer arrives one morning you notice the snow has gone and you leap into the summer and go hell for leather until Labor day which is this weekend. Later today #1 Daughter and myself are off to Elk Island for 2 nights camping and bike riding and buffalo photographing given a chance. It will be all campfire and food and a quick looking forward to the new school year which starts on Wednesday. We are especially looking forward to Steak and Eggs for breakfast and Garlic bread stuffed with herb and garlic cream cheese something we invented on our trip to Jasper to see the Rodeo. ( Not saying we are the first but we have great hopes for it.) So am I trying to make an excuse for my lack of blogging, maybe but I have been busy, my summer blogging schedule  was filled with great intentions, I have stuff on its way, the only problem is that its all beginning to run into the  one year time delay my brain seems to operate. So here is a taster of the fantastic articles to come, now that the summer is grinding to a halt and my big Hawaii  approaches. This is a strange thing I don’t think I look Hawaii on the outside or feel Hawaii  on the inside and as much as I want to be taken seriously I don’t want it to have anything to do with being older. So is Hawaii the new thirty something? Probably! Which leads us to these:- BBQ MOJO :–  The exciting history of the Funky Nomads crazy culinary outside adventure and the loss of the mojo just don’t have the BBQ mojo any more. YESTERDAYS BIRTHDAYS:-    5 O years of reflection. the future self and Premature Immaculation. EURO  83:- The big one and the revelation of the heartless soul. ALL MY WEDNESDAYS :-  A look at the Wednesday club, Sheffield and my complete inability to play football. THINK BIG OR GO HOME:-  A disturbing glimpse into the aftereffects of thinking outside the box. It has not been a completely wasted summer I wielded...

Jasper AB, Canada Day

What? Actually posting the same year  as the trip! I thought you just blogged it takes a year to distill the wisdom etc. Well yes it does but for one reason or another there are certain thing that are time sensitive, this is one of them. Having made a contact or two on my last trip I feel I have to provide the goods. I challenged myself could I still photograph a flag raising a parade etc. So I treated this like an assignment put on my photographers hat ( Yes I really do have one can’t miss it brim and all and a badge ). So I found my spots warned neighboring photographers I was going to go crazy run into the road stand in front of them sit in front of the floats and horses and run around like a headless chicken. It was a very hot day,  I crafted and generally kept going until the fireworks ended at midnight. No I didn’t get punched, yes I like the results and I think I can still do it, I could even do it for the local paper if asked and probably as a full time job. (There are more and different photos on the flickr feed but these are the ones I like the most.               To finish off a firework slide show, there is more Jasper 2014 to come and no doubt it will be something more than a photo fest. The Tribe had a fantastic day come out to Jasper next year for Canada Day, absolutely fantastic, great town,  great people. Every year we discover more and more to bring us back time and time again. (See you all at the RODEO)       THE END    ...