Recently I have received two pieces of mysterious mail. The first one was a riddle I was tasked to solve with the promise of a second quest which would be harder than the first if I solved the riddle. I was told to reply to my mysterious challenger via Facebook which I did the same day I received the first quest. In my reply, which was a picture of a Banshee, I told my challenger to try harder next time, the riddle was too easy.

A few days later my second quest arrived in the mail. This blog post is the result of that quest. My challenger has requested that I research the existence of the Fairy Folk being brought with the Colonists to the United States and if they were alive and well.

My hope is that my challenger will forgive my disregard for the rules some what and grant me leniency for the information I have found predates the colonists.

I have discovered that many if not all Native American Tribes have their own beliefs in fairies, or as they are known to the different tribes The Little People. I have decided to tell you about the Cherokee Tribe and their Little People.

The Cherokee Tribe were mostly located in the mountain region of the South Alleghenies in Southwestern Virginia, North Georgia, East Tennessee and Northeast Alabama. They believe in three different types of Little People. The Rock People, The Laurals and The Dogwoods. Each group shows different characteristics and each have a different lesson to teach us. Let’s take a look at each one.

• The Rock People: They are known for being malicious, stealing children and wreaking havoc in general. It is said that they dislike their space being invaded the most out of all the Little People.

Their Lesson: They are here to teach us that if you do things to others out of meanness or out of spite it will come back on you. They are here to remind us that we must always respect others beliefs, limits and their boundaries.

• The Laural People: Are friendly and mischievous beings who like to play tricks on Bigger People (namely us!) One of the tricks they enjoy playing is to tangle your fishing line with a tiny stick to make you think you’ve caught a big fish only to discover the trick when you reel in your line. They enjoy making you laugh and keep you young at heart.

Their Lesson: The Laural People teach us not to take the world too seriously. They remind us that we must always have joy and to share that joy with others.

• The Dogwood People: They are good hearted and enjoy taking care of us when they can. Some people have said that The Dogwood People are closely related to the Brownies from Scotland.

Their Lesson: These Little People teach us that if you do something for someone else do it out of the goodness of your heart. Never make others feel obligated to you or do something for your own personal gain.

The lore states that The Little People live in the rock caves on the sides of the Allegheny Mountain Range. They are described as being good looking with hair long enough to almost touch the ground and they are about knee height. The Cherokee describe them as being black, white, or golden like the Cherokee in skin tone. They can speak in the Cherokee native language but they also have their own language.

And finally the lore tells of a warning. If you hear drums in lonely places in the mountains it’s not safe to follow the sound because The Little People dislike being disturbed. If you are foolish enough to follow and discover them they will cast a spell on you and you will become bewildered so that you will lose your way home. If you are lucky enough to find your way home you will spend the rest of your life in a daze. They may also come near your house or your field. If you hear them talking or working in the fields do not go out to find them or watch them work. If you do, you will die.

I have searched high and low looking for stories of The Little People that the Cherokee would have passed down to new generations but sadly due to the forced relocation of the Tribe and the resulting change in their way of life any stories of The Little People have been lost in the mists of time.

Flaybrick is a municipal cemetery in Birkenhead which is now a conservation area owned by Wirral Council. It was planned in the 1840’s for the expanding township of Birkenhead but due to a recession and the subsequent decrease in population the plan was shelved. However a boom in the 1860’s meant that the need for a new cemetery was a priority. A competition was held and was won by Edward Kemp curator of Birkenhead Park.

The site chosen was Flaybrick Hill a prominent location overlooked by Bidston Hill. The site was originally 16.7 acres but was then expanded to 26 acres by the 1890’s. It was officially opened on May 30th 1864 and named Birkenhead Cemetery. The site had three denominational chapels to begin with, but the Roman Catholic chapel was demolished in 1971 and a memorial has been erected in it’s place. The Nonconformists and Church of England chapels were last used in 1971 although they are now in a state of dereliction.

The cemetery contains the graves of 219 Commonwealth Service Personnel of both World Wars.

The cemetery was designated a conservation area in 1990 and a wildlife friendly approach to the management of the grounds is used while maintaining the grounds.

The Friends of Flaybrick help look after the site. They hold regular meetings and illustrated talks along with offering practical work for those who are interested in a more hands on approach.

Cheryl and I will be returning to explore the part of the cemetery we didn’t get a chance to see and we plan to explore other places on the Wirral so look for more adventure posts.

If you like the pictures in this entry you can see the rest on Flickr

Do you like horror? – Buy the book!
Do you like suspense? – Buy the book!
Do you like ghost stories? – Buy the book!
Do you like a bit of gore? – BUY THE BLOODY BOOK!

