Tag: Whitehaven

Who Wears The Crown? – 23rd October 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Where the waters glisten night and day
With all the pearls of wisdom on display
There’s a bridge over untroubled waves
That draws the diamonds a gambler craves

Awash with stories, a rain with dice
There are twenty floors of a winner’s advice
A promise of the life richly deserved
Park your dreams in the spot reserved

Pearly smiles are this devil’s greeting
The chase of the highs is forever fleeting
One more roll, one more spin or turn
The future is no longer of concern
From the shore or dreams, ships depart
Into the mists of the broken heart

Today I’m feeling:

A little anxious about all the things that need to be done when we get back home but also thankful that home is there waiting for me.

(Later) Amy was straight into cleaning mode so I dashed out for coffee revival at Utopia. Once back home though I got sucked into the whirlwind.

Today I’m grateful for:

The hotel staff who helped us in the morning, the taxi driver who told us about his BYD electric car, the Thai Smile check-in staff who was very helpful with our bags, the airport staff we interacted with, the pilots for flying us home, the cabin crew who gave us a snack and water, Aing for picking us up at the airport on time, Now for washing the car (badly but I appreciate the effort), Art for a great first coffee home, the seller for his fish for our dinner. All the people in and out of my space that didn’t kill me today.

The best thing about today was:

Feeling positive and content despite all our running around. Getting back to our home was a little strange for a moment but when I jumped on the bike to go to Utopia I suddenly felt free again. 

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

Aing and Now had two friends staying over and asked if they could stay for a couple more days. For me, it doesn’t really matter as we are still busy running around and Amy didn’t have any problem either except when we met them they didn’t say anything except hello. Amy was upset about that and I tried to rationalise it away. It’s pretty Thai style but still…

Also, despite us just getting back we had to drive into the city for dinner at Amy’s parents as her brother was here for the weekend and flies back early in the morning. It was literally, drive there, eat and drive back!

Something I learned today?

I caught up with all my Substack reading over the last couple of days so lots of stuff went into my eyes and possibly made it to my brain. I think I read one article twice without even realising it. Anyway, one thing that I do recall is a breakthrough in quantum computing. I don’t understand exactly what the machine was doing but the computation took one-millionth of a second whereas it was estimated it would take our current fastest supercomputer ten billion years to complete! That’s outrageous! But will it be useful? Time will tell.

What’s my earliest childhood memory?

I’ve answered this before and I’m a little curious if I would say the same thing now. It must be something from living in Bransty, Whitehaven. I have quite a few memories from there but can’t quite put them in order. The most important memory is from when I was 4 years old (and I even wonder now if that’s right but I’ve made it that age over the times I’ve recalled it) and crying because I didn’t want to die. I assume this may have been triggered by talking to my mum about why I didn’t have a father like other kids. Learning about death is pretty traumatic for a four-year-old.

I took this picture because I’m back home and our giant asparagus plant thing is about to do something. I don’t recall there being amazing flowers but it’s obviously part of its reproduction cycle. The other one that grew before hasn’t flowered again since it did back three or four years ago.

Day Is Done – 14th January 2023

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A day of too much time
Passes by lethargically slow
Nothing got done
And the day is gone before you know

Today I’m feeling:

Motivated and relaxed

Today I’m grateful for:

Our drain cleaning tool (again). It’s a bit of an effort but gets our pipes cleared 90% of the time and is a simple device. Good decision to buy it.

The best thing about today was:

Feeling like I did very little and realizing I’d done quite a lot, tasks that I knew would take some effort like fixing the screen outside my room and cleaning the gutter from the garage roof, which has my toe throbbing from a nasty cut. I’m feeling half dead and half alive. I know I could’ve done a lot more today but everything felt like there was little hurry.

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

Nothing much today. Late afternoon I found the neighbour’s kids riding around our lawn and I found it amusing kind of reminding me of my old home in Whitehaven and the garden we had there where we left it open so people could easily walk through the alleys. We had many lodgers who came and went and I was used to there being many different and changing people around.

Anyway, whilst it’s not out of my control it is something I’m choosing not to control.

Something I learned today?

I got into watching One Championship women’s atomweight fighting and had been following teenager Victoria Lee, younger sister to Angela.

