Holiday Piccies from Co.Mayo Ireland

Sophie's Birthday

Yesterday my youngest daughter was 2

We will be having a family party today - but yesterday we took Sophie to Hesketh Family Farm/Park. Its near Bolton Abbey on the edge of the Yorkshire dales.

Sophie had a fantastic time (as did her brother James! (6))

As she's so young Sophie seemed oblivious to the fact it was her special day. She goes at life with her amp on 11 anyway so she left us trailing in her wake!

My older daughters will be coming over today and I will be feeling very proud and very old!

Back in the Saddle

I just cant get used to My Space/Facebook etc etc!!
So I've decided to go back to using my blog. I really am going to try to keep up to this from now on!

So here goes!

Leaving

The tjjkiosk

House

I have discovered that I can blog from my mobile phone!! -I see the future!

Birthdays and Christenings

James trying to look cool on the morning of his 5th birthday

Ruth (failing to look cool) and Sophie ready for the party!

James blowing out the candles on his Dalek cake

Its Grandaughter Emily's Christening (Sarah Emily and Mark)

Finally Me mum (The Great Grandma) with Emily

My God its me!

Thanks to David Nassur for the picture.

This was taken in 1977 ish in Hoyland Near Barnsley - Arc Rouge's North of England tour (tee hee) I was 18.

Not sure what I was so happy about (probably about having the camera to myself!) Ah the dreams that boys have when they worship slavishly at the alter of Rock and Roll .

Holidays.

Just returned from our second holiday of the year. This one was in Whitby at Easter, an alltogether cooler more bracing experience than February's trip to the Canary Islands. (see photo)

Haven't been making many posts so far this year - I will have to sort that out!

Played a gig at the weekend, a bikers do in a marquee - it was a good one and it was good to be back behind the kit again.

Witchcraft

We watched a documentary on Wednesday night. It was about The children involved in the Rochdale Satanic rituals case back in 1990. The film covered what the events had done to the lives of those involved.

20 Children were taken from their homes in dawn raids by social services. They spent 34 years in care between them, one kid was in care from 6 to 16. The whole thing was a media fuelled witch hunt based on spurious comments made by the kids in interviews which were later condemned as unprofessional by the trail judge. Any one who asked questions about the way the investigation was being handles was immediately under suspision themselves or at best seen as sticking up for child abusers. One local councilor upon being told by the Police that the allegations included children having their fingers chopped off and nailed to an upturned crucifix in the local graveyard said "and have your officers checked the local schools to see if there are any four fingers kids knocking about?" Of course they hadn't and his seemed to have been a lone voice of common sense in the whole affair. Seeing the kids talk about this time in their now ruined lives made both Ruth and I cry. What was more chilling was that it had happened here in the UK in the last 16 years!! The programmed finished by saying that at the time there were over 30 separate different enquiries of this type all over the UK and not one allegation was shown to be true,

The whole sorry affair reminded me of Arthur Miller's astonishing play 'The Crucible' based on the Salem witch trials in America it was his response to the McCarthy political (anti Communist) witch hunts in the 1950/60's. In my amateur acting days I had the chance to play the main character John Procter in this play. What a priviledge thas was. Indeed the actor Robert Carlyle sites The Crucible as the reason he decided to go on the stage. Once you have read or performed this play you can never join the crowd in denouncing someone or some group without asking questions. As another hero of mine Oliver Cromwell said "In the bowels of Christ consider it possible that you may be mistaken". Advice he himself didn't always take of course.

I feel that this play and the issues around it should be required study for everyone, because when you look round the world and even this country today, its is obvious that the witch hunters have not gone away.

New Stuff

If you follow The Erics site you will already know that we are rehearsing again. Its been a long time, plus with Sam's illness it was good just to get us all there and ready to play!

When you're an aging covers band, choosing material to do is very important. The Erics have always tried to do stuff that we like and can try to believe in, and if the audience love it too, then thats a bonus. So we have started work on Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' and Queens 'Now I'm Here' both are sounding great and although not unique on the local covers scene, there are not that many bands doing them.

The same cannot be said for anything by the Kaiser Chiefs! Everyone is playing 'I Predict a Riot'. We will be joining them as we love the track. The pressure is then on to make it a standout performance and to inject some Ericsness in to it. This is difficult and doesnt always come off. It was the same with Vertigo. Everybody does (did) it, we tried to take it to another level but ended up just playing it too fast (a common failing of mine I do confess). However, eventually we sorted it out and ended up with something which goes down really well live and seems to aviod the 'standard' tag. Lets hope we can do the same with 'I predict'.

We are also working on 'Ant Music' and 'Times like These' (foo fighters) plus there will be some stuff coming back from past set lists. What will see the light of day first is anyones guess, but is is great to be playing again. In a band its the shared experience thats the thing, when The Erics get working positively in either the live setting or in working out new stuff, the buzz is wonderful.

