Tuesday, November 27, 2012

storm

22 comments:

A13 said...

HI John, I love storms..
but only when i'm inside and comfy..
i've always wanted to be a lighthouse keeper..and live in a lighthouse and would love to be in one when a storm hits..that would be my ultimate storm experience.
Do you have any lighthouses around your area??
stay safe for the storms and floods :)all the best A

A13 said...

about lighthouses..
my favourite of all time

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordouan_lighthouse

then this one...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skerryvore

Just love em..I would so love to visit the one in France the most.
especially in a storm :)

dognamedblue said...

hello A13 :)
I used to work for the northern lighthouse board here in scotland
as a "kickback" to staff they used to let you book your holiday & stay in a lighthouse, not the "rocks" but mainland ones [I think the public can now book holidays there too but would have to check]
you stay in the cottages at the lighthouse as they no longer have live in facilities
one thing they don't tell you,and don't tell you on purpose, is when there's fog the fog alarm, or fog horn, goes on & doesn't go off until the fog's gone which at night usually lasts all night
there are some rather unusual stories about lighthouses, murders, disappearances & when it's night & the fog horn is sounding & you go outside & can't see your hand in front of your face you get carried away in the weirdness of it all, very spooky
I stayed in the mull of galloway light house where the atlantic, irish & north seas all meet & there's a line in the ocean when it's calm & even the sea sucks you into going swimming in it
definitely "song to the siren" stuff

A13 said...

HI DMB :)
WOW...i'm so jealous of you right now!! working for the lighthouse board and staying ina keepers cottage..how cool.
That is my ultimate holiday (except for foghorns going off of course) but all part of the experience and ambience of it all i guess..

One of my favourite DR Who's with Tom Baker was horror at Fang Rock about a lighthouse..
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Horror_of_Fang_Rock_%28TV_story%29

Have it on DVD and watch it occasionally

Cheers A13

A13 said...

Apologies!!!
I mean DNB..sorry Blue :)
got those dyslexic fingers again.
Cheers A

john said...

Cheers A13 and dognamedblue. This is excellent, we have a lighthouse keepers convention. I lived in the West Usk lighthouse near Newport in Wales from Autumn to Spring in about 1987, sharing it with ten other students. As the others coupled off and hid away in bedrooms I spent a lot of time with a guy named Hugh (now living in Australia) sitting in a small lounge, smoking spliffs and burning driftwood in the tiny fireplace, trying to keep warm. The lighthouse was not one of the traditional tower shaped ones, it was more of a quality street tin shape, built in 1821.

One very stormy night I decided to go outside and have a bit of a walk up the beach, I hadn't got very far when the wind blew the hat off my head. Usually when the wind does this your hat will roll along the ground a way and you can chase it but my hat was lifted high into the air and rapidly vanished into the sky, something I've never seen since. We did have quite a few laughs in the place but my God it was cold, and the wind... one of the other odd things was that when it was very quiet at night you could hear a massive roaring sound way out in distance to the west, probably just the sea out there doing what it does. The basement was sealed up so we excavated to have a look...we had all sorts of fun.

The french lighthouses look wonderful A13 and the first being surprisingly old too. Nice one dognamedblue, I'll have a look at the mull of galloway light house, I should think the sea would get very rough up that way, much rougher than the Bristol channel I expect. It seems a shame that the lighthouse keepers are now replaced by automated lights, in some ways it looked like a good sort of a job for the right person and there was something nice about being warm at home on a rough night and imagining the lighthouse keepers watching over the seas.

john said...

oh and there are two lighthouses visible at night from here, one at Portland Bill and the other at Berry Head, near Brixham. here is the West Usk lighthouse now http://www.westusklighthouse.co.uk/

It wasn't anywhere near as posh when we rented it I can assure you. for some reason they seem to have a tardis and a dalek. Tom Baker was always my favourite Dr. Who.

john said...

The Mull of Galloway looks like a beautiful place.

A13 said...

My lighthouse fetish has just had a huge boost thanks to you two!!!!
That lighthouse at west usk is awesome...very lush and i could easily see myself there in a storm or even foghorns going off having a great time!!!and you stayed there john!! those times were so much fun and enlightening.Thanks for sharing your story there :)
Well, i'd have my spliffs and an open driftwood fire and a nice glass of cognac for that one! I'd certainly go the four poster!!
Love the idea of the tardis!! i used to have a Navy VW golf and i used to call it the tardis!! anyway..Blue, what a stunning lighthouse! you guys over there have really nice lighthouses..there are none in my general area and even then mostly they are automated and some do have accomodation but they are nowhere as old or as stunning as yours there..
Tom baker was the best DR Who ever..The Pyramids of mars is my favourite :) cheers A

A13 said...

