A week switched off

While the grown ups are preoccupied with resignations, elections and that six letter word beginning with the letter B with its M.P's no, no, no and no votes, I've been busy watching this.

I've had this for a good while being one of the earliest dvd's I bought and being around the period I was reverting to watching and reading for that matter things either from my own childhood or as with the likes of Rugrats, those I saw on channels for today's children while I recovering from both childhood traumas and a nervous breakdown.
I find the style of narration very soothing and the primitive stop-gap animation has a charm of it's own that seems to be missing from CGI based animation.
I also have got a new spare platform for my tripod which is uses a quick release plate system so I can leave attached to the bottom of the digital camera using the wing nut which is much easier than relying on using a one pence coin to turn a screw.
This means you can easily uncouple it for hand held shots but clip it back in where you need to or switch between the Olympus film body and the digital keeping the exact same position.

Crunch time at Brexit

With a week on the clock, you cannot escape the at times hourly updates around "Brexit" as the tensions are ramped up several fold.

 I don't know anyone who isn't on edge over how the process that has taken 1,002 days seems to of achieved nothing, not one thing parliament has actually agreed on to take our leaving forward but only said what it is they don't wish to see.
In that respect Prime Minister May's frank comments in Wednesday's televised address to the nation make sense to me as much as they have annoyed the heck out of Members of Parliament.
However we voted in June 2016, most of us expected that vote to be respected and for M.P.'s to work toward a plan for leaving by agreement with the EU and then move toward settling questions around retaining good trading relations while being able to exercise our rights having left to make fresh agreements with other non EU countries.
This simply has not happened but moreover we are stuck in a major constitutional crisis about how parliamentary business is supposed to be run, a speaker who it is regarded is being partial in his decisions and a week to get an agreement passed unless an extension on the leaving date is granted that will come with terms from the EU.
If that isn't enough there is an implied threat the Prime Minister might even resign which would plunge the majority Conservatives into a leadership campaign that would take over three weeks and still leave the winner with the conundrum that is Brexit to deal with just the same.
It appears overnight EU leaders have agreed a delay to of a fortnight if Parliament doesn't agree to a deal and up to April 22nd if they do
I suspect many of us have had enough.

R.I.P Andre Previn

On February 28 2019, we lost the German-American, conductor, composer and pianist André Previn who had started out writing scores for movies by the likes of MGM before moving in to Jazz and then classical playing and conducting.

André was in many respects an important popularizer of Classical music in an era where opportunities to hear such music were limited to rather stuffy concerts where conductors and players alike dressed more like they were at a funeral than having fun playing music for people.

In Great Britain, there were in the 1970's two shows that broke the mode, one being the BBC Radio 2 series A Hundred Best Tunes, that played popular extracts from classical music that lead to compilation records and tapes being issued to tie in with it.
BBC Television secured from 1971 through 1979 a coup in having Andre present a show live on tv where he and the London Symphony Orchestra would play whole short works in front of an audience in a less formal way that proved extremely popular.
It was an era where even one serving British  Prime Minister, Edward Heath was actually a classical conductor.
That show resulted in a few selections being issued with an eye toward the shows audience the most obvious being this, Andre Previn's Music night that was issued in SQ Quadraphonic sound on record and tape.

 Of his many achievements as a conductor, his 1970's set of the complete Tchaikovsky Ballet scores for Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and the Nutcracker recording in stereo and SQ Quad remain my personal favourites having then in a six cd set with their light airy touch.
He also famously took part in the Christmas 1971 Morecambe and Wise tv show playing as the straight conductor to Eric Morecambe attempting to play Greig's Piano Concerto on piano, something that showed his sense of humour.
R.I.P André.

Being younger than your years and Birthdays

As one goes through an annual event in something that I'll cover more as a report on the other blog it is as well to look at why from an outsiders point of view my life has a very different aspect to it and how sometimes I spark off conversations at other places and sites that were not my intent.
We build our lives around certain expectations for one another sometimes on the basis of what it is we are capable of achieving  and to which is seen as virtuous while in others it is more what we are used to and perhaps feel if you had it then you'd stay there.
This is fine and dandy because in a busy society the ability to engage with and require minimal support from other adults has clear advantages.
Advantages that in the normal course of events while you may feel a need for a break from what might be excess responsibility or being less able for a short period you'd never wish to trade down from.
For some of us it's very different because the first and most painful aspect of all this is you haven't and won't achieve anything like that full status because you don't have the capacity and mental capability to.
To the extent people attempt to treat you like them, actually you find the level of responsibility you are expected to carry goes beyond what you can do, you may stand there and frankly see the whole situation as less of adult to adult but very much one more like that of a child.
Indeed you actually have the need to be in that role and to be treated more as that because you cannot handle any further responsibility than one (and I might add with me even in my late teens the gulf between me and my peers was wide-they had to look after me as a younger child) so life is more frustrating than it need be because of those expectations so many of you have.
Thus to me, an event such as a birthday or christmas simply is what I'd of had when I was younger because regardless with all things that would of been in it and while obviously popular culture changes, the nature of what appeals doesn't because I remain in many respects that same child.
So if I play with a toy or as like today read my Paddington Bear story book that is perfectly in order for who I am and more sensible folk will understand that I am different and respect that including my need to treated differently.

Photographic spring cleaning

At least she knows the correct way to handle a camera unlike some even though I hold mine so the viewfinder is over my left eye that usually requires dioptre adjustment to see clearly though it being unable to close my right eye independently.
I've been checking through some of my older film camera equipment as thanks to things such as needing to have pictures ready to blog within a week and being totally dependent on mail order processing losing the local branch of Jessops several years back who apart from selling equipment also did most of my print photography means I can't just drop a roll of film off on Monday morning and pick them (plus a disc of jpeg scans from them) on the Wednesday, they haven't had as much use as they did when this blog started.
I was taken aback when I came to checking over the Olympus T32 flashgun I've had for ages to find I'd forgotten to take out the four AA cells and worse still being also Zinc rather than alkaline weren't just dead but had leaked on part of the battery cover and one contact that I ended up scrubbing with a wire brush, washing the reminder off and praying it hadn't gone on the circuitboards .
Thankfully having retested afterward with four fresh alkaline cells, it still fires up correctly with the usual whining sound before you trigger the flash.
Surprisingly the OM10 body still worked even though when I unscrewed with a one pence piece the battery chamber the LR44 cells had started to breakdown so I cleaned that up to ensure the connectors would not corrode.
Of course today most of my posts have all digitally taken images rather than analogue film to digital conversions.

This is fairly recent picture I took indoors using an all digital system camera and macro lens which gives an idea what modern systems can do even if it still doesn't look quite the same as it would off film.
I might as well add I axed my Google + account and from that the Olympus OM user group I moderated as it would of gone in a month's time anyway