Warm umber glow.
A solitary presence
amid the luminous
forest of fir.

Proud and perfect.
smooth bark climbs
for cloudy skies.
Untroubled, reaching.

Seedlings fly far
to Infertile ground.
Embraced maverick
shoots break free.

Father to a million
beautiful inspirations.
Small beginnings
branch and grow.

Unknowing host to
growing acreages.
Father to a few,
a revolution to the many.

© Si Homfray 2010

Written at the New Dungeon Ghyll, Langdale, The Lake District 30th October 2010.

Blog entry.

Feb 88 – Feb 93

Principle role:

Founder/Managing Director.

Established and actively ran The Futon Workshop as the leading futon sofa bed company in the North of England, taking a one man craft business to a company employing 23 staff enjoying 38% market share of all national sales. Ultimately manufacturing for our own retail premises in three cities and supplying the trade UK wide.

Skills:

Principle disciplines: Marketing: Copious and original marketing material production through in – house studio and equipment including personal production of all brochure material, photography, flyers, newsletters, advertisements and packaging.
Direct Marketing: Mail order and associated fully computerised data base market research that gave The Futon Workshop the leading edge.
Public relations: Extensive proactive public relations exercise operation gaining full regional and national TV coverage in addition to regular press coverage. Competitions and charity work included pushing a sofa bed from Newcastle to Sheffield for Comic Relief, flying a sofa off Mt Blanc, driving a sofa bed through the Peak District and even floating a sofa bed on Ullswater in The Lake District.
Furniture design: Personally designed and developed a comprehensive range of new and original sofa beds, market leading designs that won several awards for enterprise. Other disciplines included furniture retail, wholesale and manufacture. Production management. Staff management, team culture development, morale and motivation. Financial control.
 

Dalai Lama: The art of hapiness - a handbook for living

Anita Roddick: The Body Shop Book - Macdonald, 1985

Yvon Chouinard: Let my people go surfing: The education of a reluctant business man

High Altitude Leadership: Chris Warner & Don Schmincke

Rosie Swale Pope: Just a little run around the world: 5 years, 3 packs of wolves and 53 pairs of shoes

The Long Walk: Slavomir Rawicz: The true story of a trek to freedom

Ellen Macarthur: Taking on the world

Lance Armstrong: It's not about the bike

Roger McGough: Pie in the Sky

The Mersey Sound: Adrian Henry, Roger McGough and Brian Patten

Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now

Richard Long: Walking the line

George Orwell: 1984

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea

Herman Hesse: Steppenwolf

Earth Pilgrim: Satish Kumar

Favorite films:

Beautiful Life

Cinema Paradiso

Il Postino

Malena

Tie me up, Tie me down

Machuca

Che Part One

Les Amants du Pont Neuf

Vodka Lemon

Lovers of the Arctic Circle

The story of the Weeping Camel

City of God

Motorcycle Diaries

Harold and Maude

Invention of lying

Gladiator

The Big Blue

Belle and Sebastien

Woman on top

Amelie 

Avatar

Lord of the Rings: Trilogy on BlueRay

Long Way Round

Eddie Izzard: Boxed set

Black Books: Series 1-3

Billy Connolly: Everything

Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers and Tides

Michael Palin: Himalaya

Jacques Cousteau

Yosemite: BlueRay DVD

Wild China: BlueRay DVD

Shackleton

Baraka

Chronos

Kowanisqaatsi

David Attenborough: Boxed set

Time spent in the mountains, wherever it is, allows him to 'earth' to reset the personal balance and reach those places described as higher conciousness and 'at one', contented places where ideals can be lived, philosophising on the finer things in life and fulfilling some dreams. It also creates space for great clarity of thought and time for blooming great ideas to blossom, but that might just be because there is no readily available alcohol.

Loaded up with just enough diving equipment, two cameras and our emergency equipment 'just in case', we drive off through Dahab 2010, an emerging Mecca for Red sea diving in our JEEP Just Enough Essential Parts.

