As some of you know I am having health issues following my recent DVT and I had an appointment at the hospital this morning for further investigations
However, on leaving and going to my daughter's car, who had come to collect my wife and I, a gentleman was standing outside his suv in a disabled bay and we smiled and expressed pleasantries
He came over and said how terrible things were ìn Gaza and he had lost 125 members of his family. He then showed us video and photographs of his house blasted by bombs and his family, including a doctor who died hours later of injuries, and his 3 year old nephew as a rag doll in his torchered father's arms
When confronted with such stark reality literally words fail you.
I asked where he was from and he said Manchester. I then queried if he was a patient at the hospital and he said he wasn't
He said he was the visiting Iman and was to take Friday prayers in the hospital
He pleaded for the US and UK to agree a ceasefire and if only my wife , daughter and I could arrange it we would
I have not commented on this war much, but it is clear Israel has gone too far and we must plead for cessation of the fighting, but it will not bring back the Iman's family and all the other Israelis and Palestinians lost in this senseless conflict
I have commented before on how my wife, myself and our youngest son was on the first tourist bus to enter Jericho after Arafat's peace accord and how our Jewish, ex Auschwitz, tour guide and the Palestinian Policeman on the steps leading up to the wall embraced and the whole coach of International tourists instantly broke out in applause
There can be no opposite feelings for me than then, and today's encounter with the lovely Iman
I share you sentiments and only add the qualification that whatever Israel has done in pursuing a war, which is in principle just and right following 7th October, it has not yet been sufficient to achieve its proper and just objective. Hamas has not yet laid down their arms and has not released the hostages. So if criticism of Israel is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages) Hamas are doubly guilty.
Sunt lacrimae rerum.
My italics.
I just don’t believe such absolutism is appropriate or morally defensible, especially given that the horrific attack of 7th October was not in a historical or moral vacuum.
One could equally argue from the opposite perspective, that nothing can justify 125 innocent civilians in one family being killed for no reason other than the accidental geography of their birth.
It seems crystal clear to me that giving one side full freedom to pursue even a just objective such as the elimination of Hamas perpetuates rather than reduces the misery in that part of the world. Not least because the moral equivalence is the elimination of the settler movement imo.
The much more difficult message, but one that the rest of the world has to give imo, is that the contested nature of the land both Israelis and Palestinians call home means that both sides must tolerate a degree of violence without escalating things in the way that Hamas did on 7th October and Israel are currently doing now.
Thanks. I am not of course defending absolutism or Israel's tactics particularly. I support neither side, but support good people on all sides and oppose bad people on all sides. Like most others I am unable to turn this trite truism into a policy, except that I support a two state solution, which neither Israel nor the Palestinians support (SFAICS) so I am not holding my breath. I support it because there is no other possible solution.
Several things are true at the same time including: Israel has a casus belli from 7th October, Hamas has neither laid down arms nor released hostages, Israel has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Palestinians and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
In my view such arguments, whilst being made in good faith, reveal a conscious or unconscious bias towards Israel.
Two examples:
So if criticism of Hamas is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Israel to stop stealing Palestianian land through illegal settlements) Israel are doubly guilty.
The question contained within this statement sounds deeply wrong because of the horrors Hamas inflicted. Although different in nature and scale, the horrors that Israel have inflicted since Oct 7th also make the original statement deeply wrong in my eyes.
Also: Several things are true at the same time including: Hamas has a casus belli from the Israeli government’s institutional support of the illegal settlement programme, Israel has incorporated settlers into the heart of government and defends the settlements with its military, Hamas has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Israelis and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
Similarly, to me at least, the reads like an apologist for Hamas. Reversing the statements in this way reveals their underlying prejudice in my view.
I am not, by the way, meaning to attack you personally. Many others make similar statements, believing them sincerely to be a balanced view. I just don’t think that they are.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
No. Just you. Doubtless this is the precursor to an anecdote. About you.
No, I just had a big hit of weed from my new Crater 420, and put some Patrick Moraz on Sonos and then suddenly got a sharp memory of being in love aged about 17 or 19 and listening to that music, and OMG I recalled the intensity of it, even seen many decades distant, it is like the radiation from a bloody supernova, still a crimson glow in the dark
That you were a self-obsessed twat from a very early age isn’t going to shock anyone here.
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
And could an AI ever replicate it?
If AI does develop human passions - physical as well as emotional - and yet is disembodied in a machine, unable to touch, kiss, smell, caress, the beloved, not even be present with the love object, that would be one of the purest forms of torture imaginable. and it is not inconceiveable this could happen: these machines are trained on thousands of years of human discourse about love and desire
I could see AI wreaking a grave revenge on us, for doing that to it
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
No. Just you. Doubtless this is the precursor to an anecdote. About you.
No, I just had a big hit of weed from my new Crater 420, and put some Patrick Moraz on Sonos and then suddenly got a sharp memory of being in love aged about 17 or 19 and listening to that music, and OMG I recalled the intensity of it, even seen many decades distant, it is like the radiation from a bloody supernova, still a crimson glow in the dark
That you were a self-obsessed twat from a very early age isn’t going to shock anyone here.
That witness Bolc from the solicitor’s firm to which the PO transferred its legal work amid what has turned into scandal, who started this morning as a refreshingly intelligent witness in contrast to the succession of PO-employed dimwitted bozos whom we’ve seen over the past week, ended up being torn to shreds and barely able to answer the simplest of questions.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,
EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵
- Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s - Consultation to begin as soon as January - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook via twseal and me
We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.
How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.
They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
I think that's actually quite important.
A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.
In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.
Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.
2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.
Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.
I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
I am not sure I approve this message.
Anyone drink driving should feel the full force of the law, but to isolate St Mellons and Coedely is unfortunate. Back in the early eighties friends of mine would have three or four pints and wind their way home on the Herefordshire back lanes. Being s***faced behind the wheel of a Fiesta is not unique to Wales and it is not unique to 2023.
I pretty much agree with that - outliers often deserve attention, in the same way that eg numbers of baby deaths in hospitals reveal systemic problems, and we need to do the same wrt road KSIs.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
Yes. The love I had for my one and only wife - thirty years younger - was glorious. We never argued. It was the best relationship of my life
Nevertheless there is something about those loving emotions when they are newly minted, as you leave puberty, they never have that blinding shine yet again, you feel like you are suddenly breathing some purer, but cruelly limited oxygen
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
No. Just you. Doubtless this is the precursor to an anecdote. About you.
No, I just had a big hit of weed from my new Crater 420, and put some Patrick Moraz on Sonos and then suddenly got a sharp memory of being in love aged about 17 or 19 and listening to that music, and OMG I recalled the intensity of it, even seen many decades distant, it is like the radiation from a bloody supernova, still a crimson glow in the dark
That you were a self-obsessed twat from a very early age isn’t going to shock anyone here.
At least my first love wasn't a Dachshund
You’ve either the memory of a goldfish, are desperately trolling, or hope that you might emerge better from the retelling of my sad story than you did the last time around.
You’re not worth the effort of a repetition, but you might try to grow up a little. Most of us manage to emerge from childishness long before we reach old age, and you might find a short intervening period between the two enlightening, or even educational.
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
No. Just you. Doubtless this is the precursor to an anecdote. About you.
No, I just had a big hit of weed from my new Crater 420, and put some Patrick Moraz on Sonos and then suddenly got a sharp memory of being in love aged about 17 or 19 and listening to that music, and OMG I recalled the intensity of it, even seen many decades distant, it is like the radiation from a bloody supernova, still a crimson glow in the dark
That you were a self-obsessed twat from a very early age isn’t going to shock anyone here.
At least my first love wasn't a Dachshund
You’ve either the memory of a goldfish, are desperately trolling, or hope that you might emerge better from the retelling of my sad story than you did the last time around.
You’re not worth the effort of a repetition, but you might try to grow up a little. Most of us manage to emerge from childishness long before we reach old age, and you might find a short intervening period between the two enlightening, or even educational.