You get the idea now right? So if you want to know more, you have been warned so don’t blame me if you don’t, keep reading.

Jack Sparks, he’s so rock n roll, you can’t help but want him to be real and to be able to hang out with him. The fact that his ego is bigger than Texas doesn’t hinder him, much. Until he gets the giggles at an exorcism. The Devil and his minions really don’t like being laughed at.

Reading this book was like being on a rollercoaster in the dark. You know in some sense what you’re getting yourself into but at the sametime you have no idea what’s coming. Soon as this book hit my grubby little hands I knew it had to skip the “To Read” wait list (okay pile) and go right to the top. It was all I could do to not start reading it the day it arrived.

The book is full of creepiness, darkness and good old fashioned horror. As a fan of a perfect horror film this book was like heaven in print. The format of the book threw me at first, I hadn’t expected the change in narrative between Jack and his brother. The fact that what I am reading from Jack’s point of view is an unpublished piece of work that has been edited by his brother, with noted areas where facts are missing or wrong, is fantastic! It made me not want to put the book down even more. To me it was a new twist that worked well with the plot of the book.

The twist at the end of the book is pure genius as far as I’m concerned and leads you to not only make your own conclusions, real or the work of a madman, but also makes you wondering if there’s going to be another book. I found myself wanting to clap at the end, the same way you do at the end of an amazing movie or gig. Or like the end of the best scary ride you’ve ever been on and you’re full of adrenalin and that rush, where you shout AGAIN AGAIN and run to the back of the line to ride the ride again.

The fact that there’s a website http://www.jacksparks.co.uk/ just makes it all feel a bit more real. The only disappointment I had was that there was no video. The famous video is missing, which while disappointing is also probably a blessing since no video could match my own twisted, dark imagination.

Three months into the new year and I think I’ve found my top book of the year, so much so I might have to go back and read it again before the year is out.

My first album of adult music, instead of kids records, was a compilation album called Circuit Breaker (K-Tel 1979) but I can’t remember where this one came from. Only thing I can think of is that I saw the album cover, liked it and talked Mom into buying for me. I do remember getting my next album Billy Joel Glass Houses (1980). That one I did talk Mom into buying and I know it was because I liked the cover. Good thing the music was good! Although my taste in music hasn’t always been so good, but everyone has had questionable taste now and then. I don’t apologize for my bad taste in music either. So no guilty secret Artists here.

For my 12th Birthday my best friend Brian gave me Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles and a love affair was born. One that would last until, well, I don’t know I’m not dead yet. That love affair is for another day though, suffice to say I own a lot of memorabilia.

Music was the soundtrack, is the soundtrack, to my life. I know that’s old hat saying that but it’s true. Loving The Beatles lead me to love other music from the 60’s, to the degree that I was fairly well known in school for not listening to the popular music but being a know it all when it came to 60’s tunes. I did finally catch up and catch on to Top 40. But that didn’t happen until I was 16 and grew out of my dork phase.

My love of music now spans 50’s tunes up to todays stuff. I feel better if I have music on at least for a bit every day and my choice of music is dependant on my mood. There are fall back Artists when I don’t know what I’m in the mood for, of course The Beatles are there they are my first love after all. The Divine Comedy are another fall back band, discovered after I moved to the UK 18 years ago, I’ll never get tired of them.

There are songs and albums that evoke such strong feelings in me that they bring me back to a moment in time. Glass Houses takes me back to my living room in my childhood home, winter nights of playing indoors with another best friend, learning all the words to the songs and making up ways to perform them. In fact I still can’t sing all of It’s Still Rock and Roll To Me, I have to stick to ‘My’ part and wait for Wendy to sing hers. Human by The Human League takes me back to my awesome bedroom in the basement, nights of listening to the radio and trying to call in to talk to the local DJ’s. While doing homework but probably writing notes to people instead. Hold Me In Your Arms by Rick Astley actually all of his first two albums remind me of playing Legend of Zelda on my Nintendo while drinking way to much Mountain Dew in frosty beer mugs I kept in the downstairs fridge.

Albums and songs that remind me of my first summer of driving, that possessed car with the black steering wheel that would fry your hands when it was hot out. The freedom that driving gave me, the adventures and yes even the boys. Songs like Patience, Fly High Michelle, Free Fallin’ that take me back to being 18 and being invincible.

Life moved on and so did I. Flash in the pan bands, one hit wonders, my tastes changed. Music got louder and harder. Then I met someone, music again was there creating to the soundtrack of long distance love. Songs like Calico Skies, Dream A Little Dream, new bands appeared like The Lightning Seeds. Music made the distance feel less, and helped connect us. Love bloomed.

