Mike's un-hyperbole T-shirt - mouse-over for another one

Mike's Pith & Wind - GOB-smacked
I’m an easy-going sort of chap. I tend to ride the bumps of the everyday hurly-burly with Buddhist-like resignation tempered with self-deprecating humour. But the tide may be turning – I’ve found there are advantages to occasionally transforming myself into a GOB (Grumpy Old Bastard).
I should preface the following tale or two illustrating this proposition by saying that the last few weeks have been quiet on the live performance front – too quiet – and what happens in such fallow times is that I tend to to tackle those tedious but necessary tasks that I’ve banished to the bottom of the teetering pile of papers on the kitchen table - you know, the tasks that I’ve been using as an excuse not to put the finishing touches on the third Breathing Space EP or write some more songs; in fact, anything actually fulfilling and ultimately useful.
A task like tax, for instance.
Not only does the financial year confusingly straddle two calendar years, but it’s usually a good twelve months after the event that one is compelled to assemble all the appropriate information and try and make sense of it all. In an effort to conserve costs, I’ve been educated to set out the year’s financial activities on easily understood XL work sheets to save the accountants’ time, but it means that I could be up for nearly a week of tedious collation and equally tedious notation. So, when I found that certain credit card records were not available to me on-line because I have subsequently replaced my Visa card, I had to pop into my local.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Alice
Martin Gardner who died on May 22nd was best known for his mathematical puzzles, which were published for twenty four years in the Scientific American, his scepticism and for the many books he published – which were not all about mathematics. Closest to my heart has always been ‘The Annotated Alice’ which explains the many now obscure references in the books ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’. In the annotations to ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’, not only are the chessboard moves noted as Alice moves from pawn to Queen, but the poem ‘Jabberwocky’ is provided in several languages, such as the following German version written by Robert Scott, an eminent Greek scholar who had collaborated with Alice Lidell’s father the Dean of Christ Church in Oxford. The young.. read more