Ian Short

Dad and daughter at her debut at The Gov yesterday, performing with 6RPM at Club Cool.

Thanks to Steve Rees for the pic.

That’s us – 6RPM. We’re on again at The Gov in the Venue for one of our favourite gigs of the year – Club Cool.

We’re third band on, playing at 12.45pm to finish off the lunch-time show with a bang.

Chihuly Nights at the Botanic Gardens. A surprisingly delightful experience on a cool Autumn night.

We were lucky enough to visit the Chihuly gallery in Seattle a few years ago and were impressed with his works back then. To see more of his stunning creations enhanced by their night garden settings was a bit special.

Thanks to my friend the author Aiden Bailey for the “Sapphire Star” photo. That sculpture was made in 2010. The tall one is “Lime and Lava Red Tower” made in 2021.

Then and now……

My recent rant “Just another day on Facebook” has been published on the online wit and humour magazine Witcraft at www.witcraft.org.

You might need to scroll down to 28 March to see it.

Thanks to editor Doug Jacquier for the inclusion.

Just emerged from Helios at the Adelaide Fringe, in The Yurt at the Migration Museum.

An unexpected gem of a one-man show; contemporary story-telling intertwined with ancient Greek legend.

An engrossing performance from Wright & Grainger.

Well, they did it. The industrial archeology team visited the site of the old foundry complex where I worked in the late 60s to see if they could find any remaining traces of it. Or is it now just a phantom of the past?

No one who works on the site nowadays has ever heard about it; in most cases they hadn’t been born when it closed in 1974. They work in buildings which occupy the sites of former foundry buildings and workshops but those have been considerably rebuilt, re-roofed and altered over time.

I took Photo 1 below in 1967. The old admin offices are just left of centre with the triangular roofs. To the right of them is the giant shed of No. 3 Foundry. No. 1 Foundry is behind me, No. 2 Foundry is just out of sight on the right.

Photo 2 is the same view in 2025 from ground level, courtesy of Prof Mark Duffield. The houses on the left are the same in each photo. The old structures in the foreground have been demolished. The admin offices have been rebuilt and the building that was No. 3 Foundry is out-of-view behind them. The team reported that it has been subdivided into separate units with their own entrances and, in some cases, built out frontages. The clean lines of No. 3 Foundry no longer exist.

The team commented that taken as a whole, the site provides a typical post-industrial Black Country landscape. “Once a place of productive labour it has been subdivided between various small service and supply businesses – used cars, vehicle hire, recycling, car repairs, body shops, plant and machine hire, etc – and acquired an untidy and rundown aspect.”

An outside wall of the former No 2 Foundry provided the only identifiable, physical remains of the old foundry complex. Photo 3 shows the building in 1973, taken by the Borough Surveyor and courtesy of the Sandwell Archives. Photo 4 (per Prof Duffield) shows the same view today. It has been much altered – re-roofed and rebuilt extensively. However, on the left part of the wall the team could see remnants of the original cladding. While worn and no longer legible, in 2025 this old cladding has what looks like some of the lettering that can be seen in the 1973 photo, displaying the name of the former foundry.

The contrast between Photos 4 and 5 is in some ways both sad and exciting, a potent metaphor for the passage of time and the changing nature of work and community.

Photo 1. No. 3 Foundry is the large shed on right.

Photo 2. Similar view in 2025 from ground level. Houses on left are same as in photo 1.

Photo 3. No 2 Foundry in 1973.

Photo 4. Remains of No. 2 Foundry in 2025.

Kudos to Lucia’s in the Central Market.

Just ordered coffees and cakes, flashed the card to pay and took our seats outside. The cakes arrived first, followed a couple of minutes later by the coffees, just as ordered and good as ever.

One minute later the barista comes out and checks that we ordered only two coffees.

“Sorry,” he says, “I accidentally charged you for three” and hands over a refund in cash.