Oh God
Sorry. I remembered
Franky the Dachshund got run over, didn't he? By that milk trolley, just as you said goodbye on Ventnor High Street and he did one of his funny "hairy" waves with his little paw then he got squished by 300 lbs of Semi skimmed?
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
Yes. The love I had for my one and only wife - thirty years younger - was glorious. We never argued. It was the best relationship of my life
Nevertheless there is something about those loving emotions when they are newly minted, as you leave puberty, they never have that blinding shine yet again, you feel like you are suddenly breathing some purer, but cruelly limited oxygen
And the scorching desire, my God
Agreed. Do you know of/listen to Christopher Ryan’s podcast Tangentially Speaking? He attributes, inter alia, Jihadism and mass shootings in USA to that scorching desire, especially when it is frustrated.
No idea how true that view is, but it is plausible.
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Lets hope they have about £5billion tucked down the back of the sofa. There are a lot of peoples pensions invested in it.
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Lets hope they have about £5billion tucked down the back of the sofa. There are a lot of peoples pensions invested in it.
Let's be honest, privatisation of water is nonsensical. There is no competition and there is no incentive for investment. The private companies know if they run up a massive debt pile the government will have to bail them out so the whole thing is a complete con.
The problem is that it's not just Thames, several of the other water companies are in equally stressed positions. Huge fail on behalf of Ofwat.
Indeed. But they're the biggest and best covered example. It's right that the regulator should take some of the blame, but it's a problem set up by, and ignored for decades by government.
Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,
EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵
- Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s - Consultation to begin as soon as January - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook via twseal and me
We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.
How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.
They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
I think that's actually quite important.
A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.
In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.
Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.
2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.
Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.
I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
I am not sure I approve this message.
Anyone drink driving should feel the full force of the law, but to isolate St Mellons and Coedely is unfortunate. Back in the early eighties friends of mine would have three or four pints and wind their way home on the Herefordshire back lanes. Being s***faced behind the wheel of a Fiesta is not unique to Wales and it is not unique to 2023.
I pretty much agree with that - outliers often deserve attention, in the same way that eg numbers of baby deaths in hospitals reveal systemic problems, and we need to do the same wrt road KSIs.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
This is despite E & W & NI limits being a pronounced outlier on the high side in Europe for a very long time.
As the founder of a telematics auto insurance company, I can tell you there is an inverse correlation between "thinks they are a good driver" and "doesn't get into accidents".
I joke that we should ask people if they are good drivers, and charge the overconfident extra.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
Yes. The love I had for my one and only wife - thirty years younger - was glorious. We never argued. It was the best relationship of my life
Nevertheless there is something about those loving emotions when they are newly minted, as you leave puberty, they never have that blinding shine yet again, you feel like you are suddenly breathing some purer, but cruelly limited oxygen
And the scorching desire, my God
Agreed. Do you know of/listen to Christopher Ryan’s podcast Tangentially Speaking? He attributes, inter alia, Jihadism and mass shootings in USA to that scorching desire, especially when it is frustrated.
No idea how true that view is, but it is plausible.
The incel movement is indeed closely adjacent to jihadism here. Thwarted young male desire is like dangerous snow building on a clifftop
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
My first kiss was a Hungarian girl in a cemetery in Rossington. Don't worry she wasn't dead, she was 12 (like me) and very much alive. Love? No it wasn't. I didn't even know her, we somehow met beside the graves there and we never knowingly saw each other again. So not a 'first love' story at all (apols for deviation) but I'm telling it because of your point about the intensity of romantic memory. Her breath was warm and smelt strongly of chocolate (I think she'd just eaten a bar) and that precise aspect has stayed with me my whole life. Whenever I smell chocolate on somebody's breath it takes me back to that year, that village, that cemetery, and that girl.
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Lets hope they have about £5billion tucked down the back of the sofa. There are a lot of peoples pensions invested in it.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
As Raymond Chandler put it, alcohol is a lot like love. The first kiss is intimate, the second is routine. After that, you just take the girl's clothes off.
Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,
EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵
- Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s - Consultation to begin as soon as January - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook via twseal and me
We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.
How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.
They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
I think that's actually quite important.
A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.
In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.
Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.
2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.
Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.
I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
I am not sure I approve this message.
Anyone drink driving should feel the full force of the law, but to isolate St Mellons and Coedely is unfortunate. Back in the early eighties friends of mine would have three or four pints and wind their way home on the Herefordshire back lanes. Being s***faced behind the wheel of a Fiesta is not unique to Wales and it is not unique to 2023.
I pretty much agree with that - outliers often deserve attention, in the same way that eg numbers of baby deaths in hospitals reveal systemic problems, and we need to do the same wrt road KSIs.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
My first kiss was a Hungarian girl in a cemetery in Rossington. Don't worry she wasn't dead, she was 12 (like me) and very much alive. Love? No it wasn't. I didn't even know her, we somehow met beside the graves there and we never knowingly saw each other again. So not a 'first love' story at all (apols for deviation) but I'm telling it because of your point about the intensity of romantic memory. Her breath was warm and smelt strongly of chocolate (I think she'd just eaten a bar) and that precise aspect has stayed with me my whole life. Whenever I smell chocolate on somebody's breath it takes me back to that year, that village, that cemetery, and that girl.
Very poignant - beautiful detail about the sweet chocolate. Could be a passage by Kundera
As some of you know I am having health issues following my recent DVT and I had an appointment at the hospital this morning for further investigations
However, on leaving and going to my daughter's car, who had come to collect my wife and I, a gentleman was standing outside his suv in a disabled bay and we smiled and expressed pleasantries
He came over and said how terrible things were ìn Gaza and he had lost 125 members of his family. He then showed us video and photographs of his house blasted by bombs and his family, including a doctor who died hours later of injuries, and his 3 year old nephew as a rag doll in his torchered father's arms
When confronted with such stark reality literally words fail you.
I asked where he was from and he said Manchester. I then queried if he was a patient at the hospital and he said he wasn't
He said he was the visiting Iman and was to take Friday prayers in the hospital
He pleaded for the US and UK to agree a ceasefire and if only my wife , daughter and I could arrange it we would
I have not commented on this war much, but it is clear Israel has gone too far and we must plead for cessation of the fighting, but it will not bring back the Iman's family and all the other Israelis and Palestinians lost in this senseless conflict
I have commented before on how my wife, myself and our youngest son was on the first tourist bus to enter Jericho after Arafat's peace accord and how our Jewish, ex Auschwitz, tour guide and the Palestinian Policeman on the steps leading up to the wall embraced and the whole coach of International tourists instantly broke out in applause
There can be no opposite feelings for me than then, and today's encounter with the lovely Iman
I share you sentiments and only add the qualification that whatever Israel has done in pursuing a war, which is in principle just and right following 7th October, it has not yet been sufficient to achieve its proper and just objective. Hamas has not yet laid down their arms and has not released the hostages. So if criticism of Israel is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages) Hamas are doubly guilty.
Sunt lacrimae rerum.
My italics.
I just don’t believe such absolutism is appropriate or morally defensible, especially given that the horrific attack of 7th October was not in a historical or moral vacuum.
One could equally argue from the opposite perspective, that nothing can justify 125 innocent civilians in one family being killed for no reason other than the accidental geography of their birth.
It seems crystal clear to me that giving one side full freedom to pursue even a just objective such as the elimination of Hamas perpetuates rather than reduces the misery in that part of the world. Not least because the moral equivalence is the elimination of the settler movement imo.
The much more difficult message, but one that the rest of the world has to give imo, is that the contested nature of the land both Israelis and Palestinians call home means that both sides must tolerate a degree of violence without escalating things in the way that Hamas did on 7th October and Israel are currently doing now.
Thanks. I am not of course defending absolutism or Israel's tactics particularly. I support neither side, but support good people on all sides and oppose bad people on all sides. Like most others I am unable to turn this trite truism into a policy, except that I support a two state solution, which neither Israel nor the Palestinians support (SFAICS) so I am not holding my breath. I support it because there is no other possible solution.
Several things are true at the same time including: Israel has a casus belli from 7th October, Hamas has neither laid down arms nor released hostages, Israel has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Palestinians and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
In my view such arguments, whilst being made in good faith, reveal a conscious or unconscious bias towards Israel.
