The Sunday Reflection #101 - A better man than me

 As often happens, when I go to mass on a Sunday, I drift off into my own little world of memories. It is a constant throughout my life. I get it isn't for some, but an hour's peace, no interruptions in a spiritual setting is, in my opinion, highly beneficial. The Priest who said todays mass is one Fr Stephen Monaghan. He is an Irish Vincentian priest. Many of the local Irish community like him, as he brings Irish brevity to his masses. Our wonderful African priests prefer to say a longer mass. Anyone who knows Irish culture, will know that not all of the Irish community enjoy a long mass. 

Once we get past the readings and the sermon, I do tend to mentally drift. I used to think I'd go to hell for  this, but now I am pretty sure God is OK with it. I tend to find a thought pops into my head, then my brain runs away with it. For some reason, Fr Stephen reminded me of our Sunday ritual in the 1960's. We would always go to the 11am Mass, as Dad liked a lie in. He would round up all of us younger kids at around 10.30am. Myself, Caroline and Valerie. He'd load us all into his motor, I believe it was a Humber Sprite to start with. It had bench seats and walnut panelling. He then got a Ford Zephyr 4 followed by a Ford Zodiac. He'd drive up to the Cottage Homes, now known as The Retail Trust, and pick up a posse of Old Ladies. I can recall Miss Monaghan (this was what started the train of thought, was she a relative of Fr Stephen), Miss Faller and I think a Miss Devereaux. The estate was also known as The Drapers Homes, as many had worked in the clothing industry. They were always immaculately turned out, incredibly polite and pleasant. Often, they'd bring us sweets for after mass. Dad would take them and drop them back.

I never really questioned why Dad had started doing this, or how he knew the ladies. I assume, a Priest had asked him to help. It was the sort of thing Dad would do and he took it very seriously. He'd always tidy the car up beforehand and make a big song and dance of escorting the ladies to and from the car. I'd never really thought it through, but in hindsight, Dad was clearly trying to make them feel special. When Dad was on holiday, he'd get my brothers to do the run. As I recall both had decided Church wasn't for them. Frank would wait outside for the mass to finish, listening to the radio in the car. Laurie would go in and sit with them. Both were quite happy to help, although they'd volunteer the other if they could. 

I can't recall when this stopped or why. I can recall one of the ladies passed away, and also that Dad had a row with the Parish priest and started going to Burnt Oak for a while, but I don't know if he'd stopped before that. After Dad dropped them off, he'd take us to a little convenience store, run by his mate Bill Cardon, on Shakespeare Road. Dad would buy fresh cut ham, garibaldi biscuits and tinned salmon. My mum would berate him, as it was expensive, but Dad didn't care a jot. Bill was a mate from Mill Hill Services club. He was also a Watford FC season ticket holder. He had a green mini van and I thought he was a pretty cool dude. As I recall, he had a heart attack and retired. Some ladies took the shop on. They upset Dad because during a sugar shortage, they wouldn't sell him any. They said he wasn't a regular, even though he'd go in every Sunday and spend a small fortune. That was the end of that tradition.  Sadly, they didn't last too long. The shop is now a house.

One of the big differences between myself and my Dad was that he'd never walk to church. He'd always drive, even though it is only five minutes walk. I queried this and he said "What is the point walking if you have a car?". I actually quite enjoy walking. I was mulling over all of this, and I got to thinking of my Dad's funeral. Although it was held in the Sacred Heart, it was not held in the current church, but the old one that got knocked down in 1996. I was quite pleased when they knocked it down, as going in always reminded me of that day, which was the worst period of my life. I was totally in awe of my Dad and believed him to be indestructible. He'd survived WW2 as a bomber pilot, being shot down, a POW and escaping. He had a seemingly total self belief and would always back himself to win in any situation, no matter how sticky. I always felt almost embarrassed to be his son, as I felt I lacked all of the attributes that made him such an amazing person. 

This week, we saw the burial of the President of Mill Hill Services Club, Jack Leach. Jack joined the club in 1967. HE knew my Dad quite well. He was 97, twelve years younger than my Dad. He'd been conscripted into the Royal Engineers, which was why he ended up in Mill Hill/Edgware. Jack's funeral was packed. It is sad that there are so few of the old members now, who remember my Dad. I believe Jack was our oldest member who still regularly attended. It is odd to think that Dad would have though of him as a youngster. When they first met, Dad would have been 50 and Jack 38, both men in their prime. 