Today I found out that she died on December 26th aged just 18. She didn’t look much different to my students and had a bright future ahead. Although her death has no personal meaning to me it doesn’t seem fair or right. I also feel extremely lucky to be here at 55.

Have you ever been bullied?

When I was in middle school I was bullied by older kids. I purposely stood out as the only ‘real’ punk kid and was tormented by the older kids calling me Sid. I tried to brush it off but it definitely helped make me bitter towards humanity.

I couldn’t understand how people could be so normal and boring and also not furious at the situation they were growing up into. I didn’t want to be them so I brought it on myself but better that than an average Joe.

When I became one of the older kids I sometimes resorted to bullying but I understood it wasn’t the right way to go about things. I also wasn’t beefy enough to be threatening.

I did acquire a vicious tongue though and was never afraid to speak my mind.

I took this picture because this gunk came out of my bathroom sink pipes! No wonder water was backing up. I could only unblock it so far and not sure how long it will be before I have to do this again. So much for a beautiful picture every day. However, it should be recognised I can do some dirty work every now and then. My hands aren’t always soft and clean.

Blues Understanding – 7th December 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Confront suffering
By making peace with the world
Whilst fighting against it
Embrace it wholeheartedly

Structure, inseparable
Death and suffering
Within lies freedom
The contradictory idea

Accept injustice as real
And never stop fighting against it
Every path is correct
With the blues understanding

1st Jun 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Colour Challenge

Your complicated parts are your best parts. They are what make you interesting and special.

Tarzan Kay

Today I’m feeling:
Happy
Today I’m grateful for:
Google Drive and being able to store my files for lessons there and then to adapt them to suit my schedule and plans. Having this in place has made life more flexible for me and waste less of my precious time.
The best thing about today was:
Being back in the classroom, into the thick of it, enjoying what little control I have over my students. I’m sometimes surprised they ever listen to me at all. A good start to a three-day week for me.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
I discovered about ten of my students did nothing for my class yesterday and when I discovered that they had the ability to do it but just that they didn’t even bother I was a little frustrated. In the end, I pushed, prodded and encouraged them and tried to show them that with a little effort, they could achieve more. I didn’t let frustration overwhelm me.
Something I learned today?
I learned that Nay at House is 30 years old though she could still get away for 19. With her poor English and my poor Thai, we used Gui as a translator and expressed our opposing opinions on fair and tan skin and our reasons for them. No deep insights from this exchange or anything standing out especially today though I’m trying to force myself to recall things that I have read in previous 24-hour periods and finding it a struggle. I was desperately trying to remember the Chekhov story I read last night which inspired me at the time and eluded me today. Coincidentally, it loosely ties in with today’s prompt about earliest memories as the story, Grisha, was about seeing the world through the eyes of a toddler.
Write about your earliest memory.
I’m not sure about my age with some of my memories but they revolve around being maybe from 4 to 8 years old in Whitehaven and I have a few different memories from then and can’t pinpoint which would be the earliest. I also know that I lived in a small hamlet called Blencogo before Whitehaven and I have a vague recollection of the house and garden there but can’t be certain I’m getting them mixed up with other memories, including one when visiting around that area in my mid-20s. I will write more about my early memories at some point.

I took this picture because this is student Amy being smart and thinking that no one will be upset by giving the wrong finger. I threatened to show her mum but she said she was not scared of her mum, so I said I’ll show her dad who I have met before and she was a bit more concerned about that! It was all in good fun though and Amy has grown up a little in the last few months and is very capable of doing my work.

The Week That Was – 15th April 1979

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Record of the week; Supertramp – The Logical Song
Highest Entry: Bee Gees – Love You Inside Out – 25

7th Mar 2022 – The twisty bendy Logical Song shows my early interest in prog-ish music. The sound of this song made me happy. I like music that challenges but that also makes me laugh with excitement. So, not much into the Bee Gees at the time. I do have their early albums to check out as they were apparently much different to their popular hits around this time.

15th April 1979
Going up North today
2p

7th Mar 2022 – I don’t recall driving back up North with Jean at any time and can only think we took the National Express, though I don’t have any memory of travelling with her on the bus either.

I do believe it was on this bus journey that, on the way to London, there was a mouthy brat further up the bus, a boy probably around my age. He was leaning over the back of his seat, retelling a movie he saw recently about a skydiver whose parachute had failed. People found him standing upright in a field, held upright by his bones having split through his feet and shoved like stakes into the ground.