Two examples:
So if criticism of Hamas is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Israel to stop stealing Palestianian land through illegal settlements) Israel are doubly guilty.
The question contained within this statement sounds deeply wrong because of the horrors Hamas inflicted. Although different in nature and scale, the horrors that Israel have inflicted since Oct 7th also make the original statement deeply wrong in my eyes.
Also: Several things are true at the same time including: Hamas has a casus belli from the Israeli government’s institutional support of the illegal settlement programme, Israel has incorporated settlers into the heart of government and defends the settlements with its military, Hamas has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Israelis and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
Similarly, to me at least, the reads like an apologist for Hamas. Reversing the statements in this way reveals their underlying prejudice in my view.
I am not, by the way, meaning to attack you personally. Many others make similar statements, believing them sincerely to be a balanced view. I just don’t think that they are.
Thanks. A perfectly fair set of points. Yes, I have an affinity for the Jewish cause in general because of where I was brought up and who with, and because of a particular 1930-1945 history. I have a particular affinity for the Palestinian cause which I only came to later, like many in the west. The best I can do is to reiterate that supporting good people on both sides is something I cannot turn into a polity except to support a 2 state solution, something neither side appears to value at the moment.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
And could an AI ever replicate it?
If AI does develop human passions - physical as well as emotional - and yet is disembodied in a machine, unable to touch, kiss, smell, caress, the beloved, not even be present with the love object, that would be one of the purest forms of torture imaginable. and it is not inconceiveable this could happen: these machines are trained on thousands of years of human discourse about love and desire
I could see AI wreaking a grave revenge on us, for doing that to it
Essentially, Allied Mastercomputer in I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream.
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Lets hope they have about £5billion tucked down the back of the sofa. There are a lot of peoples pensions invested in it.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
Yes. The love I had for my one and only wife - thirty years younger - was glorious. We never argued. It was the best relationship of my life
Nevertheless there is something about those loving emotions when they are newly minted, as you leave puberty, they never have that blinding shine yet again, you feel like you are suddenly breathing some purer, but cruelly limited oxygen
And the scorching desire, my God
Agreed. Do you know of/listen to Christopher Ryan’s podcast Tangentially Speaking? He attributes, inter alia, Jihadism and mass shootings in USA to that scorching desire, especially when it is frustrated.
No idea how true that view is, but it is plausible.
I don't agree with Leon. The emotions I felt at 18 were strong, sure, but unrefined - and if I'm honest based more on "here is an opportunity for sex aplenty" than "this is the most amazing person in the world." The emotions I felt at 32 when I met the woman I would later marry were more enjoyable in every way. Like comparing your first pint with your best pint.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up with my wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I adored "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely departed yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moments, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy, the ache of forsaking
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Let's be honest, privatisation of water is nonsensical. There is no competition and there is no incentive for investment. The private companies know if they run up a massive debt pile the government will have to bail them out so the whole thing is a complete con.
I do not understand how anyone can support it.
It's a good example of dysfunctional practices being promoted by the EU. A Brexit benefit would be to implement more cross-subsidies in public services and utilities.
Both Conservatives and Labour continue their slow decline with the Conservatives the lowest since October last year and Labour also almost at their lowest.
As some of you know I am having health issues following my recent DVT and I had an appointment at the hospital this morning for further investigations
However, on leaving and going to my daughter's car, who had come to collect my wife and I, a gentleman was standing outside his suv in a disabled bay and we smiled and expressed pleasantries
He came over and said how terrible things were ìn Gaza and he had lost 125 members of his family. He then showed us video and photographs of his house blasted by bombs and his family, including a doctor who died hours later of injuries, and his 3 year old nephew as a rag doll in his torchered father's arms
When confronted with such stark reality literally words fail you.
I asked where he was from and he said Manchester. I then queried if he was a patient at the hospital and he said he wasn't
He said he was the visiting Iman and was to take Friday prayers in the hospital
He pleaded for the US and UK to agree a ceasefire and if only my wife , daughter and I could arrange it we would
I have not commented on this war much, but it is clear Israel has gone too far and we must plead for cessation of the fighting, but it will not bring back the Iman's family and all the other Israelis and Palestinians lost in this senseless conflict
I have commented before on how my wife, myself and our youngest son was on the first tourist bus to enter Jericho after Arafat's peace accord and how our Jewish, ex Auschwitz, tour guide and the Palestinian Policeman on the steps leading up to the wall embraced and the whole coach of International tourists instantly broke out in applause
There can be no opposite feelings for me than then, and today's encounter with the lovely Iman
I share you sentiments and only add the qualification that whatever Israel has done in pursuing a war, which is in principle just and right following 7th October, it has not yet been sufficient to achieve its proper and just objective. Hamas has not yet laid down their arms and has not released the hostages. So if criticism of Israel is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages) Hamas are doubly guilty.
Sunt lacrimae rerum.
My italics.
I just don’t believe such absolutism is appropriate or morally defensible, especially given that the horrific attack of 7th October was not in a historical or moral vacuum.
One could equally argue from the opposite perspective, that nothing can justify 125 innocent civilians in one family being killed for no reason other than the accidental geography of their birth.
It seems crystal clear to me that giving one side full freedom to pursue even a just objective such as the elimination of Hamas perpetuates rather than reduces the misery in that part of the world. Not least because the moral equivalence is the elimination of the settler movement imo.
The much more difficult message, but one that the rest of the world has to give imo, is that the contested nature of the land both Israelis and Palestinians call home means that both sides must tolerate a degree of violence without escalating things in the way that Hamas did on 7th October and Israel are currently doing now.
Thanks. I am not of course defending absolutism or Israel's tactics particularly. I support neither side, but support good people on all sides and oppose bad people on all sides. Like most others I am unable to turn this trite truism into a policy, except that I support a two state solution, which neither Israel nor the Palestinians support (SFAICS) so I am not holding my breath. I support it because there is no other possible solution.
Several things are true at the same time including: Israel has a casus belli from 7th October, Hamas has neither laid down arms nor released hostages, Israel has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Palestinians and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
In my view such arguments, whilst being made in good faith, reveal a conscious or unconscious bias towards Israel.
Two examples:
So if criticism of Hamas is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Israel to stop stealing Palestianian land through illegal settlements) Israel are doubly guilty.
The question contained within this statement sounds deeply wrong because of the horrors Hamas inflicted. Although different in nature and scale, the horrors that Israel have inflicted since Oct 7th also make the original statement deeply wrong in my eyes.
Also: Several things are true at the same time including: Hamas has a casus belli from the Israeli government’s institutional support of the illegal settlement programme, Israel has incorporated settlers into the heart of government and defends the settlements with its military, Hamas has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Israelis and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
Similarly, to me at least, the reads like an apologist for Hamas. Reversing the statements in this way reveals their underlying prejudice in my view.
I am not, by the way, meaning to attack you personally. Many others make similar statements, believing them sincerely to be a balanced view. I just don’t think that they are.
Thanks. A perfectly fair set of points. Yes, I have an affinity for the Jewish cause in general because of where I was brought up and who with, and because of a particular 1930-1945 history. I have a particular affinity for the Palestinian cause which I only came to later, like many in the west. The best I can do is to reiterate that supporting good people on both sides is something I cannot turn into a polity except to support a 2 state solution, something neither side appears to value at the moment.
I wonder what a balanced view looks like?
Likewise I find myself having a more natural affinity with the Palestinian cause and having to more effortfully empathise with the Israeli one, even though intellectually I can recognise the validity of both sides’ pov.
I think perhaps a balanced view is impossible, as you intimate. I think this is because the competing claims are indeed close to absolutes, even though they conflict. Perhaps they cannot be balanced by their very nature. (Isiah Berlin comes to mind).
In any case, thank you for engaging with my rather belligerent posts in good faith.
Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,
EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵
- Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s - Consultation to begin as soon as January - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook via twseal and me
We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.
How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.
They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
I think that's actually quite important.
A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.
In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.
Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.
2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.
Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.
I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
I am not sure I approve this message.