If I had a time machine for a day, there is nothing I'd like more than to go back to those times and have a drink with Dad as a mate and a peer. We never really did that. I have often thought about that, but today at mass, a darker thought entered my head. What if I could collect Dad and take him for a day out in Mill Hill in 2026? What would he make of it? What would he make of learning his errant Punk rock son had become the chair of the Mill Hill Services Club? What would he think of the new Sacred Heart Church? What would he make of Mill Hill Broadway, with no butcher, no greengrocer, no telly shop? What would he think if he saw Bunns Lane Works, where he ran MacMetals for nearly 40 years? What would he make of the fact that there is not a dedicated off licence and that La Katarina, where he enjoyed succulent steaks has gone? Dad was someone who had travelled the world and loved progress, so I suspect he'd be OK with all of that. What he may be less OK with would be if we saw the news and he learned of what the President of the USA was doing. I thought of Dad and his respectful treatment of those old ladies that he drove to mass. Dad believed that men should always be gentlemen around ladies. I think that things like the Epstein files, Trumps totally uncouth behaviour and worst of all the revelations of clerical sexual abuse would have been too much for a man who was both very Conservative and very Roman Catholic. I have no doubt in my mind that Dad was a better man than me. I am glad he didn't live to see all that. It would have broken his heart.

The Saturday List #512 - Ten reasons why 512 is a magical number

 When I realised what the number in this series of blogs was, I was immediately reminded of my 37 year career in IT. I'm going to go a bit  nerdy on you all today, but 512 is one of those significant numbers in the world of legacy data processing. Although I am dyslexic, I am pretty good at maths. I once got 96% in my O Level mock at FCHS. I was accused of cheating and copying the work of Simon Stebbings, who was sitting in front of me. I had a simple refutation to this heinious charge. How could I have possibly cheated and copied his work, if I got a higher mark. My maths teacher, Mr Small (no not the Mr Man) hated me, but he couldn't refute the logic. In actual fact, I had cheated slightly. Myself and Simon finished at the same time. He then held his paper up to check his answers. I could see them and I realised I'd got one wrong! The funny thing was, so had he, hence the cheating accusation. We both had the same wrong answer (which I copied from him). When this was queried, I simply said "great minds think alike". 

When I started working in IT, I soon realised it was important to learn what key numbers are. The computers I worked on, worked in Octal (Base 8) and Hexadecimal (base 16). A lot of the time, I worked in support, which was all about fixing systems when they went wrong. I'd say 90% of the problems, were caused by systems adding numbers together that were bigger than the space available for the answer, which caused a crash. Numbers that are to a power of 2 were the point at which this happened, so understanding this was an absolute key. 

When I went to Orange Hill, I did an A level in Maths. Our teacher was a certain Mr Rackyliffe. He was brilliant. He took the time to explain to me that if you wanted to succeed in maths, you should learn to enjoy 'doing sums' and see equation solving as simply doing a big, really interesting puzzle. Sadly, he left after a couple of terms, and his replacement was rather uninspiring. These days, I don't get out of bed until I've done the Soduko puzzles in the paper. Strictly speaking, they are not maths but I find the patterns fascinating. 

Anyway, here are ten interesting things about the number 512. 

Power of Two: 512 is equal to 2⁹ (2 raised to the 9th power).
Cube of 8: It is the cube of 8 (8 × 8 × 8 = 512).
Digit Sum: The sum of its digits (5 + 1 + 2) is 8, which is the cube root of 512.
Palindromic Bases: It is a palindrome when written in base 7 (1331₇) and base 15 (242₁₅).
Divisors: It has 10 divisors in total (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512).
Disk Sectors: 512 bytes is a traditional and standard size for a single computer disk sector.
Kibibytes: It is exacty half of a kibibyte (1,024 bytes).
VGA Graphics: 512 (2 × 256) is the highest number of glyphs that a VGA character generator can use simultaneously.
Binary Scaling: It represents a classic milestone in binary doubling (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512).
512 is the telephone area code for Austin Texas:  Austin is famous for North America's largest urban bat colony, housing about 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats from March through October at the Congress Avenue Bridge. You may wonder what this fact has to do with my career in IT? Well one of my first jobs was constructing Mini Bat detectors for Queen Mary College. I've taken an interest in Bat colonys ever since. 

Rock and Roll Stories #79 - Why I still love being in a band

 It's issue 79 of this series. My band, The False Dots started in 1979! So I thought I'd mark this episode with a few tales that tell the story of why I love being in a band. Until the 6th June 1977, I never saw even considered being a musician. The Choir mistress at The Sacred Heart told me I was tone deaf and totally unmusical. My then favourite artists were people like Bowie and Bolan, who seemed to me to be impossibly glamourous. I couldn't imagine walking down the street dressed as Ziggy Stardust. I'd picked up my sisters guitar a couple of times and couldn't get a chord out of it, let alone a tune. I thought I was destined for other things. 

Then I saw the Ramones at The Roundhouse. They weren't mythical, elfin creature playing mind bogglingly complex masterpieces. They wore jeans, t-shirts, sneakers and leather jackets and played short, simple songs. For the first time in my life, I saw someone doing something I loved and I thought I could do it. When I bought their albums, it was a revelation. Music could be simple, raw and angry, but still be a thing of great beauty. When I met like minded people who thought the same thing, I realised that I wanted to be in a band. I didn't want to write complex masterpieces like Bohemian Rhapsody. I didn't want to play ten minute guitar solos. I just wanted to play high energy music that I could relate to. When I saw The Specials at the Lyceum, supporting The Damned and The UK Subs, in my head the final piece of the jigsaw was found and the picture was complete. Although the Ramones were brilliant, they were American. Although their songs were brilliant, I couldn't really relate to most of them. With the Specials, their songs were all about the subjects I wanted to write about. Ian Dury was another huge influence. His style of writing, bringing characters and situations to life appealed to me. 

