Farewell 2012 - And All That Jazz!

So - here we are - on the verge of the End of 2012, and the start of 2013! How time flies!

I cannot say 2012 has been the best year of my life so far - although it is far from being the worst! It has had many challenges, and many goals (and their inherent dreams) still remain unattained, although, admittedly, a lot closer than they have been in previous years. Some of the impacts that have either delayed or prevented certain achievements were not of my own making, nor were they under my control, which makes them even harder to bear.

 

But I am not going to dwell on those events and occurrences, as that will only serve to bring the mood lower than need be!  There were still many things about 2012 that gave me a certain amount of success - especially in areas I had only pondered about previously - and which have laid a very hopeful foundation for the future on a number of levels.  Work went well, with the new company being very successful, and looking to continue that for the next 12 months.  And my writing has been successful in ways that both myself and my wife find amusing and inspiring, if somewhat unexpected, and, with a little more effort from myself, looks poised to bring even more success in the coming years - hopefully to the extremes of my dreams.  The only challenge is reigning in the new diversity and channelling that into those routes that others would expect from me, while still allowing the new routes I am following to achieve their success.  It will be interesting!

 

So I enter 2013 with a certain amount of optimism, putting behind me the depradations and interferences of the past - both 2012 and beyond - and looking forward to bringing greater achievements and successes to ever-growing audience - no matter what the field or endeavour!

 

Another aspect of my future life is these blogs I have so recently started writing.  These will be a challenge on a number of fronts.  First - I am by no means a strict diarist or journalist (in the pure sense of that word), so writing regularly will be an interesting challenge.  Then the challenge to that challenge is to write something interesting, informative, or entertaining, because I don't believe in writing a blog entry just for the sake of having a blog entry.  And the other challenge is keeping it fun and interesting for myself, otherwise it will languish in that special purgatory set aside for failed hobbies and projects that we all have!  Time to make the hobbies into obsessions!

 

Finally - if you are reading this, I wish you a very happy and successful 2013.

 

Paul J Todd

 

 

 

Farewell Gerry Anderson!

I heard the news today and, oh, boy!

Gerry Anderson has died at the age of 83. He will be sadly missed, but his wonderful creations will live on forever in the minds and hearts of us Children of the '60's.

 

Gerry, along with his wife Sylvia, was the creator of numerous television series in the 1960's and 1970's that filled our fertile minds with the wonder of the possibilities that the 21st Century held for future generations and, if we somehow were lucky to live long enough, us, too!

 

Television series such as Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, Joe 90, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, UFO and Space 1999, along with others I cannot remember, were mandatory watching for us, and, despite most of them being populated by clunky marionettes, were totally believable when we combined them with the ongoing news from the Space Race and the technological developments going on all around us.  Combine these with other wonderful science-fiction shows such as Doctor Who - which I will be writing a lot more about in other posts - and Star Trek, and we all knew the future was going to be full of challenges, but also full of heroes and fun.

 

 

How we thrilled at the adventures of the five Tracy brothers, along with Brains, Lady Penelope and Parker, saving unfortunate victims in their marvellous Thunderbird machines, and Troy Tempest and Phones battling the fish-shaped submarines of King Titan in Stingray, or Steve Zodiac in Fireball XL5 as he rocketed across the galaxy. Then there was the superspy who was only a child - Joe 90 - who, through the power of the BIG RAT, could learn the skills of any craftsman in the world and use them to combat evil forces.  Go on - ask me what the acronym BIG RAT stands for - you know I`m gonna say "Brain Impulse Galvanoscope - Record And Transfer", don't you!

 

And then there was the wonderful Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.  Due to an encounter with the combative inhabitants of Mars, two captains of Spectrum are made indestructible. One of them - Captain Black - becomes the tool of the Mysterons, and the other, Captain Scarlet, remains true to his race and becomes the unkillable protector of Earth.

 

Of course, many of the artefacts developed for these series actually became real during our lifetime.  Cell phones, snorkel fire engines, super mini-subs, and so on, all became real as the century wore on. But that mattered little to us back in the '60's - we just enjoyed the thrill of the shows and never even considered that those marionettes were not real at all.

 

Thank you, Gerry Anderson, for filling my childhood with the wonder of all those shows you created.

 

Gerry Anderson TV series:

• Twizzle (1957-59)
• Torchy the Battery Boy (1960)
• Four Feather Falls (1960)
• Supercar (1961-62)
• Fireball XL5 (1962-63)
• Stingray (1964-65)
• Thunderbirds (1965-66, 1968)
• Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-68)
• Joe 90 (1968-69)
• The Secret Service (1969)
• UFO (1970-71)
• The Protectors (1972-74)
• Space 1999 (1975-77)
• Terrahawks (1983-84, 1986)
• Dick Spanner, P.I. (1987)
• Space Precinct (1994-95)
• Lavender Castle (1999-2000)
• Firestorm (2003)
• The New Captain Scarlet (2005)

Tragedy Revisits Tragedy - Newtown, CT, Friday Dec 14, 2012

Friday, December 14, 2012.

11 short days before the biggest celebration of Children on this planet.

Now another day we will always remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the horrendous and soul-destroying news of yet another massacre of school children at the hands of yet another nutbar.  And another outcry against the crazy gun-culture upon which the United States of America thrives.