Anyone drink driving should feel the full force of the law, but to isolate St Mellons and Coedely is unfortunate. Back in the early eighties friends of mine would have three or four pints and wind their way home on the Herefordshire back lanes. Being s***faced behind the wheel of a Fiesta is not unique to Wales and it is not unique to 2023.
I pretty much agree with that - outliers often deserve attention, in the same way that eg numbers of baby deaths in hospitals reveal systemic problems, and we need to do the same wrt road KSIs.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
This is despite E & W & NI limits being a pronounced outlier on the high side in Europe for a very long time.
As the founder of a telematics auto insurance company, I can tell you there is an inverse correlation between "thinks they are a good driver" and "doesn't get into accidents".
I joke that we should ask people if they are good drivers, and charge the overconfident extra.
We have a friend who worked for an F1 team as an engineer. He was a fast, accurate and skilled driver.
After one night-time trip with him, we vowed to try not to drive with him ever again. *He* is an excellent driver, but other drivers did not expect someone to be driving 20-30 MPH over the limit, however accurate their driving, or going for tiny gaps.
In other words; he was a really good driver if he was on a track; I'm far from convinced he was a good road driver. He certainly did not really comprehend the idea of 'defensive' driving.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
On topic - the Cons are losing huge numbers of voters to the centre and to the right. The right defectors are now lining up behind Ref UK - in large part fuelled by Rish & Co's failed record on immigration. A failure the Cons and No 10 seen hell-bent on making a hotbed issue! The centre defectors still identify as 'ex-Con Don't knows'. They might come back to the Cons but if More In Common are right on their largely being Blue Wall 'liberal' types then chasing those Ref UK voters could decide these folks to stay home or choose between Lab and the Lib Dems.
To get out of this they need a leader with strong personal ratings and acute political skills. I still say that no-one should underestimate just how much ground the Cons could lose in a GE campaign merely by having Mr Sunak front and center. Let alone if he tries to debate with Starmer - that would be a massacre.
Maybe the Tories should bring back a former PM. Mrs May?
December PMIs show Europe heading for recession, while UK appears to be avoiding one.
There's time yet. Our core inflation is around 5.7%, so we're unlikely to see quick interest rate cuts. Or we could just zero growth for a while longer.
If Germany sorts out their fiscal snarl up, next year could still be better did them than us. But neither of us are sound anywhere near as well as the US.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
My first kiss was a Hungarian girl in a cemetery in Rossington. Don't worry she wasn't dead, she was 12 (like me) and very much alive. Love? No it wasn't. I didn't even know her, we somehow met beside the graves there and we never knowingly saw each other again. So not a 'first love' story at all (apols for deviation) but I'm telling it because of your point about the intensity of romantic memory. Her breath was warm and smelt strongly of chocolate (I think she'd just eaten a bar) and that precise aspect has stayed with me my whole life. Whenever I smell chocolate on somebody's breath it takes me back to that year, that village, that cemetery, and that girl.
Very poignant - beautiful detail about the sweet chocolate. Could be a passage by Kundera
🙂 I was going for Proust and his madeleines.
(true story though - and big gap to the next snog if you must know)
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Lets hope they have about £5billion tucked down the back of the sofa. There are a lot of peoples pensions invested in it.
Labour's average share in the polls is about 43% atm. If the usual swingback happens, they might get around 40% at the election. So not the 44% that Blair got in 1997.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
My first kiss was a Hungarian girl in a cemetery in Rossington. Don't worry she wasn't dead, she was 12 (like me) and very much alive. Love? No it wasn't. I didn't even know her, we somehow met beside the graves there and we never knowingly saw each other again. So not a 'first love' story at all (apols for deviation) but I'm telling it because of your point about the intensity of romantic memory. Her breath was warm and smelt strongly of chocolate (I think she'd just eaten a bar) and that precise aspect has stayed with me my whole life. Whenever I smell chocolate on somebody's breath it takes me back to that year, that village, that cemetery, and that girl.
Very poignant - beautiful detail about the sweet chocolate. Could be a passage by Kundera
🙂 I was going for Proust and his madeleines.
(true story though - and big gap to the next snog if you must know)
Now you've got me onto first proper kisses
OMG - Linda Gillespie in the school yard. Think she tasted of salt and vinegar crisps, but in a good way
It wasn't so much erotic as nice and soft and weird and odd and made me feel deeply funny.
The first erotic kiss is something else. Electrifying. Instantly addictive and quite scary
Mine was probably with my second love, it took that long for me to apprecaite a kiss could in itself be superbly erotic, rather than just this sweet cute thing you did before you go to other places.
It was on the battlements of an old castle on Gozo, Malta, under the Mediterranean moon. She was sunburned and beautiful and kept yelling in mild pain if I touched the wring place, but then she laughed, her red lips white teeth in the starry starry darkness
Let them go bust. The government is going to have to bail them out in one form or another.
Surely Thames Water will go into administration, the equity holders will lose all their money, and the debt holders will take a haircut, and there will be a new owner.
There's also the minor problem of the Thames Tideway project. Currently this is funded by a listed vehicle - Bazalgette plc - with the intention it would be bought by Thames Water when complete. Thames may not have the cash to buy the completed project.
Bazalgette plc will need to make new arrangements with the new owners of Thames Water
Lets hope they have about £5billion tucked down the back of the sofa. There are a lot of peoples pensions invested in it.
Labour's average share in the polls is about 43% atm. If the usual swingback happens, they might get around 40% at the election. So not the 44% that Blair got in 1997.
The last Opinium showed Labour at 42% - I believe that we are due another this week. Opinium incorporate swingback into their calculations by adjusting for don't knows.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
But the later love is better don’t you think? Less superbly coloured and wildly dangerous (great turn of phrase) but each heartbreak teaches you about yourself and it is only by knowing and loving yourself that you can really love another.
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
Yes. The love I had for my one and only wife - thirty years younger - was glorious. We never argued. It was the best relationship of my life
Nevertheless there is something about those loving emotions when they are newly minted, as you leave puberty, they never have that blinding shine yet again, you feel like you are suddenly breathing some purer, but cruelly limited oxygen
And the scorching desire, my God
Agreed. Do you know of/listen to Christopher Ryan’s podcast Tangentially Speaking? He attributes, inter alia, Jihadism and mass shootings in USA to that scorching desire, especially when it is frustrated.
No idea how true that view is, but it is plausible.
I don't agree with Leon. The emotions I felt at 18 were strong, sure, but unrefined - and if I'm honest based more on "here is an opportunity for sex aplenty" than "this is the most amazing person in the world." The emotions I felt at 32 when I met the woman I would later marry were more enjoyable in every way. Like comparing your first pint with your best pint.
It's a nice post, Cookie, and it rings true, but should we be comparing romantic partners to pints of bitter?
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Labour's average share in the polls is about 43% atm. If the usual swingback happens, they might get around 40% at the election. So not the 44% that Blair got in 1997.
So only the second most successful leader of all time for Labour then. I recall very well you posting about crap Keir was.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
The late great Sinead, of course.
Tep ten, for sure, and - interestingly - so much better than Prince's original
As some of you know I am having health issues following my recent DVT and I had an appointment at the hospital this morning for further investigations
However, on leaving and going to my daughter's car, who had come to collect my wife and I, a gentleman was standing outside his suv in a disabled bay and we smiled and expressed pleasantries
He came over and said how terrible things were ìn Gaza and he had lost 125 members of his family. He then showed us video and photographs of his house blasted by bombs and his family, including a doctor who died hours later of injuries, and his 3 year old nephew as a rag doll in his torchered father's arms
When confronted with such stark reality literally words fail you.
