Tag: The Jam

Negative Spurs – 22nd January 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

You’re either winning or learning
Embrace the struggle and pain
Push through your muscles burning
Get back up and do it again

Title appropriated from Robert Greene’s Daily Laws

Today I’m feeling:

Happy, relaxed and a little sore in my right side chest from when I came off the bike yesterday

Today I’m grateful for:

My aching body reminding me that I am still alive, reminding me of days past when wounds and pain were a part of everyday adventure.

The best thing about today was:

Having a long conversation in LINE with my student Mee after she told me she doesn’t know why she is alive. I talked about a lot of different things with her such as the dichotomy of control and methods of improving self-talk but the thing she really took to was different things to do to distract herself from spiralling out of control with negative thoughts. I told her about the FutureMe website and she immediately went off and her future self an email. It will give her a spark, something to live for, just to receive her own email after she has forgotten about it.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Waking up in the night to the sound of one of our cats throwing up. I was just hoping it wasn’t on my donna but when I woke up unfortunately it was. Amy’s doona was still hanging from last night as well as the week’s clothes but there was nothing else for it except to wash my doona and hang it over my drying clothes and hoping everything would get a chance to dry. It did.

Something I learned today?

The beginning of the Jam’s Start is ripped off from the Beatles’ Taxman, a song I don’t think I’ve ever heard before until today.

If you could have 2 wishes, what would they be?

Wishes again? Ok, let’s play.

  1. I have the power to grant people two wishes.
  2. Any wish anyone makes can have no negative outcome for anyone or anything now or in the future.
I took this picture because I have to shampoo Tigger to try and clean up his skin from a fungal infection. But as soon as I’ve finished he, smartly, goes out into the sun but then rolls around in the stones which is how he gets the infection in the first place.

I glanced back on my life – 22nd July 2020

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Last night as I was going to sleep I remembered more of the dream that I had yesterday night. We – not sure who – were in some kind of outdoor festival/playground and I was scared to go headfirst down a cardboard tube in the ground. I don’t recall last night’s dream at all. Quick one today – want to meditate.

23rd Sep 2022 – Perhaps I had recently been remembering the time when I was six or seven and wouldn’t get on an escalator with my mum at a London Tube station. Escalators were truly scary for a little boy who had no idea what it was or how it worked and despite mum’s assurances that it was fine, I stood at the top crying my eyes out as she disappeared downwards. A very nice man walked me down the stairs to reunite with her a minute later. Such trauma!

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the foot inserts I can wear to try and make my feet feel better.

Something’s gonna crack on your dreams tonight – 16th November 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Woke up this morning all excited because last night was the first time since Steve died that I’ve dreamt about him. Not some mega fantastic meaningful dream with some deep message (well, maybe not) so this is what happened.

I’m in the front room of a wooden shack type house and the front wall isn’t there, it’s like a big verandah and immediately outside it’s like a BMX dirt track, all rolling mounds and hills and there’s Steve riding on his bike up and down and around. We say hello and talk to each other like nothing has happened and I’m really pleased to be able to talk to him again.

It’s time for lunch and I turn around and Chrissy and Broni are sat at the table with lunch all prepared so I go to sit down grabbing an extra plate for Steve on the way. Chrissy realises what I’m thinking immediately and says “Steve’s not really here, you know”.

I woke up then and thought about getting up and writing it all down but opted, in my laziness, to try and get some more dreams in, which I did but no more about Steve. It could mean something, it could mean nothing but it felt great just having a moving image of Steve in my mind again.

This was after an exhausting day yesterday which involved us going to the pool, which we found is only a quarter of a mile away, to practice that thing I’d vowed never to learn some years ago, thinking why would you need to know how to swim in England, not knowing then my future and heading towards such wild and pretty beaches and rivers and ocean in Australia.

So for an hour we swam up and down and under and round just having fun, getting our bodies slowly into shape, not some long haul 100 length job, god forbid, I can’t even manage one length in one go yet! But I will, just you wait. And maybe all that exercise jogged my subconscious that Steve used to play football and do some weight training and always looked incredibly strong. In fact I’ve got some lead for taking up indoor soccer (yes, it’s called soccer over here) which I may persue when I get a bit more stamina.

*The Week That Was – 25th May 1981

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Single of the week: Jam – Funeral Pyre, Siouxsie and the Banshees – Spellbound, Squeeze – Is That Love?

25th May 1981
STILL QUITE ILL
The Exploited are #20

26th May 1981
THE EXPLOITED
I got Punk’s Not Dead and Splodgenessabounds

27th May 1981
PUNKS NOT DEAD
Euro Cup
Liverpool 1 – Real Madrid 0

28th May 1981
John Peel’s gone mad after yesterday
TOO DRUNK TO FUCK

29th May 1981
I can’t remember
May 1st

must’ve been June 1st

30th May 1981
Wales 0 – USSR 0
Switzerland 2 – England 1

31st May 1981
Cut the dog
God-dog

This week’s chart-topper is: Adam and the Ants – Stand and Deliver
ROTM: Killing Joke – Follow The Leader, Vice Squad – Young Blood, Dangerous Girls – Man in the Glass

The Week That Was – 18th November 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Record of the week: Tourists – I Only Wanna Be With You

5th Sep 2022 – This is a great song and a couple of years later I found a sleeveless copy on yellow vinyl in Wimborne Market, probably for 50p. I don’t think they had any more popular songs, maybe released an album and then went on to achieve fame as the Eurhythmics, which was dull new wave pop that I generally detested.

An online search shows they had 3 albums and a handful of singles, the only one I recall now being ‘Blind Among The Flowers’ which preceded I Only Wanna Be With You I believe and was also excellent. All of these were released in 1979 and 1980 when bands didn’t hang around, years between albums.

18th November 1979
I want my bike
2p

19th November 1979
(tick)
^^
2p

20th November 1979
God knows
1p

21st November 1979
England v Bulgaria (European Championship)
2-0
2-0
2-0
two-nil
1p

22nd November 1979
1. Dr Hook
2. Queen
3. Jam
4.
5.
My bike comes
1p 182p* 162p*

5th Sept 2022 – Was the excitement of my bike arriving enough to distract me from the top 5 this week? A quick look online suggests there wasn’t much else to write home about, except perhaps Madness cracking the top 10. The Jam song was Eton Rifles, one of their last great singles. Funeral Pyre was the last – they’d gone too soft by this time.

23rd November 1979
My bike is here
Mum did tell it came yesterday because she was going out.
2p 160p*

5th Sept 2022 – I guess this bike was a Christmas present and with it coming a full month before Christmas it still gave me enough time to beg for new presents on the actual day. She would’ve told me it was here because I would’ve discovered it in the garage anyway as I always had my nose in everything. Keeping myself entertained as an only child and in a garden about an acre in size, I was intimate with every nook and cranny. I knew places to hide and spy from, football was best behind the sheds where the two apple trees could be goalposts. Athletics could be run around the top lawn as it was mown with an oval around the edges. This tree was good for one thing and that tree good for another. The garage I often rearranged to make it more convenient, first for my bike, then motorbike and later drum kit and sofa,

24th November 1979
Hope Graeme comes
Ipswich 3-1 Soton
2p 180p*

5th Sep 2022 – It’s possible Graeme didn’t come because his folks forbid him to see me anymore as they decided I was a bad influence. I was bemused by this as it seemed that he was always the bad influence on me.

5th Sep 2022 – I had an irrational hatred of Peter Shilton. Maybe it was his curly hair or the fact that he kept Ray Clemence out of the England team whom I considered a better keeper.