I knew that if I could get a band that encompassed all of the elements of the music of these, it would be brilliant. I have never been interested in playing mega gigs. I wanted to play smaller venues and get to know the people who came to see us. We realised that the way to build an audience is to be entertaining. My punk ethos meant that I didn't really earn to play guitar with any great degree of technical accomplishment. As I've never really enjoyed long solo's, I saw no reason to learn to play them. 

From the first moments that The False Dots played our first song, in our first rehearsal, I felt a magical energy flow through me. It was a buzz. I never dreamed that 47 years later, I would get that same feeling when we get together. We have a gig next Friday at Nambucca on the Holloway Road. It is a free entry gig and we're playing with an amazing reggae/ska band called The Monoversals. We had a rehearsal of our set on Wednesday. We are playing a brand new song, called Moderately Priced Hedonism. It is probably the fastest song we've ever played. Tom, our trumpet player loves it and reckons it sounds like The Fratellis. I sing the first verse and Tom sings the rest of it. To me, it is reminscent of Sweet Gene Vincent by Ian Dury and The Blockheads, although I doubt too many people will think that. When we played it, I was really buzzing. 

There are times when being in a band is, for me, the absolute affirmation of life. It is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. I like to think that the people who come and see us have a real blast. There are very few things I can say with absolute certainty in life, but one thing I can say uniquivocally is that without The False Dots, my life would have been infinitely worse. The best thing though is that, unlike football, there is no downside to loving music. There  is no VAR where you find out a piece of brilliance counts for nothing. There is no financial fair play. Your favourite band does not get relegated. You can listen to song you love a thousand times and still enjoy it. But best of all, you will always find something new and exciting. 

So why not come along on Friday 16th and see what all the fuss is about. It is free to get in and the beer is cheap at Nambucca. It is five minutes walk from Archway Tube on the Northern Line.

Running a business - Rules vs common sense

 Something I heard on the radio today reminded me of an incident that happened many years ago, when I first started working as an IT contractor. My then boss, who I always have rated highly, posed a dilemma to me. One of the team was a very talented female. She was extremely intelligent and a very hard worker. However, she could become emotional very easily. She always took work appraisal feedback as unfair criticism and I often saw her by the tea machine in flood of tears, over some perceived slight or comment from another member of staff. I really liked her, as she was great fun most of the time and did her job well. 

However, on this day, my boss had a terrible dilemma. She had phoned in and requested compassionate leave, as she had suffered a bereavement. Normally no debate would be had about such a thing, but the problem my boss had was that the bereavement was her cat. His instant reaction was to say "Don't be so silly" but knowing the individual involved, he said "I'll get back to you, I don't know what the rules are on compassionate leave". My boss then asked me my opinion. Should someone be entitled to compassionate leave, when their moggy has snuffed it? The rules were pretty clear, moggies don't count, but he knew he'd be called a beast by her and there would be tears. The lady in question lived alone with her cat and she spoke of it, like many of us speak of our spouses. 

I posed the question back "Do you really think she'll be fit to work?". His answer was unequivocable "No, she'll be in bits". I then asked "How much sick leave has she had this year?". He said "She never takes sick leave". So I said "Call her up, tell her to take off the time she needs to get herself back on her feet and tell her it won't be a problem", then sign it off as sick leave. 

That was the end of the matter. She took three days off, then returned and was extremely grateful to him for being so understanding. It was pretty clear to me that a good compromise had been reached. There was however one member of staff who was most disgruntled that she'd had 'special treatment'.  A few weeks later, he approached the boss and said "If my cat snuffs it do I get three days off?". My boss had anticipated this question and his reply was "Do you think you'd genuinely be in such an emotional state that you'd be unable to do the job". His reply "Of course not, but that is not the point". My boss replied "It is the point and we both know it". 

Sadly as time went on, HR departments have removed all flexibility and common sense from such decisions. Everyone is different and everyone is affected in a different way by situations. I personally don't think there is anything to be gained by forcing people to work, when they are in no fit state to. In general, they will disrupt the environment and will be unproductive, let alone any bad effects on their mental health and wellbeing. But then we have people who 'play the system' and use any excuse to be lazy. That is a different situation and should be handled in a different way. Ultimately, I try and judge people by their productivity overall. That generally is the best indicator, not just whether they have a melt down when the cat dies. 

