Bloody Hell we are all still here, I thought that the bombing of Syria possibly could have sparked a war with the Russians and anyone else who supports Syria, but again no wastelands and I am still here, so why do I think that the above could have happened?  The truth is I really do believe that the chances of Russia getting it's hands dirty with us or the USA or the rest of the UN is so small it not even worth thinking about, however, that is not the same as my students who have been scared shit-less by the current events.

On Monday morning I had a bunch of 16 - 22 year old's for a film revue, but before I could even load the film to watch they were asking me if world war 3 was going to happen?  I then decided to delay the film I had plans to show and gave them the opportunity to discuss events for 30 minutes.
Some of the thoughts were reasonable, others were obviously lead by panic, but the overwhelming sense was that WW3 was coming, so at the end of the 30 minutes I gave them my thoughts as to what was going to happen.

I told them about the Cuban crisis back in the 60's, how my parents and grandparents were really concerned that war would break out, Kennedy's ultimatum to the Russians to withdraw the missiles from Cuba had the whole world listening worrying and waiting for him to push the big red button, it came close, rumour has it he wanted to hit the button several times but was talked out of it by his staff, a close call for us all.

So having told them how it was and how it would be, I decided to show them the film 'Bridge of Spies' about a spy caught by the Americans right in the middle of the cold war and the building of the Berlin Wall.
Why show them that when they are so worried, I believe the story line was a great one, remember these are Film & TV students, but it was a good way to show them if they thought it was bad now it was far worse then.

​So a message to Trump & Putin, don't you fucking dare start up WW3 and make me look like an idiot, believe me anything you 2 can do to each other is nothing to what I will do to the both of you.  So fingers off buttons, sit down at a nice coffee shop, have some tea/coffee and biscuits and just chill, no need to act like a baboons arse, or use other counties as sticks to beat each other with, as a certain comedian in a Liverpool accent would say 'Calm Down, Calm Down'.

Let our kids enjoy their lives without the fear of hostilities and world annihilation.

Old Git out.

I am told this is about as close as we can get to WW3 without actually setting off the nukes.
It does look like it will be us (the UK) and America against Russia, Syria & N Korea, but thats not who I am worried about, while everyone is watching the escalation of threats it's China I am worried about, they may decide to sneak in an attack against us all, I have always said that when push come to shove the Chinese would try and take over the world, and why not? as the big 2 argue about Syria Chine sits there rubbing it's hands together.

Where do I stand on all this, well I believe as does Mrs May that Syria can't get away with gas attacks, and now the french say they have proof that Syria did indeed use chemical weapons, so, I think we should do the old eye for an eye stunt, don't tell me we don't have chemical weapons, all counties do we just don't use them because it's against international law, but, in Syrias case, let them have it, give the rebels and civilians a time period to get away from Bashar al-Assad and then gas the bugger.

In the event that the USA do strike and Russia responds after the proof the French have then I think the world needs to consider nuking Russia & N Korea and be done with it, or someone needs to take out Putin and quickly.
I'm too old now to do it myself, but 30 years ago I would have had a go myself.

So just in case this is my last post ever, by either a nerve agent on my front door or the nukes start flying, bend over, place your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye.
​TTFN.

I have always said that once a company has your money as far as they are concerned your done with, however over the last couple of months my faith in, at least the music industry has been restored.  If you have read my previous post you will know that Blackstar Amplification were extremely generous to my request for some giveaways for my students sending me a large back of lanyards, key-rings etc, at the same time and todate I have written to over 75 companies requesting the same, some replied with lame excuses, others just never replied, however 5 did and sent me an assortment of stuff for my learners/students.

So I will take this opportunity to thanks them publicly, so a BIG thank you goes out to:

Blackstar Amplification (again)
Victory Amplifiers
Flattley Guitar Effects Pedals
Newtone Strings
RotoSound Strings

Wow, see links above, I now have a decent enough quality stuff to give away to my Learners/Students in September when they enrol on my Guitar Maintenance/Making Course.

Someone said to me that I was wasting my times, fair enough, 70 emails wasted but 5 came up trumps and for that I am grateful.

For once a happy grumpy old git says 'Thank you and good night'

Bloody hell, for those that don't know me and even those that do, I am a grumpy old git, and this site is somewhere for me to vent my frustrations and say it as it is, no bullshit here, however, something happened today that has shown me the brighter side of life and that there are even large companies that still have  the personal touch with their clients.

