Dean's Blog

Once we walked under skies of blue

A time where love seemed pure and true

Deceit I could not see buried in your eyes

The truth masqueraded within your lies

One year on you still laugh at me

You only view what you want to see

A drifting man cast away to drown

Your wicked smirk thy show no frown

But I found land and built myself to be strong

The feeling of revenge cannot be wrong

Blue skies we shared now a charcoal black

Reap the whirlwind feel my attack

Your only as strong as the wind you blow

I felt its harshness yet I did not go

So feel the pain as the lightning hits

I aim to shatter your heart into broken bits

Some say its cruel but my revenge has just begun

May my darken storm engulf your sun

What can you say about Paul Newman that has not already been said over the past few days? Amongst the stories of celebrities falling out of taxis drunk, or flashing their bits to the press it seems that the defenition of the words 'icon' or 'legend' have all but been lost yet Paul Newman was much more than this.

The iconic actor starred in some 60 films in a career that spanned five decades.

He was nominated for an Academy Award 10 times - but it took him 33 years to win one, picking up the best actor trophy for The Color Of Money in 1987.

In May 2007, Newman said he was giving up acting because he could no longer perform to the best of his ability.

"I'm not able to work any more... at the level that I would want to," he told US broadcaster ABC.

"You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention.

"So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me."

Earlier this year, he pulled out of directing a stage production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in Connecticut because of unspecified health problems.

Film star George Clooney said: "He set the bar too high for the rest of us. Not just actors, but all of us."

Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey added: "Paul Newman was a great, humble giant.

Although his handsome looks and piercing blue eyes made him an ideal romantic lead, Newman often played rebels, tough guys and losers.

"I was always a character actor," he once said. "I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

His movies included Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, The Sting and Hud.

Along the way, he worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood - including Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall and Tom Hanks.

He also appeared with his wife, Joanne Woodward, in several films including Long Hot Summer and Paris Blues. The star later directed his wife in movies such as Rachel, Rachel and The Glass Menagerie.

But his most famous screen partner was undoubtedly Robert Redford, his sidekick in both Butch Cassidy and The Sting.

In addition to his Academy Award for best actor, he was given an honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft".

In 1994, he picked up a third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his charitable work.

His philanthropic efforts included the establishment of summer camps for children who suffered from life-threatening illnesses.

He also donated profits from his Newman's Own food range to a number of charitable organisations.

Newman's last film role was as the voice of Doc Hudson, one of the most famous racing cars in history, in the Pixar animation Cars.

It was perhaps a fitting epitaph for the actor, who had a lifelong fascination with the sport - and put his film career on hold in the 1970s to become a professional racing driver.

He is survived by his wife, five children, two grandsons and his older brother Arthur.

RIP Paul Newman, the last of the living legends.

So here I am at the end of my three week journey of self discovery. A journey that began when I departed the shores of London to travel to Brazil via America. I have been to and seen some wonderful places, I have also exhausted every emotion a person can. As I read about the sad death of Paul Newman I am immediately transported back into reality. The heat from my expensive and rather distasteful latte brings me crashing down to Earth from the heights of happiness that I experienced this past few weeks.

When I say I was not happy in my private life that would have been an understatement. Week after week I began feeling lower, worse than ever before, a lack of self esteem and forgetting just everything that had ever happened in my life, I was concentrating on the here and now.

I had to go to a place where I had never been before, a place to where I knew nobody, a place where my footseps were new and fresh. That place was South Brazil, there were many reasons I went there, friends reccomendations, tales from an old housemate and a desire to see zest in life.

Through the people that I met, and I will never forget any of them, to the bars I drank in and the beaches I pondering lifes mysteries on I finally came to a realisation that the past is something that we have to learn from and also put to rest. The future is what will shape our destiny, the past is something that we not only learn from but it makes us who we are.

Becoming wrapped up in a time where I was not myself, a time where beating up ones self over things that had gone wrong was the fundamental mistake.

Not only did I learn in Brazil who I was and where I came from I once again found the notion that everything happens for a reason. I left the shores I am about to return to a forgotten man, I return a king of my own life.

What is it with people calling you by an incorrect title? Maybe it is just one of those trivial things that bug me and nobody else?

"Excuse me Sir..." - I am not a Sir, that title is bestowed on those who have been knighted by the Queen

"Hey Boss" - No..I am not your boss and you are not my employee

"Alright mate?" - Unless we have been frequented before then let's get to know each other before we are "Mates"

Now lets hark back to the Victorian times when a cheeky youth would say "Excuse me Mister", now that is more like it, Mr is my title so why call me something I am not?!

