Personal Blogs

During a recent trawl of the local second-hand book market, my son brought home Why E=mc2 by Jeff Forshaw and Brian Cox. In the introduction it says ‘In science, there are no universal truths, just views of the world that have yet to be shown to be false’. That is certainly something to think about in relation to what we have been told in the last few years about climate change and covid, and that the ‘science is settled’! Someone should remind Brian Cox about this since he has now joined the climate crisis cult too.

The scientific method, where a hypothesis is formulated and through a process of observation and/or experimentation is shown to be correct or incorrect, has been the main basis for all scientific research and discovery for a few hundred years now. If a hypothesis is shown to be incorrect, it has to be reformulated and further observation and experimentation carried out until a conclusion is reached. If a hypothesis is correct, the same result should be achieved by following the same steps and/or methodology. This is what makes the difference between opinion and scientific fact. The whole purpose of science is to question everything but we seem to be moving towards a world where no one is allowed to question anything and we are just supposed to accept what we are being told as truth.

Within science, there are, and have been, major disagreements over many subjects; the movement of the earth in relation to the sun and its place in the universe, global warming and the cause of disease to name but a few. In relation to the cause of disease and illness, there is Germ Theory vs Terrain or Cell Theory. Germ Theory was championed by Louis Pasteur and is the model that has been adopted by the medical profession as the cause of illness. Germ theory believes that germs invading the body are the cause of disease.

Terrain or Cell theory was supported by Antoine Bechamp who believed that diseases are caused by microorganisms which multiply in the body and cause infections. Terrain or Cell Theory believes that illness and disease are mainly due to the individual’s state of internal health.  When, through bad diet and a sedentary lifestyle, the body become weak, the cells become damaged and diseased, the balance of microorganisms within the body is thrown out of balance causing illness.

It is estimated that there are between 30 – 700 trillion cells in the human body, about 37 trillion bacteria and fungi, and maybe ten times that in viruses.  Some scientists believe that what we call viruses are a natural part of the body’s own immune system, exosomes, which I wrote about before on the blog. They believe you cannot ‘catch’ a virus from someone else and when bugs appear to go around in the winter, it is merely the body’s own immune system clearing out old and diseased cells. It is also believed that one of the reasons we become ill more in the winter is due to a lack of vitamin D from reduced levels of sunshine. This can be supported by the lack of certain types of illness, Multiple Sclerosis, for example, that are present here but virtually non-existent in countries with high levels of sunshine.

The majority of patients who die in hospitals die from pneumonia. Pneumonia sets in when the body is in a weakened state and often kills the patient. Pneumonia can be viral or bacterial. Bacterial pneumonia can be treated with antibiotics but viral pneumonia cannot. The medical profession started a campaign a few year ago to reduce the amount of antibiotics being prescribed as their overuse was making them ineffective (even though they were doing the prescribing) and who, prior to the pandemic, would have told you when you brought your child in sick ‘It’s a virus, it’ll clear up on its own’.

However, regardless of whether you believe in catching viruses or not, one other factor that is being ignored in the debates about health, disease and illness is the role of diet and good nutrition.

I’ve just finished reading a book called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price. The book was published back in the 1930’s and details studies done comparing the dental health of tribal/isolated communities eating traditional foods to those on modern diets. Weston was a dentist and wanted to find out the cause of tooth decay. His studies were conducted around the world from the outer islands of Scotland to the Inuit and Maori. He found that within a generation of adopting the western diet (white flour/sugar/processed food) crowded mouth and dental caries/tooth loss became endemic. Those communities who maintained their traditional eating habits also maintained their teeth, strong dental arches and overall good health. This would tend to support Terrain Theory that poor diet is a contributing factor to the cause of illness and disease. Dr Weston showed numerous examples of skulls from previous generations who had perfect dental arches and a full complement of teeth. He also concluded that the degeneracy of the dental health was reflected in a degeneracy in overall physical and mental health, a lowering of the IQ and a general downwards trend in both character and behaviour within society with increases in crime and mental illness.

‘How different the level of life and horizon of such souls from those in many places in the so-called civilised world in which people have degraded themselves until life has no interest in values that cannot be expressed in gold or pelf (money gained by dishonest or dishonourable means) which they would obtain even though the life of the person being cheated or robbed would thereby be crippled or blotted out.

One immediately wonders if there is not something in the life-giving vitamins and minerals of the food that builds not only great physical structures within which their souls reside but builds minds and hearts capable of a higher type of manhood in which the material values of life are made secondary to individual character’.