I asked where he was from and he said Manchester. I then queried if he was a patient at the hospital and he said he wasn't
He said he was the visiting Iman and was to take Friday prayers in the hospital
He pleaded for the US and UK to agree a ceasefire and if only my wife , daughter and I could arrange it we would
I have not commented on this war much, but it is clear Israel has gone too far and we must plead for cessation of the fighting, but it will not bring back the Iman's family and all the other Israelis and Palestinians lost in this senseless conflict
I have commented before on how my wife, myself and our youngest son was on the first tourist bus to enter Jericho after Arafat's peace accord and how our Jewish, ex Auschwitz, tour guide and the Palestinian Policeman on the steps leading up to the wall embraced and the whole coach of International tourists instantly broke out in applause
There can be no opposite feelings for me than then, and today's encounter with the lovely Iman
I share you sentiments and only add the qualification that whatever Israel has done in pursuing a war, which is in principle just and right following 7th October, it has not yet been sufficient to achieve its proper and just objective. Hamas has not yet laid down their arms and has not released the hostages. So if criticism of Israel is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Hamas to lay down their arms and release the hostages) Hamas are doubly guilty.
Sunt lacrimae rerum.
My italics.
I just don’t believe such absolutism is appropriate or morally defensible, especially given that the horrific attack of 7th October was not in a historical or moral vacuum.
One could equally argue from the opposite perspective, that nothing can justify 125 innocent civilians in one family being killed for no reason other than the accidental geography of their birth.
It seems crystal clear to me that giving one side full freedom to pursue even a just objective such as the elimination of Hamas perpetuates rather than reduces the misery in that part of the world. Not least because the moral equivalence is the elimination of the settler movement imo.
The much more difficult message, but one that the rest of the world has to give imo, is that the contested nature of the land both Israelis and Palestinians call home means that both sides must tolerate a degree of violence without escalating things in the way that Hamas did on 7th October and Israel are currently doing now.
Thanks. I am not of course defending absolutism or Israel's tactics particularly. I support neither side, but support good people on all sides and oppose bad people on all sides. Like most others I am unable to turn this trite truism into a policy, except that I support a two state solution, which neither Israel nor the Palestinians support (SFAICS) so I am not holding my breath. I support it because there is no other possible solution.
Several things are true at the same time including: Israel has a casus belli from 7th October, Hamas has neither laid down arms nor released hostages, Israel has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Palestinians and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
In my view such arguments, whilst being made in good faith, reveal a conscious or unconscious bias towards Israel.
Two examples:
So if criticism of Hamas is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Israel to stop stealing Palestianian land through illegal settlements) Israel are doubly guilty.
The question contained within this statement sounds deeply wrong because of the horrors Hamas inflicted. Although different in nature and scale, the horrors that Israel have inflicted since Oct 7th also make the original statement deeply wrong in my eyes.
Also: Several things are true at the same time including: Hamas has a casus belli from the Israeli government’s institutional support of the illegal settlement programme, Israel has incorporated settlers into the heart of government and defends the settlements with its military, Hamas has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Israelis and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
Similarly, to me at least, the reads like an apologist for Hamas. Reversing the statements in this way reveals their underlying prejudice in my view.
I am not, by the way, meaning to attack you personally. Many others make similar statements, believing them sincerely to be a balanced view. I just don’t think that they are.
Thanks. A perfectly fair set of points. Yes, I have an affinity for the Jewish cause in general because of where I was brought up and who with, and because of a particular 1930-1945 history. I have a particular affinity for the Palestinian cause which I only came to later, like many in the west. The best I can do is to reiterate that supporting good people on both sides is something I cannot turn into a polity except to support a 2 state solution, something neither side appears to value at the moment.
I wonder what a balanced view looks like?
Likewise I find myself having a more natural affinity with the Palestinian cause and having to more effortfully empathise with the Israeli one, even though intellectually I can recognise the validity of both sides’ pov.
I think perhaps a balanced view is impossible, as you intimate. I think this is because the competing claims are indeed close to absolutes, even though they conflict. Perhaps they cannot be balanced by their very nature. (Isiah Berlin comes to mind).
In any case, thank you for engaging with my rather belligerent posts in good faith.
Thanks. It is an extreme case of incommensurability, a concept which needs bolstering. Not all good things and ideals are compatible with all other good things and ideals; and bad things relating to issue X do not in most cases vitiate the good things in relation to X, nor vice versa.
One of the markers of political dead ends, left, right, populist, idealist et al is where there is a failure to see that this is usually the case.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
Labour's average share in the polls is about 43% atm. If the usual swingback happens, they might get around 40% at the election. So not the 44% that Blair got in 1997.
The last Opinium showed Labour at 42% - I believe that we are due another this week. Opinium incorporate swingback into their calculations by adjusting for don't knows.
Labour's average share in the polls is about 43% atm. If the usual swingback happens, they might get around 40% at the election. So not the 44% that Blair got in 1997.
Though Conservative polls in July/August 1996 were in the range 25 - 32 percent, so they're also polling worse than then.
Neither RefUK or the Greens were a thing then; one of the unknowns is how squeezable their support will be next year.
And the Conservatives are flirting with levels of support where FPTP turns really nasty.
The problem is that it's not just Thames, several of the other water companies are in equally stressed positions. Huge fail on behalf of Ofwat.
All these useless Quangos are filled with stupid chinless wonders Alan. There only due to the old boy's network, where the useless go to get their rewards for the years of butt licking.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
And could an AI ever replicate it?
If AI does develop human passions - physical as well as emotional - and yet is disembodied in a machine, unable to touch, kiss, smell, caress, the beloved, not even be present with the love object, that would be one of the purest forms of torture imaginable. and it is not inconceiveable this could happen: these machines are trained on thousands of years of human discourse about love and desire
I could see AI wreaking a grave revenge on us, for doing that to it
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
For me a good break up song has to evoke intense sadness
Of yours, only Someone Like You does that, but I find the lyrics a little simplistic. Nonetheless a fine song
Boys of Summer is brilliantly sad, that haunted guitar line
Peace, Piece by Bill Evans is mayne not a break up song but fuck me it is sad and it reminds me INTENSELY of my divorce and it HURTS, she loved it and played it all the time specially near the end
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
And could an AI ever replicate it?
If AI does develop human passions - physical as well as emotional - and yet is disembodied in a machine, unable to touch, kiss, smell, caress, the beloved, not even be present with the love object, that would be one of the purest forms of torture imaginable. and it is not inconceiveable this could happen: these machines are trained on thousands of years of human discourse about love and desire
I could see AI wreaking a grave revenge on us, for doing that to it
Essentially, Allied Mastercomputer in I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
For me a good break up song has to evoke intense sadness
Of yours, only Someone Like You does that, but I find the lyrics a little simplistic. Nonetheless a fine song
Boys of Summer is brilliantly sad, that haunted guitar line
Peace, Piece by Bill Evans is mayne not a break up song but fuck me it is sad and it reminds me INTENSELY of my divorce and it HURTS, she loved it and played it all the time specially near the end
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
And could an AI ever replicate it?
If AI does develop human passions - physical as well as emotional - and yet is disembodied in a machine, unable to touch, kiss, smell, caress, the beloved, not even be present with the love object, that would be one of the purest forms of torture imaginable. and it is not inconceiveable this could happen: these machines are trained on thousands of years of human discourse about love and desire
I could see AI wreaking a grave revenge on us, for doing that to it
The flip side of that is that AIs will have access to sensory experiences way beyond what we're capable of. Computers generally aren't sandboxed and potentially have access to all manner of 'embodied' stuff.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald Love don't live here anymore- Rose Royce
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
No. Just you. Doubtless this is the precursor to an anecdote. About you.
No, I just had a big hit of weed from my new Crater 420, and put some Patrick Moraz on Sonos and then suddenly got a sharp memory of being in love aged about 17 or 19 and listening to that music, and OMG I recalled the intensity of it, even seen many decades distant, it is like the radiation from a bloody supernova, still a crimson glow in the dark
Just had a look at a Crater 420 turbovape thingy.
It's probably one of those things I go window shopping for, to remind myself what I don't need to buy.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
Labour's average share in the polls is about 43% atm. If the usual swingback happens, they might get around 40% at the election. So not the 44% that Blair got in 1997.
Though Conservative polls in July/August 1996 were in the range 25 - 32 percent, so they're also polling worse than then.
Neither RefUK or the Greens were a thing then; one of the unknowns is how squeezable their support will be next year.
