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“Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Atticus Finch tells Jem and Scout. For the Mocking Bird is a beautiful creature and sings only for you. A long time its taken me to complete the reading of Harper Lees iconic novel - To Kill a Mocking Bird. So eloquently and beautifully written, with a story that works on so many levels today. We see the story through Scouts eyes, a young girl, fast losing her innocence as a world of rights and wrongs play out before her and she slowly sees  the world through the Mocking Birds eyes. The Mocking Bird - symbolises the innocence of the characters who are derided, mocked and even killed just for being themselves, in a conformist society which fails  to understand them. A society with deep seated prejudice towards them, for this is the way society behaves and heaven forbid if you step out side of the symmetry of the...

"Fear is only as deep as the mind allows"  - Japanese Proverb Had we lived many thousands of years ago, as cavemen and women walking the earth, our fears would have almost certainly been intrinsically linked to our survival. The instinctive "Fight or Flight" response would have automatically kicked  in when confronted  by any external force that did us harm, that threatened our very existence to propagate,  procreate and survive. Of course, nowadays there are no longer dinosaurs, lions, bears and tigers (oh my!) roaming free to frighten the living daylights out of us or threaten us. Instead our modern day fears manifest themselves in other forms: Fear of failure. Fear of rejection.  Fear of nonacceptance. The so called "mind fears". Do these mind fears hold us back? Stop us from achieving our full potential? From going it alone?  Is it all too easy to stay firmly routed in the ...

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.” – Federico Fellini, Italian Film Director " I am a passionate person " said the person stood on the stage in front of me. That's odd. I thought to myself on hearing these words. Three things immediately struck me as strange. 1. The person had just spoken for 10 minutes earlier with no passion in their voice, no enthusiasm, no emotion. 2. Surely we the audience should be the judge as to whether this person is passionate or not and not themselves. 3. Isn't passion something that belongs only in the bedroom and I really don't want to know about this persons private life! Ah well. I decided to give the person a chance and see what would happen in the next few months. So a year went by. Nothing, absolutely nothing happened to prove the person was a passionate leader during that year. Not a drop of evidence, not a ripple in a pond, not a raised eyebrow. Nothing. So w...

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" - Mark Twain Well here we are again. Its the start of another New Year, 2013 to be precise. Imagine if you will 1000 years from now. Would anyone think, "what were those people of 2013 up to?" Did they leave any mark on mankind? Any footprints, Internet footprints for us see what they really thought? Naturally this got me thinking about this blog:   The Random Ridiculous Rants and Ramblings of Rubi Red. It all began back in 2000. Yes the year of the dot.com,  when Internet was the craze of the free thinkers. I was lucky to be working along side some of the early adopters and first Internety, I mean  mobile Internety geeks at Genie Internet which later became O2. These guys were smart, very smart, very ent...

Ah charisma! Such a beautiful euphonic sounding word. Say the word and observe how it tantalisingly softly slips and sings off the lips. Charisma.... But this hallowed word is reserved only and rightly so for the chosen few who have the power of charisma. These chosen few have something special about them and that certain something puts them head and shoulders above the rest of us But what is it? What is it that they have and we ain't? Charismatic people connect and engage on another level. A level where words and actions are morealess redundant. Operating on an unspoken level, a sub conscious level. A connection that reaches out to us, captivates us, enthrals and moves us on a myriad of levels and senses: emotional, spiritual, social and intellectual. You cannot bottle it. You cannot buy it and you most definitely cannot learn or be taught it, no matter how brilliant your leadership course. Charisma, no two ways about.You either got it or you ain't. So ...

Yes what exactly is brilliance? An often over used, over emphasised word used to describe almost anything and anyone these days. Be it a little move away from mediocrity, a tiny shift away from the steady state. Is that brilliance? Not in my book. Brilliance personified happened on the 4th August 2012. The venue, the London Olympic stadium. From seat 390 Block 106, I was witness to one 1 hour of sheer brilliance courtesy of  Jess Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford. No matter how amazing the support team, how many hours of blood,  sweat and tears happen during training or at the dress rehersal, that one small window of intoxicating brilliance to perform at the very top comes but once in life time to many of us and perhaps never to even more of us. But step back into history and you will find other examples of brilliance. Acts of courage, acts of heroism, such as Rosa Parks who in December 1955 refused in to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama....