Oh, my! The morning has gone already, but I’ll definitely get stuck in this afternoon, as soon as I’ve checked out these couple of posts proving the existence of Bigfoot and Nessie once and for all.
Oh, look at that clever octopus, finding his way into a bottle like that, who would have thought it? And it won’t take long to read this fascinating new evidence that the Earth is 6000 years old and that there was a worldwide flood exactly as described in Genesis.
Goodness, look at those huge, human skulls recently found by archaeologists – did giants roam the earth in ancient times? Maybe they have something to do with the secret chambers they found under the Sphinx and inside the Pyramids. Is it only me who can see these connections?
Gosh, it’s funny the way the Royal Guards handled those rude tourists and here’s a colourised version of an historic photo, that’s nice. Is climate change a hoax? This person seems to know what he’s talking about, I wonder who he is – oh, his profile is locked; never mind, I’ll read instead about how I can make a fortune buying crypto, selling stuff on Amazon and write a best-selling book in 5 minutes.
I wonder which date format is really better, day/month or month/day? And I’d better not join this metric versus imperial debate or I’ll never get anything done.
No, I don’t recognise this photo of a young person who became a Hollywood star, I’d better check no 17 on the next page. Goodness, I must be officially old because not only do I know what the antique gadget in the photo is, I had one!
Ha, that prank backfired hilariously. It’s like this other story about a bully who picked on the wrong person. It shows that karma works, like when this snooty women treated the janitor rudely, not knowing he was really the boss.
On, no! That poor lost dog, injured cat and disabled child! Can we get a share? Just look at that crazy Karen screaming at shop staff, fighting over a parking spot or arguing with a delivery driver; very different from this other young women who owned 4 houses by the time she was 20. And just look at these pets dressed in comic costumes – hilarious.
Perhaps I really shouldn’t leave my charger plugged in without a phone connected – I never knew that. And here’s 20 things I never knew about the bible, 15 mind-boggling mysteries and 10 essential travel hacks.
Shall I comment on this post about how baby boomers had it so good, move just one match to form a triangle or tackle this puzzle? After all, only a genius can solve it, and if you can answer more than 10 of these questions you have an IQ of 150. I wonder if I have time to add my answer to the existing 2.7K corrections to the obvious mis-identification of characters in the photo? No, maybe I’ll just add my opinion to this argument about wind turbines.
Gosh, the world is an amazing place. It’s this lady’s 122nd birthday, she doesn’t look a day over 60, Elon Musk is building a tunnel under the ocean from New York to London and Norway is building a floating tunnel under the sea.
Oh, here’s another fascinating story – you won’t believe what happens next!

If it looks like a frog you’re right-brained and if it looks like a giraffe you’re left-brained. What? It looks like a seagull to me. Never mind, here’s an intriguing story about a passenger’s outrageous behaviour on a plane with yet another entitled person refusing to move or demanding a seat swap. Shocking.
Anyway, which cup does fill up first, what colour is the dress, green or blue, and which way should toilet paper hang?
Now here are some absolutely genuine and not in the least AI pictures of intricate plants that look like animals, amazing animals that no one has ever seen on this earth before and the giants who once walked amongst us. Even more convincing are photos of couples in their 90s who have been married for 65 years, bless them, how do they manage to look like 45-year olds?
Oh, here are some more gripping stories about the actions of bad neighbours, careless or aggressive drivers, rude and dumb tourists, ratbags on the subway train and unreasonable in-laws. I love these last ones, especially if they involve weddings, funerals, Wills or conflicts between husbands and wives or bosses and workers, that tell of absolutely believable karmic justice and elaborate revenges.
Now I can join the other 4.3K commenters trying to explain why someone’s bizarre maths meme doesn’t add up before admiring some absolutely convincing pictures of incredibly complex, detailed and futuristic engineering miracles, not just of astonishing machines and devices, but also fantastic bridges, tunnels and giant buildings, often in China or Japan (where people are “living in the next century”) except for the giant looped skyscraper in New York’s Central Park.
After discovering that one weird trick to reduce belly fat, another to cut your electricity bill in half and what unusal foods can cleanse your blood or remove toxins, let’s spend spend some time arguing with Flat Earth advocates, moon landing deniers and brain chip implant believers before checking today’s stories about the early warning signs of loathsome diseases, silent killers and how to rid your body of parasites and toe fungus. My goodness, when the doctor checked this one, he called the police!
It almost as exciting as the stories of extensively tattooed and pierced people who can’t get a job or the furious debates about how much to tip. Let’s face it, if you can’t tip at least 30% then you can’t afford to eat out.
The morning has almost gone and at last I can get on with my work, but not before being amazed at the transformation before my very eyes of an elderly woman on America’s Got Talent into a gazelle to the astonishment of audience and judges and admiring the amazingly intricate and detailed larger-than-life carving of an owl, lion, woman, bear, ship, tree, flower or mermaid by a sad-looking young girl, teenage boy, disabled veteran, elderly aunt or someone’s grandfather who has never received the recognition they deserve. They are so talented, the whole world should know, can we get a like?