Onwards + Upwards...

BIKE BITS, BACK-YARD BLUES!
It's great! It's Fantastic! It's Rapid! And it's a show stopper!




My home-made-extra-cycle is on the road. I've been out and about on the extended bike this week and it has turned heads everywhere I've been. A lot of people think it is some kind of tandem, others tell me it's crazy! But everyone agrees, they havn't seen anything quite like it before. Well, I have to say that I didn't invent it. Credit where credit is due, the good ol' boys at Xtracycle.com should get all the applause! If, and I hope you do, want to find out about this great thing I'm blogging on about! You should clink the link above and take a look at the wonderful slideshow the Xtracycle people have put together. I also, have had lots of photos taken of me riding my back-yard-special-home-made-extra-cycle.
FREECYCLE
I've been monitoring the FreeCycle mailings this past week and there's been some good things given away. I got in on the act myself after recieving a pc monitor, as mentioned last week. So, when a young girl came knocking on my door this week asking if I had an old radio she could listen to, I was only too happy to oblige and presented her with a working radio/cassette/cd player. The next thing I had the pleasure of giving away was a hand made bookcase, which was badly in need of a coat of paint and you guessed it, a new home. The third and final item on my gift list this week was a pair of Buzz Lightyear curtains, the young lady who took them away informed me that she intended to recycle them into a pair of matching Ra Ra skirts.
StraightTalkingStreetTalkingSweet..
It's been a good week on the poetry front! As regular readers of this blog and STSTS.. already know, I have linked to a performance poetry web site called Write Out Loud! I put my profile on their site last week and this week I managed to upload a photo of me performing in a funny hat. So, if (and you really don't want to do this!) you want to see what I look like, you can clink the link in the right hand side bar or PRESS HERE. When you reach the Write Out Loud page you need to click on Poets' Showcase then click on Andy Sewina aka Danny Wise and you'll see my profile and something you wished you hadn't. Anyhow, on STSTS.. this week I have placed/posted two new poems. One is a love poem! Are you sure? Of course I'm sure, it's a love poem to my secret lover! She knows who she is! Don't you? Even I'm getting confused now! But a poem is a poem is a poem is a poem! Isn't it? Poetic licence, and all that jazz! The second poem is an off-the-wall advert kind of affair, almost a 'found poem' only I made it up, back in the days when I was writing one or two song lyrics a day. I thought, 'If I could just play that guitar, that's gathering dust in the corner...'
TECHNO WHAT?
Techno overload! seems to be the order of the day, I managed to load-up/post a photo on one site, as mentioned earlier, then when I attempted to add one to my blogger profile the whole techno what? thing went mad! Resulting in me having to create this blog in aol as opposed to Mozilla Firefox as I usually do. So, if Proper Joe's looks a bit different this tuesday, it's probably because it is! This photo thing is really getting to me now! It was so easy to send a photo to Write Out Loud and so impossible to do the same thing at blogger! I really don't know where I went wrong, so I guess I'll try again in a few days time. Watch this space!
GREEN GILBERT
Andy Gilbert came to my house today (not the Leicestershire business man) with three bags of horse manure! How green's that? Not only did he supply the muck, he also dug it into my front garden for me! He didn't stop there, No, Andy Gilbert is really green, so green that everybody who knows him, calls him Green Gilbert! He then planted some rosemary that he had grown from his own cuttings and he followed that up with a gladioli plant that he had drained himself. Next, he cut back my roses with his special seceteurs and finally he brushed up all the mess he had made on the path! Leaving me to say a GREAT BIG Thank-You! To Mister Green Gilbert!
EAT-ON-DEMAND
How's the On-demand-non-diet going then? Just trundling along, I say. This is my eighth week, having completed seven weeks by last monday morning. It's not difficult to continue, in fact it is quite easy, perhaps too easy, I think sometimes. I was reading about some of the London fashion models and how they think that they need to be wafer thin/slim, American size zero, to be allowed onto the catwalk. Some of these girls, and they are just girls, teenagers for the most part, literally starve themselves to capture the look! The worrying thing I read was that some of them are on a very similar eating order/disorder to me. I am taking high-protiens and little else and the weight/pounds falls off. My plan is to lose the weight first - then go on the diet! The diet, of course, will be my new eating regime, that I will embark upon after May Day when I have reached my target weight. The worrying thing about the girls was that, they're at the same place as me now, i.e they don't feel hungry anymore because all that protien acts like some kind of hunger suppressant. The difference with me, is that I can/will stop, when I reach my target. The poor model girls can't/won't, if they want to keep working.
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!
(FREDERIC FORSYTH)
Remember the book and the filum, The Day of The Jackal? Or how about The Odessa File? Or perhaps The Forth Protocol? Well all of the above and many many more thrillers were written by, you guessed it? Frederic Forsyth. The author, and I'm told, controversial journalist, was born on, you're right again, August 25 1938. Frederic Forsyth has won the Edgar Allan Poe Award on more than one occasion. You can find out more about him on this Dutch website or you can clink the link in the side-bar. Don't forget, if you share the same birthday, Aug25, as Frederic Forsyth and I do, you can either leave a comment at the bottom of this post or you can e-mail me at: properjoes@aol.com and I'll give you a BIG write-up on this blogspot!
FINALLY
It's late at night, my eyes are red, it's time for me, to go to bed! So, what's been happening in Manchester this week? Well, Nic and I got to go to a party in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, it was in memory of our writer friend Eric Topp, who sadly died five years ago aged only 34. It was a somewhat nostalgic night as there were friends/writers there who we hadn't seen for a long time.
Later.