It would seem that food for the body is also food for the soul and when the body is given food that is not nutritionally adequate, it is not just the physicality of the person that is affected.

When Jamie Oliver was running his campaign to improve school dinners he said ‘Even while doing the show, we could see the benefits to children's health - we could see that asthmatic kids weren't having to use inhalers so often, for example. We could see that it made them calmer and therefore able to learn.'

This was further supported by a follow up study that was carried out - Between 2004 and 2008, Michele Belot, of Nuffield College at Oxford University, and Jonathan James of the Department for Economics at Essex University found there was on average a 6% improvement in the number of pupils reaching a high level in English tests in the schools surveyed where the healthy meals were eaten and an 8% improvement in science. There was a 2% increase in the number of children reaching the basic level of attainment in science and 3% in English and maths. In addition, the number of children marked as having authorised absences for sickness since 2004 showed a 14% decrease.

There has been a big change to our eating habits in the last 50 years with the addition of processed food to our diets and which seems to have accelerated since covid. I have seen in my own town the increase in fast food outlets and hot food and ready meals available for sale in the local shops. One of our local shops which was a butchery and bakery, has now stopped selling meat altogether. I know a couple of families who have never had a home cooked meal cooked from scratch, and another family who eat from one of the local chippies every day, and it shows.

When the government shut down the country for covid, they closed the gyms and stopped people going to forest parks and beaches but they kept the fast food outlets and off-licences open. If there was any real consideration for our health, they would have done the opposite.

In reading Price’s book, I considered my own diet. Because I am from Ireland, people sometimes assume that the potato is one of the fundamental foods in the traditional Irish diet but this is not so. The potato came from America and our traditional diet would have been similar to the isolated communities in the Scottish islands, with a reliance on oats and barley. Dairy also played a significant role and, as an island, salmon and other seafood would have been important for coastal communities. Pork would probably have been the primary meat eaten along with game like deer, pheasant and rabbit.

The collapse of the potato crop in the 1840’s, which halved the population of Ireland from 8 to 4 million, through a combination of starvation and emigration, might not have happened if the Irish had maintained their traditional diet. I cannot even begin to imagine the horror of what it must have been like in a country as small as Ireland for millions to have been left to starve to death.  However, the famine has had another long-term consequence that still reverberates today. The loss of nutrition from the famine and the traditional diet, combined with ongoing poverty and the introduction of processed food, has had a detrimental effect on the people of Ireland which explains why, as I have said many times before on the blog, there are no, or very few, ‘men’ in Ireland. These factors have reduced the ‘manliness’ of the population and this has been reproduced across the west where we have seen a decline in masculinity and a growing imbalance towards the feminine in society. In Weston’s book it was noted that in the Scottish Isles the average height of men went down by up to four inches within a generation of adopting a diet of white flour, sugar and processed food.

Advances in modern medicine were assumed to be responsible for improved health outcomes and longer life spans, however, in The Modern Rise of Population (1976), Thomas McKeown proposed that improved nutrition, clean water and better hygiene were the main factors responsible for reductions in illness and death from infectious disease. Mortality rates were falling before the introduction of vaccines as part of general health care. However, we seem to have reached a point now where, despite all our scientific and technical advances, our health is moving in reverse and illness in the general population has exploded with more than one in 3 adults suffering with at least 2 chronic health issues, and even rickets, which is due to a lack of vitamin D, making a comeback among children. This could have more serious long term impacts as MS is believed to be caused by a lack of vitamin D in childhood.

The National Health Service started with good intentions to provide basic universal health care for everyone but, sadly, the NHS is no longer about health, it is about medicine and medication. Even our local ‘health centre’ has changed its name to ‘medical practice’. For all the knowledge the medical profession have, they are trained in medicine not health and their medical training contains nothing about diet and nutrition which seems completely ridiculous even though Type 2 Diabetes is diet related and cases of which have sky-rocketed in the last 40 years. There were 2 million diabetics in the US in 1964 when the population was 194 million, and today there are over 37 million diabetics in a population of 330 million.

Increases in diabetes and obesity are correlated with increases in crime and a lowering of the IQ. Recorded crime increased by 5 per cent a year between 1915 and 1930; by 7 per cent between 1930 and 1948 (compared with a post-war annual growth rate of 10 per cent and more). It is no coincidence that poorer areas have higher levels of crime yet, when is improved nutrition ever considered as a solution to this.

