Category: Thoughts

Three favourite songs of all time….maybe. (Subject to change)

What’s your top three tunes of all time…subject to change?

Life is a strange old beast when you look at it. From a very young age you are compiling lists, and that never stops. From an early age it’s for fun and easy to do as you don’t have a great deal to add to those lists, however as you age, the knowledge improves and what was originally on your lists gets bumped in or out depending on taste and preference changes, commiserate with your growth and ageing process.

Now when you get a lot older, and here is where I can relate quite well, you get into similar age groups where the talk sometimes goes around what music you want at your funeral. And yes I speak for my wife and closest members of our family circle in that we all know what we want played at our last big hurrah. These decisions have usually been made after a night of listening to good music and imbibing some questionable beverages.

Hence subject to change in the title.

This got me thinking. What are my three favourite songs of all time and why? It wasn’t a difficult decision to make as they’ve sat in my head for a while now, two of them especially from when I was a very young buck back in the 70s. Now anyone who knows me knows that my musical likes cover anything from Heavy rock through to classical. My favourite group of all time are R.E.M, I just love them, but none of their tunes feature at all in my top three. Believe me though they do have some fantastic tunes in their repertoire.

It seems I was heavily influenced from the seventies, my childhood years, difficult years, quite abusive years but these these tunes helped get me through that pain and anguish, and that’s why they still have a positive impact on me all these years later.

My first is this one by the Doobie Brothers.

Doobie Brothers – Listen to the music

Now if this song doesn’t get you tapping your feet you’ve probably already got no pulse. It’s raw 70s happy music, it’s one of those songs I play when feeling low and I can honestly say it’s probably as close to a musical drug as you can get as it improves my mood no end. I just love it, I love the movement, the double drums, the three guitarists and the inclusion of a bit of banjo indicating its roots in a country rhythm as it goes mainstream. It’s food for a bad mood and should be prescribed by doctors to listen to in my opinion. But hey, it’s my opinion and you probably would feel totally different. But do me a favour first, just check your pulse hey!

Secondly is the Bellamy Brothers.

Bellamy Brothers – Let your love flow

Another 70s crossover song that just like the Doobie Brothers above is just such a happy song. I was about 12 years old when this came out, and it’s stayed with me since. Another one that just oozes good vibes and happiness. Basically two Cowboy brothers that hit the big time with a song that crossed over into the mainstream. In the 70s life was tough with strikes, power cuts and 3 day weeks and songs like this really did lift the mood, I even remember my old man tapping his feet to this tune and he was a curmudgeonly old sod at the best of times.

The third is from the Eagles

The Eagles- Take it to the limit

Randy Meisner just sings this song so beautifully. Again a 70s masterpiece of pure musicianship with super talented masters of musical togetherness, pure musical class. Such a mellow song, superb singing and a great tempo, what’s not to like about it. Peaceful, easy and just beautiful.

As I stated earlier, subject to change. Who knows if I gain more senior years I may well accumulate another tune to displace the third choice, but I know only too well that the first two choices just ain’t gonna budge.

It seems that my choices have been influenced by those informative pre teenage years of my childhood, and fifty years later they are still top of my list. Amazing isn’t it? When you consider all the fine music that has been created within that time period, that these two songs hold their heads above the parapet for me.

What does it for you, and what are your reasonings?

Have a peaceful day.

Home

I’m hanging up my flying goggles. Feet firmly on the ground from now on. Time to explore the world on my doorstep.

If you had a free round-trip ticket to anywhere, where would you go?

To be quite honest I’m at that point in my life where I am quite satisfied. I live in a country that itself has some of the most beautiful scenery you will see anywhere, not a million miles from my doorstep, but I’ve hardly seen any of it. Why?

I think when you are younger, and some older people still have it, there is a wanderlust in you that makes you want to see everything, see it all as if you are going to be the last person to ever see or experience it. If that’s you, then great, keep it up enjoy it and don’t ever let anyone put you off doing it.

Me though, I’ve hit a point where there isn’t anywhere on the planet i truly dream of visiting. I’m not immensely well travelled, I have done a bit but compared to many I’m a true amateur in the travel business.

To be quite honest I’m now quite content in keeping my feet on the ground and discovering the world on my doorstep. I’m in a country with many undiscovered treasures for me personally, and from now on that’s the route I will be taking.

So a round trip for me would probably be in the form of a coach or train ticket giving me unlimited access to their networks. That would be nice and simple wouldn’t it? With no queuing and herding like sheep at airports….how utterly pleasant.

Have a lovely day, don’t let others bring you down. Stay safe.

Mums voice

A simple recording from 22 years ago, takes me to the breast of the only other woman I have loved. Mother.

What’s one thing you own that holds deep sentimental value?

