Sutton Manor Knob...I mean Dream!!!

You know sometimes you see something and then you have to look again to make sure you saw it correctly? Well this morning, this very thing happened to me.

I left the M57 at Tarbuck Island and headed east towards the M6. Alongside the motorway between junctions 7-8, something new and large loomed on the horizon. My instant thought was...its a huge knob!!! I even had to call my mate Nick as I was in shock at it.

Following some Internet research, its part of the Channel 4 Big Art Project and It turns out to be the sculpture above.

The artist is a genius, look at this narrow sculpture from the motorway and you can only see the part above the eyes, forget that you now know its a face and you have, a giant knob.

Perhaps that's just what I see though? I urge you to visit it and I urge you to comment too!!!

191 years notice.....

Here is a pic taken with my mobile phone that made me smile. This is on the Runcorn Expressway on the way to the Runcorn Bridge and its nice of Halton Borough Council Road Maintenance to give us 191 years notice of a bridge closure.....

Hillsborough - 20 Years On.....

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the tragic happenings on F A Cup Semi Final Day back in 1989.

I remember it well, I was watching it unfold live on telly at a house on Manor Road in Crosby where myself and my friend Roy Evans had stopped by.

I was 16 at the time and although I dont remember much from my youth, I remember Hillsborough and the aftermath clearly.

To be honest, it had little direct effect on me but when I came back into school I realised quickly that I had friends who were at the game and friends who knew people who had died on that day so its true to say that almost everyone in the Liverpool area was affected by it in some way.

On from there, the justice campaign set about ensuring that the people to blame for the accident were made accountable and as a reflection of how things work in the UK, it still continues today.

All I wanted to say was that on that day, 96 people died for no good reason. 96 people who were just doing what they loved, seeing the team that made them happy lost their lives at what should have been a great game. I had been seeing Liverpool at Anfield around that time and it strikes me that from standing on the Kop, these people were no different from me and just doing the thing they loved.

So today at 3.06PM, while I hold my own personal 2 minutes of silence, I will be putting aside the whys and wherefores of how the accident came to happen and I will be remembering the 96 people who just wanted to watch some football and follow their team and lost their lives in such a tragic way.

Tactically speaking....

Sometimes I just dont get Benitez.

You will never see a more bizarre game of football as you saw at Stamford Bridge last night and on several occasions, it looked like we might just pull it off.

However, once Chelsea scored 2 goals, it could not go to extra time so I ask myself why you would not throw on all your attacking options at that point and go for shear number of goals.

I am quite good at second guessing Benitez, I usually get his substitutions correct with the exception that I see them after 5 minutes rather than 67 but sometimes I just dont get the man at all!!!

I think now its best that Man Utd beat Porto tonight after extra time and penalties and then beat Everton at the weekend after extra time and penalties too. I want them to play as many drawn out games as possible so that they are knackered for the title run in and slip up a few more times. Liverpool only have the Premiership to concentrate on now and so we should be as fresh as you can be in this run in.

Come on United!!!!

Jay the 2 wheeled wonderboy!!!

There are some moments that need to be shared and this is one of them!!! Here we see young Jay taking to 2 wheels almost (!) effortlessly.

I think there are skills that can only be passed from one man to another and the same can be said for all those years ago when I met Luca and went on to get him onto 2 wheels too.

Its a very proud moment, he has trouble pushing off and cannot turn a circle yet but by the end of this week, with a little fine tuning from his Mum, he will be a master!!!

Just as another point, note the HQ feature on the You Tube video here. My new camera records of a format that You Tube likes and by selecting the HQ option, you can see the video as it was uploaded as apposed the to the sometimes grainy You Tube format.

Terrorvision

I went to see Terrorvision on Thursday evening in Manchester at the Academy with my mates Nick and Bally and it was a special show to celebrate 15 years since the release of the CD you see above.

I have actually read the Dale Carnegie book "How To Make Friends...." and its a pile of worthless poo!!!

The CD however, is a modern classic filled with energy busting silly pop songs that offer more volume and guitars than most bands of today can summon.

Anyway, the show was great, they played the album in a track listing order, took a break, and then came back for another 7-8 songs. In Terrorvision terms, this is a long show as the sheer energy required to perform this stuff only lends itself to being kept up for about an hour live!!!

It was also nice to see, and swiftly not become part of, a classic mosh pit!!! Nick and I exited stage left, I fear for my safety these days but we lost Bally only to find him at the end of the show sweating from head to toe....I think he made a few friends!!!

It was good to see you Terrorvision, its been a long time and a long journey. Your lead singer may look a lot like Frank Gallagher from Shameless but you still have what it takes to rock the house your own way!!!

Fatigue.

This week, I have been very tired.

If indeed I have what we all think I have then fatigue is the most common symptom of it. It didnt take me very long to look it up with regard to MS and to say that every word was spot on was an understatement. I quote -

More than anything, the fatigue that comes with multiple sclerosis (MS) is what makes one a member of the “MS club”: Virtually all of us experience it (experts estimate 85 to 95 percent) and people that do not have multiple sclerosis have never experienced the “special” nature of MS-related fatigue. Moreover, it is an invisible symptom, unlike a limp or a tremor. It is often difficult to get sympathy or understanding for this type of problem, even though fatigue can be the most debilitating part of having MS.

While everyone experiences “being tired” occasionally, the fatigue associated with MS has certain characteristics, including:

• Occurring daily
• May be present in the morning, even after a good night’s sleep
• Worsens as the day progresses
• Aggravated by heat and humidity
• Comes on suddenly
• More severe than normal fatigue and more likely to interfere with daily life
• Feeling of heaviness in arms and legs
• Difficulty concentrating
• Vertigo or dizziness
• Headaches
• Flu like symptoms
• Depression

So I look at that and so much of it rings true for me. I think about this week and I have started most days with a tired feeling, I have progressed through the day and found it difficult to concentrate on tasks because I am thinking more about being tired than what I am doing. Then, I have faced a few technical problems this week on jobs and found the troubleshooting process to be a struggle.

Sometimes, I wish that I could just climb back into bed but I do know that rest is not necessarily the cure. There have been times when I have collapsed in bed and slept like a baby only to wake the next day with a near hangover.

When I feel like this I just try and get on with my day and hope I keep going until a decent hour when I can go to bed. If I sleep in the afternoon then I feel as if I wont sleep at night so its best to keep my sleep pattern as regular as I can. I know that when I am like this, it is reflected in my mood too, I know people can tell a mile off when I suffer from fatigue and only with time will I learn how best to deal with it.

I have so many questions and not many answers. I am looking forward to the referral to the MS Psychologist as I think this person can help me.

I think I am still quite naive about all that has happened so far. I keep waiting for the next thing to happen while at the same time hoping it stays at bay for many years to come.

Kerris has a belief in life that before you arrive here (from wherever you were before you existed), you or your soul set yourself goals and tasks to attain to and challenge you. The most developed souls come to earth time and time again to test themselves in ever more elaborate ways, choosing a life of hardship and disease. If there is any truth in it then I can relate to myself as being quite a developed soul I reckon. There are 2 things it would really strike true on. The first would be the unpredictability of all this as I am an organised person who needs to know what is going on and when. So slamming me with something unpredictable kicks that one right into touch. The second is that I spend a lot of time looking after others. There are very few tasks in life where I let someone else do something for me and while some are mundane like insisting on ironing my own shirts or cooking the evening meals, I like to ease other peoples burdens and I am good at it. So potentially having a disease where ultimately I would need to rely on others would be a hard thing for me to cope with. In doing so, I am challenging myself and therefore must be a developed soul!!!