The Green Party - Racism and Anti Semitism

 The Green Party have sparked a huge media debate as to whether they are anti semitic (a form of racism), by passing a motion attacking the ideology of Zionism. As with all such things, it is important to understand exactly what was said, rather than just to cut and paste a few statements made by people you agree or disagree with. So here is the motion in full

---

The Motion Declares:

1. The Green Party declares itself to be an anti-Zionist party.

2. The Green Party rejects attempts to normalise the racist subjugation and oppression of Palestinians; to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism; to deny or minimise Palestinian human rights; to create hierarchies of racism; and to normalise or attempt to justify apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide. We affirm that definitions of anti-Jewish discrimination should not equate Jewish identity with Zionist ideology or political practice. As with any ethnicity or faith group, no single political ideology should be ascribed to an entire people.

3. Following from Motion E05, which affirmed that Israel is an apartheid State committing genocide, and Motion E07 supporting reparations and accountability, the Green Party supports the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants.

4. The Green Party affirms the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self- determination, including the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation, and acknowledges that the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under international law is legitimate.

5. The Green Party heeds the call from Palestinian civil society to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, and calls upon the United Kingdom Government to impose full embargoes and sanctions against Israel.

6. The Green Party calls for the release of all Palestinian prisoners of conscience (including Marwan Barghouti), the end of the use of administrative detention of Palestinians by Israel, and the treatment of Palestinian combatants in accordance with international humanitarian law, including in particular those provisions dealing with prisoners of war in the First Additional Protocol of the 1977 amendments to the Four Genevan Conventions of 1949 relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.

---

I must state that the motion does not say what I thought it would say, having listened to the media coverage. What surprised me is that I think the most incendiary of all of the statements, and the one which I am, quite frankly amazed no one has said anything about is "4. The Green Party affirms the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self- determination, including the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation, and acknowledges that the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under international law is legitimate."

Now, maybe I misread that statement, but if I was Jewish, in light of the October 7th attack, which resulted in the kindapping and murder of large numbers of civilians, including children and elderly people, I think I would be very upset and worried indeed.  As somone who abhors violence, I have noted that seemingly intratcable disputes such as Northern Ireland and Apartheid South Africa have been resolved without mass bloodshed, by getting the parties to negotiate in good faith and I believe this should be how UK political parties should approach the middle east. My view is that the Green Party has taken a position that is will alienate many people who may sympathise with many issues raised in the text. What concerns me is that section 4 of this motion seemingly gives carte blanche to any attack on Jewish people, if it is deemed that this may support the wider goal of Palestinian liberation, in any context at all.

Motions such as this are largely symbolic. I doubt the Green Party will ever form a government or set UK foreign policy. This statement was aimed specifically at a UK audience of activists who support Palestine and want to see a UK political party speak strongly on the subject. I cannot believe that any consideration in drafting this text was given to ordinary Jewish people living in the UK. In the grander scheme of things, I don't think this motion will make an iota of difference to anything in the real world, except for perhaps convincing a few people that the Green Party are a bit too extreme to vote for. 

The Sunday Reflection #100 - My formula for success in life

Ok, before we progress, I thought I'd take you on a little deviation, as to quote the late, great Nigel Kennedy (not the violin player, my mate), "we all enjoy a litte deviation now and then". This is the 100th blog in this series. Prior to this, Sunday was the day I did "The Tweets of the week in the London Borough of Barnet". I did the last one on 19th November 2023. I spent over a decade promoting Twitter, until I concluded that Elon Musk had ruined it and there was virtually no interesting local content. So I thought I'd do a quick trawl, nearly three years on. Has it improved. Although I spent over a decade plugging Twitter, it is now x.com, a different beast. Mr Musk and his platform decided that I am not a real person and banned my Barneteye account. There is no one to appeal to. They just have a robotic system. It doesn't tell you how or why it has banned you.  When I did the feature, I did a search on the following areas of the Borough. Mill Hill, Edgware, Burnt Oak, Finchley Barnet, Cricklewood, Hendon and Colindale, as well as tweets I'd tagged during the week. So I thought I'd just do it again for fun and see what I was missing

Mill Hill

Nothing of interest 

Edgware

Not last week, but a great tweet!

Considering Edgware is literally named for its fishing (Edgware = Ecgi's weir meaning an Saxon man's fishing pond) it's a shame that its water ways are in such mediocre shape (though in line with what most of the country looks like) pic.twitter.com/gAqUXjmExH

— Mill Hill Hist Soc (@MHHistSoc) September 22, 2026

Burnt Oak

Nothing of interest

Finchley 

O. Aleksandr Nadsan z każdego Białorusina starał się zrobić świadomego swojej tożsamości Białorusina. Na emigracji w Londynie miał kilku swoich „Mieroszewskich”, czyli charyzmatycznych pisarzy i publicystów. Duchowny spoczął w londyńskiej dzielnicy Finchley. To miejsce nie jest… pic.twitter.com/D1rwKkgqZh

— Centrum Europy (dawniej Biełsat PL) (@CentrumEuropy) September 28, 2026

Barnet, 

Cricklewood, 

Imagens remasterizadas de 1918 mostram a montagem de motores de "aeroplanos" e tanques nas instalações da Handley Page, em Cricklewood, Londres; um registro impressionante da capacidade industrial durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial.

