About me & this 'Blogette'

Welcome to 'Blog-it-and-Scarper'

My very own 'Blogga Den'

This is my creative playground where I can indulge and share in many of the social topics and cultures that interest me most. It's a bit of an eclectic mix of lightweight narratives, pictures and music - hopefully sometimes humerous, and mostly centered around some of my travels and experiences in France, Italy, Spain & the UK - or at least the ones that made me smile.

Originally from the east end of London, I've spent most of my life living in and around the New Forest and Hampshire coast. A family man with two fabulous twenty something children, I have a small business career background in the design, build and interiors industry.

Although I have a broad range of social, cultural and historical interests, until last August (2010) I had never actually, knowingly read a blog, visited Facebook, or been tempted to 'Tweet' - and for those last two, this is still very much the case.

 Possessed of an artistic/creative bent I took up digital photography, purely as a hobby, about three years ago and started to experiment with all the scary technical features that exist on a modern digital camera beyond the 'on/off' and 'capture' buttons that had until then been the limit of my very limited technical capability.

Buoyed up by my newly discovered technical know how, I invested in some 'Photoshop' picture editing software, loaded it onto my PC, opened it up for the first time, and just sat there staring hopelessly and forlornly at all the myriad of tools, icons and features that appeared before me on the screen.

Twelve months later and I still hadn't done anything with it.

Eventually I plucked up the patience as well as the courage to start playing with it and after an age, as with any new language, I began to get the hang of it. Then last June, my local professional photographer mentor suggested I join Flickr.com, the photo image sharing site, and start connecting with all the other zillions of camera users around the globe. So I did.

Having tentatively loaded up my first batch of Flickr photo images, I discovered the feature that allows you to type in either a description or longer narrative to give the viewer some contextual background information and references to the image in question, and so it was quite literally this simple facility that got me 'typing'.

The thing was, that in the space of just a few short weekends I realised I was enjoying the business of typing out the text stuff that supported the photo images, more than the loading up of ever more photos. For me though, there was something clearly missing, and just a little too shallow and unrewarding about the whole Flickr photo sharing thing, other than being able to admire and enjoy the magnificent work of thousands of truly gifted and skilled photographers around the globe.

So after stifling yet another great big Flickr yawn one Saturday evening last August, I found myself typing in the word 'Blogging' into Google, for the very first time. Five o'clock the next morning I'd somehow managed to contrive a basic blogsite and insert a couple of pics on it, although there was absolutely no evidence of any blogging postings. A virtually stark naked blog then. A blog that's really not a blog at all. Wow. Not.

What to do? Where to begin? Stress! Panic!!

Rescue soon arrived in the form of a 'cut & paste run' to Flickr and back. Transferring some of the descriptive narratives from underneath my photo images, I was able to contrive my first couple of blog posts, namely 'My Incarceration in Beynac Castle', which over the next couple of days just grew and grew in size as I got completely carried away with gay abandon at finally loosing my blogger virginity.

It wasn't so much of a blog as a blogopic, but I didna care, and anyway, no-one in the Blogasphere even knew I existed, so "what the hell" let's just play around with it all for a while and see what happens next - and just like the pre pubescent boy in the bath scenario, I thought "well, it's all mine and I'll play with it as much as like". In a manner of thinking.

Fact is, I really was having alot of fun, even if I was all by my blogging lonesome, it mattered not. I was creating  my own bloggazine, a mini blogette where I could explore and practice the business of stitching words and sentences together, and at the same time finding an expressive form of release for my own particular sense of humour and take on some of my experiences, mini adventures and life stuff in general.

Eight months later and I've still got no idea where this is all going. No idea at all. I just make it all up as I go along, as and when time permits. Bottom line is...I'm having alot of fun, even if I do now suffer from a bit of bloggers 'numb bum'.

Hmmm.

Hope you find something to chuckle at in here somewhere. Please play with all the music and video widgets, especially the sidebar music videos while you lurch your way through this blog - and if you can find the time to comment here and there, I'll be delighted to hear from you and respond in kind as soon as I'm back at my PC.

Have a better day than me!! - Peace and Love...Phil. 

Just a couple of very rare pics of me taken about twelve years ago. I'm the only one in the family who uses a camera, and thus I've never understood the need to pop out from behind it and spoil all the scenery! 

The one on the left is me and Joanna on the day she won her yellow belt at judo, for which she went on to reach brown belt and fight in tournaments at county level. Had Jo not broken her ankle badly while in the process of beating a much larger opponent a few years later, she would certainly have gone on to achieve her black belt and compete in national tournaments.

The other pic on the right is a fun family memory of me in a Karaoke bar in Lefkas, Greece. Everyone who knows me is well aware of the fact that I absolutely cannot sing for toffee, and neither do I try, and I categorically loathe Karaoke bars with a passion. However - on this particular night, with a few happy beers inside me - I was well and truly 'got' by a posse consisting of 'all my family' and half of the citizens of Lefkas, after they conspired to grab me from another bar altogether, blindfold me and then carry me down the street to this horrible ghastly Karaoke place!

 Here I am then, trying hopelessly to read from a tele prompter and sing the words of Eric Claptons 'Leyla' - to a momentously noisy, howling, screaming, cat calling although extremely good natured mob of supporters who in turn began throwing money at me shortly after this pic was taken, just to get me to shut the hell up and return once again to the bar. In truth - I ended up enjoying every minute of it as well as the night through to sun up on the beach that duly followed! Epic stuff.

Funny...I've never been hijacked into performing at a Karaoke event since. Ho Hum.