New post :)
http://rantydrunks.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/the-lighthouse.html

cheers A

john said...

Yes it looks like quite a place to stay now A13. I'd be happy in most of them really, anywhere near the sea and I'm happy and it's lovely to be able to hear the sea at night. I don't know if its of any interest if you live in Australia but I found this website when I was checking the lighthouses out, it seems like a good resource for the UK lighthouses.

http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/A_heritage/Lighthouses/Maps/Lighthouse_map_EW.htm

It's odd but I've never seen what the lighthouse at Berry head looked like before. It's not very impressive as a lighthouse but seems like a nice bit of the coast.
I'll pop over to rantydrunks and have a look. Cheers!

Oh and the Pyramids of Mars. I remember the title but can't recall it. It might be time for me to catch up on some the old Dr Whos. No Tv here so I haven't seen hardly any of the new series'

I always wanted to go to a fancy dress party as Davros, it would be fun to bump into the walls all evening as a sort of drunken human dodgem.

A13 said...

haiku for John

Top photo:

desolate sky parts
orange light gives
white light emerges.


(very technical..i know)

2nd one:

chundering seas
a good port
and chowder.

3rd:

Others look
One sees
makes the difference

4th:

Get inside
Get warm
Have a drink.

( yep...... :))

5th:

Calm seas
friendly to boats
a port in a storm.

There you go :)
and a drunken Davros would be a great idea!!
Sometimes i get the feeling the world is run by a davros head somewhere in Tel Aviv...lol

Cheers mate A

john said...

Hi A13 and thanks very much, all very good, feel welcome to haiku here in the future. I think you might be right about the davros head in Tel Aviv. Spellcheck wants me to put Stravros instead of davros, it's so helpful. Maybe spellcheck knows that the world is run by a greek head. There are the banking families that we know about but where they get their orders from who knows, its probably not very pleasant. I was reading something sinister at Rigorous Intuition about blood transfusions, http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11608&p=481183&hilit=blood+transfusions#p481183

john said...

Quote from RI http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/10/young-blood-reverses-age-related.html

I'm not quite sure where this nugget belongs, so I'll post it here and maybe someone can suggest a more appropriate thread (ritual abuse?)

It's pretty much accepted that the laboratory mouse is a valuable model for studying human disease, and so this study is rather revealing/shocking

TLDR: giving old mice young blood improves cognitive abilities.
qf. ritual abuse and child abduction.


Aging is associated with structural and functional changes in the adult brain that steadily drive cognitive impairments and susceptibility to degenerative disorders in healthy individuals. As human lifespan increases a greater fraction of the population suffers from age-related cognitive impairments, making it crucial to elucidate means by which to combat the effects of aging. To date, studies in old animals using heterochronic parabiosis - in which the circulatory systems of young and old animals are connected - have demonstrated that young blood can improve stem cell function in aging tissues including the brain. However, whether the enhancements of young blood extend beyond regeneration in either peripheral tissues or the central nervous system remains unknown. We hypothesized that the beneficial effects of young blood could counteract the pre-existing effects of aging in the old brain, and moreover improve higher order cognitive processes. Using heterochronic parabiosis we show that exposure of an old animal to young blood results in an increase in the dendritic spine density of mature granule cell neurons, as well as improvements in synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus of old mice. Furthermore, intravenous administration of young blood plasma to old mice improved age-related cognitive impairments in both contextual fear conditioning and spatial learning and memory. Together, our data indicate that young blood is capable of reversing some of the structural and functional changes occurring in the adult brain during aging.

john said...

and quoting the next comment at RI;

@ smokin' - my grandfather-in-law was approaching his departure date a few years ago and things were looking grim. He'd had a stroke and consequently got terrible bedsores, which in turn went septic. He was admiitted to hospital on deaths door and given hours to live.

He received a blood transfusion.

Two days later, he was back at home, sitting up in his chair, laughing and entertaining my kids. His eyes were alive and his mental faculties had fully returned. My wife and I found the change so shocking that we both agreed it that while it was wonderful, it was also a little bit creepy.

10 days later he was dead. Massive stroke. I wonder?....if only he had an unlimited supply of blood transfusions....

reem said...

