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It’s been fun guys!

“Gosh Chuck, would you look at the view?”

Chuck shifted his gaze from the dials and switches and looked to his right out of the cockpit canopy. The high rise buildings of San Francisco lay behind him as he piloted his Vought F4U Corsair out across the bay towards the Marin Headlands. Beneath him and his wing man, the Golden Gate Bridge poked its rusty red pillars through a bed of low lying cloud and fog, protruding obelisks soaring high into the crisp summer’s air.

“Gives me the creeps when that happens” Chuck replied to his wingman as he turned his attention back to the controls of the aircraft.  

            “Oh I love it, it’s surreal don’t you think?”

            “Yes Joe, that’s why it creeps me out.”

            Chuck pulled hard on the control column and sent the Corsair higher into the sky before banking hard right and descending at dizzying speeds towards the river. Joe followed suit, never leaving his wingman’s side.

            “I hope the clouds aren’t making it difficult for them to see us,” crackled Joe’s voice over radio. “I’d hate to think they were missing out.”

            “No it’ll be fine; the cloud’s sticking mostly to the headland.”  At fifty feet, Chuck pulled back on the stick and eased up on the throttle, straightening out the aircraft as he bombed down the river back towards to the harbour. “Pull up into a half loop and finish with a Cuban Eight. We’ll give them a victory roll fly past and then call it a day.”

            “Roger,” replied Joe, still stuck to Chuck’s six o’clock. The pair reached Fisherman’s Wharf and climbed vertically; rocketing towards the heavens like a couple of fireworks before rolling off the top to complete the manoeuvre. The crowds bellow cheered as the Corsairs glided past and rolled their victory dance.

            “Good show wouldn’t you say Chuck?”

            The pair once again flew off in the direction of the Marin Headlands, crossing the Golden Gate’s path, its towering monoliths slowly disappearing beneath more cloud and fog.

            “Of course Joe, when you’re as good as us, every show’s a good one.”

Chester was at the bar, leaving Julian picking his nails and looking at the beer stained table. “Have you ever told him?”

My chest tightened, but I knew what he was talking about. “Told him what?”

“What happened at that party.”
”No.”

“Why?”

I thought hard. “He doesn’t need to know.”

“I wish it would happen again.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry Julian but you need to forget about it. I have.”

Original:

Arthur was leaving Tammy’s Laundrette. It was twelve o’clock, and a queue of cars had begun to form at the traffic lights. The pink and white striped laundry bag grazed a series of puddles as he dragged it towards his house. It had lasted him for twenty-three years, but since February, he had found the plastic handles a little incapable when carrying a week’s worth of greasy, blue overalls. He stopped at the curb. The cars had begun to pull away. Arthur looked to his right and crossed to the other side. He felt water spray at his heels as a truck went past. The trailer swerved and mounted the pavement. Arthur’s pink and white striped laundry bag fell to the ground, as did he.

Edit:

Arthur left the Laundrette. His laundry bag grazed various puddles as he dragged it towards his house. It had lasted him twenty-three years, but recently, he found the plastic handles incapable when carrying his greasy overalls. He stopped at the curb and crossed to the other side. Water doused his heels as a truck went past. The trailer swerved and mounted the pavement. Arthur’s striped laundry bag fell to the ground, as did he.

My girlfriend passed away. I was crushed, heartbroken. My world turned upside down. She’d been my life, my soul, my everything. I met her on my first day of work at the Trafalgar Hotel in central London. The place where I met her and the place where I truly fell in love for the first time. She’d lost her fight over an agonising few weeks of desperation and tears. I promised her I could never be with anyone else. I was a permanent reminder of her existence. Preaching to the world of her once great beauty. I did meet someone else though. I caught her eye in an inappropriate place and she proceeded to woo me. I told her I couldn’t. I told her it was far too soon to be thinking of such things. Nevertheless she prevailed and eventually I succumbed to her persistence. I took her into my arms and we passionately kissed. The Vicar then asked me to leave as we were distressing the other mourners.   

Week 4 Assignment – How To Guide. A step-by-step spoof guide to air guitar.

So you want to be the next Hendrix or Van Halen, but you haven’t the time or the patients to actually learn the ins and outs of an musical instrument? Then you may want to quickly read through…

THE FARRALL GUIDE TO AIR MUSICIANSHIP 

 It might just be what you’re looking for!