A cena revela linhas de produção ainda bastante… pic.twitter.com/XVeQ8zI2kw

— No Front Militar (@noFrontMilitar) September 28, 2026

When I got to Hendon & Colindale, X.com informed me I'd used up all of my searches for the day!

It was a very depressing experience and it totally confirmed what I was feeling in 2023 when I stopped the feature. It reminded me of just how depressing and draining putting the feature together had become, in amongst all the slop that their system of paying 'verified customers' for engagement has created.
---

I replaced the tweets of the week with my Sunday reflection. I think that this is now the series I most enjoy writing. It is where I can take my time and say things that interest me. I also feel I can say what I like. I am not overly concerned if people like what I say or agree with me. I do hope that on some level, you the reader finds it interesting.

The last few months has been really challenging. This week however, it appears to me that now I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Bear with me on this. Why have things improved? Well, I was feeling very low earlier in the week. I did what I often do when I feel like this. I say a small prayer. Nothing complicated. "Dear Lord, please give me the strength and wisdom to get me through this". You may think it is coincidence, it may be that it is a false dawn, but it seems that the clouds have simply rolled away. The problems have not disappeared, but the solutions to many of them are clearer and I am feeling far more positive. Fixing the problems will require a lot of hard work, but they are surmountable. As I am polite by nature, this morning, I said "Thank you Lord for helping me get through this", as happens more than you might imagine, as I said that a ray of sunshine broke through the clouds for a few seconds.  It seemed to me as if my thanks had been acknowledged. I'm happy for you to feel it is a coincidence. but for me it is an affirmation. I think saying thank you and appreciating anyone or anything that helps you meet your goals is a good thing. Too many people tread on people to climb up the ladder and never thank those that assist them. Appreciation should always be shown. 

I believe that prayer only works in association with hard work, selflessness and an effort to make the world a slightly better place. If I bought a lottery ticket and prayed for a win so I could find a mistress and move to Bali, I suspect I'd fall under a bus. I believe all you ask for is the tools to do the right thing. 

I genuinely believe that doing things like running a music studio that provides facilities for artists is a good thing and I believe that my relative success in keeping it going for 47 years is a sign that I am doing something good. I also believe that my band and my music puts a smile on peoples face, brings people together at our gigs and provides a focus for me, helping keep me sane and happy. My songs enable me to say things and reach people in a very unique way. Many of the the people who like the band have become friends and we try really hard to speak to people and make them feel part of the gang when they come to gigs. I honestly believe that The False Dots are a pretty unique collective and what we do is special.

I have come to the conclusion that if you try and be ethical, thank people who help you, recognise that you are a small part of something bigger, then you have a key role in making things better for those around you, and good things will happen in your life. What brought this home to me is that one of the big challenges I have been struggling with has been caused by the retirement last year of someone I do business with. He has proven to be difficult to replace. He no longer lives locally.  As I said, I was reaching the end of my tether. Then I thought "Why don't I just ring up Dave (the retired person) and ask his advice". Although he can't fix it, he knows the issues and might give me some pointers. So I did and he was more than helpful. He then said "Look I'll do everything I can to assist, you guys really looked after me when I was working". It made me realise building good personal relationships and having trust is perhaps the real secret of success.

This brings me back to Twitter/X.com. It is a platform run by AI bots. I have no idea whether it is doing better financially now than it did before, but it has changed from being a source of fascinating information, to primarily being a forum for crackpots to post clickbait. There are still some great legacy posters out there, but the default "for you" posts they show are as dull as dishwater. I rarely look at it and when I do, it is only at people I've followed for over a decade, or when there is a specific news story that I need to research. I used to look at it all the time, because it was full of interesting posts.  It is another part of the equation for success in life. Don't waste time on stuff that you dont enjoy and don't have to do. I think X.com for me has become an interesting case study in how not to do things. But unlike Elon Musk, I've never really done anything to become mega rich or to hold sway over politicians. I recently wrote a song called "Moderately priced hedonism" which celebrates the joys of living life to the fullest on a budget. Therein lies the secret. Don't be too obsessed with piling up the cash in the bank. Enjoy life whilst you can and don't hurt other people in the process.

And finally, hangovers. Not just from alcohol. Don't do stuff that will screw up your ability to function when you have to be on your game. 

I promised you a formula for success. Here it is. 

The Saturday List #511 - Seven notable members of the Tichborne clan! My esteemed ancestors

 Sadly, I am not minted. At one point though, my family were one of the richest families in England. They owned a large swathe of Hampshire and also were involved in all manner of political and religious shenangans. I am not really that interested in geneaology, so I don't know exactly how I am related to this lot, but they are all either direct ancestors or cousins of them.  I think there are some fascinating characters in the list. I was inspired to put this together by the new series of Traitors, for reasons which are hopefully obvious!

