This is the personal blog of greenygrey

Just created a bit of poem from my visit to Leeds' Elland Road ground last week and submitted it to the football poets site, and it's below.

Zen Snakes and Emerald Lakes

After ascending one hundred grey steps
I arrived at the summit of Mount Upper East
and walked out into bright sunshine
illuminating the emerald lake below.

Memories of glowing red sunsets returned
And glorious victories won on cold dark evenings
that brought us hope of better things to come
only for them to fade away as the colours did.

Multicoloured trains passed through
houses and trees in the distance.
Looking like a snake passing through
stones and plants in a zen garden.

People walked dogs through parks
looking like Lowry's Matchstalk men
and their criss-crossing had worn an x
in the ground like some landing zone

For birds flew overhead, looking
like dragonflies in summer.
But it was autumn now, and the last amber and gold
would soon make way for the winter wonderland.

Also, a year after I proposed the word brangle for when your brain's in a tangle, I read this report which suggests brain's slowing down in old age is due to tangling. Link:
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081117_aged-brains.htm

Have a great weekend!

For all those who were into rock in the 80s, or are now, the new Guns n' Roses album is streaming in its entirety on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses

It's out on Monday in the UK, so like writing, I guess music is having to show itself before release these days in our www world.

It's got a lot of slow and thoughtful tracks, as well as innovative rocky ones, so a bit for everybody.

I took the swans and sunset on the Aire photos at Kirkstall Abbey, and was also treated to a wonderful light show after sunset. There were clouds on the horizon above the sunset, and then more above that after a clear gap, creating a kind of dome or arch effect.

Then the sky under the higher cloud turned translucent sea-green, turquoise, sky-blue and pink. After it faded away, the sky started to redden, and there was a conventional sunset which filled half the sky.

I think I saw the translucent colours before, but was half asleep on a train, and wasn't sure if I was seeing things. This second time suggested it was happening, so I asked on Yahoo answers, and got a couple of ideas:

1. It might have been Noctilucent clouds. They are the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 kilometers (47 to 53 mi). They are normally too faint to be seen, and are visible only when illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the atmosphere are in the Earth's shadow.

2. Diffraction. This is similar to the effect light has when passed through a prism. The light is split into it's constituent components (wavelengths), and depending on your viewing angle, you will see different colors.

Have any of you seen this, or know what it is. Cheers.

I went to the local derby between Leeds v Huddersfield on Saturday. We lost to an injury time goal, so it was a bit disastrous football wise, but I was sitting high in the Upper East Stand, which isn't open much these days. I remembered there were great views of sunsets there during the 3pm winter games, but this game was a 12.15 kick off, so too early for that.

But I did get to appreciate the view, with distant multicoloured trains passing through the mixture of concrete, fields and trees evoking the image of a snake passing through a zen garden.

The Elland Road pitch looked like an emerald amongst the jade fields outside, and I thought it must have been imported from the finest Dales fields.

I'm blogging the day in more detail and three parts on my blog at www.greenygrey.co.uk/blog so hopefully you'll join me there.

I've got a couple of photos from Kirkstall Abbey after the game on the BBC Leeds website at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/image_galleries/gallery_weather_november_2008_gallery.shtml?1

Beautiful sunny day here today by the way, and weather was good over the weekend.

It’s Saturday, an article’s just been published and my booklocker ebook account is up and running so life's pretty good for the writer in me.

My Dolomites Great War travel history article is at: http://www.travelthruhistory.com/html/exotic14.html and I hope you enjoy it. It took a bit of time and work!

My Guns n' Roses Worker Traveller booklocker ebook is at: http://search.booklocker.com/search-bl.cgi?q=marc+latham&t=&SEARCH=Search and there’s some of it on display to read. Please remember, it was from my youth!

Have a great weekend!

Hi all, hope you're having a nice November, and are keeping out of the wind and rain.

Been focusing on my ebook recently, with Booklocker agreeing to publish it the main news. I just sent it to them on the off chance from the Writers and Artists Yearbook, and was surprised to read they only accepted 10% of submissions in their acceptance email. So that should be getting off the ground this week, and I only have to send details for my page.

Ruth (Wynn) has also accepted an article I sent her a while ago on World War One (Great War) battles in the Dolomites, and that should be published in the next week.

I've also been publishing regularly at Suite 101, and am on course to fill their 10 articles in 3 months minimum. I'm also blogging regularly of course.

So some promising news as the year ends, and trying to keep my work going until the holidays. Cheers.