"They just couldn't believe that somebody would do all that running for no reason" Forrest Gump Don't you just get the urge to run, run, run runaway sometimes? Just like Forrest Gump, run for no reason. Just one foot in front of the other, breath, in and out and we are off. Round the block, round the town,  onto the M1,  up to Scotland and then just stop. I love the film, Forrest Gump. Clever, comic  with beautiful subtle undertones of pathos. Tom Hanks is a proper Actor. He does versitility. A chameleon that can change his persona for any role. An Oscar winning performance every time in my eyes. Anyway, back to running. I do little running nowadays. Unlike a few years ago when I entered a few  10k races. No training. Just turn up, down 2 gallon of Lucozade and run. Need of loo meant speed and so would not be last or a DNF. I do little running for sure, but in my mind I'm running. Running far far away.

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.”   ―  Marcus Tullius Cicero   I came across the work of the photographer William Klein the other week after watching the BBC Imagine programme charting the life of  the 80 year old iconic photographer   Klein's early work captures the gritty street life of New York in the 1950s. Here there's something so very unique about his photography of crowds, street life, people, faces in the crowd. Where most photographers are voyeurs, standing back to capture a moment in time, Klein is altogether different: He goes forward, advances into the crowd with his camera, to produce raw, explosive, intense, yet intimate results; where the subjects faces are laid bare for us to interpret. Sometimes I can get totally lost in a photograph of faces. Who are these people, I ask myself,  Where are they now? What were they doing? what pained them, what pleased ...

  I can do Posh. Oh yes I can do Posh and Sophistication extremely well, considering I hail from the West Midlands. But then offer me a nice cup of tea with a biscuit and the whole facade comes tumbling down as you will observe a flurry of biscuit dunking, but no slurping I hasten to add. However certain posh standards are an absolute must and are to be upheld at all times. So when it came to a holiday in Malta this week, there was no way one would be staying in any below par accommodation. It's  only right, considering the awful dodgy Travel lodges I have to endure for business trips. So Malta meant luxury and this meant nothing but 5 star treatment . fit for the Princess that I am! I had never been to Malta before, a small sun kissed yet windy archipelago in the Mediterranean. This time of year you will find few tourists, few larger louts or fat pink over sized lobsters on the beaches. You will instead find a warmth and a generosity from the...

Its Remembrance Sunday today. A time when we all remember "The Fallen" from the many Wars. How fitting that I should blog that I finally finished reading All Quiet on the Western Front . Yes it took me a long time to even start to read it. But I did and I am so glad I did. For the last few months,  I have been totally transported to the hellish, bloody, death-ridden battle fields and trenches of World War 1 France. Clinging onto every morsel of life, every strand of survival with our young Narrator Paul. Whether on the train back to Suffolk or on the Circle Line to Westminster,  I was there,  transfixed, mesmorised, hopeful... teary. We live the story out through the eyes of a  young German Soldier, Paul. His early youthful optimism turns to auto pilot enermy killing machine and savagery. Unhopeful for any future for himself. All he must do is survive the bloodbath Hell before him. "We were eighteen and had begun t...

Oh my what a day I've had ! I now know that there is nothing more satisfying than watching a 40 ton amoured tank as it crushes an average size family car to pieces. Even better when your driver is a Russian named Vladimer, with big strong hands. On a pleasant English farm in middle E ngland there is a company called Tanks-a-lot http://www.tanks-alot.co.uk/main.htm Here you will find a compound full of tanks, tanks and tanks. Every size, every shape, every colour. The place is owned and operated by ex British Army and SAS men who have seen active service in every modern day war you could care to mention. I guess they didnt want to miss the "big toys" so they started off a company where the general public can now be let loose on these military "toys" for a day. Its a fantastic day out, even to the most peace loving gentle folk amongst us. I was so pleased when the SAS man singled me out and gave me the AK47 to try for size. Oh my the power of this kill...

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; WB Yeats. I'm getting really fascinated with all this DNA stuff lately. Reason being, I've come to the conclusion that I only barely look like some members of my family. Although admittedly we are all mad, rash, hotheaded outspoken and rarely agree with one another. So will DNA unlock our secrets? I hope so. Its like this... I'm dying to know what other ethnic groups have made up my DNA. Could I be related to Gengis Khan, Kubla Khan or even Imran Khan? Could I be a direct decendant of some Nobleman or Maharaja that has bequeathed me a fortune (which I would readily give to the poor) or am I the decendant of Savages that robbed, ravaged and ransacked their way through poverty. Questions questions (sigh) I did a bit of research on DNA companies on the net and most charge upto 200Euro jus...