1. Robert Tichborne (1604-1682). Former Lord Mayor of London and one of the men convicted of regicide for the murder of King Charles I, having signed his death warrant. He was fervant republican and was elevated to the House of Lords, being knighted in 1656. When the Monarchy were restored, he was imprisoned for life for Regicide. >>>>> READ MORE HERE

2. Chidiock Tichborne (1562-1586). Chidiock was a poet and conspiritor. He was a part of the Babington plot to murder Queen Elizabeth I and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. He was the last person to be hung,, drawn and quartered.  He is best remembered for his poem, The Tichborne Elegy which was written the night before his execution. I included the poem in the song Traitors, by The False Dots.     >>>>> READ MORE HERE

3. Thomas Tichborne (1567-1602). A Roman Catholic priest who was executed for his faith. There is a stained glass window in Winchester Cathedral in his honour.

>>>>> READ MORE HERE

4. Sir Roger Tichborne (1829-????). One of the most famous cases in English legal history was the case of the Tichborne claimant. The heir to the family estate, Sir Roger Tichborne disappeared and was presumed dead after a shipwreck in 1854. His mother, Lady Tichborne set a reward to find him. A butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia emerged as the claimant". Lady Henrette recognised him, but the rest of the family didn't, claiming he was an imposter. After she passed away, a legal case was launched aand The claimant was declaared an imposter and was ultimately jailed for 14 years for 'personation'. Interestingly descendents of the Tichborne family have always refused to undergo DNA testing to solve the mystery. >>>>> READ MORE HERE

5. Sir Roger Tichborne (Circa 1150). An unpleasant and rather wealthy man, who did not believe in charity. His wife, Lady Mabella, on her deathbead requested that he made a charitable act on her behalf as a memory. He told her that he would donate the produce from any part of his estate that she could walk around to charity in perpetuity. She roused herself and walked around 23 acres. She then informed him that she would curse the family if the donation was ever discintinued. The dole was discontinued 1796, on the orders of local officials. The family fearing the curse was happening reinsatted it shortly after. >>>>> READ MORE HERE

6. Sir Henry Tichborne (1581-1667). Unlike many of the family, Sir Henry was a Protestant and an ally of Cromwell. He was a soldier and responsible for commanding Roylaist troops successfully in the seige of Drogheda. He was extremely wealthy and his great Granddaughter married Charles Spencer, an ancestor of Princess Diana, bringing wealth to the Spencer family. By all accounts he was a brilliant military strategist but not a nice man  >>>>> READ MORE HERE

7.  Theresa Doughty Tichborne ( 1866-1939) The daughter of Sir Roger Tichborne/Arthur Orton. She always maintained that her father was genuinely SIr Roger Tichborne. After he passed away, she told The People newspaper that her faather had confided that he was genuinely Roger Tichborne. He told her that he had actually murdered Arthur Orton in Wagga Wagga when Orton threatened to expose him. As murder was a capital offence, he did not use this irrefutable evidence to clear his name. Theresa went to her grave believing she was the rightful heir to the family fortune. She even tried to murder the fiancee of the Baron. >>>>>> READ MORE HERE

It is quite strange for me reading about these figures from our families past. I was tempted to mention my Father who had a fascinating war record, but in some ways what is most interesting to me about these characters is that although we share a common gene pool, they are just names to me. Perhaps the one I feel most affinity with is Chidiock. He clearly was a young man who railed against injustice and wrote poetry, although regicide has never crossed my mind. If I ever win the lottery, I will make a film about the life and death of Chidiock, as it is a fascinating story. 

Why not come down to Nambucca on Friday week and see what the modern day Tichbornes do!

Rock and Roll Stories #78 - How hard can it be to write a few songs and play em to a few mates?

Pic courtesy of  plainorpan.com/tag/guitar-chords/

This is where it all started for me. Well that is not entirely true, I never bought this edition, owned a copy or even saw one at the time, but every young punk rocker knew about it. Sniffin' Glue was the primal punk fanzine, edited by the legendary Mark Perry  The ethos of punk was that you didn't need to be Jimi Hendrix to get a band together and make great music. You just needed to know a few chords and off you went. 

When I saw the Ramones in 1977, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I got into punk and all everyone said was "you just need to learn a few chords on the guitar and you can get a band together. My sister had a Columbus Les Paul copy and my brother had a copy of "Play in a day" by Bert Weedon (in 1977, the only guitar tuition book). I got it and started to try and play the chords. The first song? When the Saints go marching in. The second, the rather racist ditty "The old folks at home". Mark P put easy chords in Sniffin' glue. Bert Weedon put difficult chords (for me) such as F in. As I didn't really want to play "When the Saints go Marching in", I moved straight onto the "Old folks at home".  I didn't really bother to read the lyrics, I just spent hours trying to strum the chords. I'd never heard the song, which didn't help. Now, I never start to learn a song until I've got the melody and structure in my head. It may sound pretty basic, but I had no clue.