My dear mum, bless her, passed away in December of 2004, she’d had a hard life living at the beck and call of an evil presence, that being the man known as my father.

One day around Christmas a year or two prior to her passing, they came around to mine and my wife’s property where we had dinner and a few drinks. I had at this point been brought a small dictaphone tape recorder, one of those little portable recorders that were all the rage around the late 90s early 2000s.

Sitting in my living room, and slightly influenced by her choice of tipple, mum started singing to a tune on the radio, that song was “Smoke gets in your eyes” by the group – The Platters. The record button was pushed on that little dictaphone, and there is the one thing that I own that holds the most sentimental value to me.

If ever I am low, feeling out of sorts, in need of some nostalgic revival, in go a couple of new batteries and my mums beautiful, comforting “Slightly tipsy” vocal range comes floating back to me. She was happy, relaxed, and very much loved, and in that one fleeting moment I can hear my mum, with not a care in the world, and that was a very rare occurrence due to the imposing, controlling and angry man that always accompanied her.

I suppose one good sentiment always has to have a bad one to counteract it. Even in death that man is a controlling, cowardly individual.

Stay safe.

Good stress and toxic stress & Trains versus cars

I had an incident last week where a car was hit by a train. There is good stress and toxic stress. Guess which one is the hardest to handle?

How do you manage stress?

There is good stress and toxic stress. This post will try to get across my point on how a recent incident created a different level of stress, it was good stress.

As I have stated in the past, my job is to keep people off of the train tracks and to keep trains on them. Quite a simplistic view, the official job title is a little grander but I’ll just keep it simple in this case. One day last week I was working nights, when early in the shift I get a radio call stating that there had been a train versus car incident at a road crossing in the region. Stress levels in this incident hit 100% in a micro second as you just don’t know what you are about to witness. I’m a good 20 minutes away and all of a sudden my phones, my radio and emails are now going into meltdown as I am now being supplied with a flood of information as well as the world and his wife trying to make contact with me. I’m not allowed to answer calls whilst driving, it’s against company policy, and if I was to answer a call my Job would be in jeopardy, even more stress has now taken a perch on my already burdened shoulder’s. A quick call, whilst in a lay-by with the engine off, I confirm my ETA to the emergency services and inform them I cannot answer further calls until I am on site, I confirm that an emergency block of all lines has been implemented and that they can access the area, cautiously.

What greeted me on site

Arriving on site, I’m met with a scene of numerous flashing emergency lights and emergency workers moving all over the place and as soon as I’m out of the door I have a queue of people waiting for a piece of me, I can’t see the car, the fire officer tells me it is a quarter of a mile down the line, I ask the welfare of the driver and am told she has gotten out ok and is sitting just to the side of me. A collective sigh of relief is given that no one has lost their life. This lady I’m sure, is very aware of just how lucky she has been this evening.

My first calls are to the signaller ensuring I have a full official block of all lines to ensure the rescue effort can begin, when this is in place, the work can really begin in earnest.

Now I go back to the subject of this post, how do you handle stress? Stress takes many forms, there is that stress that we just let build up inside of us, sometimes overwhelming you to such an extent that you do not want to even leave the house, this is toxic stress, it’s probably the hardest to understand just because we don’t know how it has built to this extent in the first place. The other stress is the immediate stress that comes when an incident is put upon you that requires your total attention. Now I have been trained throughout my career to deal with this sort of incident and I like to think I can handle it considerably well, just reading the feedback from last weeks incident that I have received confirms that for me.

However the first example of stress, the toxic one, that I have highlighted above, I have had no training with and I suffer with that immensely, as do many other people in this big old world. How do I handle that? To be honest I don’t handle it very well, I struggle to be honest, it gets to me, it incapacitates me at times and it’s where my hobbies can sometimes help, but not always.

I have always believed in the old adage of work to live, not live to work and have always tried to separate my work life from my home life. I have been very successful with that however, I sometimes have to resort to the way I handle inherited stress as above, into the way I handle the overwhelming every day toxic stresses of life. Therefore there is some bleed of my work life coming into my private life, I’m aware of it, and it’s probably just me resorting to a way of handling stress that I’m more familiar with and that I know truly works.

I’m in my 60’s now, I think I handle the poisonous stress better than I did, but it is still there and it is always a bane to me. I’ve tried many ways and techniques of eradicating it, but though some methods show short time gains, they only last a short time and the old black dog creeps back into my life again and the age old need to chase it away starts all over again. I am very fortunate that I have a loving wife and family who know when I am in a bad place, they are sometimes all I need to chase the stress demons away, and for that I am very lucky. I know not everyone has that support and I am so appreciative of it.

Back to the incident.