Goats blanket themselves across the road, potholes crunch already destroyed suspension on the side road and car horns resound all around as we drive across the sea of 'Desert wind' strewn plastic bottles, bags and the goat's staple diet of cardboard boxes. An occasional camel blocks one lane of the 60 degree Tarmacadum and casually chews as we drive around it, oblivious to all, aware of everything.

The road takes us though the Dahab suburbs of increasingly Bedhouin existences, mind numbing heat and increasingly stunning coastline of turquoise and sand. The hotels and dive centres dwindle as we travel through Sinai desert to the heavily manned checkpoints and onto our destination - The Canyon.

The Canyon is one of the most beautiful dive sites in the world and as such attracts a constant stream of world tourists. A lot of divers. So many divers, but not so many American or Israeli!
The procession constantly streams into the water in buddy pairs, the whole debacle only missing one tall man with a long white beard and a huge wooden boat - after all this is the Red Sea.

Russian Divers, are the majority this morning, with their big metal sticks and gloves so they can handle, poke and touch things. Things that are meant to be left untouched by man and left untouched as dictated by local law.

Such beautiful things reveal themselves as we float at a few metres over and around the small coral ridges to see strange streams of diver's bubbles rising from the apparent sea bed. We glide through the curtain of bubbles and descend deeply into a canyon passage choked with varying degrees of incompetent tourists, flapping and floundering, gliding and hovering in unison in the narrow passage that makes up this underwater nirvana. At 30m we leave the masses behind into a silent wonder, the fish enquire as for the first divers, why we are there. We, however, need no explanation and revel in the joy of it all.
Climbing out of the depths and resurfacing at a mere 10 metres we are greeted by spectrums of colour and entire reference book listings of fish.

Our photographic expedition, one of the slowest of all time, drifts at a sea slug's pace... Not much goes unmissed, the baby octopus that carefully hid himself from the Russian probes sneaks a view and our gentle glide encourages all manner of curious fish to come look see who see sensitive tourists are... Every colour imaginable reveals itself as do the baby clams, urchins and bottom dwelling camouflaged creatures of the sand. It's a labyrinth of intricate detail and ecosystem complexity the creation of which leaves us in awe and uncertain as to our God and just how all this came to be.

Trance like, breathing calmly, slowly and in rhythm with the gentle current we emerge to the hectic hurly burly of the global visitors, transient and confused.

The gulf that separates us, the differences between those in tune with their world and those who merely see it as a list of rushed snapshots was all here to see today - at the Canyon in the Gulf.

Sunset at the Islands, Dahab, Egypt.

The BMW S1000RR is a new generation of high tech, superbikes. Unbelievable power, control and handling.

For somebody whose idea of paradise is an English Flower meadow and a decent camera, racing motorcyles has always been a contradiction and felt a little strange. That is until you are are sat on them with the keys turned to the on position. The engine fires up and then you are an...

Adrenalin Junkie

This bike is worthy of a full write up...

It's not that the Motorcycle shop doesn't trust me - it's not that I am dangerous or irresponsible but after twenty years of borrowing motorbikes for a ride - I have a somewhat blemished reputation. It's not surprising when you consider that I have either crashed, damaged or worse - had them stolen with a faultless regularity ever since the eighties.

So getting hold of an S1000RR was a little bit more of a challenge. The word NO was only as regular as the response as uncontrollable laughter from Shaun when I kept asking for a go. So imagine the excitement when on a hot Summers afternoon Dave and Ian said yes.

Not a disappointment

Most of what happened on the loan should be kept quiet as it was either illegal or unbelievable.

It's probably wisest to merely state that this bike is quicker than is legal in this country and that 165mph on a country lane is jolly easy to achieve in 'race-mode'. [allegedly].

Test riding the fastest bike in the world or any other fast bike is a buzz. Most times it is pretty scary when you aren't used to regularly racing at speed or doing regular track time - but this bike wasn't scary it was just quick - very very quick and very very predictable, manageable and exciting to ride.

It was a technological masterpiece - electronic controls for everything, slip clutches, electronic gear changes and a wizard assortment of everything found on the world's Grand Prix circuits. That is because it is a World Superbike on the road - race ready !

Thanks Rainbow - I want one - but the flower meadow's are calling this month, so maybe next?