Inspiration

Christmas brought the usual bagful of smellies, socks etc but increasingly rellies and mates buy me dvd's cd's or vouchers for the same.

This allows me to get an annual dose of musical inspiration.

This year stand outs have been Bullet in a Bible - Greenday Live at Milton Keynes. What a cracking dvd plus you get a cd of the live show as well. The live version of Jesus of Suburbia is a classic and reminds me of the first time I saw The Who live, it is so energetic -also it proves that you can play things fast and loud and still get emotion across if the song writings good enough. The dvd ends with a Billy Joe doing a solo of Good Riddance on electric rather than acoustic guitar - this is brilliant just like a billy bragg song, the crowd sing a long and the gig ends on superb high.

Next pressy to mention is U2 Vertigo live in Chicago dvd- This stage show is the best I have ever seen. Plus they do an updated version of Electric co. along with a great Running to Stand still and an even better 40 to finish the show.(incidently me and my mate Bono are both Christian types so we know that 40 is based on psalm 40 in the bible).

Most Influencial this year is the Live 8 dvd. Madonna's performance is stunning, she's the same age as me but she's not fat and knackered like I am. She is my favorite female singer by a country mile! Then there's the very over rated Robbie Williams, he bangs out three hits from his time with Guy Chambers but doesnt do any new stuff. Why? cos the new album is sh*te. Yes his tour sold out in record time, but the punters dont want his new stuff they want Angels! he is very soon going to undergo the emperors new clothes treatment. Pink Floyd -aaah sublime, as a result of this Live 8 performance I phoned Sam to suggest we do Wish You Were Here. Not the usual Erics fayre but when we reheased it it was pretty damn good.

ok I have a few rants brewing which some may be interested in -I will start posting those tomorrow!

Events

Its been a dramatic Christmas this time. Sam's illness caused major plan changes and gave us all a shock. However on a personal level this has been a great year and Christmas has been no different.

James was delighted with the bike Santa brought him. Despite his tired and emotional expression here!






Sophie was completely non plussed by the staggering array of soft toys and other baby goodies she received. A typical comment being, Gooo...eh eh!

Any way hope everyone has had a really good one time and here's to a rocking '06

Grandad

I am incredibly proud to announce the arrival of my first grandchild, Emily Faye Dickinson.

She was born at 1842 on Saturday 3rd December at the General Infirmary in Leeds weighing in at 7lb 8oz

Below is a picture of the proud parents, Mark and Sarah (my daughter)

with Emily of course.

This one is of the girl herself. She is a real beauty.

Finally the proud Grandad, the bemused 4-year old uncle and the lovely Emily Faye

Don't know what else to say, it all seems very strange but wonderful.

Martyn Joseph - Awesome (trumpet player?)

We had an Erics band trip to see singer songwriter Martyn Joseph last night. Dave, Linda, Sam and myself have all seen MJ before - Phil and Sam's partner Jill were the virgins.

Describing music is difficult, part protest, part folk, part infused with a gentle God bothering (but not enough to make Sam feel uncomfortable), part David Gray, part Bruce. All delivered acoustically with exceptional guitar playing behind a wonderful voice which, though not the best I've ever heard, he uses to both move and inspire the crowd.

When the performance starts it is clear from the off that this guy knows his craft. New songs are interspersed with old favourites. He also has the intersong patter and anecdotes off to a 't'. Stand out for me were a new song about the life of African American activist and Singer Paul Robeson (as Martyn said - if you dont know who he is...you really ought to!), the classic Cardiff Bay and an extraordinary virtuoso acoustic guitar fest called Wake Me up.

We also got covers of Piano Man, Stuck in Moment and One of Us. Dave loves this guy and was close to tears on a number of occasions. All of us left raving about the performance and I would like to think a little inspired and less cynical.

Finally in a Vic and Bob style misunderstanding, my knackered drummers ears mis heard Jill as she said "theres the Horse and Trumpet" (pub) as "He's an awsome trumpeter" For a few moments I thought she knew something about MJ that I didn't!! Guess you had to be there.

Great night.

Sorry its been a while since I have posted a blog message.

Sophie's arrival has led to much happiness, but also much fatigue as we all adapt to new routines. Experience leads me to suspect that this 'tired' stage has a couple of months left to run, so I apologies in advance for my lack of posts.

This picture opposite, is of my son James. It was taken as we were on a pony and trap ride during our 'lads only' trip to Ireland in July. We visited my sister Helen (Brother in law Mark and nephew Ben) at their house in Co. Tipperary. Although it is a long way (tee Hee) we have been able to visit them often over the years and James and I love it. Ruth was gutted as she was unable to travel due to pregnancy.