The art of the playing and manipulating an Air Instrument is a sure fire way of bringing you than one step close to become the rock legend you always dreamt of being. Through the infinite power of your imagination, you’ll be shredding solos and chugging out riffs in no time. Here’s an example of just how cool you could be:

(Notice his intriguing use of the finger tapping technique and sign of the devil. He’s REALLY metal!)

Step 1 – Knowing your instrument.

There’s an endless variety of instruments that you can play depending on your preferred style. The obvious choice is of course the Air Guitar (which we will be primarily focusing on throughout this guide), yet you may wish to mix things up a little. Ever thought about becoming an Air Drummer? An Air Saxophonist? Perhaps even an Air Violinist!? The possibilities are indeed endless, but you’ll ultimately wish to choose an instrument that suits you best.

For this guide, we’ll use the Air Guitar. An Air Guitar is basically the same as your run-of-the-mill regular guitar, it’s just invisible. You hold it and play it in exactly the same way you would a physical guitar, using your left hand for manipulating the frets while your right hand either strums (using your Air Plectrum) or finger picks. This, of course, is reversed for left handed players. It can be played either sitting down resting on your knee, or standing up using an Air Guitar Strap.

Step 2 – Song choice, making the right decisions.

You overall performance will be determined by your choice of song. The Air Guitar can usually be used to its fullest potential through the rock and metal genres; however it can be used in whichever context you desire, just keep in mind that you won’t look as cool. Songs laden in lead guitar and solos usually prove to be very popular with the experts. To get you going I have picked out a song, which I feel, meets the criteria for a perfect Air Guitar song: Clicky 

Step 3 – Posing, Posture and Showboating.

For this section, I refer you back to the first video I posted. This man has it down to a T. Power stance, headbanging, the sign of the devil and stuck out tongues are all classic examples of posing, posture and showboating. The song he performs to compliments these techniques perfectly and is to be noted. For example: Playing to a Simon and Garfunkel song isn’t particularly going to allow you to utilize your PPS techniques to their fullest. Your face is also a crucial tool in conveying emotions associated with rocking out. Screw it up, raise your eyebrows, stick your tongue out, pout… Be creative, it’ll all come together and work out for the best.

Step 4 – Practice and Experimenting.

Just like playing a real instrument, practice makes perfect. However with Air Guitar, the practice time is considerably less. Whenever you hear a song and you know a ripping solo is approaching, get the Air Guitar out and shred to your hearts content. You’ll find the Air Guitar has a contagious effect on those around you, and may result in a spontaneous Air Band being formed. Playing with others will help to increase your understanding of the techniques we have discussed here and you may wish to experiment with new techniques and instruments. It’s perfectly natural to want to progress and experimentation with bizarre songs and crazy arrangements will help propel you to that of an Air Guitar champion.

So you’ve got a near endless supply of money, and the best brains from twenty countries across Europe and what do you build? A giant tube designed for firing microscopic particles at colossal speeds in order to re-create ‘The Big Bang’. Money well spent?

Science. It’s come a long way in just one hundred years, It wasn’t all that long ago that we were still strapping people down and hacking their limbs off without the use of anaesthetics and claiming Earth was the centre of the universe. But now, now we’ve explored the moon, cracked the DNA sequence and cloned sheep. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for science and its many wonders, but am I really that eager to know what could have possibly happened at the very moment the universe was created?  Let’s just say it’s not keeping me awake at night.

The collider itself has a circumference of seventeen miles and fires the proton beams and lead ion around the collider at 99.999999% the speed of light. So that’s pretty damn fast.  The results producing all kinds of scientific anomalies and mysteries such as dark matter , dark energy and extra dimensional theories. But of course these haven’t been the only hypothesised outcomes of smashing micro-particles together at nearly the speed of light. The boffins have also speculated that mini black holes may be produced as a by-product of the collisions. Let me run that by you again. Mini black holes. Those infinitely dense beasts that are known for munching down stars and galaxies. Now if that doesn’t raise a few eyebrows, then I don’t know what will.

The fact that this extravagant experiment has the goahead, even with the possibility of such catastrohpic outcomes, slightly worries me. Where will the experiments go from here? it’s already been decided that the Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to the Super Large Hadron Collider, and they haven’t even got the first one working properly yet! It’s in this writer’s opinion that science has taken a turn for the extreme and wonders if curiosity will indeed kill the cat.

I chose to review three websites on a subject which I had previous interest in and a well rounded understanding of. The three airshow review sites that I selected were all relatively similar, yet contained unique differences that helped to set them apart.