I teach a couple of guitar courses, Guitar Set Up & Guitar Building, and had an idea to maybe give the students/learners something extra to takeaway from the course other than the knowledge they have pick up, so I wrote to quite a few guitar, amplifier companies asking if they would like to send me something to hand out to those on the course, I contacted over 80 companies only 4 came back to me with replies 3 of these were sorry we don't do that sort of thing, one however Blackstar Amplification replied asking me how many students i had, I explained that it would be a maximum of 30 a year,  Joel the gentleman who replied said he would put something in the post, WOW, I was a little shocked could this nice young man restore my faith in the personal touch?
Today a BIG bag of goodies arrived from Joel, Lanyards, Keyring's and Stickers, everything I had suggested, all the gifts are of excellent quality and I am sure my students will love them, so I am going to do something I don't normally do and say "Thanks Joel and Blackstar for your support and the gifts" what an amazing company, they could quite as easily have ignored me like the others but they went out of their way to give support, I need to go lie down now, I am still in shock.

Oh, and yes I do have a Blackstar amp, it's a Core ID40. it's amazing, I had a Marshall before but the Blackstar beats it into the ground.

​Off to my hammock.

The snow is here, it's arrived, and it's no good moaning about it, that's my job.
Every time we get more than 2cm of snow in the UK everything stops, Trains, Buses, cars, they all stop, I don't get it, I have driven to work every day this week with large amounts of snow causing a few problems, but none that I can't get around.  So what's all the panic about.

I can remember as a kid 50 odd years ago that it snowed every winter, it was always about 15cm - 30cm deep, we all carried on with our jobs, we all went to school, we made the most of it, I can remember going to Hampstead Heath and riding the slopes on my mums tin tray, great fun, we often ended up cut and bruised but that was all part of it,  Snow ball fights, we had them every break at school, now most schools ban students from even touching it 'WTF' they have taken away learning experiences from young people.

​As for the trains, I could mention Scandinavia where there are bigger issues with snow yet everything seems to run OK?

SO come Britain, wheres they fight gone, it's a little snow, if we can't cope with that what the fuck are we gonna do when the EU decides to invade our country, which they will try in the future once we leave that shit club the common market, common my arse.

Stiff upper lips boys & girls, lets not let a little snow defeat us.

Time for a lie down now as the buses bringing the student to college are not running, FFS.

I need some balance wheels for my table saw, simple enough you would think, but it took me a long time to find the required size, I found a company called 3DTooling, they advertised that they had the balance wheels I needed so I ordered them mid December  come February I had completely forgotten about the order so I ordered them again, however this time I ordered the wrong size, when they arrived I sent them back the next day and explained that I had made a mistake and remembered that I still had not received my December order, so I asked for a refund on order no 2, they said no they had to buy them in from another company and could not return them, not really my problem but they offered to bore out the wheels to the correct size, 2 weeks later I get a call saying that the company they had sent them to for re-boring had charged them and I was expected to pay, that's not going to happen, and I still have not received my first order, I am about to phone them and reject the items and ask for a full refund or take them to the small claims court, I also found out from trading standards that they have broken the rules about online trading, the money they took is meant to be held in escrow until I receiver the item, that's not happened so I feel I have a really good case.

I will continue with this tomorrow when |I have called them.

Mr really fucking angry OUT.

UPDATE
Having sent them a letter refusing to accept the products and asking for a refund, suggesting that I would seek legal advice, a refund was was given and I now have the money in my account, so reluctantly I must say thank you to them for doing that.
I bought replacements from another UK company and they arrived with 3 days and were cheaper than the previous items. So a grumpy old man is now a little happier.

As I sit here listening to the Chelsea Barcelona game at half time the news comes on and the main headline is the logistic problems, so no fried rat for half the restaurants? Who gives a fuck, the coating on the rat is delicious, but the rat, tastes like rat? The other question is why would you change your supplier that has serviced you well for several years to swap to someone like DHL? DHL can't deliver anything on time and have a rep for losing items? Surely the specialist company that KFC used were a much better bet, the reason for the swap was the cost of delivery, KFC put the contract out for tender, bang DHL make a ver low bid to get the deal then realise they can't do the job, also KFC are in trouble, sales are down as most takeaways now offer fried chicken cheaper and the chicken is chicken.

But the point I am really trying to put across is does anyone care, NO, there are lots of more news worthy stories tonight, why are the BBC so fixed on this particular story, I must admit it is developing into something a little more interesting with shops closing and staff be told to take holiday while the shops are closed. 

I need some food, so I will go make a sarnie, then settle down for the second half of the football, 'COYS'.

