Progressive Thoughts - Day 17

Today’s song is called Trains by the brilliant Porcupine Tree. This is a beautiful and thought-provoking song written, of course, by the amazing Steven Wilson.

You may initially think the song is about trains but there is much more to it than that. I think it’s a song about summer love and childhood with trains providing the hook for the memory of long summers past.

As I sit here typing this post in the deepest darkest depths of winter I long for sun and summer.

January and February are the worst months of the year for me and when they vanish I usually celebrate.

December is actually cold and dark too but at least we have Christmas to raise our spirits and make life enjoyable. Remove that and you just have cold, dark miserable January. It’s dark in the morning when I go to work and dark in the evening when I get back. The only daylight I see is through an office window so my daily two mile walk at lunchtime is just that little bit better – that is unless January weather has kicked in and decided to drop snow or what seems like the entire Atlantic Ocean on my poor head as I navigate the cold streets.

These two awful months are the low point and I actually start to feel slightly depressed. I don’t suffer from depression but somehow the dark grey skies and freezing weather haul my usually happy demeanour down towards despair.

However, I’m nothing if not optimistic.

I usually try to arrange a couple of things to make January a busy month so that I can take my mind off the negative aspects that January and February force to the surface. For example, I have a couple of gigs lined up and I am enjoying pouring my thoughts out to the world in a daily blog, as rubbish as they may be. I also have a trip to London arranged and a weekend in Chester enjoying an engagement party for some friends.

I will get through this with flying colours and as soon as the weather warms up and the buds appear signalling the arrival of spring, I shall smile a lot more.

And then summer will come with its wonderful long days.

Mind you, some British people may scoff at that last sentence because although the days are long, the weather doesn’t always play along. I don’t care because summer also brings with it the holiday season where Mrs PM and I will leave Britain’s shores to enjoy a break in places we know will be sunny and beautiful.

This year, we have a couple of holidays booked already and others planned.

For example we are visiting our friends in Abu Dhabi in April, taking time out to go to Dubai for a couple of days. In June we have booked a week in Corfu in Greece with my two lads. Later in the year we off for a weekend break in Madrid with friends before finally heading to Italy somewhere in September hopefully.

When I wake up tomorrow on a cold miserable January morning I shall subconsciously counting down to when the days warm up and grow longer and imagine myself walking around the English countryside on a sunny day or visiting a foreign city in a warm climate or perhaps even strolling along a beautiful beach with the sea lapping up to the shore.

I’ll get through this – I always do.

Progressive Thoughts - Day 7

A progressive rock blogathon wouldn’t be complete without a song from my favourite band of all time, the Canadian power trio that is Rush.

This song is called Mystic Rhythms from the 1985 album Power Windows.

 The album is right up there with my favourites of all time and reminds me of commuting between Manchester and London. At the time I was in a long distance relationship with my ex-wife. We weren’t married yet but she had moved to the south of England as a temporary measure.

It was a real strain and expensive too. I used to listen to the album repeatedly during the journey that, at the time, took almost four hours each way, every other week. These days the journey is a lot quicker and more enjoyable, thankfully.

I don’t regret doing so but at the time, it was a challenge.

I think this happened for about a year and during that time I ploughed through more novels than I have ever done at any time in my life. I alternated between reading and listening to music on my Sony Walkman, which bizarrely was considered the height of music technology at the time. That little device saved my sanity but the problem was I had to take a bagful of cassette tapes with me.

Alongside the novels, it made my overnight luggage heavier than expected.

These days I can take one tiny little iPod with me that contains my entire CD collection plus a Kindle that can accommodate hundreds of books. It’s so much easier, although I do have to make sure that they are both fully charged, particularly for long journeys and has made them more enjoyable as a result.

Actually, when I say “more enjoyable”, what I really mean is “less tedious”. Though I am a keen traveller, the actual travelling to my destination is not really enjoyable at all. I’ve spent many a blog post ranting about travelling, particularly long distance flying so I won’t go down that road again. To be honest, back in 1985, train travel was pretty much the same.