Air Scene UK: http://www.airsceneuk.org.uk/

Upon arriving at the home page, you quickly become aware of the site’s purpose. The page is laden in buzz words such as ‘air’, ‘planes’, ‘fighters’ etc… But the first item that catches your eye is the large photograph placed slap-bang in the middle. The picture, of course, is airshow related and in this case is a photo of the RAF’s aerobatic display team. Not only does this bring colour to the page and help jazz it up, but it is also hyperlinked to its relevant article. The site features a table of previous articles which are ordered and dated to help with ease of navigation and is an addition that I found to be very effective for time saving. The site is heavy in advertisements and links to other sites through banners. The links are all aircraft related in one way or another, but the sheer number of them should warrant a page of their own in my opinion, as they clutter the site. The overall appearance is something that didn’t astound me. Predominantly two colours, white background with blue detail, gives the page a bland feel about it. The only colourful aspect of the page is, as I mentioned before, the photograph.

UK Airshow Review: http://www.airshows.co.uk/

This website is a major improvement on Air Scene UK’s page. You are greeted by a much tidier page with a clear layout which is much easier on the eye than Air Scene UK’s cluttered and confusing appearance. Again, the colour scheme is a white background with blue detail, but is far more pleasing to look at, with neat blue headers above each article and a darker shade of white help the main section in the middle to stand out. The links to each article are clearly apparent as the text changes colour from grey to blue when the cursor is positioned over them. Each link is also partnered with a small photograph relating to the article which I thought to be a nice touch of detail. Unlike the previous site, there are hardly any advertisements. This helps add to the page’s clean cut look and gives a sense of professionalism.

Flightline UK: http://www.airshows.org.uk/

The last site I looked at, for me, ranks in-between the previous two sites. This site proved better than Air Scene UK, but not as effective as UK Airshow Review. The first aspect I noticed was the colour scheme. Once again, they’d opted for the white and blue approach. I’m not quite sure why this scheme is so common, as when used in the way this site and Air Scene UK have, the page comes across as rather bland and unimaginative. Redeeming features of this page that set it apart from Air Scene UK are the lack of advertisements and use of photographs. Your eye is immediately drawn to the flash box stretched across the centre of the page which flicks through an assortment of aircraft in ‘action shots’ using high quality cameras which certainly gives you something interesting to look at. Information on the page is minimalistic, but short enough to allow for a quick scan read getting the gist of what the website is all about. Another common feature is the ‘Latest Updates’ table at the bottom of the page, which like the other pages, allows for quick and easy navigation between articles.

Bass, baseball and wine. Three words, one man. Geddy Lee.

Born Gary Weinrib on July 29, 1953, Geddy was the child of Jewish concentration camp survivors who migrated from Europe to Canada after the war. The name Geddy came from his mother’s heavily-accented pronunciation of his given first name, Gary, and it later became his high school nickname before he adopted it as his stage name.

Taking up the bass guitar in his teenage years, Geddy was asked to play with fellow classmate Alex Lifeson, and in September 1968, Rush was born.

Influencing an array of famous musicians such as Steve Harris of Iron Maiden, John Myung of Dream Theater, Les Claypool of Primus and Cliff Burton of Metallica, Geddy has earned his place in Rock history, along with his band mates, by becoming the fifth most consecutive band for achieving Gold and Platinum albums, behind the likes of Kiss, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. The band was also made Officers of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honored, as a group.

Geddy, on his own, has released a solo album in the year 2000 entitled ‘My Favorite Headache,’ which was considered a commercial success with most Canadian radio stations. Aside from his commitments to Rush, Geddy has also produced albums for various other bands including Rocket Science.

A lesser known side to Geddy is his passion for wine. He claims “I’m a real Burgundy nut,” and can back this statement up with his wine cellar packed to the roof with French, German and Northern Italian bottles. His collection began during his time touring with Rush in the late 1970’s when they would regularly receive bottles of wine as gifts from promoters and such. Wine appreciation soon became a ritual within the tour.

On June 5, 2008, Lee donated his entire collection of nearly 200 autographed Negro League baseballs to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Bob Kendrick, a director at the museum stated “Some of these guys have been dead for some time, and we could not get these (signatures) before no matter what their significance was in the Negro Leagues”. At the time, Geddy Lee’s gift was one of the largest single donations the NLBM had ever received.

Tanya Carter, a fellow resident of rural Norfolk, lived out her childhood and teenage years in a village just as obscure as mine, Upwell.

(Unfinished…)