My band mate Pete told me that the chords A, E and G were easier to play, and had been on the front of Sniffin' glue. The second song we wrote was called "Political warning". It started with me strumming the intro to "The old folks at home" for a couple of bars. We then stopped and Pete screams "Politics, it's OK for the old folks at home" and we went into and  E A G progression. The lyrics were a diatribe against everytthing the we saw was going on that was wrong in Britain. The Labour government of Jim Callaghan was in its dying days, Thatcher was leader of the opposition, but it seemed unlikely (to me) that she'd win. Pete and I believed that old people had it cushy. We had mass unemployment. the country was going down the pan, the National Front were pushing racism (which we fundamentally opposed), and we felt that as the Pistols had said "There is no future, in Englands dreaming". It is almost funny, if it wasn't tragic, that young people today feel the same. I thought I'd never own a house or have a decent job in 1979 when the band formed. To me, the band was the only way out of the mess I saw myself to be in. 

When we were writing our first songs, in late 1978/early 1979, they were very nihilistic, but accurataty summed up the way we felt. But we passionately believed that we could put a great band together. How hard could it be? Pete bought a bass guitar, I bought an amp and we sat in my bedroom every night practising and writing songs. The first challenge was to get a drummer. We went to see The Fall at the Electric Ballroom and met Dave Edwards and his girlfriend Mandy Spokes. We met a few times and we had our first reheasal on 14th Feb 1979. By then, we had seven or eight songs. We thought that it would be simple to get them into shape to do a gig. We started frantically rehearsing. Dave was older than us and had a job. Although Dave was keen, he was a complete novice. He'd not had lessons. The joke was that he only knew two beats, which we called Dave beat 1 and Dave beat 2. We'd just tell him which of these to play and what tempo to play them at. 

All of the songs were pretty dodgy and we were pretty bad at playing them. We decided that Pete should sing all of the songs. Pete was mates with Charlie Harper of the UK Subs and we blagged a gig supporting them in Derby. We also blagged an interview with a fanzine called Xpert-I. We felt it was happening. Three weeks before the gig, disaster struck. Dave and Mandy were returning from a rehearsal and three idiots ambusged Dave and threw him through the window of WH Smiths, then when he ran away, they threw him through the window of a Jeweller. Dave was seriously injured. The gig was off. We did the interview with Xpert-I. Pete was drunk and obnoxious, and the interview was a hatched job "The only thing more immature than their music is their sense of humour". The band fell apart. 

At the time, I felt that we'd been deluded. We'd all fallen out big time. I desperately wanted to be in a band, so I joined a covers band on bass (Pete had left his bass at my house and as we weren't talking, he hadn't come to get it). The band were playing songs like "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones and "Help" by The Beatles. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I was playing with people who could play and it sounded a million times better. At Xmas, I bumped into Pete. We agreed to give it another go, but do it properly. We junked all of the songs and started again, I quit the covers band. It had been a huge learning curve, but I actually had the tools I needed to make The False Dots a proper band. By the end of the year, Pete had gone and we had pretty good line up. 

How hard was it? A million times harder than I dreamed when we started. You have to just keep plugging away. But the band did. And our next gig is on Friday 16th October at Nambucca on the Holloway Road, near Archway. It should be a blast. 

On Monday I was a guest on the Griff Griffiths show on Rock Radio UK. I told a couple of stories about the early days of the False Dots and played a couple of tracks from our new album. Have a listen

www.mixcloud.com/GriffGriffiths/griff-rocks-280926-roger-tichborne-andy-last-jen-brown-o-drag-mp3/

Is Strawberry Fields forever by the Beatles about AI before it was invented?

 I happened to hear Strawberry Fields foreverby The Beatles earlier. I can recall hearing the first time it. It was the first time it was played on UK Radio. It was a double A-Side with Penny Lane. Radio 1 built it up for ages, plugging the new Beatles single, which was a major event. It was a real change of direction for them (Much influenced by LSD). I think it is the only Beatles track I can remember hearing getting such a build up, although I was about 4 at the time, so why would I?

After hearing it, I looked up the lyrics online. Something struck me that I've never thought of before. Here is the first chorus and verse

Let me take you down

'Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields

Nothing is real

And nothing to get hung about

Strawberry Fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed

Misunderstanding all you see

It's getting hard to be someone

But it all works out

It doesn't matter much to me

When I first heard the song, I was intrigued by the idea of Strawberry fields. We grew strawberries in the garden and picking them was one of the highlights of the summer. Years later I discovered that the song was about a mental hospital. I realised that the song is perfect summary of social media and the way all and sundry are using AI to generate images to indulge what ever fantasies or delusions they cling to. In a bizarre sort of way, AI bring psychotic delusions to life - NOTHING IS REAL - when I go on Facebook and Twitter, I see all manner of posts, aliens, UFO's, Dinghys full of migrants, politicians in silly outfits - NOTHING IS REAL. Armies of people search out things that confirm their version of the truth "LIVING IS EASY WITH EYES CLOSED, MISUNDERSTANDING ALL YOU SEE - AI is the perfect tool for inventing an alternative reality. 