In a Norwegian study of IQ scores from 1970 to 2009, showed that children born after 1975 were on average 7 IQ points lower per generation. This same pattern was also observed in British teenagers.

As Price noted, tribal communities did not have prisons or asylums prior to adopting the western diet.

Food manufacturers tried for many years to deny the link between diet and health and even now they say is it ‘complex’ issue despite the fact that the evidence is overwhelming that something is not right with our diets (the obesity crisis is definitely not caused by the weather). This state of affairs is not helped by the ever-changing ‘health’ advice from government and other vested interests. Every day it seems that for every study recommending a certain food or diet, there is another contradicting it. Even that statement ‘food manufacturers’ speak volumes. You do not ‘manufacture’ food you grow it or tend to it, at least until it is time to eat it.

When processed food came on the market it was packaged as time saving and convenient for working mothers. However, it has not turned out as well as was hoped and all our ideas of progress do not always turn out to be progressive. Like the birth control pill, which was hailed as another step towards personal freedom for women, it too has had a downside and is responsible for the increase in oestrogen in the environment. This has been shown to affect the testosterone levels in males and is responsible for an increase in female to male fish species in some areas by as much as 10 to 1.

There has been a decline in sperm counts in men across the world which have decreased by 52% since the 1970’s. While the increase in oestrogen is a factor, diet is also part of it and, in traditional communities, it was the practice to put young men and women on special diets prior to marriage to ensure healthy offspring. The ages between children were also restricted to ensure that the mother had fully recovered her health before another pregnancy which was why polygamy was practiced in some groups.

The increase of oestrogen in the environment is also believed to be a significant factor in the increasing numbers of breast cancer, which has more than doubled in the last 50 years.

Overall, there has also been a huge increase in other cancers. Global incidence of early-onset cancer increased by 79.1% and the number of early-onset cancer deaths increased by 27.7% between 1990 and 2019.

In looking for a way forward, it would do no harm to look backwards to what we ate before all this ‘progress’.  A return to whole foods, whole fat milk, butter and whole grain bread is a good starting point. This is demonstrated in Price’s book by the case of a young boy crippled with inflammatory rheumatism and arthritis who, after a year of having these foods introduced into his diet, had his health restored.

While no one in Ireland is starving to death now, I only have to look around me to see that many of us are still starved of nutrients with narrow faces, poor dental health and rampant illness. Poverty is a factor but some of the most nutritious food is also the cheapest, like oats, barley, mackerel, lentils and liver. Liver is £2.50/1lb in my local butchers and is one of the most nutritionally dense foods you could eat, high in the vitamins and minerals that are essential to good health. I know many people find the taste too strong but it can be mitigated by soaking in milk prior to cooking and goes well with bacon. Taste can be acquired if something is eaten enough times and the more you eat real whole foods the more you acquire a taste for them. I remember watching Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners and children who had been having meltdowns about the meal changes were happily eating the food within a couple of weeks.

Granted butter is more expensive than the congealed oil alternatives and while some people can’t believe it’s not butter, I’m not one of them. Sometimes choosing quality over quantity and paying a little extra can be more beneficial in the long run.

If there is a crisis for humanity to worry about it isn’t the climate or world war 3, it is that we are eating our way towards extinction. The nutritionally deficient western diet is toxic to the human body (and soul) and the social and dietary changes of the last 50 years are destroying the physical and mental health of society at large. The events of the last few years have put the worlds focus on health and whatever you believe about the cause of illness and disease, or its cure, the food we eat has to be an important factor in building and maintaining our health.

While it suits certain interests to have a population that is sick, tired and becoming dumber by the day, after all you can’t make money on health if the population is well fed, fit and healthy, it is to our own detriment that we continue on this road. Good nutrition is the foundation stone of good health and if you wouldn’t feed it to an animal then don’t eat it or feed it to your children.  Sadly, too many do not even consider their diet until serious illness appears and, by which time, it is usually too late to make a difference.

I personally believe that food is the first medicine and within the plant and animal life of our indigenous countries lies the nutrition we need to grow and thrive as humans. In building a defence against illness a good diet is a better place to start than the contents of a needle. And, as any good gardener will tell you, in order for plants to grow well they must be able to access the proper nutrients, in conditions that are favourable and suitable to their needs. The same can be said for us and, surely, it is the least we could do for our children to feed them wholesome nutritious food.

In view of the importance of good nutrition, the ongoing attacks on farming under the guise of ‘saving the planet’ appear rather insidious. Vegan diets do not provide the nutrition the human body needs in order to function well. It is also no surprise that the processed food industry is funding the body positivity movement which hails obesity as a healthy option. There is nothing healthy about obesity or morbid obesity and if there was one illness stretching the NHS to its limits it is type 2 diabetes.

