So in between art attacks I was reading a lot over the summer. I finished the Tom Rob Smith Trilogy which includes Child 44, The Secret Speech and Agent 6.  I would definitely recommend them. Child 44 was made into a film, I haven’t seen it but my sons didn’t think it was up to much.

One of the local charity shops has a whole room of second hand books so I pick up most of my fiction there quite cheaply. They always get them back when I’ve finished with them, so it’s a win, win all round. I read some ‘womens’ fiction, if you’re allowed to call it that now. Anita Shreve’s, A Change in Altitude and one called Home but I cannot remember who wrote it, Trophy Child by Paula Daly, and The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. You could rattle through them in a day or two and they won’t tax your brain too much. One of the reasons why I don’t particularly like ‘women’s’ fiction is that the central characters are always so bloody weak and drippy. And it’s all a bit ‘Oh no! Gerald is shagging the au pair again, and that’s the third time this week, whatever am I going to do? But I still love him so much!’ It hard to feel much sympathy for the characters when it usually turns out she started shagging Gerald at the Christmas party when his wife was 6 months pregnant. But they’re a cheap read and it’s probably the only way I would ever read them, I wouldn’t spend good money on them. One exception was Sail Away by Celia Imrie. I got this as part of my prize for winning the Haiku competition and really enjoyed it, so this is one I would recommend and will definitely read more of hers.

I’m not a great reader of fiction and prefer autobiography over other genres. But as I worked my way through The Gulag Archipelago, I needed a break now and again, as the brutality was quite harrowing at times and, more so, at present, as we seem to be sleep walking back into totalitarianism. Everyone should read this book, it should be on the Secondary School curriculum. It is an appalling indictment of man’s inhumanity to man and, as I’ve said before, Stalin killed no one, it was the ordinary Russians who ‘followed’ the orders of the tyrant. They estimate 14 million Russians died in World War 2 and 17 million Chinese. They estimate 65 million died under Stalin and Mao, killed by their own, murdered and starved. An appalling lesson from history that everyone should know about, but seems to have been forgotten by our glorious leaders and their minions. Ignore the lessons of history at your peril!

Other good reads were Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. The Geisha who the book was based on was not impressed with Arthur’s interpretation and wrote her own story afterwards.  I have it on the Kindle but haven’t read it yet, but I would still recommend Memoirs.

Other fictions were John Grisham’s The Appeal. I enjoyed this up to a point and it felt very relevant considering it’s themes of political and corporate corruption. There is no happy ending to this one so don’t read it if you’re feeling depressed, it just might tip you over the edge especially with ‘life’, if you could call it that, at present.

On the rest of the reading list was Wilbur Smith’s Blue Horizon, this is book 11 in a whole series about the Courtney family but I haven’t read any of the others. It was a bit of an epic and set in Africa in the early days of colonialism. I did enjoy it and will look out for the others.

John Case’s The Genesis Code was ok. I could see where it was going quite early on, part of the ending didn’t quite gel, but it was ok and worth a read, if you’re not looking for anything too taxing on the brain cells.

Since it was a bit of a Russian summer, I also read Shallow Graves in Siberia by Michael Krupe. This took me back to autobiography. He was a Polish national and this is the story of how he ended up in the gulags and managed to escape both them, and the Jesuits, eventually ending up in Britain. A happy ending for once! I would strongly recommend it. A great read and a reminder of just how amazing the human spirit can be and what we can endure and overcome.

And after all that, and to continue on the Russian theme, I was trawling through some music on Youtube and came across this stunning piece by Tchaikovsky. I’m a big fan of Tchaikovsky but I had never heard of this one, it is called Hymn of the Cherubim. It has to be the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard and it gives me great pleasure to share it with you all today. It shows that even though we can be absolutely appalling to one another, we can also be beautiful and wonderful, and this is a demonstration of what humanity can produce when we are at our absolute best. Food for the soul that speaks to God. Turn out the lights, turn up the volume and let your soul soar to the heavens. Amen!

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Hymn of the Cherubim - YouTube

My brain has been itching for something to do recently so I tried out one of the OU's free online courses, Living Without Oil.  I had started it when I was off after my op (which I had forgotten) but I finished it this week.  It was interesting, at some point in the future humanity may have to live without oil and as we have lived without it for many more years than we have had it, I don't really think it will be a problem. Humans have shown themselves to be incredibly creative when needed and are great problem solvers.  The thing is, we could easily cut back our consumption if the will or necessity was there.  All houses could be insulated to a much higher standard than they are at present and there is always the option of ground source heat.  Public transport could easily be improved too with trams and trains.  I'm not losing any sleep over it, we'll adapt when the time comes, I'm sure.

I've now moved on to a Philosophy course, Faking Nature.  I have too much on this year to commit to formal study but I think I may have to do something after the summer, my brain needs it.

I've still been reading a lot too.  2 outstanding reads are; The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Educated by Tara Westover.  They are both on similar themes, growing up in highly unstable environments, I would recommend reading The Glass Castle first.  You can also watch the movie of it on Netflix, I haven't checked it out yet so I can't comment on what it's like.  