And the Conservatives are flirting with levels of support where FPTP turns really nasty.
The Tories could end up like Shimazu Yoshihiro's forces at the Battle of Noryang, destroyed by the combined allies against them.
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
No. Just you. Doubtless this is the precursor to an anecdote. About you.
No, I just had a big hit of weed from my new Crater 420, and put some Patrick Moraz on Sonos and then suddenly got a sharp memory of being in love aged about 17 or 19 and listening to that music, and OMG I recalled the intensity of it, even seen many decades distant, it is like the radiation from a bloody supernova, still a crimson glow in the dark
Just had a look at a Crater 420 turbovape thingy.
It's probably one of those things I go window shopping for, to remind myself what I don't need to buy.
If you're on a break from the booze they are great for having just a tiny hit of weed to liven up a chilly December afternoon, when you've done your tax returns and want to chill out
You can smoke exactly as much or as little as you want - (small doses in my case)
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Not a classic "split up" song; but I split up with a girl I cared for on the Grand Union Canal towpath at West Drayton. The first song I listened to as I walked on was that song, and it always takes me back to that place and moment.
Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,
EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵
- Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s - Consultation to begin as soon as January - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook via twseal and me
We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.
How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.
They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
I think that's actually quite important.
A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.
In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.
Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.
2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.
Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.
I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
I am not sure I approve this message.
Anyone drink driving should feel the full force of the law, but to isolate St Mellons and Coedely is unfortunate. Back in the early eighties friends of mine would have three or four pints and wind their way home on the Herefordshire back lanes. Being s***faced behind the wheel of a Fiesta is not unique to Wales and it is not unique to 2023.
I pretty much agree with that - outliers often deserve attention, in the same way that eg numbers of baby deaths in hospitals reveal systemic problems, and we need to do the same wrt road KSIs.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
This is despite E & W & NI limits being a pronounced outlier on the high side in Europe for a very long time.
I approve this message!
One of my early driving memories was driving (gently) down Hard Knott Pass 3-up plus hiking gear in a 900c VW Polo Mark 1 in early January - University Housemates, and the brakes more or less giving out about 3/4 of the way down.
So I have tried to be sympathetic to conditions ever since.
Obviously we had gone over from the Wrynose Side. At least we hadn't tried the out-and-back version.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
For sheer inchoate longing, California Dreamin. It's not really a heartbreak song - but perhaps it is ?
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
For me a good break up song has to evoke intense sadness
Of yours, only Someone Like You does that, but I find the lyrics a little simplistic. Nonetheless a fine song
Boys of Summer is brilliantly sad, that haunted guitar line
Peace, Piece by Bill Evans is mayne not a break up song but fuck me it is sad and it reminds me INTENSELY of my divorce and it HURTS, she loved it and played it all the time specially near the end
SOB
Wild Horses is very very sad.
It's about a girl who's just tried to commit suicide. Marianne Faithful in fact. Because of some bad behaviour from Mick Jagger she'd taken too many (but not quite enough) pills and was recuperating in a Chelsea hospital.
Mick went to see her and took his guitar in, perched on her sickbed and played her this song he'd written specially for her. Talk about living on a higher plane. Most men would have brought grapes.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
“It was Only a Winter’s Tale” by David Essex. Although it started in the summer it all went wrong by the end of March. And I told her if she was ever in trouble, to contact me. Which brought the scornful reply “What, even when you’re married!”
And 50 years later, after 45 years of marriage (obviously to someone else) I started “almost seeing ” her round every street corner, everywhere I went. And suddenly it stopped.
And a year or so later I traced her on Ancestry and found she’d died shortly after I’d stopped getting the “visions”.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
Peace, Piece by Bill Evans is mayne not a break up song but fuck me it is sad and it reminds me INTENSELY of my divorce and it HURTS, she loved it and played it all the time specially near the end
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
My first kiss was a Hungarian girl in a cemetery in Rossington. Don't worry she wasn't dead, she was 12 (like me) and very much alive. Love? No it wasn't. I didn't even know her, we somehow met beside the graves there and we never knowingly saw each other again. So not a 'first love' story at all (apols for deviation) but I'm telling it because of your point about the intensity of romantic memory. Her breath was warm and smelt strongly of chocolate (I think she'd just eaten a bar) and that precise aspect has stayed with me my whole life. Whenever I smell chocolate on somebody's breath it takes me back to that year, that village, that cemetery, and that girl.
Very poignant - beautiful detail about the sweet chocolate. Could be a passage by Kundera
🙂 I was going for Proust and his madeleines.
(true story though - and big gap to the next snog if you must know)
Now you've got me onto first proper kisses
OMG - Linda Gillespie in the school yard. Think she tasted of salt and vinegar crisps, but in a good way
It wasn't so much erotic as nice and soft and weird and odd and made me feel deeply funny.
The first erotic kiss is something else. Electrifying. Instantly addictive and quite scary
Mine was probably with my second love, it took that long for me to apprecaite a kiss could in itself be superbly erotic, rather than just this sweet cute thing you did before you go to other places.
It was on the battlements of an old castle on Gozo, Malta, under the Mediterranean moon. She was sunburned and beautiful and kept yelling in mild pain if I touched the wring place, but then she laughed, her red lips white teeth in the starry starry darkness
You were a bit forward with just a stolen kiss. "(she) kept yelling if I touched the (w)ring (place) piece"
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Lost Cause by Beck. The whole album ‘Sea Change’ is a great collection of depressing break up songs that I wallowed in for years
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
For sheer inchoate longing, California Dreamin. It's not really a heartbreak song - but perhaps it is ?
A magnificent song - one of the masterpieces of the songwriting craft in the 20th century - but definitely not a heartbreak song. More of an impassioned hymn of spiritual longing with a 60s pop music vibe
This famous video captures that religious quality
WELL I GOT - DOWN - ON - MY - KNEES, AND I BEGAN TO PRAAAAY
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
Ah I sense a list situation. Ok it won't kill me. 3 romantic songs that bring a lump:
Wild Horses Someone Like You Just Can't Help Believing
Peace, Piece by Bill Evans is mayne not a break up song but fuck me it is sad and it reminds me INTENSELY of my divorce and it HURTS, she loved it and played it all the time specially near the end
SOB
Respect. Evans is great, and that's a fine piece.
It is TOO good - too sad - as a breakup song. Because it is 100% tragic, it offers no redemption
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be in love aged about 18 or 20? the pure overwhelming desire, the painful yearning, the sense that nothing else matters except THIS, THIS emotion, THIS love, THIS need, THIS unrequited lust and the desperate hunger to touch, THIS THIS THIS
Luckily in my case it wasn't unrequited.
Mine was requited then she went and broke my heart into a billion pieces anyway. Then the second did the same! - but I did the same to her, and this time it was a trillion pieces
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
My first kiss was a Hungarian girl in a cemetery in Rossington. Don't worry she wasn't dead, she was 12 (like me) and very much alive. Love? No it wasn't. I didn't even know her, we somehow met beside the graves there and we never knowingly saw each other again. So not a 'first love' story at all (apols for deviation) but I'm telling it because of your point about the intensity of romantic memory. Her breath was warm and smelt strongly of chocolate (I think she'd just eaten a bar) and that precise aspect has stayed with me my whole life. Whenever I smell chocolate on somebody's breath it takes me back to that year, that village, that cemetery, and that girl.
Very poignant - beautiful detail about the sweet chocolate. Could be a passage by Kundera
🙂 I was going for Proust and his madeleines.
(true story though - and big gap to the next snog if you must know)
Now you've got me onto first proper kisses
OMG - Linda Gillespie in the school yard. Think she tasted of salt and vinegar crisps, but in a good way
It wasn't so much erotic as nice and soft and weird and odd and made me feel deeply funny.
The first erotic kiss is something else. Electrifying. Instantly addictive and quite scary
Mine was probably with my second love, it took that long for me to apprecaite a kiss could in itself be superbly erotic, rather than just this sweet cute thing you did before you go to other places.