While there is a certain degree of personal responsibility regarding diet and what we eat, sugar and carbs make the body/brain crave more sugar and carbs, which is why sugar is so difficult to give up. Sugar causes changes to the brain chemistry which ordinary food does not. You could give up broccoli tomorrow without any negative side effects or cravings.

It is also noteworthy that the authors concerns about the degeneration of society have played out exactly as feared. And for those who despair at how society appears to be declining rapidly, a return to eating home-cooked real food, rich in the proteins, fats and minerals we are starved of, may be the place to begin to arrest the decline and start to ‘build back better’. However, if we continue as we are, it is inevitable that the decline will continue and western society will collapse within a couple of generations, if not before.

There is one issue with the book that readers may find off-putting, and that is the language, which would not be considered politically correct today. However, while it is archaic at times, the outcomes and conclusions reached are sound.

Also, when the book was written in the 1930’s, Eugenics was being touted as a science, which allegedly proved the superiority of some ‘races’ over others. It is very positive in that it shows there is no evidence of this at all, and that many of the problems regarding illness, disease and birth defects can be traced back to poor nutrition and its outcomes, and nothing else.

 “Illnesses do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against Nature. When enough sins accumulate, illnesses will suddenly appear.” —Hippocrates (460 - 370 BCE), Greek physician

‘Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing’ Voltaire

“The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule in the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.” —Florence Nightingale, OM RRC DStJ, statistician and the founder of modern nursing

References

Nutrition and Physical Regeneration by Weston A Price

Difference Between Germ Theory and Terrain Theory | Compare the Difference Between Similar Terms

The human virome: The trillions of viruses keeping you alive - BBC Science Focus Magazine

Jamie Oliver's healthy school dinners continue to boost learning, study shows | School meals | The Guardian

Jamie Oliver's healthy school dinners campaign 'boosted exam results' | Daily Mail Online

Major report highlights impact of Britain's disastrous food policy | Food Foundation (.org.uk)

Improving Nutrition to Turn the Tide on Diet-Related Chronic Disease | FDA

The Impact of Improved Nutrition on Disease Prevention | Silent Victories: The History and Practice of Public Health in Twentieth Century America | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

The Modern Rise of Population (1976), Thomas McKeown

The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis? (1979) Thomas McKeown

Rickets making a comeback in the UK, doctors say (business-standard.com)

Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought | National Geographic

The Profitable Destruction of Americans’ Health (shiftfrequency.com)

IQ Scores Are Falling in "Worrying" Reversal of 20th Century Intelligence Boom: ScienceAlert

IQs are falling - and have been for years | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)

Crime in 20th Century Britain | History Today

The Relationship Between Poverty and Crime: A Cross Section Analysis (bryant.edu)

The shocking impact of estrogen on our health and environment | by Sara Korchmaros | DataCures | Medium

https://www.hli.org/resources/what-are-the-environmental-impacts-of-hormonal-birth-control/

Global trends in incidence, death, burden and risk factors of early-onset cancer from 1990 to 2019 | BMJ Oncology

Very sad news regarding the death of Sinead O'Connor. I read her autobiography last year Rememberings and she had a very tough early life. I think her mother was seriously mentally ill with schizophrenia, maybe even paranoid schizophrenia and Sinead and her siblings suffered at her hands.

She also talked about a head injury she received when she was young and blamed it for some of her own mental health problems. She was standing on a train platform one morning and someone opened a door on a train going through the station which hit her on the head. She was hospitalised for it and was lucky she wasn't killed. 

She has had a long struggle in this life and I hope now she is at peace.

This is my favourite Sinead O'Connor song, The Healing Room from the Faith and Courage Album. It also features in the film, Vanilla Sky, another of my favourites.

The Healing Room - YouTube I don't know what is going on with youtube but it won't pick up the url. so I have typed it below, if anyone wants a listen, or you can just search for it yourself. It's a beautiful haunting tune.

If you think of me today

A little prayer for me say.

RIP Sinead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9-0rOuvw4

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

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything, but since there isn't anything other than the slow descent into technological and medical enslavement to talk about, there really wasn't much point. But irony of ironies, we now have Sinn Fascism telling us to wear masks.  4 months after '3 weeks to save the NHS' and NOW you need a mask. We've been given 4 weeks to get used to the idea before they make it mandatory, you couldn't make it up!! Well, actually you could because that is exactly what they are doing, and from the party whose military wing spent years running around with masks and guns, terrorising and traumatising an entire community?? Give me strength!!!

