You can see more about my recent crash by clicking HERE ..HERE and HERE

Or you can click these links below.. If the links aren't working come back in a bit as the servers are being refreshed..

http://www.ourmaninside.com/blog/files/84acdca4295a8c386c63fbcf7954a1c2-77.php

http://www.ourmaninside.com/blog/files/0188b4e27e4482e04cf38d5effcd1afa-78.php

http://www.ourmaninside.com/blog/files/dbf66fea33e89f3defea42ce486c88e5-79.php

Thanks again to Summersault Communications

Desperate times call for desperate measures and whilst thinking about how I can regain my freedom and leave the village I remembered a little Vespa wannabe I had hidden under a pile of junk in the garage.

I am not normally a winter rider, I don't have the electrically heated kit that is normally required to survive our extreme temperatures. I don't like falling off on the ice either.. especially after the Landy incident.

Still, i do have a fat no claims bonus on a motorbike having never claimed and the little 125cc LML Star Delux does do the length of the country on a cup of fuel.. so why not. If it weren't for the ice this week I would have about 9 years no claimes on a car too.

I can insure tax and mot the bike for the same price as a set of Land Rover seat covers. So I have. And for the moment I have limited freedom and the means to get out of the village and at least into the nearest two towns without resulting to our sporadic and expensive public transport.

I am still going to need a car for those long distance kit lugging journeys but having a burn on the little bike today has made me yearn for another 'practical' bike that I can use for work.



I would also like to add a big thank You to the kind folks that have donated to the Land Rover fund. I can't tell you how cheeky i feel having this on my site. It wasn't my initial idea and I was asked from more than one person to set it up. I also won't be a hypocrite and say i don't appreciate the idea.. I do.

Insurance companies are notorious at being difficult and mine is no exception. After over 14 phone calls i have found the right person to talk to, only then to be told my claim has had to be re-started due to an internal error. It will be a while before I see this resolved and in the meantime I really need to be mobile. At the very least so that I can work.

You never know, Land Rover may still get wind of my appreciation and sponsor me to produce more content. :)

Liala Payne was also the Mother of my Brother Daniel and the Daughter of my Italian Grandmother, Ofelia.

I guess I am writing it down to clear my head. Perhaps it will be cathartic. Maybe I am finding any opportunity to distract myself.

At 2:20am as we lay exhausted in our beds after many many bedside hours, she was breathing out her last breath.

She lay in a hospital in the center of England. She did not die alone. By her side, Nigel, her partner of 12 years who had shown a superhuman strength in staying with her continuously over the last week.

Although suffering many different ailments it was pneumonia that was taking her away from us. The first hint i had got that she was not well was almost two months ago on the morning of her 57th birthday. I had arrived with presents and a card and could see she was not well.

She never complained and avoided doctors when she could. As a result, a bruise she suffered in a fall had gotten infected and started to spread inside her chest. The doctor we called didn't see it and when we finally persuaded her to go into hospital it had already taken hold.

It grew swiftly and silently until only the most powerful of antibiotics could slow it down. By this time it was too late.

There were many goodbyes. But as each doctor gave us a different prognosis, there were days where we still thought she would pull through. On Christmas Eve we kept to European tradition and she opened her presents in a public ward.

At 1am Christmas morning my first gift was a call from the hospital informing me of an imminent procedure that was about to take place that she may not survive through. Later that day she was moved into a room so she could 'have more privacy'. For me that was the point I knew, but did not want to believe.

The day before yesterday we were told in great detail that she would not last the night. She did.

She was unconscious for most of the following day and every moment a breath passed we were certain it was her last. Both me and my Brother both found the counting of breaths unbearable. Waiting for a moment we never wanted to arrive. From dread to fear and back again, all the time our hearts pounding, aching and on the verge of beating right out of our chests.

We needed sleep and left our sleeping mother lifting and falling behind her oxygen mask.

We got to mine and the phone rang saying that my Mother had opened her eyes. The hour drive back was the worst drive of my life. We did not know what to think.

I am so very glad we got there when we did. My mother had made one of those miraculous and albeit brief recoveries you hear about and we managed more goodbyes and words which had to be said. We had been given another chance to tell her how much we loved her and through movements and hand clasps, She too got the chance to communicate. It was a last momentary reprieve from the edge of death.

Exhausted and deeply saddened by the final realisation we were saying goodbye for the very last time, we choose our words carefully. We gazed into her eyes and she gazed back until this last miraculous bout of awareness seemed to flutter and wane. This was the point me and Daniel decided she was waiting for us to leave so she could let go.

I have always thought mourning to be the selfish act of someone who could not let go. Someone who found it hard dealing with loss and bereavement. I am thinking now it is more natural than that. An inbuilt mechanism to stop your heart from exploding with grief and pain.

I am mourning now and I imagine a part of me always will. It will be a smaller part than the one that remembers her love and cherishes the memory of every moment spent in her company.

She's my Mum. I owe her my life. I hope I made her proud. I hope I earn her gift.. my life.


(There is a small site now up at www.Liala.co.uk)

NOTES ON THE BLOG In collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery and hosted at openDemocracy.net (http://thedemocraticimage.opendemocracy.net), The Democratic Image blog launched on 11 April and posed the following question: Time magazine has voted you `The Person of the Year’ for `seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game’. As a `pro’, what is your take on the democratisation of art and media in the digital age? First to respond was Christian Payne, the blogger and podcaster behind OurManInside.com, who thanked Time `for the recognition’ and the `corporate media [...] for making me switch off, for making me sick at heart, for making me angry’. Thanks to them, he turned to his computer `to get a bearing on some kind of meaningful truth’. For Payne, the Internet revolution counters the mediation of Big Media, allowing `diversity’ and `a deeper, wider, discourse’ that has enabled him, in his words, to `make up my own mind’. Switched on again, Payne became a blogger, primarily of images. More than that, the medium inspired him to self-finance a journey to Northern Iraq in 2006, video-podcasting a photo-documentary about the Kurdish Peshmerger warriors under the title of `Those Who Face Death’.Payne is very clear of the political importance for image makers like him of increasingly accessible new media, which in his view `are reviving our dwindling hopes for genuine freedoms’. But he is equally clear that the only alternative to corporate mediation for the new `pros’ striving for these freedoms is an alliance with other bloggers, podcasters, and other internet users, in which new work can be mutually financed and supportively criticised online. This raises the issues of the blurring between image makers and audiences, and of how cooperative might the Internet be. What structures might enable real collaboration beyond the much celebrated interactivity touted by the corporations behind the Internet? And to what extent are corporate interests foreclosing the emergence and maintenance of truly democratic internet use that might conflict with their values?

It wasn't even a a drag and drop affair, just a few clicks.. Where was all the messy editing.. where was the faffing about with cuts, timelines, titles and syncing?

The future is scary... Scary but very convenient.

p.s. The hairy guy with the camera at the start is not me.. It's 'Badly Drawn Boy' I am sat with Noel Gallagher on the last slide.

Phil Campbell - Nick Butler - Jason Jarrett - Craig Marston - Rupert Howe

You would think that going to an 'in the flesh' social gathering would take a bit of the magic away from peoples content.. You get to see the reality behind the avatars, the hidden truths behind the great content and perhaps this can be slightly disappointing..

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.