As I gear myself up to return from Brazil I realise that today is an important day for Pagans. It is Mea'n Fo'mhair or in English the start of the Autumn Equinox. The end of summer and the beginning of the new season.

Each time this day occurs I feel a shift within within me, as we pay respects to The Green Man I feel something that only really occurs once a year, the strength within me grows. It is akin to losing all hope and strength and then feeling an overwhelming return to power, all in one day.

But in these times there is always the interest in Stonehenge that resurfaces. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it fake or real? Please just leave it alone! There is a thin line between respect and obsession. The laws that be have already stripped us of the opportunity to pay respects and get close.

Now I hear that a new archaeological dig has found that carbon-dated the stones to 2300 bc, some 300 years older than originally thought of. Some are questioning that is a place for healing, others say it a burial place of ancestors, some say it is just a place to worship. Great, whatever, argue just LEAVE IT ALONE.

How would others like it if they started digging up and poking around with important religious artefact's? I think that we Pagans are just laughed at at times, the interest is there but the respect never is. Despite the fact that we are one of the oldest beliefs around and still going strong today.

As the Equinox begins, leave us be and let us respect in peace.

Blessed be.

One of my most favourite sportsman and icons retired through injury this week.

Graeme Hick's cricket career came to an abrupt end Wednesday as his final season before retirement was cut short by injury.

The Worcestershire faithful will miss the chance to say one last goodbye to their favourite adopted son after the 42-year-old Zimbabwe-born Hick confirmed he would not appear in the Midlands county's final two matches this season after the recurrence of an elbow injury during a one-day match against Middlesex last weekend

The former England batsman, missing from the team team for the four-day County Championship clash, also against Middlesex, which started on Wednesday, said he would not be fit either for Sunday's Pro40 play-off away to Glamorgan.

"Unfortunately with my elbow not being right, I didn't really enjoy the fielding side of it," Hick told Setanta Sports News. "I don't feel like I did my job properly on Sunday.

"I'm not 100 percent. I made my decision as if it were mid-season and whether or not I felt I would do myself, and the rest of the guys, justice on the field," he added.

"The decision was made without the added emotion of it being my last game."

A prolific performer at county level, Hick's tally of 136 first-class centuries puts him eighth on the all-time list and is unlikely to be exceeded by any current player. Only former England captain Graham Gooch has scored more than Hick's 64,372 runs in all senior cricket.

Born in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), Hick had to serve a seven-year qualification period before making his England debut in 1991, during which time he was repeatedly touted as the saviour of the team.

Had he gone into the side in his early 20s, when expectations were not so high, he might have been treated more kindly by selectors and supporters alike.

Hick, who endured a stop-start 65 Test career which yielded 3,383 runs at a modest average of 31.32 - compared to a first-class figure of 52.23 - with six hundreds, admitted: "If I have anything that I'd like to change, it would to have been more consistent for England and to actually have a period in the side when I wasn't dropped.

"In the end I was in and out of the side every year."

However, something Hick said he wouldn't miss was modern warm-up routines. "They need to be done but they're an absolute bind.

"Damian D'Oliveira and I used to walk out, he'd have a fag, and we'd have a few throw downs, have a few slip catches and walk back in. That was it.

"Nowadays it's all laps and cones."

Hick, who 20 years ago compiled Worcestershire's first-class record score of 405 not out, against Somerset at Taunton, was witheringly branded a "flat-track bully" by former New Zealand coach John Bracewell.

His placid nature led to one of celebrated umpire Dickie Bird's more famous rebukes when the batsman was on the receiving end of a volley of verbal abuse from Merv Hughes.

"What's that nice Mr Hick ever done to you?", a bemused Bird asked the Australia quick.

Perhaps the truth about Hick was that rather than being unfulfilled, his career went as far as his talent and mentality allowed, only the distance wasn't as far as both his supporters and detractors would have liked.

"My kids watched my retirement being announced on the news and my son just said, 'That's my dad!'" Hick told Tuesday's Guardian newspaper. "And he came over and sat next to me and he held me.

"I sat there thinking, 'Of course I would have liked to have scored 30 Test hundreds but I might not be the person I am if I'd done that.' And, looking down at my boy, I just felt very proud and very happy."

Every four years a few days after the conclusion of the Olympic Games the Paralympics begin. These athletes train just as hard and are just as dedicated as able bodied athletes in their chosen events. After the overwhelming success of 'Team GB' at the Olympic Games I am slightly disappointed to see the level of press coverage of our Paralympic team.