It was on the battlements of an old castle on Gozo, Malta, under the Mediterranean moon. She was sunburned and beautiful and kept yelling in mild pain if I touched the wring place, but then she laughed, her red lips white teeth in the starry starry darkness
My first kiss was with a girl called Tanja, a German exchange student of Polish origin, aged 14, in the girls' hockey changing rooms at school at some Anglo-German party arranged by the school to foster good relations. Lots and lots of emotions at once: "At last!" and "this is much nicer even than I thought it would be" and "everyone knows where we've gone - how are we going to reappear subtly?" and "having started this, what is supposed to happen next?" I think she was going through the same. We found it almost too excrutiating to talk afterwards. 14 year olds are, by and large, rubbish at being 14.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
For sheer inchoate longing, California Dreamin. It's not really a heartbreak song - but perhaps it is ?
A magnificent song - one of the masterpieces of the songwriting craft in the 20th century - but definitely not a heartbreak song. More of an impassioned hymn of spiritual longing with a 60s pop music vibe
This famous video captures that religious quality
WELL I GOT - DOWN - ON - MY - KNEES, AND I BEGAN TO PRAAAAY
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
For sheer inchoate longing, California Dreamin. It's not really a heartbreak song - but perhaps it is ?
A magnificent song - one of the masterpieces of the songwriting craft in the 20th century - but definitely not a heartbreak song. More of an impassioned hymn of spiritual longing with a 60s pop music vibe
This famous video captures that religious quality
WELL I GOT - DOWN - ON - MY - KNEES, AND I BEGAN TO PRAAAAY
I just realised the Evans piece recalls Satie's Gymnopédies.
Well indeed
I don't think Peace Piece is a break up song, it's probably more about the bittersweet ephemerality of life and the consolation of its inevitable conclusion, but it has attached itself to my break up and it makes me nearly cry, every bloody time
Meanwhile, in "it might be a good thing, but do you really think you're going to make this happen" news,
EXC: Rishi Sunak's government considers crackdown on young teens' social media use 🧵
- Possible legal ban on use of social media by under-16s - Consultation to begin as soon as January - Currently industry standard is for 13+ on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook via twseal and me
We're governed by an overbearing 'Tiger Dad'. No TikTok but extra maths. Fuck me, this will do wonders for the future Conservative vote.
To be fair, I'm sure Rishi flosses.
Not according to DuraAce - and his wife is a dentist.
How many under-16's vote Tory? And zero under-18s too, except in Scotland and Wales. It's Granny, who doesn't like little Johnny using his mobey at the dinner table, who has the vote.
They should be bloody grateful they don't have compulsory school uniforms with shorts with elastic belts with snake clasps.
Some of us lefties also ban their kids from using phones at the dinner table. A deeply anti-social habit (the phone use, not the banning). Disrupts the discussion of Hegelian dialectics.
Yep. And I wouldn't let my son watch Top Gear when he was an impressionable teenager. Hearts and minds. This is why we'll prevail in the end.
I think that's actually quite important.
A lot of young people are playing games of Russian Roulette in their cars or bikes, and losing. There seems to be a serious problem in Wales, but also elsewhere. Drink and Drugs are factors in a lot of it, as is dangerous driving by inexperienced drivers.
In the St Mellons crash (the one near Cardiff with 3 dead, 2 hospitalised, that lost the VW Estate in the bushes, followed by the 'why did the police not find them' media stuff), all 5 in the car including the driver were tanked up on drink and drugs. Ages 32, 24, 21, 21, 20.
Then the two teenagers on the Ely Estate killed themselves racing around on an illegal Surron motorbike given to them by parents. Ages 15, 16.
2 weeks ago we have the four Shrewsbury teenagers killed in "a car that left the road" and ended up in a river near Llanfrothen. Aged 16-18. Causes not yet determined.
Now we have 3 more killed and 2 more in hospital in a collision on a straight, wide road in Coedely. Ages 19, 19, 18, 18, 18. Causes not yet determined, but local reports are that the road is used like a racetrack.
I can cope with Russian Roulette playing Darwin Award winners copping themselves, and some problems due to inexperience which we need always to be working on. But I cannot accept the public being put at risk recklessly.
I am not sure I approve this message.
Anyone drink driving should feel the full force of the law, but to isolate St Mellons and Coedely is unfortunate. Back in the early eighties friends of mine would have three or four pints and wind their way home on the Herefordshire back lanes. Being s***faced behind the wheel of a Fiesta is not unique to Wales and it is not unique to 2023.
I pretty much agree with that - outliers often deserve attention, in the same way that eg numbers of baby deaths in hospitals reveal systemic problems, and we need to do the same wrt road KSIs.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
This is despite E & W & NI limits being a pronounced outlier on the high side in Europe for a very long time.
I approve this message!
One of my early driving memories was driving (gently) down Hard Knott Pass 3-up plus hiking gear in a 900c VW Polo Mark 1 in early January - University Housemates, and the brakes more or less giving out about 3/4 of the way down.
So I have tried to be sympathetic to conditions ever since.
Obviously we had gone over from the Wrynose Side. At least we hadn't tried the out-and-back version.
One of the joys of that route is inching past caravanners who obviously thought the signs saying "not suitable for caravans" were an outrageous intrusion by the nanny state. There are several points where they can't go forward, can't go backwards and can't turn. I've no idea what happens in the end. Maybe they're all still up there.
This solicitor from the legal firm that the Post Office engaged is flaky without any chocolate covering to hold him together. One assumes he is aware that his professional reputation is on the line.
Can you be more specific as to which solicitor your referring to, and/or post link to his testimony?
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up withmy wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I loved "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely gone yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moment, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Great song. It's one I always think of for Boris fans now that He has gone. The best line "better learn how to face it" is also an excellent piece of muscular 'tough love' advice.
Best heartbreak songs apart from She's Gone?
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song Ten Years Gone by Led Zep Love Will Tear Us Apart Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
No Regrets-the Walker Brothers River- Joni Mitchell I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
No Regrets is a fine song, so is the identically named but very different No Regrets by Robbie Williams
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
For sheer inchoate longing, California Dreamin. It's not really a heartbreak song - but perhaps it is ?
The best heartbreak songs in my view are more for unrequited love than actual break ups. That’s more ‘heartache’ I suppose
RU Mine by Arctic Monkeys is a great take on the frustrations and craziness of wanting someone who you’re not sure feels the same. The whole album ‘AM’ is on the same theme and is absolutely brilliant
Comments
Two examples:
So if criticism of Hamas is right (and all such must offer what they should have done instead to get Israel to stop stealing Palestianian land through illegal settlements) Israel are doubly guilty.
The question contained within this statement sounds deeply wrong because of the horrors Hamas inflicted. Although different in nature and scale, the horrors that Israel have inflicted since Oct 7th also make the original statement deeply wrong in my eyes.
Also:
Several things are true at the same time including: Hamas has a casus belli from the Israeli government’s institutional support of the illegal settlement programme, Israel has incorporated settlers into the heart of government and defends the settlements with its military, Hamas has in many and various ways acted terribly towards Israelis and others and continues to do so, the competing claims of both/all sides have legitimacy.
Similarly, to me at least, the reads like an apologist for Hamas. Reversing the statements in this way reveals their underlying prejudice in my view.
I am not, by the way, meaning to attack you personally. Many others make similar statements, believing them sincerely to be a balanced view. I just don’t think that they are.
After those first two loves it was never quite as intense, the first was puppyish and romantic the second was voluptuous and sexual, but after that the heart hardens a little. I have been giddily in love since but it never feels that superbly dangerous and wildly coloured ever again
I could see AI wreaking a grave revenge on us, for doing that to it
I would say I look back with deep pleasure on (most!) previous loves, but none gave as much pleasure as the current/most recent, precisely because I know myself better and am more confident to be myself in the relationship.
The ones I point out are a possible outlier needing attention.
On road deaths, I suggest that self-created myths exist along the same lines as "I'm an above-average deriver, donchaknow" believed by perhaps 70-80% of the population, but on more serious topics.