​Bye

They say you should never start a sentence with so.  So, I find it a little weird that I have no comments to any of my posts, I know you guys are reading them because I have checked the hits I am getting.  Is it because they are so bloody boring that no one finishes reading them?
You comments below would be appreciated, LOL.

​I find myself at this half term sitting in my office wondering what to do with my time, I am struggling with my neck problem so working in my workshop is a no no, maybe I will spend some time with my stamp collection, yes I collect stamps, not cheap everyday ones, I invest a lot of money into rare and valuable stamps, Penny Blacks, Reds & Blues, why?  They are an investment for my son, when I finally leave this world he will have a valuable collection to do with as he pleases.  I find as I get older I tend to buy things that will increase in value as time goes on, I come from a very poor family, in fact so poor that 6 of us shared the same bath water in a tin bath when we were young, in winter we would have to rap in blankets as coal was a luxury, sometimes dad would get hold of scrap wood to burn, I often think of those days when I light my wood burning stove in the workshop, so the investments I make will at least give my son something of value, my siblings and myself were left nothing as my Dad died poor and my Mum will go the same way, although we all pitch in to make sure she has everything she needs..

Anyway 'Enough' I here you cry, so I will end it here.

FFS, someone comment.

Old Man out..............

Music, I love it, it's been a part of my life for so long I would not survive without it,  I started playing piano at 7 or 8, was never any good at it but love playing the Z Cars theme on my parents upright. Now at school I was good at the recorder, ok on percussion, and ok on the ivories, but I wanted a guitar. 
Move on about 9 or 10 years, I am working with a guy called Bob Pond and he plays in a band called Colours with another guy called Paul Lomas on guitar, they blew me away, that was it I wanted to play in a band, so off to the local second hand shop and £15 later I have a semi acoustic guitar, a Columbus , crap guitar but hey it was a piece of wood with a stick and and some strings. 

I managed to get Paul Lomas to give me some guitar lessons a few months later he said that I had progressed enough to go it alone, so I did, playing along to Hendrix, Humble Pie, Moody Blues to name a few, Paul and Bob gave me the oppertunity to play with them on stage in London, I played 3 numbers, the crowd went crazy, well they clapped, I suppose that counts, next step, form a band.

I had a good pal at work called Dave, I asked if he would be interested in starting a band, yeah he said what am I playing, your choice I said, so he got a Bass guitar and we were 50% of a group, next to follow was Tony my younger brother, he was a good player for his age so he was in, next we needed a drummer, Tony girlfriends sisters boyfriend said he said always wanted to play drums, we were now a group, we went through several names but finally agreed on Pearl Dice?

We practiced a couple of evenings a week and weekends in Dave's bedroom, his mum made tea and biscuits, they were good times, it was not too long before we had our first gig, a working mans club, we went down a storm and the bookings came in were were playing every week, we played at the olympic runner Alan Pasco's Birthday party, we won battle of the bands, we were up and running really fast, I was pretty good even if I say so myself, I had a unique style, as a band we were tight and were really very good, then the shit hit the fan, Bell Records came to see us play, everything that could go wrong did, so I split the band and played with another band called Raven for a while but soon got fed up with the singer, so I gave up playing for over 20 years before I got the urge to play again, I purchased a Fender Stratocaster, learnt to play again and was just enjoying bashing out the odd song here and there.  Then in 2009 I had medical problems that have left me with hand issues so no guitar playing for me.

So, who are my Players and Singers, guitarists have to be Joe Bonamassa, BB King, Gary Moore, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Hendrix, Dave Gilmore, Nita Strauss, to name a few,  singers are, Beth Hart, Timi Yuro, Gary Moore, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, there are too many to mention here.

You can see my choices are stretched over a long period of time, it's cos I is old.  Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.

​Old Git out.

4 times, 4 fucking times, that how many cancellations I have had to my operation, I am waiting for surgery on my neck, I am in constant pain, have not slept for years because of this problem, in November last year the surgeon noticed spurs and a lacking cushion for the vertebrae in my neck, the nerves are trapped and I am in agony, but I am told that I am a non essential or urgent case as it is not life threatening?

Explinations are, other more urgent cases and the government issues?  WTF, so it looks like I need to be near to death to get this op, if it carries on I will die of old age before I get this surgery.  

Pissed off, angry, and Fucking annoyed.
​UPDATE

On the 6th attempt to get me into hospital the surgeon doing the op booked me into a private hospital as he could not get me an operating room on the NHS in the near future, so as I rtype this I have had my operation and it seems to have worked (I won't really know for about 6 months), however I am now happy that it's done.  Thank you Mr Rikin Trivedi.