A celebration of sons

Today is father's day. But you cannot be a father without sons or daughters. And in my case it is sons and here they are.

So today is really the day to celebrate sons.

I showed a friend of mine Curly Al's wedding photos yesterday and she gave me a knowing look along the lines of he's a chip off the old block. Well I have never had curls and have never used a soldering iron. And it was his great grandad Smith who was an engineer. So there he can breath a little more easily! Yet oddly he has inherited his grandad John's shivering aversion to peeling and eating apples which seems to have passed me by.

I will never stop missing FreelanceNerd. But could I have coped with the angst over the current state of the England football team?? Or what to do about the budget deficit? Today though was a Matt day. Wall to wall sunshine and time to put on the shorts.

There are some times when an experience shared with him is repeated now in 2010 and it can be painful but even at the same time invigorating because it makes the memory of him so much stronger.

One example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He inherited the Smith love of story and literature and the films were great favourites. Such that Teapot cannot bear to hear the music from the score with its lilting melodies. I understand that but at the same time find it stirs me deeply. So with her being away this week I have watched some of the Fellowship of the Ring and plan to see more as the week goes on.

And when we reach the point where Gandalf tells the Balrog of Morgoth, "you shall not pass", I shall be at a special Matt moment.

Vuvuzelas....

...have become one of the big talking points of this World Cup.

Assuming that is you can hear anybody talking above the noise made by thousands of them in the hands or should I say mouths of the South African football fans. Some people think they should be banned and are a danger to long term health or just a plain nuisance.

I mused a little on this earlier today as I walked by a lone bagpiper busking outside the Gracechurch Centre in Sutton Coldfield. Now there's optimism for you and he even had CDs for sale as well! Now just think about thousands of football supporters all playing the bagpipes at the same time. A sort of shivering goes down the spine just to imagine it.

But back to vuvuzelas. Professor Nils Steyn from the University of Witwatersrand has published a research paper on the history of the vuvuzela showing conclusively that they take their inspiration from the the rams horn of the people of Israel in Bible times. It was after all the vuvuzelas that brought down the walls of Jericho. So you can imagine there is real concern for the structural safety of the football stadia in South Africa. Watch out for falling walls!

More recently the vuvzela has found its way into the more lively forms of Charismatic worship. I have a suspicion that Mission Team Leader is a secret player (she is not called Cath Horne for nothing) and may even give us a taster at this week's "Song from the Shows".

Watch (or listen to) this space.

Don't run....

......on the platform!

So says the latest affront to Timelord's human - nay intergalatic rights - which has appeared at Four Oaks Station. 29 years have I been travelling to Birmingham from this station. One of my inalienable rights has always been to run at supersonic speed and just reach the train as it enters platform 2 or just before it is about to leave platform 3.

So which Jobsworth has decided to try to stop this practice by erecting this sign. Have I been accused of trampling over fellow commuters in my morning dash? Have the elderly or infirm been forced to jump on the track in my slipstream? Have I been tried and convicted in absentio!

What dreadful punishment awaits me now should I as much as break into a trot at the platform entrance? Transportation to the deepest bowels of New Street Station for life perhaps? Condemned to listen to the incessant playing of its tannoy so that all I will be able to say in a jibbering voice is "extinguish all smoking materials" over and over again!

Am I expected to screech to a halt after hurtling down the snicket and watch the train guard smile a knowing smile as I miss the train again.

No fellow travellers. Timelord will not be cowed. Timelord will continue running!!