I give you two videos for the pre-Christmas periods:
1 - Home counties types insisting that they knew they were safe drinking & driving, from when the first DUI laws came in in the UK. Interviewed in the Green Dragon at Shenfield in 1967. The first remark shown is "but what about the drunk pedestrian."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg
2 - The Durham Constabulary bodycam footage of dealing with drunk drivers. For me the startling point remains the self-delusion. "I've done nothing wrong" echoing through the door as the drunk driver is put in custody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDU5ps3B-O8
This is despite E & W & NI limits being a pronounced outlier on the high side in Europe for a very long time.
Nevertheless there is something about those loving emotions when they are newly minted, as you leave puberty, they never have that blinding shine yet again, you feel like you are suddenly breathing some purer, but cruelly limited oxygen
And the scorching desire, my God
You’re not worth the effort of a repetition, but you might try to grow up a little. Most of us manage to emerge from childishness long before we reach old age, and you might find a short intervening period between the two enlightening, or even educational.
Sorry. I remembered
Franky the Dachshund got run over, didn't he? By that milk trolley, just as you said goodbye on Ventnor High Street and he did one of his funny "hairy" waves with his little paw then he got squished by 300 lbs of Semi skimmed?
Sorry
frustrated.
No idea how true that view is, but it is plausible.
I do not understand how anyone can support it.
But they're the biggest and best covered example.
It's right that the regulator should take some of the blame, but it's a problem set up by, and ignored for decades by government.
I joke that we should ask people if they are good drivers, and charge the overconfident extra.
The full clip of the BBC presenter giving a middle finger has just come out
https://x.com/ub1ub2/status/1735670845463245281?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Bazalgette finance doesn't seem to have that much in the way of assets and liabilities.
I wonder what a balanced view looks like?
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/38LO/tideway-operational-update-to-investors/15927604
https://www.tideway.london/corporate-info/
The emotions I felt at 32 when I met the woman I would later marry were more enjoyable in every way. Like comparing your first pint with your best pint.
A "broken heart" - which is tremendously hurtful at the time - must be one of the few pains we actively seek out
When I broke up with my wife I used to play lots of tragic or sentimental music, it solaced me even if it sometimes ached. I adored "She's Gone" by Hall & Oates in particular because it was so horribly accurate and also rather lovely.
And now? Now the heart break has entirely departed yet sometimes I listen to "She's Gone" just to get those feelings of heart break back, if only for a few moments, the sense of terrible loss tied up with burning memories of joy, the ache of forsaking
Is there any other pain we voluntarily revisit? Not sure there is. It makes us feel alive?
Both Conservatives and Labour continue their slow decline with the Conservatives the lowest since October last year and Labour also almost at their lowest.
Reform are continuing their climb.
I think perhaps a balanced view is impossible, as you intimate. I think this is because the competing claims are indeed close to absolutes, even though they conflict. Perhaps they cannot be balanced by their very nature. (Isiah Berlin comes to
mind).
In any case, thank you for engaging with my rather belligerent posts in good faith.
After one night-time trip with him, we vowed to try not to drive with him ever again. *He* is an excellent driver, but other drivers did not expect someone to be driving 20-30 MPH over the limit, however accurate their driving, or going for tiny gaps.
In other words; he was a really good driver if he was on a track; I'm far from convinced he was a good road driver. He certainly did not really comprehend the idea of 'defensive' driving.
https://twitter.com/wethinkpolling/status/1735677211200430108
Mrs May?
Our core inflation is around 5.7%, so we're unlikely to see quick interest rate cuts.
Or we could just zero growth for a while longer.
If Germany sorts out their fiscal snarl up, next year could still be better did them than us.
But neither of us are sound anywhere near as well as the US.
Without You has to be up there. A cliche but still a heck of a song
Ten Years Gone by Led Zep
Love Will Tear Us Apart
Back to Black
But mine might be
Rocket Man
Which is evermore overpoweringly sad the more you listen to it
(true story though - and big gap to the next snog if you must know)
OMG - Linda Gillespie in the school yard. Think she tasted of salt and vinegar crisps, but in a good way
It wasn't so much erotic as nice and soft and weird and odd and made me feel deeply funny.
The first erotic kiss is something else. Electrifying. Instantly addictive and quite scary
Mine was probably with my second love, it took that long for me to apprecaite a kiss could in itself be superbly erotic, rather than just this sweet cute thing you did before you go to other places.
It was on the battlements of an old castle on Gozo, Malta, under the Mediterranean moon. She was sunburned and beautiful and kept yelling in mild pain if I touched the wring place, but then she laughed, her red lips white teeth in the starry starry darkness
One of the markers of political dead ends, left, right, populist, idealist et al is where there is a failure to see that this is usually the case.
Wild Horses
Someone Like You
Just Can't Help Believing
Neither RefUK or the Greens were a thing then; one of the unknowns is how squeezable their support will be next year.
And the Conservatives are flirting with levels of support where FPTP turns really nasty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream
Of yours, only Someone Like You does that, but I find the lyrics a little simplistic. Nonetheless a fine song
Boys of Summer is brilliantly sad, that haunted guitar line
Peace, Piece by Bill Evans is mayne not a break up song but fuck me it is sad and it reminds me INTENSELY of my divorce and it HURTS, she loved it and played it all the time specially near the end
SOB
Computers generally aren't sandboxed and potentially have access to all manner of 'embodied' stuff.
River- Joni Mitchell
I Keep Forgettin'- Michael McDonald
Love don't live here anymore- Rose Royce
But the best EVER is
The First Cut is the Deepest - Cat Stevens
It's probably one of those things I go window shopping for, to remind myself what I don't need to buy.
Leaving on a Jet Plane - the Peter Paul and Mary version, not the faintly saccharine original - is unbearably sad and is certainly a separation song
You can smoke exactly as much or as little as you want - (small doses in my case)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oag3I4VRXyM
Not a classic "split up" song; but I split up with a girl I cared for on the Grand Union Canal towpath at West Drayton. The first song I listened to as I walked on was that song, and it always takes me back to that place and moment.
I'm still friends with the lass, as it happens.
So I have tried to be sympathetic to conditions ever since.
Obviously we had gone over from the Wrynose Side. At least we hadn't tried the out-and-back version.
Dreamin.
It's not really a heartbreak song - but perhaps it is ?
PMIs for German economy would have gone through the roof in the 1940s too.
It's about a girl who's just tried to commit suicide. Marianne Faithful in fact. Because of some bad behaviour from Mick Jagger she'd taken too many (but not quite enough) pills and was recuperating in a Chelsea hospital.
Mick went to see her and took his guitar in, perched on her sickbed and played her this song he'd written specially for her. Talk about living on a higher plane. Most men would have brought grapes.
"I'd rather live in his world than live without him in mine"
Welling up just typing it.
Which brought the scornful reply “What, even when you’re married!”
And 50 years later, after 45 years of marriage (obviously to someone else) I started “almost seeing ” her round every street corner, everywhere I went.
And suddenly it stopped.
And a year or so later I traced her on Ancestry and found she’d died shortly after I’d stopped getting the “visions”.
Evans is great, and that's a fine piece.
"(she) kept yelling if I touched the (w)ring (place) piece"
My spelling corrections.
Great song, though.
This famous video captures that religious quality
WELL I GOT - DOWN - ON - MY - KNEES, AND I BEGAN TO PRAAAAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk
I think she was going through the same. We found it almost too excrutiating to talk afterwards.
14 year olds are, by and large, rubbish at being 14.
I just realised the Evans piece recalls Satie's Gymnopédies.
I don't think Peace Piece is a break up song, it's probably more about the bittersweet ephemerality of life and the consolation of its inevitable conclusion, but it has attached itself to my break up and it makes me nearly cry, every bloody time
Am listening to it now
Chin up, Leon old boy
https://news.sky.com/story/tory-mp-scott-benton-to-appeal-proposed-suspension-over-lobbying-scandal-13031094
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjzvTObzgA
Edit - is it Andrew Bolc?
Empty Chairs, Don McLean?
RU Mine by Arctic Monkeys is a great take on the frustrations and craziness of wanting someone who you’re not sure feels the same. The whole album ‘AM’ is on the same theme and is absolutely brilliant