Allegedly the lady was listening to her Sat Nav that told her to take a sharp right that unfortunately took her straight onto the train lines. No sooner had she realised her mistake and put that car into reverse she had noticed that the barriers had lowered and that a train was approaching her at speed. She was able to exit the car to safety just as an empty stone freight train weighing in at 500 tons hit her car and took it a quarter of a mile down the track in emergency braking mode.

The train, with just a few scrapes
The car was not as fortunate

The outcome was good. No one was injured apart from some serious shock I’d guess, and we were able to get the lines back open for services in the early hours of the following morning. It took a big team of personnel, a lot of stress to get completed but it was what I call good stress.

If only toxic stress was as easy to eradicate.

I wish you all well, stay safe. And don’t follow Sat Nav instructions religiously.

Been there. Done it.

Been there done it, don’t want to do it anymore.

What’s a country that’s at the top of your bucket list?

There isn’t now.

As I saunter everyday, further into an old age I realise that I am now quite content with what I have seen in my life. I have visited every country I have ever wanted to visit, and even a few that I wish I’d never even bothered to visit, however they will remain in my mind as a silent reminder that not all travel decisions are particularly good ones.

It feels very unsafe travelling now, well it does to me. I’m not a particularly good traveller and I like a journey to be swift, peaceful and hassle free. However fellow travellers sometimes go out of their way to ensure that this is not always the case.

Everywhere seems to be taken over by the insta-maniacs, those individuals or couples posing and pouting and pretending to be what they will never really aspire to be, it’s annoying and they have no real intention to fit in and enjoy a foreign culture and its ways. It’s all for false likes and a need to be loved and adored.

That’s not the true meaning for visitation of a foreign country. In my view anyway.

A country I have recently visited is now being invested in by two of the most “feared or disliked” countries on the planet – allegedly. The locals feel uncomfortable with this, and personally you can feel the tension building, and that is sad as they are a peaceful, caring and generally happy people.

And this takes me back to saying I now feel unsafe to travel, friendly countries unfortunately become soft targets, and that is what scares me. Good people get taken advantage of and that is not fair or ethical.

No, my bucket list has been achieved, and apart from maybe, going abroad on my yearly vacation, I will be keeping my feet firmly on the ground in the UK.

And even that has become an unsafe environment to be in.

You just can’t win.

Have a good day.

Even more electrifying

And tonight, to add to the superb artwork that nature has supplied all week, the moon decides to poke its head through the storm clouds.

The holiday is coming to an end and tonight has given us even more to enjoy as the moon has started to break through the storm clouds.

Hello moon 🌒

Superbly stunning views of nature this week. Quite unique and unbelievable.

Have a superb day.

It’s been electrifying

This holiday has not disappointed in supplying natural phenomenon to photograph. Mother nature has pulled out all the stops this year.

This holiday has not failed to produce the goods. I’ve taken some stunning photos this year and mother nature keeps supplying the photo opportunities. Another night of heavy electrical activity out to the north of the island, supplying a superb natural firework display.

Just absolutely mesmerising

Have a good day all.

Full moon, storms and rainbows

Weather mood swings in Cyprus. And a full moon.

Having a wonderful time out here in Cyprus, we’ve seen some stunning weather events and exceptionally beautiful full moon. This island continues to deliver and impress.

Weather and moods aplenty

Have a lovely day .

Some observations in black and white

A walk around the towns and some observations in black and white

24th of September 2026 around the towns of Polis Latchi and Limni, Western Cyprus.

Have a lovely day.

It’s all about me

I write for me. For my family. It’s a journal. But feel free to dive in…

How do you write what people actually want to read?

I don’t really worry about what others want to read. I write what I want, if others choose to read what I write then it’s a bonus, but an altogether rare event.

I’ve always written as a journal for my self, that has always been the case. Those who have knowledge of why I write, will realise that every thing here is an extension of the journal I used to write whilst going through hard times. I opened up my journal to my family and this is the platform I chose for them to be able to check in on me. So whilst being respectful and appreciative to those who do pop in and read my ramblings, it was never meant to be that way and as stated was just a way for my family to keep tabs on my wellbeing, and in that respect it has worked very well.

And with my repairs, it is an ongoing work of reference for me as well.

So those pesky “bulk” likers who like about 20 different posts in 30 seconds, just for the hell of it would never know just what this whole set up is about, and to be honest they can just go and take a running jump as they would never really understand.

But like i stated at the beginning, I write for me, my family and that is about it. Anyone else who tags along is most welcome, and appreciated. But at the end of the day this is about me, and I’m pretty basic and boring at the best of times. You are looking into a wellbeing journal, expect some harsh truths, opinions and ramblings. That’s about the cruxt of it all.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. it serves a purpose. It is not a fanzine.

Have a great day.