For the first time in eight years, I appear to have gained a vehicle that does not depend on people-power in order to propel it. This, of course, may depend on your definition of 'people-power'. People almost certainly designed the engine, the drive shaft and all the other bits that make the wee beastie go, and it was almost certainly was not discovered roaming free on the plains of Birmingham before being broken to the steering column.
Yes, it's true, after being reliant on public transport for almost as long as I have lived in Birmingham, I now own a device that will allow me to leave it easier. Getting home from the garage today, AND going the long way round via the motorway, took around 30 minutes. Last Sunday, via two buses, it took over an hour and a half (the shorter distance is just over seven miles).

Of course, I now have to remember that I have said vehicle, and actually use it. My plans? Naturally, I aim to take the environment destroyer out to nice environments that I can't access by bus very easily. Early morning deer watching may soon be a thing. Birds at sunrise, forests, trees. Even the elusive robin may soon be mine. Though I doubt it. And I'll also hopefully be able to get to all those events that are three hours or more by public transport, and only 45 mins in the car. Be careful what you invite me to - as I may actually be able to get there!
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Lock up your vehicles, the Dread Cookemobile is coming... (mwah ha ha ha...)

I have my own personal horsemen. They are harbingers of doom - of my private apocalypse

• Famine rides in as the last of the xmas rations is nommed. I may have to cook. Shield yourselves.
• Pestilence follows soon behind. Yes, that's right, snot funny at all - the lurgy is returned and this time it means business.
• War is next as I do battle with several centuries worth of cardboard boxes 'stored' in the garage. Centuries, weeks, they are very similar timescales. Which brings me on to my last horseman:
• Death of time... someone has set the dogs on time. Someone has set it running faster, so fast it can never be stopped. The corpses of dead, desiccated hours litter its path. Seconds scream as they die minutely. Or secondly. Time is gone. Mourn its loss. Even list making cannot save you...

The harbingers of doom. They are here. Flee, you fools.

Or at the very least, make another list.

See you next time! *checks list*

Last week I wrote of my quest for the elusive robin (not the superhero sidekick) and for dog's-eye video footage of running through trees, all in aid of making some videos for LM Cooke Music. This, of course, was in part because I will be providing two musical tracks for the forthcoming charity compilation, Raising Steam 3, in aid of New Futures Nepal. There'll be news about the release date for that compilation very soon, but in the meantime, you can find out more about it and about the two previous volumes through the Raising Steam facebook page.

I plan to make a video of one of the tracks to coincide with the release of the compilation, and am aiming to make a second video for another track at the same time. I'm still on the look out for footage of robins and the afore-mentioned dog's-eye view, so please send me any such footage you'd be willing to share. But we have also begun filming the other bits.

A few weeks ago, I made a post detailing my search for the elusive robin. Well, friends, I find myself still seriously short of a robin or two. Occasionally I have spotted one. As soon as I level a camera, it flits off. Gits.

Can you help? Are you aquainted with any robins who sit still long enough to be videoed? 'Cause a starving artist needs your support...  

That's right, this is in all in aid of LM Cooke music, which is of course one of the muscial arms of my endeavours (other musical bodyparts are available). LM Cooke music may have been quiet, but has not been idle, oh dear no. There are new tracks in the bag (aka the hard drive). There is a new studio set-up. And excitingly, there are two tracks that will soon be available on a new charity anthology album, due out in February!

​Yes, I know, none of that explains the (lack of) robin. I'm getting to that now. All this activity means that it's about time that LM Cooke music expanded to delight your visual capacities as well as your aural ones. This does not mean I will eat lots of cake and photograph the remnants, oh dear no. It means that it is time for an assualt on the Tube of You and other visual media.

So, I now have two songs I wish to make videos for - and here's where I'm hoping you can help.

• Song one is called The North wind - you know the nursey rhyme! For this song, I need video footage of robins. Cold robins, if at all possible, shivering on bare branches. The snowier the better, but hey, I'll take any robins I can get at this stage. Ideally, such footage should be reasonably close up, and is better in unmanicured gardens if at a possible.
• Song two, Yellow Eyes, is less robin-y, and probably more tricky to get footage for. I'm after dog-cam footage, through trees and in the woods, should any of you own a dog who has his own camera and takes it for walks, etc. This is for one of the songs going onto the charity collection, so it would be great to be able to promote it visually as well.

Can you help - using your camera, your phone, whatever you have to hand. Are you willing to part with your footage for a thank you in the video credits (and I can probably stretch to an exclusive copy of said songs...)? If so, then get in touch - and thank you!

A happy new year to all my readers! Made any resolutions? Broken them yet?

A new year always seems a good time to start afresh, and 2016 appears to have been the friend of very few. So we make haste to change. This year, I will make it better. This year, I will do it all differently. This year, I will be a New Improved Person. We make our resolutions, and then we immediately break them all. Because we are, after all, the same person that we were before the bell tolled midnight on new year's eve. And then we tell ourselves that we are failures, and we give up all attempts at doing something different.

Personally, I wonder if we are too quick to throw away that old year - all those old years - and launch into something new. And yes, maybe there are things that we might want to do differently, but that doesn't mean discarding the past. If anything, it means learning from it.

Too often we only see our failings, our faults, the sad times, the bad times. We look at what we have not achieved, and not at what we have. If we take a moment to stop and genuinely reflect on what we have done with our lives, I think many of us will come to realise that we are not such failures after all. I hope that such reflections - looking at what we've achieved, and what we have survived, what has made us stronger or wiser - can spur us all on to do whatever it is we want to do. Because at the last, it is ourselves that we must satisfy in order to be content.

I hope that we all find contentment in the coming year.