Talking about movies, I ventured out to see the new Mary Poppins this week.  It started off well enough and was in keeping with the original but then it just went on and on, about 25 minutes too long and there was a bit at the end which didn't make sense.  Spoiler Alert!  They were racing to turn back the hands on Big Ben and then Mary Poppins flew up with her umbrella and did it.  I thought, 'well, why didn't you just do that to start with?'  And it's not that I don't enjoy a long movie, I'm actually sitting here at the moment watching one of my all-time favourites, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (today on Channel 5).  I actually have a limited edition Directors cut of this on video so when it's good, the longer the better!  

I've also just finished Jordan B Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos.  I only recently got to know about Jordan Peterson (again when I was off after the op) by watching videos on Youtube.  I am most definitely a fan and he has transformed my thinking and consequently, my life.  He is every man I wish I'd ever known, I wish there were more like him.  The book was a much more intelligent and spiritual read than I expected and I think listening to him has rekindled the desire in me to get back to study.  I'm now re-reading CJ Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections since Jung gets quite a few mentions in it.

I read this book the other day, The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It's about madness or what is, or is not, madness and it raises as many questions as it answers. 

Going insane might be one of our worst fears along with serious illness, or something terrible happening to our children but after reading this I am now feeling highly reassured. I am never going to worry about going mad at all again because after reading this, I figure we're all a little bit crazy anyway, and some of us may even be a whole lot crazy but if we're not really harming anyone and managing to function in our lives, well, where's the problem?? Because what is normal anyway?? Does anybody even know?? 

Well you could say that it’s normal to get up and go to work every day. Ok then, think about this -  is it really normal to get up and go to work every day, the way we do? 

To slog your way through crowds and traffic, to sit in a building doing stuff for a company or corporation, to make money for them so they can pay you money to buy stuff, most of which you don’t really need, for a house, you didn’t really want, to begin with. 

Then you take on a mortgage to pay for the said house which will ensure you have to keep your nose to the grindstone for the next thirty years when you can finally look forward to retirement (which by this time you will be too worn out and too tired to do anything) to find that the company CEO has raided the pension fund and disappeared into the ether and you are destined to spend your old age in fear and poverty after spending most of your life working your bollocks off for someone else!!! 

AND, along the way, you missed out on most of your children’s growing up, your partner is now a complete stranger with a life of their own, that doesn’t include you, and all because you had to be at work, in order to pay your taxes to a government that basically doesn’t give a crap about you anyway!!! Yes, THAT'S normal!!

If that's normal, then I embrace my insanity with glee!!  Hee, hee!! Because inside all of us, there is a little streak of insanity. It may not manifest itself as a medically recognised psychosis (although if the American Psychiatric Association has it's way, it may very well soon be) but it might just be a little obsession about collecting stuff, or how we dress, or cleaning; something along those lines, because let's be honest, we all have our little obsessions, don't we?

And what harm are we doing?  Ok if your shoe buying habit is the reason you haven't paid your rent in six months well, maybe there’s a little bit of a problem there that you need to think about but still, you're not crazy are you??  And what about the girl up the street who goes out to work every day dressed up like Mary Poppins, or the old lady who walks around like the queen on LSD, are they really harming anyone?  Because the truth is, isn't it our little insanities that mark us out as individuals? Aren't these the hallmarks of our uniqueness in the world?? 

Because what I now realize is that THERE IS NO NORMAL. We’re all crazy in some way and some of the so-called most normal things are the craziest of them all!!!

What I see happening within the world of psychiatry is similar to what happened back in the 19^th century, when the Victorian's did a study on sexual habits and labelled everything that wasn’t the Missionary position as sexually deviant. 

Basically the same thing is happening now with all human behaviour.  Anything that deviates from the norm (because we all know what normal is??!!) is now being diagnosed and labelled as mental illness and comes with its own line in pharmaceuticals. 

Roll up! Roll up!  Get you behaviour modifiers here, an emotionally-deadening pill for every little ill!!

‘WHAT YOU HAVE AN OVER-ACTIVE CHILD???’ (Fake shock and horror)

Here, don’t you know that a little Ritalin a day, will keep the pharmaceuticals in pay!!!’

If you think that’s a bit exaggerated, then I urge you to read this book, (if you haven’t already) because the really scary part of all this, is what is happening with children in America and, here too, so let’s not get complacent. Children are being diagnosed with all sorts of mental health problems. We’ve all heard of ADD and ADHD, ( I always had huge reservations about those two, even more so now!) but what about childhood bipolar disorder?? Now, there’s a happy little threesome, to label a child with!  Add to that, the huge rise in autism diagnoses and soon you will find that children everywhere are being medicated out of childhood. 

So, if you have an active child, don't take them to a doctor and definitely don't take them to a psychiatrist, take them to the park and let them run around, stop feeding them crap and let them dig that hole in the back garden and get mucky!! Who cares what the neighbours think!! Let them swing from trees, even better, join in and swing from the trees with them and, basically, go have some fun!!!! 

Because that’s what’s wrong here, we take ourselves far too seriously and have forgotten what it is to HAVE SOME FUN!!!! So let rip and let a child be a child and remember that you were once one too!!! Life’s too short to let it drift by on prozac and Ritalin. ENJOY IT!!!! .LIVE IT TO ITS FULLEST!!!! Because in the words of Noddy Holder -  ‘MA MA, WE’RE ALL CRAZEE NOW!’

So stop worrying and embrace the insanity because we are all in this one together!!!!! YEAHHH!!!