 

And the rhetoric begins yet again - and will go on endlessly, with little, if any, positive outcome.  Asking Americans to give up their guns is like asking Christians to give up God.

 

But I am not here to join that diatribe.

 

I am here to remind us all that, for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, the healing has only just begun, and will be never ending.  Yes - there will be grief, anger, denial, and, eventually, acceptance, but there will never be release.  Don't believe me?  Then just ask any of the residents of the small village of Aberfan, in the Merthyr Vale of southern Wales.  There, on October 21st, 1966, a rain-soakened slag heap of black slurry, dug from the coal mine that dominated the landscape, slid down the side of the valley it had been piled upon, and crushed Pantglas Junior School, where the young children of the village had just finished singing their Harvest Festival hymns.

 

116 children, between the ages of 7 and 10, almost half the population of the school, died under the crushing power of that landslide, along with 28 adults - teachers and other village inhabitants.  The political fallout from that tragedy is still going on - over 46 years later.

 

But that is not what I am here to talk about either.  I am here to tell everyone who isn't part of that community that there are still those living in Aberfan, and those who have left since the disaster, that still suffer symptoms of what would called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and who have various levels of psychological distress - whether they be parents of lost children, husbands and wives of many of the adults who died there - but, most of all, the children who survived when their brothers, sisters and friends died around them.  Even now, many of them still feel guilt that they survived when so may didn't, or feel that they could have done more to help, when, in reality, there was nothing that they could have done at that time to prevent what occurred.  The prevention was something that should have been done a long time prior to the disaster, and, like at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the cure was already well known.  And never acted upon.

 

The slag heaps could have been moved.  The guns could have been restricted.  In both situations, the danger was well known - and ignored.

 

So, we should expect nothing different from the survivors of Sandy Hook.  Sure, they will look like they are coping and getting on with life, but, deep inside, the doubts and worries will already be starting to worm their way into the psyches of those fresh, young minds - such fertile ground for those memories.  And even those who, like me, were never involved in Aberfan or Sandy Hook, there will be long-term changes in our realities - subtle but persistent - that will modify our behaviour in ways we don't anticipate.  I mean - I was 8 when Aberfan happened, and never realised just how much it had impacted me, but, forty years later, I was suddenly inspired, and not in a subtle way, but in an almost manic experience, to write a poem - Aberfan, 21st October, 2006 - that detailed the events in ways I didn't know I had even recorded in my mind.  For the short while it took to write that poem, it was almost an obsession with me, and filled my mind and heart in ways that made it a relief to complete the work - to get it out of my system!  If someone who was hundreds of miles away from Aberfan, in a time when the only news was a 30 minute broadcast or the paper, with no internet or other means of instant communication, could be affected in that way, imagine how much more damage the exposure available to todays watchers, let alone to the victims of this tragedy, will perpetrate.

 

It is going to be a long, hard recovery for Newtown, Connecticut.  Pray for them if you believe.  In any case, love them and give them peace.

 

 

 

Good Evening!!!

Ha-ha!

I LOVE saying that, in my full-on English accent! LOL

It's become a bit of a trade-mark of mine - or, conversely, one of the minor annoyances - that eventually everyone I work with becomes familiar.

Welcome to The Barney Blogs!

What's this blog about, and who is Barney, anyway?

Well - Barney was my nickname a long, long time ago, way back at High School, (more commonly known as South Shields Grammar-Technical School for Boys!), where I was a member of a small group of miscreants known as The Flock.  Most of us either had, or were subsequently given, weird and wonderful nicknames.  Mine was Barney (Barney Googoo in full - don't ask!), and others were Olly Beak (quite normal, really, that one), Clag, Sos, and - wait for it - the (in)famous Arnold Vou-Bag Winklepicker!  We got up to a lot of nefarious activities, and earned a few stripes - if you get my drift! - but, all-in-all, we were a pretty harmless bunch of proto-nerds, that have since developed into a bunch of older nerds - those of us that have survived so far.

 

So, the name stuck, and, as one of my companion blogs will attest, I subsequently suffixed the Barney with Bolanoid - Barney Bolanoid - because I was, and still am, a huge Marc Bolan fan and officianado - although age has both mellowed and expanded my musical horizons - but that's what the other blog is for!!

 

So - that's the who!  The why?

 

Well, like all semi-sentient under-achievers, the older you get, the more time you spend reminiscing about - queue Bruce - The Glory Days - i.e. those days long ago when you and your pals dreamed - actually fantasised really - about all of the wonderful prospects and achievements you would achieve over the long span of life remaining to you.  With the benefit of crystal-clear hindsight, you can look back through the span of years between then and now, and think about all of the good, indifferent, and bad times, that are sprinkled along the path of Time.  Some of these events are actually worth recounting and sharing - either as entertainment, or as educational experiences, or, further, as opportunities to rant and rave about the many odd and strange occurrences we all experience.

 

So - that's why The Barney Blogs exists - reminiscences of the Glory Days revisited for your entertainment and enlightenment. I hope you find them as enjoyable and stimulating to read as I will to write them, and take the time to let me know with a comment of two.

 

Nice to meet you!!

 

Barney