Learned a few items of really sad news over the last couple of weeks. It is always particularly difficult to know what to say to people you know or know of, when it is clear that nothing can really be done (by you) to ease the pain of their situation. It does lead to a reappraisal of your own life and realisation of how precarious many of the things we take for granted are. But for those in difficulty I find myself with an increasingly fustrated feeling of helplessness. I confess that I do say a prayer for people. I realise It might be futile but it cant do any harm. Perhaps it just makes me feel a bit better? Well, much of the time it seems like all I can do. My head tells me that we are all able to move on eventually, but the thought of the ordeals that people I know have had to face in their lives gives me an all too familiar sick feeling. In the song 'stuck in a moment Bono says:

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along this stony pass
It's just a moment
This time will pass

Not much help in the deep pain we can feel in the harshness of a really bad day, but perhaps something to think on when we're ready to face tomorrow.

I have been working lot of overtime at work as this month (Nov) is paid in December. I realised during one of my Saturday shifts, that I am lucky to work with a decent bunch of young people. Iam the oldest in the team. At 46 I am nearly twice as old as most and could easily be the Father of all of them. In a future post I will describe some of the characters in detail and expalin how my confidence in the future of the country has been restored by these people.

Readers of Phils blog will know that The Erics are haveing a band outing to see Martyn Joseph the singer songwriter this month. Phil has said that his favourite MJ song of the moment is 'he never said' I will end this post by writing out the chorus and will leave it to you to work out who the 'he' is in the title

He said

Answer a strangers cry for help
love your brothers as you love yourself
you only need to seek and you will find

Forgive your enemy and drop that grudge
Dont judge others and you wont be judged
only push and the door will open wide....open wide

I love the Harry Potter books.

I started reading the 5th installment - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - because someone left it hanging around at my Mum's house. Within 15mins I was hooked. I went on to finish it in around 3 days. I usually read very little fiction but Jk Rowling has such a great storytelling style I just cant put her books down.

I quickly read the first 4 books and settled down (with millions of others) to await the publication of 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince'. I was in Ireland at my sisters when it was released. But I got my copy at 9:00am on the day of publication!

What I wasn't prepared for was the emotional roller coaster that I was embarking on. I won't go into the plot as it might spoil the book for others, but I was utterly blown away by the relationship which develops between Ginny Weasley (pictured above) and Harry. There had been much speculation on Potter websites about who Harry would fall in love with, but the way this story was written surpassed any thing anyone had predicted.

From the moment they got together to the moment Harry has to tell her that it couldn't go on, was story writing at its best. I was so gutted at the end of the book that I cried. Not a little but a lot! Ruth said I was in a mood for about a fortnight. Hard to believe this twice divorced cynic could be so moved by a story of 16 year olds in love, but I was. Now I have to wait 2 years to find out if all will end well in the final installment.

In the meantime there is the November movie release of 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' or GoF as us Harry Potter chat roomers like to call it. Can't Wait!!

More Pics of our little Princess

As can be seen from the above piccies Sophie is doing well. I am back to work on Monday (24/10) as my paternity leave, courtesy of Gordon Brown, is now over.

Ruth is intending to remain on maternity leave until Easter or later. James has had a good report on his first half term at school, so all is well in Richardsonworld.

Back To Life back to Reality

Things are settling into something of a routine now. Ruth and I , inhabit a strange twilight world between 3 or 4 hourly feeds.

Between 3 and 5 in the morning is a particularly strange and challenging time as your body is at its lowest ebb (blood sugar low etc).

However we knew it would be like this so no complaints.

Sophie seems to have a sweet nature and most of the time when she's awake she looks round quizickly. When she does cry its more of a whimper at the moment, although as a Richardson I'm sure there will be more to come on the voice front!

James has mostly sailed throught the addition to our family. He has realised though that things have changed. Yesterday he asked, not where do babies come from but why do they come! I can see that he may well be leading one of our online debates before too long.

Paul xx

We are home now. Sophie is settling down well (although she is just 30 hours old!!).

Thankyou to everyone for there best wishes. Ruth was filling up as she read through the comments here and on The Erics site - cheers guys.

It is a joy for me to know that Sophie will be surrounded by the kind of people who are in our circle of friends as she grows up.

I hope to see you all soon.

Thanks again x

FREE AT LAST!

This is my new daughter Sophie Jasmine she was born 06/10/05 at St James Hospital in Leeds at 1745.

Ruth (who had full pain relief with James - endured labour without it this time) I am so glad I'm a man!!
Sophie is a little cold to start with so its skin to skin time to warm her up (this works on me too!!)

James is very pleased cos Sophie brought him a present (will he be as pleased when he finds out she having his room?)

Many thanks to the Staff at St James - Sophie should be home late on Friday.