The last day of 1997 a new adventure had begun. The day before I got on a plane bound for the UK, a whole new life was opening up, there would be many adventures to be had, music to hear and live music would become a thing with concerts to go to. I got on my first of two flights with my CD player and as many CD’s as I could fit into my carry case. I had planned to listen to them all. I ended up with one on repeat for the whole trip. Cheryl Wheeler Mrs. Pinocci’s Guitar, not my usual kind of music but it had been played a lot in my house and I kind of fell in love with it. It’s an album that for years after moving away from home I couldn’t listen to without crying like my heart would break. It still hurts my heart like no other album has done. Calling up visions of the house I grew up in, sitting in front of the computer talking to friends and someone special while it played upstairs in the kitchen. The death of my Grandmother.

Life changed, bands died, people died. I feel old now having lost a few heros from my youth, music has moved on and mostly this time I haven’t always moved with it. There’s too much plastic in it now for my taste. Give me a band made in a garage any day. But music continues to be my lifeblood, my soundtrack, my muse for writing and creating, my comforter, my light in the darkness.

I gave up blogging for a number of reasons. Not all of which I’ll list here. But I do want to talk about the biggest reason I quit and the biggest issue I have with blogging and social media in general.

The Grammar, punctuation and spelling police. I realize that all three are important don’t get me wrong, but I want to know when it became okay to correct others? We are all guilty of it, we laugh at someone’s spelling, or how they have worded things. While working for the police, I used to type up witness statements. While doing that I wasn’t allowed to change the punctuation in the statement. As such lots of things ended up sounding funny (such as, open the door it’s fucking me, instead of open the door. It’s fucking me.) which left us in fits of laughter. But in changing the punctuation I could have been changing the whole statement to read totally differently and in a way not intended.

So I do realize the importance of grammar, punctuation and spelling. The problem is, I’m Dyslexic and as such I find to and too confusing, I’m some times not sure where to put a comma, an apostrophe or even if I should! Hell I can’t even spell apostrophe without spell check shouting at me. That little red line is currently telling me that blogging is wrong, I’m trusting my memory to tell me that I’ve actually spelled it right. I spent months one year teaching myself the difference between their, there and they’re and I still get it wrong. I get your and you’re wrong unless I’m thinking about what I’m writing. If I’m very tired everything gets messed up, and my friends will notice and tell me to go to bed or ask if I’m okay.

Yet still the online culture these days it is okay to correct people for their mistakes. It makes me not feel like writing or trying to express myself because there’s always going to be one person who thinks they are superior and needs to point out that I’ve said to when I should have said too. Now granted if I was a journalist I’d better know which to use and when. I’d better know how to use an apostrophe and when to use one! That’s slightly more important than a tweet, a Facebook post, a comment, or even a blog post. That one person doesn’t know what issues, if any, someone has. It could be Dyslexia, it could be they have other learning disabilities, they could have brain fog due to Fibromyalgia, ME, chronic migraines, or due to some prescription drug they are taking.

It makes me feel small and stupid when someone corrects me, if my brain worked better I’d use the correct word, if I could I’d spell it right. I want to be able to share my thoughts with people, share my experiences, things I’ve learned and the crafts that I enjoy, yet because I struggle with some aspects of writing I’ve hidden from blogging. I’ve written my thoughts in notebooks, not sharing my thoughts with others in written form because of the culture of correction and perfection. I’ve decided that blogging will show those who are like me or who struggle in some way that you don’t have to be perfect to blog, you don’t have to use the correct to or through to get your point across all you have to do is write. Write the words that are in your heart, express your feelings and if someone wants to comment with a *through or a *too screw them. They clearly have to much time on their hands and not enough life to live.

That makes me laugh every time I hear it, and oh boy is it true! Especially in my house. Mal and I both like stuff. Now the stuff is starting to take over the house, so it’s time to get rid of old stuff and errrr… ummm… get new stuff! Out with the old in with the new, or something like that.

We all like a bit of stuff now and then, and shiny new stuff is sometimes, but not always, better than old stuff.

Saturday I spent most of the day sorting different sorts of cables into bags so Mal can then go through the bags and work out what stuff needs keeping and what stuff he can throw away. At one point, it looked like Tandy (RadioShack) had exploded in the room I was in. Now that I’m done it doesn’t look so bad, now it just looks like some alien life form in the shape of different types of plastic bags has moved in. Cuthulhu emerging from different sizes of plastic bags comes to mind.

