musings on life

I still Think I am anonymous on the web - the only time a friend of mine said "youre on face book" actually he was wrong - but would that I could! On the down side the peopl that owned the land were imprisonned! those were the days... Anyway I am having a good day and I will continue updating my MONROES  page - much of which I cannot verify - but memory iis a weird thing On a seperate note you used to access tags thus http://just-do-it-chris.blog.co.uk/?tag=monroes wheras nowv you can use http://just-do-it-chris.blog.co.uk/tags/monroes/

I have also used the 'wayback' machine to find a new format for my symptoms page - the only drawback with this is that you have to manually scroll to Wk48 Thu 26 Feb, 2009 for todays entry - I am going to persist with this though as it seems to load much faster than the previous one

I have also improved on the joystick by  disableing the mouse buttons (to limit the number of ' Phantom' clicks I get when tired) with the use of some  card rammed under the keys and using AutoHotkeys to transfer the left; right and left double click to F9; F10 and F11 respectively. This seems to be working well and is alot cheaper than an en-abler joystick which comes in at £240 ex vat!.

Monroes Remembered...

1989 - Summer  At this time things were stirring and Dave Griddle and myself were out clubbing doing your clubbing thing and listening to there was this 'new' sound to some of the tunes that people that knew told us was house music. A crowd of people from 'runshaw colledge' came to 'Park Hall' for a bit of a dance on wednesday and the dj (phill meredith) was playing the usual club music of the time ( not reallly my thing - but there were some nice girls (Joanne and Alex; Manj and Narindo you know who you are! :) ) Dave and I heard that there were things called 'convoys' that took you to outdoor parties and we tried in vain to find one... A very personable young lady told Dave "You should go to the Hacienda in Manchester and eventually we went one day. Phil, who after all had a job, spinning club drivle, to do had not really prepared us for what was about to happen. People were being admitted to Fac51 (The Hacienda) and Dave and I were dancing away in our clothes (Me in a suit!!!!)and then , after what seemed like 30 minutes, the lights came on; the music stopped and people started to leave. I thought it must have been a fire alarm and started to head towards the door. Dave checked his watch and we had been in the club for 7 hours! What!??**&&? no really 21;000 - 04:00 REALLY IS 7 HOURS! Well that was it for me and home to Preston to spend most of the following week absolutly shell shocked. It became known, at work, that dave and I were going out to 'Acid House' parties and we fell in with Sophie guinne pig and Mary. Black

1990  We continued goig to 'The Park' and then Andrea Cullin told us that a friend of her's was going to start DJing at ' Monroes Country Club' in Great Harwood. Gilly (Simon Gill-less) had quite a following and on Wednesday nights had arranged with the owner of the club to bring some much needed revenue to the club, bringing in as he did, some 200 or so fans of his music. Dave and I went to see what Andrea was talking about and after a bit of a hunt found the door to a small club and, arriving early, went  for our  first visit early in january 1990. As was my wont, I started helping clear up n the  mornings, became a friend of the owner, and his son Simon. Dave and I went about becoming 'Acid Heads' - although Dave and myself adopted a ' no Drugs' policy. To my knowlege, Dave and myself did not take anything. I know Dave tried ecstacy a couple of times but neither of us needed to regularly  - the music completly 'blew our minds' and we became devoted followers of Gilly  - going to Hebden Bridge Labour lub' and other strange places to fill our ears with trance music and such. Back in 1990 the dance music scean had not fractured as much as it  has today - I was only vaguely aware of 'Trance'; 'Garage'; 'Hard Core' and so on. It as all just 'House' and people who were unaware of  the scene mockingly called out "Aceeeeed" to us in the streets.

We had tried to find 'sundance' and failed and then 'Set End' was closed and 'Monroes' took off. Fontunately for Dave and my self I had got to know Simon Really well as we both were Scuba divers and I was able to get into the club through the hundreds of 'party goers' outside the club - trying to get in.

Random links I have found  
The scene down in london around the time 
 Live the dream
Messages on the net  
Blackburn Parties   
Hardcore Uproar
Leeds scean

This morning started well... Managed to dress without holding my legs - should have gessed the world was snowy - thewriting was on the wall and I had had a good sleep thanks to the falling temperature this has just started and I am going to lose my mind!! Faithless are awesome! - see you in 10 minutes! I am glad, on reflection, my life before MS was so full - I may have under-achieved at most things I did but whatever it was I tried my hardest - be it  playing mind games with myself to working. After all it has given me a wide range of experience that  many used drugs to achieve - and at the end of the day and I cannot definativly prove this, my experiences where mine, not a drugged induced trance!
I guess one big advantage is that it makes switching from one thing to another faster. Take amphetamine sulfate , for example, and your drugged up for hours, wheras I would go to Monroes at 18:00 on Saterday Night and be sailing at Delph by 14::00 the next day.