I also believe it was on this trip that we were waiting at Victoria Bus Station in the evening and I bravely went off for a walk around the outside of the building and coming towards me in the opposite direction was the spitting image of Sid Vicious, in a grey woollen poncho. I guess many punks at the time copied his image and I’m not certain if I was aware that he had already died.

16th April 1979
Playing cards with Paul til 2:30am

7th Mar 2022 – Paul had lodged in our house in Whitehaven for as long as I can remember. He probably lived there right up until mum sold it a few years later. It was a four-bedroom, three-storey, end-of-terrace house with a garden. Maybe I mentioned it already. 20 Hugh Street, Bransty. I asked mum how much she sold it for and I couldn’t believe it was only 13,000 pounds! The north of England was definitely in a different freaking financial hemisphere compared with the south.

Anyway, Paul (and George, a canny Scot) entertained me despite our age difference, he was probably around his early to mid-twenties at this time. Our card game of choice was Hunt The Cunt, more commonly known as something like Chase The Queen, I forget now because we always just called it by its nastier name.

This was the hill my mum had to drag me up a couple times a week when she went shopping in town where the only supermarket was.
The typical back alley of British terraced houses where kids could and would get up to as much mischief as possible. It was quite daring to go into allies where we didn’t live or know anyone. This particular alley was where I first tried and failed to ride a pushbike that was far too big for me.
20 Hugh Street as it is now (2022). They’ve got a new door and have walled off the garden. The path also looks like it has been tarmacked whereas in my time it was just dirt and perfect for games of marbles. And gone is the old traditional green lamp post that used to have arms near the top. Was it just to stop kids from throwing tyres over it? Cos it didn’t work!

17th April 1979
Quite good day!

7th Mar 2022 – I had lost pretty much all traces of my northern accent by now but it was a kind of comforting sound to me, like a return to home, to something far away but familiar. I think these days were quite good because there was no school and I probably badgered my mum into generously buying things that I wanted.

18th April 1979
Quite good day again!

19th April 1979
1. Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
2. Racey – Some Girls
3. Squeeze – Cool for Cats
4. Jacksons – Shake Your Body
5. Milk and Honey – Hallelujah

7th Mar 2022 – The Squeeze song is classic, they had some great singles, I should probably check out their albums. I dig the Jacksons early stuff these days too. Not into any Michael Jackson though. Ever.

20th April 1979
Hi! Mum
Gave mum a tape measure
2p

7th Mar 2022 – Mum’s birthday and no doubt she had to give me the money to buy her her own present! She probably had to go and buy it too! Well, at least she got what she wanted

21st April 1979
2
Bolton 2-3 Ipswich
2p 2p

7th Mar 2022 – 2 – more long-forgotten secret codes.

Elvis is dead – 16th August 1977

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

30th Aug 2025 – I was sitting at the dining table in a room that served as my mother’s workspace when it wasn’t occupied by our dining lodgers and me. I spent plenty of time here as my mum worked at her knitting machine.

But on this day, early evening, maybe post-dinner, Paul, our longest serving lodger, ran in from the living room, where our old dial TV/radio was ensconced, proclaiming that “Elvis is dead!” They said he died on the toilet of a heart attack. I sure didn’t want to die on the toilet.

Elvis was in the zeitgeist, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. I had probably seen his movies on TV at some point, but at age 9, I wasn’t yet aware of the sexual revolution that surrounded ‘rock ‘n’ roll’.

The dining room was, however, where I, aged 6, and a similarly aged girl from ‘down the street’, played doctors and nurses, showing each other our private parts. And I specifically recall asking my mum if it was ok for us to show each other our bottoms too. If only our innocence remained.

By this time, mum and I were living with my grandparents in Dorset and hadn’t sold our three-floor end terrace house in Whitehaven, Cumbria. This was probably our first visit back since moving. By the time of my next return, one or two years later, I had discovered Sid Vicious, the Sex Pistols and was processing the anti-‘rock ‘n’ roll’ of punk and Elvis was a sworn enemy, a faker and a part of everything that should be destroyed.

I was still enjoying Elvis’s final single release, ‘Way Down’, at this point though. The song suddenly found itself scaling the charts, showing just how sellable a celebrity death could be.