shotleyfieldsforever

I am currently watching the fifth series of Peaky Blinders in slow motion, the broadband service in shotleyfields is slow, we lie at the end of the line from an exchange four of five miles away and we are about a quarter of a mile from the road, so the signal, by the time that it reaches us is exhausted, so on iPlayer for every sentence spoken we get about 5 seconds of buffering before the reply. It seems that the writers of Series 5 of this Brummy Gangland drama have put their finger on the current state of play in both society and politics. So Sir Oswald Mosley is in cahoots with the Peaky Blinders and Thomas is about to abandon Socialism for Fascism? However it plays out, apart from the Home Secretary's latest announcements with regard to Romany's and trespass, it seems that the Zeitgeist of the thirties is being re-enacted in the 20's and as Berthold Brecht warned in his play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui: The Bitch that Bore him is in heat again. ...

Every time I travel home I am advised by the sat nav to turn left into my neighbours property. As my neighbour is some six fields away I ignore the satnav's prompting and carry on for a 1/4 of a mile or so and turn into my own gate. I am then advised to turn around and then turn left. The satnav and I then have a few words until I switch off the ignition only to resume the conversation on the next occasion. The reason for all this confusion is postcodes. My neighbour (six fields away) and I share a postcode. Since the postcodes invention it has become the dominant location identifier. If you enter your postcode into a search engine you will be invited to choose your address from a drop down list. I usually choose my address rather than my neighbours, although letters and parcels are often delivered theirs to us and ours to theirs. In fact on the occasion of our moving into our new house the furniture van headed towards their house with all our furniture, goods and ...

From Ghoulies and Ghosties and things that go bump in the night, good lord deliver us. Halloween is thought to be related to the Celtic Festival of Samhain (although I am fairly convinced that trick or treating only became popular in the UK following the film ET) but that is not to say that the Celtic spirits and adventurers who travelled to the New World did not just carry their Protestant faith with them but also earlier and more mysterious beliefs. It is the loss of the hour as British Summer Time ends, the sudden onset of cold dark nights which here in Shotley Fields brings a mysterious and dangerous sense as we walk down the long tree lined driveway to the dark mysterious house surrounded by trees bending and creaking in the wind. Unsurprisingly we did not have too many trick or treaters calling by on Halloween this year. A few nights ago I had to walk across to the Church to make sure that the heating had switched itself on ready for the next day, it was about midnight, ...