I had an idea of some how finding the balance between having stuff and stuff having me. A utopia of sorts, or maybe reaching a state of nirvana where stuff and I can happily co-exist in a fluid but balanced state of bliss. Sort of like owning a cat and not having the cat actually own me. But I think that may only exist in alternative universe and where I live with The Doctor in his TARDIS. Although I’d give filling up the TARDIS with stuff a darn good go.

Reality comes crashing in and I know it’s never going to happen, I’ll always have more stuff than space and the cat will always own me regardless of how hard I try to think of it the other way around. Oh and I doubt that in any reality The Doctor would let me even try to fill the TARDIS full of stuff.

Look at the dust on this thing *blows, coughs* I’m not even sure what I’ve been doing. Poor neglected blog.

So the other day when I said on Twitter I was thinking about rebooting this thing and thought maybe renaming it would be a good idea I got a reply from David Bryher saying:

““Jeff Starbanger, King of Blogs”. You’re totally welcome.”

I’ve never been quite sure why he follows me, I’m one of the dullest people on Twitter ever, but that’s a whole other post.

Another friend James Smith (above sentence also applies here) suggested:

“How about “David Bryher’s Jeff Starbanger, King of Blogs”?”

David agreed that this was a good title, so who am I to argue?  I’ve added the tag line “Tiff Is A Rebel Without A Clue” because well I am. God knows what kind of waffle (edible or readable I don’t know which) I’ll come up with but lets hope it’s something interesting!

Wallasey, UK
Sun
Partly Cloudy
72°F
Precipitation: 0%
Humidity: 84%
Wind: 6 mph

I downloaded the app for my iPhone which was easily found on the App Store and I had no issues with installing or running it. The app itself is wonderfully set out and offers you hints and tips to navigate the choices and settings which is great. You don’t have to be a mind reader to work out what to do yet the hints can be turned off if you are a bit more savvy than some users.

Once you have picked your device and the model you are then asked to design your case. I got a bit confused how to get to the design section but that might just be me. The navigation in this bit was a bit unclear to me but I hold my hand up and say that I’m a bit of a bull in a china shop and don’t fully read instructions, but I got there in the end.

You can connect to other services where your photos are stored such as Facebook, Flickr and Instagram which is very cool! You can also use photos right off your phone which is also great. I connected to flickr just to try it out and it was really easy to connect and chose photo from there. You can also add text if you like. Ordering was a breeze and my new case is awesome! In the end I chose a photo from my phone.

I had a quick nose at the website as well just to compare features and such. The only difference I can find between the website and the app is that the website offers more choices of design. While the app offers you one photo layout the website offers multiple photos in 4 different layouts as well as template and ‘freestyle’. They also offer a DIY Fan Art selection if you’re after that type of thing. So that’s the only downside to the app that I could find, not as much choice when it comes to designing your case. But really that’s the only downside.

Price wise, it’s well worth the money. The case is well built, strong and the photo looks really great.

I really do love my new case and as soon as I get my new iPhone I’ll be getting a new case from Ideal as well. The big draw for me using Ideal Cases again is that it’s a truly individual product. No one else will have a case like mine and for me and that’s something I find really important and well going back for a second one.

When I was 25 I discovered The Doors. The Doors were a lot darker than a lot of what I had been listening to before then. Their sound was magic.

Their sound is still magic.

Being 25 was a weird age for me. I felt out of phase with everyone else and the rest of the world. Adrift in my own life. A rebel without a clue.

The Doors music and Jim’s voice touched something in me. It awakened my inner hippy. It spoke to me in a way that no other music had ever done, I felt connected to it. To something bigger than myself. I’m sure that sounds really weird.

I was sad to learn yesterday of the passing of Ray Manzarek who played keyboards and founded the band with Jim Morrison back in 1965. He was 74 years old.

John Densmore (the drummer) has said about Ray: “There was no keyboard player on the planet more appropriate to support Jim Morrison’s words. Ray, I felt totally in sync with you musically. It was like we were of one mind, holding down the foundation for Robby and Jim to float on top of. I will miss my musical brother.”

The music industry and fans have lost another music icon to the Gig in the Sky.

“The movie will begin in 5 moments”
The mindless Voice announced
“All those unseated, will await The next show”
We filed slowly, languidly into the hall.

The auditorium was vast, & silent.
As we seated & were darkened
The Voice continued:
“The program for this evening is not new.You have seen this entertainment thru & thru.

You’ve seen your birth, your life & death; you might recall all of the rest
– (did you have a good world when you died?) – enough to base a movie on?”

– Jim Morrison