I was proud as a Briton with the success of the performance of our team in the Olympics, finishing fourth overall was a fantastic achievement. The amazing performances in the pool, rowing and cycling captured the imagination of the nation for the weeks the Games were on. I also congratulate the Chinese organisers for putting on possibly the greatest games ever seen. Also the headliners of Usain Bolt and of course the amazing eight golds won by Phelps ensured that these games would be remembered for on the track rather than the off the track protests.

Yet I was slighlty miffed to read just a small review of the Paralympic achievements in the paper today. The team, finishing second overall, winning 42 golds to finish second behind China.

Cyclist Darren Kenny takes home four gold medals and a silver, while swimmer Dave Roberts also won four golds, taking him to a career total of 11 Paralympic medals. Lee Pearson won three equestrian golds, and GB's youngest team member, 13-year-old swimmer Eleanor Simmonds, claimed an astonishing two gold medals to become Britain's youngest ever individual champion.  It has been a great success.

I just hope that as we are hosting the event in 2012 we give just as much media exposure to these great athletes as we do our able bodied stars.

I read in the newspapers today that Lehman Brothers have collapsed after filing for Bankruptcy. Whilst it is sad that a 150 year old business has ended I have little sympathy for the one or two people I knew that worked in the offices in London. Having lived in Canary Wharf, the home of Lehman Brothers UK office, from 2002-2007 I was often berated and verbally abused by the two people I rather unfortunately met on several occasions who worked there.

I am not a suit and tie man, I like to dress casually and in Canary Wharf that was akin to being a Scottish fan in the home enclosure at Wembley, isolated, alone and rather unwelcome. The area had a plethora of bars that I would like to meet friends in that travelled from other parts of London but these bars always populated by men in expensive suits with wallets the size of a hippo’s testicle and no matter what time of the day the conversation would always be around work.

Sometimes these ,wanuits’ (Wankers in suits) would look down at you like a piece of shit on their shoe and utter the immortal line “And what do you do?”, when you tell them they would snigger and then would follow with “How much do you earn?”, like what the fuck does it matter?

These people have been in a business for years where money and fat corporate bonuses were the only thing that mattered, they often portrayed themselves as being the most important people in society, interested in assisting those who were financially worse off but in reality they were just using that as an excuse to step up the corporate ladder and status means everything to some.

Some of these people worked for organisations where people’s finances and savings were at stake. People whose money these wanuits were gambling with day after day. Forget the money that these people had set aside for retirement, forget their daily struggle day to day in this financial quagmire we are slowly sinking into but as long as the bonus purchased another Armani suit then all is well ? Time after time reading these CEO’s of companies awarding themselves six figure bonuses when there are so many people hitting the breadline. Maybe its because I come from a working class background, may parents have worked all their lives and still do. I am careful with money, I like to know that all the little luxuries I have in life have been purchased through hard work and sweat.

As I see these people crying into their empty champagne glasses, their cardboard boxes full of their Lehman possessions I have little sympathy. I have lost a job through redundancy and just dusted myself down to find another one, it’s not the end of the world. Now that these wanuits have been knocked off their high horse, maybe just maybe they will understand what it feels like to be a rat in the race we call life.

So today saw the last ever episode of Grange Hill on BBC 1. I must admit that I have not watched the show for a number of years but it was still a VITAL part of my childhood.

The drama has tackled tough issues such as drugs and teenage pregnancy, but was axed after TV bosses said it no longer reflected modern children's lives. I look back with fondness on how we used to copy the antics of Grange Hill in our old school.

The programme's creator, Phil Redmond, said earlier this year that the drama had lost its hard-hitting purpose and that it was "time to hang up its mortar board".

The show's heyday is considered to be the early to mid-1980s, with gritty storylines including Zammo's drug addiction which led the programme to spearhead a "Just Say No" campaign.

But the final series has concentrated on the school's younger pupils.

Thanks for the memories Grange Hill. You will never be forgotten

This week saw the start of a 20 year project, using a particle accelerator, The Large Hydron Collidor (LHC) scientists hope to unravel the secrets of how the universe began.

8,000 scientists from 85 countries want to analyse the particle collision and hopefully recreate how the universe began so they can "Learn from this".