We are in an age when if Aliens did land on the Whitehouse lawn and invited Donald Trump on board for a cup of tea, no one would believe it.  Billionaire Elon Musk has invented a tool called GROK. On X.COM it has become the arbiter of truth. Someone posts an image and then 20 people ask GROK if it is real or just AI slop. It never really occurs to them that Grok doesn't really know. It can spot the artefacts of bad AI, but that means nothing. 

We are living in a society where you cannot trust anything on line. You can generate any image you like. You can bring dead grandparents to life. But NOTHING IS REAL. The dangerous thing is that we start to convince ourselves that it is. What really disturbed me when I thought about it, was that The Beatles correctly identified that when you can't trust anything and you start to create your own reality, you are probably losing touch with reality. 

My views on AI have been evolving rapidly over the last couple of years. I worked in IT and I worked on what we now call AI systems before the term had been invented. Back then it was called decision support software. We had rather crude tools to automate writing of code. We had automated test tools. I have never really been to concerned about any of it. My view has started to change. Not because I think AI itself is daangerous. AI won't destroy mankind. However I have worried since I was old enough to worry that mankind would destroy itself. AI simply makes this far easier. It also opens up the door for new ways for us to destroy ourselves. 

My one hope is that like many IT fads I've seen over the years, we get bored with it all. Dodgy pictures and bad music (known as AI slop) are already egetting tiresome and boring. The first AI generated track I heard, but together by a mate's son for his birthday was quite good fun. Now there are thousands of the bloody things and they are mostly rubbish. Someone played me two tracks and asked me if I could spot the one that was AI, I guessed correctly, but I explained that as I didn't really think either track was any good, It was a pointless exercise. AI is actually quite good at identifying the lowest common denominator and making something vaguely passable. I am sure it could mimic styles of the most complex avant garde Jazz and fool experts. But would it ever make anthing groundbreaking? I doubt it. 

Which brings me back to that day, the 17th February 1967, when I was four. Strawberry fields forever was a complete change of direction, the lyrics about an asylum were like nothing anyone had ever heard. I guarantee that if you gave AI every track the Beatles had made before that and said "Generate a song that will be their next single" it would never make that. It would probably rehash Please Please me or something. Which for me is rather reassuring.

Anyway, here is a little ditty I wrote. There is NO AI in this! And until humans stop loving a party, there will always be hope! And you can join us for some real music at Nambucca on the Holloway Road for Free on Friday 16th October for some real music and real life fun.

I am not a fan of the Labour Party but Andy Burnham is right on adult social care and he should be supported on this across the board

Yesterday, Andy Burnham laid out his plans for adult social care. His big idea is a system that is similar to the NHS, ie free at the point of access. Whilst no one really knows how this works, how it will be funded or when it will actually come into force, I think he has to be applauded for grasping a nettle that all of our leaders of differents shades have been to scared to address. I doubt anyone was too surprised at the stock response of the Tories etc which, as ever, is "Labour is spending other peoples money". The trouble with this, is that we are a society and we should, if we are to succeed, look after the most vulnerable people in it. I have not been affected by the issue personally. My father died aged 69, whilst still relatively fit and healthy, of an anuerism that was totally unexpected. My Mother died aged 83, although in terrible health, she lived at home and paid her own care costs.. But I know dozens of people who are having a nightmare with adult social care. For me, the concept of seeing a parent degenerate into a state of dementia and total reliance is the worst nightmare imagineable. I have friends who have lost parents to dementia, but the parents live on for years. It shreds the family. Assets are sold to pay for care and there all manner of things I've seen and heard that are totally horrific. One of my best friends has virtually put his life on hold to care for his elderly mum, who still lives in the family house, but is in a world of her own. I've no idea how Andy Burnhams plans would help him, but I am sure that having proper support for people in that position would be a game changer. 

There have been howls that "Labour is ending the triple lock" to pay for it. I am 64, so I guess that if they do, that will affect me. However, if I had the choice between a bit more cash in my pension, or the alleviation of my childrens worries about when I lose my marbles, I know what I'd choose. Of course I may drop dead before then, but hey ho, I believe in society. I believe that we should look after people properly. I did hear one commentator state that all that Burnhams plans would do is line the pockets of private care home operators. I was bemused by this comment. If people need care in private homes, as that is all that is available, the pockets will be lined whoever pays the bill, but a national system, will mean families do not face hardship. 

What should be happening is that the likes of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage need to address the problem, not just criticise Burnhams proposed solution. I am open to the idea that there may be better ways to do this and fund this, but pretending there is no problem is plain dishonest. If you are a Tory or a Reform voter, you are probably in the demographic that is most likely to need adult social care, so you should be lobbying your own party for answers. If the answer is "We don't care about families thrown into turnoil at the challenges of adult social care" then shame on them all