Very angry sea and lovely lights behind thus clouds in your last photo ....I haven't got a chance to see a storm like this ,it seems very strong ,,whene i was 18 i've got a trip to Ras Al Baseet at the syrian coast it was at morning and it was cloudy day too ,it rained much and we saw our sea angry and fast ,it was my first and last time for me to enjoy rainy day next to the sea ........nice photos John .....

A13 said...

Hi John, just checking out yr links to the blood transfusion stuff nd yes for sure this is being used as a life prolonging treatment that slots right in with abductions and ritual stuff..
It's very creepy as well as sickeningly real..think of bush senior and prince phil and all of those old farts that truly should be dead by now..what about keef richards..i've read that he has had numerous blood transfusions...
i'd say for sure there is a correlation and therefore causation..interesting and macarbe.
and it also ties into organ transplants and how the new owners of said organs inherit the desire to do the things the previous owners of the organs did...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-558256/I-given-young-mans-heart---started-craving-beer-Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-My-daughter-said-I-walked-like-man.html

A

john said...

Cheers Reem and thank you very much. I am very glad you're enjoying the photos, it sounds like your visit to the coast there was a good experience, I very much like the sea when it is rough like this, there is so much happening and the sounds and smell all add to the pleasure of it. These were very big waves.

We have had almost continual rain since the end of March, very unusual and it has caused much flooding, we have had far too much rain really and it makes it hard to get things done here when it rains so often. it is very cold here now and I know that if you live somewhere hot that it might be something to enjoy but we have too much dark and cold and rain so I dream of a place where it is warm and light. the weather is so extreme everywhere and we don't seem to have a good balence I think but I like to show others what we have here as i undertand that it's different from what they experience. There are some good thingssuch as when we have the fire going and it is snug but our summers seem so short now and the winters are so long. I hope all is good where you are Reem, all the best to you.

john said...

Cheers A13. I'll have a look at the link when I can, at the moment I am on somebody elses laptop, I'm not at all used to using them and am finding it very tricky to navigate. I thought the comments at RI about the tranfusions very interesting and almost thought about putting them up as a post here but they have managed to find a link thanks now. It is creepy how the relation they mention bounced back so remarkably and od course certain people could have these transfusions whenever they feel like it, same with the organs, very odd that they would retain a memory though, i think it demonstrates that there is much that we do not understand about such things. It also would explain why these awful people seem to be with us so long.

I remember a routine by william burroughs where he talks about longevity drugs held off the market due to national security and vampiric technologies, sucking life from the american youth, all delivered with a deadpan delivery to a guffawing audience but i think that often he would give us a lot of truth, i have read many of his novels and if you can get past the large amount of gay sex there is quite a bit of unusual information given. I think he was often misread by parts of his audience as when someone gave him a subscrption to a sceptics magazine which he hated, as he maintained that he believed in a magical universe. cheers for now and thanks A13

john said...

What was I blathering on about last night? I probably don't need to recommend William Burroughs to people, I'm surre everybody knows who he is. I think I meant skeptics rather than sceptic too. Also I am not homophobic in any way and others might enjoy reading long and detailed accounts of such stuff, I just find it a bit relentless in his novels.

Beautiful sunrise this morning. If only I had had my camera with me..always the way really, if you don't take it something spectacular nearly always happens. Such is life.

A13 said...

I agree about burrows..
fucking poser and boring actually..
IMO of course..excuse the french...
All of this homoerotic s&M stuff , fifty shades of shiite, just p'ees me off rally..
nothing more sustaining and wonderful than a loving and respectful relationship...living in acceptance and love and mutual understanding,
As we age , yeh sex is great but there is a whole lot more, intricate to life....

I've had a couple of wines..

Chhers A

john said...

Ha ha! I enjoy a bit of forthright speaking, we don't always get much here, wine is good for that as well.

I have enjoyed his novels, especially the Cities of the Red Night series and I believe there is some interesting stuff tucked away in there. One of my bestest gay mates has always been monogamous but it isn't always the case here whether straight or gay and cheating leads to much grief. One of the things I find about meditation is how connected it is to the sex force, which usually goes out into the world, though it can be directed inwards, this is when meditation works well. A lot of the stuff I have discovered sounds very nutty when you talk about it, so I tend not to, blabber and all that, it's best to make these discoveries oneself so I should shut it really. Love is a very great force and underpins much that makes existence worthwhile. I look back across my life and it has been the loving and caring for other people that has been the most important thing, everything else is just stuff really.

I've been off the booze for a bit, which usually means that when I break it is more spectacular. I don't really do sensible drinking and moderation and I can't drink wine because I try to drink it at the same speed that I drink beer. Not recommended!