Worse, London is a hub and for many of the towns and cities in the south east of England, you would have to get to London, cross London and then take another train out. Getting across London these days takes almost as long as actually getting there.

And if you are unlucky enough to arrive during the rush hour then you are totally screwed. You end up standing on a platform with seemingly thousands of fellow travellers waiting for the next train.

When the train actually arrives, invariably it is full and cannot accommodate the sheer volume of people waiting to get on. This doesn’t stop everyone trying to get on board and if you are lucky enough to actually manage that, you find yourself crammed up against total strangers. Personal space is non-existent during such journeys.

Most of the time, you don’t know where to look. I tend to look up simply because it is awkward when you are pressed up against a total stranger, particularly if it is a woman. When this happens, I don’t know where to put myself – and I simply don’t have a choice.

It can be embarrassing.

Thankfully, if the train isn’t crowded, the journey is more tolerable and I can entertain myself watching my fellow passengers, in a non-creepy way of course. Some of the people who live in London or just visit are actually quite eccentric – and I love eccentricity. I particularly love places like Camden Town and Camden Market where a lot of these people are drawn too.

Campden Town

It's not everyday you see the Mad Hatter on the streets of London

People-watching is one of the things that also make travel more tolerable. It is a pastime that quite a few people enjoy and I sometimes wonder what these people make of a weirdo like me.

Do they regard me as eccentric or just plain boring.

To be honest, I regard myself as slightly weird but not excessively so, and I imagine that people ‘s eyes just gloss over me in search of a more interesting person.

And believe me there are plenty of them about.

Cars, Trains, Bikes ... and a Tank

I was looking through some recent photographs and I noticed that I had taken quite a few pictures of various modes of transport.

I’m not really interested in cars, trains and motorbikes to be honest, but when I see an interesting vehicle, I do feel compelled to take a photo of it.

I thought I would share a few with you, dear reader in the hope that you find them as interesting as I did when I captured them, starting with the car above, which I saw at a classic car show in Manchester.

I spotted the car below in a multistory car park in Bordeaux. I think it's meant to serve as a warning to drivers to be careful when driving around corners.

The truck below was parked outside a James Dean themed restaurant in Prague, in the Czech Republic. It was a great advert for a very enjoyable place.

In Collioure, in the south of France, they also use a car to advertise a restaurant.

Regular readers will know that I love the city of Hong Kong and the double-decker trams in that wonderful city are iconic - and cheap too.

In Europe, we rarely see bikes as beautiful as the one below. We have to go across the pond to Boston to catch a glimpse.

Below is another couple of classic cars I spotted at a show in Manchester.

Back across the Atlantic Ocean in Alaska, there is a very enjoyable way to tour Skagway.

In Canada, in the past, a rather special vehicle was required to take tourists onto a glacier. 

These days, the Canadians have replaced it with a monster bus whose wheels are almost as tall as I am.

In a warmer climate, its obvious that there are people in Monte Carlo have a little more disposable income than the rest of us.

And a few kilometres away, in the French city of Cannes, the story is the same. Here is a random car I discovered parked outside the shops.

Before the wall came down in Berlin, East Germans drove around in tiny little cars called Trabants. These days, they also use them to advertise shops.

In Japan, you can travel the length and breadth of the country in super fast Shinkansen bullet trains. They roar through train stations at such high velocities that if you are standing on a platform it is actually almost a scary experience. The picture below was my fourth attempt at capturing this magnificent train. 

Japan is the only place in the world where you will find a neon tank. It is probably the most wonderful place I have ever visited and probably the strangest too. Only in Japan would you experience the Robot Restaurant and find yourself face to face with the tank below while eating your meal and witnessing what I can only describe as the weirdest but most entertaining show I have ever seen.

I will tell you more about the Robot Restaurant in a future post.

The tank was one of the more sensible parts of the show. 

I'll bet you can't wait to hear about it.