Of course world wide pandemonium began with freaks saying it was the end of the world, which actually made one girl one girl take her own life. And then there were the hackers who were minutes away from taking control over this massive science project that allowed scientists to create the largest amount of man made power since the neutron bomb.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for experiments if it improves the standard of living or can benefit our lives for the better. But this cost over £5 BILLION

What that money could have been spent on? Hospitals, medical research, third world relief, it could have made the lives of hundreds of millions better.

It will probably lead to nothing, it will piss off Catholics and appease Atheists. I just feel its money down the tube.

Sometimes you wonder if we are trapped in our solitary isolation because of who were are. Is it a generic hereditary reason that we are who we are or do we make our own existence?

Sometimes when I was a child I would often feel isolated because I did not belong. Not because of any social status or physical attribute but purely because I just did not feel 'Normal'. I did not want to leave school and settle down in the tiny village that I grew up in. I wanted to expand my horizons as far as possible and seek every corner of the Earth to make myself a better person.

I knew that things would not be the same for me from a very early age, I knew that I would not have children to early, that there was always going to be a creative goal in my life that would be achievable not matter how unrealistic it felt.

Yet even in my 20's I still did not feel that I belonged. I did not want to be part of the group of lads who would go out each night and get pissed trying desperately hard to chat up a girl with half a kebab hanging out of my mouth. If we went to see a movie my friends would be talking about the action scenes whereas I would be thinking "If I were that character would I have used my intellect or emotions differently?", then go off on a tangent thinking about the storyline and how my own imagination could make it better.

I have no time for the here and now, my mind belongs in a time long gone by. A medieval prince trapped in the body of a Primeval time. Life was more primitive back then, more rustic and nomadic but there seems to lie within that period an element of romanticism that has long since left us. We now just live in a social bubble and from that early age I wanted to burst it.

Solitary Isolation maybe what best sums up my life. Yet it takes two to lead the escape.

I am pondering the question "Do romantic guys ever win in love?"

Take a guy who is romantic, kind, honest, caring and loyal. The sort of man who knows his romantic side as well as his male side. A man who is a lover, a protector, a poet and a prince. A man who will put the happiness of the one he loves above his own, making his destiny to ensure her life is happy.

Sure these men exist in romantic stories but is the age of chivalry now dead? Why do women tend to time and time go back to the ones who treat them like shit, ones who physically hurt them, those who just abuse the very things you crave for.

Is it too much to ask to hold someone and night and whisper those immortal three words in there ear? Is it too much to wipe the tears from their eyes as they pour out there most inner emotions to you. I guess so.

The ones you want to be with either just step on you and use you as a shoulder to cry on, or they just seem too far out of reach to know that you are calling their name across the wind.

Resilience is a word that is often mentioned about me. I just don't know how much more resilient one can be.

Last night, as it was not raining, I decided to go for a quiet drink with a friend. It will probably the last time that I get to sit in a beer garden. Enjoying a good conversation with a nice cold beer is something that I savour as one of the small pleasures of life.

As we began talking it was obvious that a rather loud gentleman, who had no idea of volume control, decided to return the banter of his friends with a lot of loud shouting. Not to be outdone in the vocal department Gluteus Maximus (or rather the two large women next to us) seemed to want to win the competition of pubs loudest customer.

As the noise got so much I could hardly hear the person sat no more than a foot away from me I decided to leave. As I made my way home I was thinking deeply about why people just have to be that loud. Are they deaf?, are they insecure yet demand to be heard above everyone else? Either way I just wish that they would tone it down in future.

There is something about Autumn that makes me wonder if there is a distinct possibility that seasons can change the course of someones life. After thumbing through some old diaries the other day two things arose which made me believe this maybe the case.

My last two relationships lasted six and five years. Nothing unusual there I know but the fact that both begun in June and ended on the same day (Aug 31st) made me think that this was just far too coincidental.

The minute Autumn begins (Sep 1st) I feel alive, refreshed and invigorated. It is like the shackles of the past are always removed and I feel so confident, so powerful and alive. This feeling usually lasts until the first signs of winter approach.

I know that I am Pagan and that we do have a sense in the seasons affecting our lives but I have never really thought about it too much until now. Most people here in the UK are always sad to see the end of Summer but in all honesty when is the last time we had anything that actually resembled a stereotypical Summer? 2003 by my reckoning.

The smell of bonfires, the leaves that fall from the trees and cushion our paths as we tread carefully towards the cold. The auburn horizon that lines the fields, the chilly winds and darker evenings.

There is something magical about Autumn, something unique. In an ever changing world where the seasons seem to merge into one wet constant mess it is Autumn that remains the solitary king.