But I don't care who says it, I still won't be wearing one, I don't care if it's mandatory, compulsory or whatever, I'm not wearing one because a) they are completely pointless - a virus is so small you need a microscope to see it, it is one 10,000th of a millimetre and can easily pass through paper and cloth  and b) for health reasons - and as the propaganda says - it's not to protect me, it's to protect you -  because if you try and put a mask on me, you will get severely beaten. 

But I don't care anyway as my holidays are coming up soon and i'll be heading to England for a few days, for a nice change of scenery. I have to fly out of Belfast this time to Heathrow as everything going to Gatwick was sold out, making it a bit of a trek to get down to Sussex. But it'll be worth it, I'm sure.

I also started running recently, something I never thought I would do, but it just sort of evolved with being out walking so much, and I thought I would try the couch to 5k. I'm just starting my 3rd week and going pretty well, I managed to run for a steady 10 minutes on Saturday and could have run for longer but didn't want to push my luck. I won't be doing any marathons but I'll be quite happy if I can manage a 5k.

I've also been cutting back on the social media and the telly and been reading more, in between the crocheting, gardening and decorating. I finished Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World and also read Ron Kovic's, Born on the 4th of July. I'm on the last chapter of America:The Farewell Tour by Chris Hedges at the moment. The book is divided into 7 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of the declining empire. I had to take a 3 week break after reading the chapter on Sadism, it was pretty rough and as Hate was the one straight after, I needed a break before getting into that. I don't agree with all his conclusions, but the final chapter titled 'Freedom' is a real eye opener into the depth of the corruption in the prison system or the industrial prison system. It is the best chapter in the book.  The prison system is the new slavery, there is just no argument on that and the corporations all have their dirty hands in the trough.  Did you know that all the McDonald's uniforms are made in prison by inmates getting paid a dollar an hour, if they are lucky, many aren't even getting a dollar. Think about that the next time you're chowing down on a Big Mac. 

But McDonalds aren't the only ones, all military gear is made by prisoners and here are just some of the other corporations using prison labour to boost their profits, usually done through sub contractors - JC Penney (or Primark to us), AT&T, Bank of America, Walmart ( or Asda), Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Dell, Revlon, Johnson & Johnson, Fruit of the Loom, Quaker Oats and many more. It's a business and a very big business at that, and one I'll come back to but whatever you may think of the Black Lives Matter campaign, there are genuine issues of grievance within the black community to be addressed. However, poor whites are suffering just as much and these are the groups who need to unite to fight the injustice and exploitation. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon, we're badly in need of a Malcolm X or 2, (the last honest politician) but with everything that is going on at the moment, something has got to give, as we really can't go on like this. It's a question of where and when that first domino falls...lets hope it's soon.

I've been on a bit of a reading binge again. First up, Alan Cummings autobiography, Not My Father's Son. This was an interesting read and for anyone who doesn't know him, he played the role of Eli, in The Good Wife which is how I came to know him.  Alan's father was a bit of a psycho and he suffered badly from his bullying and abuse.  But in spite of all that, he got out and did very well for himself.  I won't say anything more about it, I don't like to give too much away but a good read and I would definitely recommend it.

On a similar theme, I was in the library 2 weeks ago and saw Operation Lighthouse by Luke and Ryan Hart.  I had heard them on the radio, the day before, talking about their lives and the book they had written.  Coincidentally, it was on the recommended display in the library when I went in to return the Alan Cummings autobiography so, I thought, I would give it a go.  

Luke and Ryan's father was also an abusive bully, controlling and manipulative.  He was never physically violent until he was completely murderous, and he shot and killed their mother and sister and then shot himself.  Their reason for writing the book was to show that while a relationship may not always be violent, it can still be abusive through the use of coercive control. Their father wanted to control every aspect of the lives of his family and did so through his bullying and demanding behaviour. They were also appalled at the sympathy shown to their father by the media after he murdered their mother and sister and how little sympathy was directed towards his victims.  I would highly recommend this, if for no other reason, than to open our eyes and minds to the quiet acceptance of abuse in society and the tendency towards victim blaming in the media.

Another, in the real lives genre, was Gavin Edward's biography of River Phoenix, Last Night at the Viper Room.  This tells the story of River Phoenix's life, from birth until his death, at aged 23.  Best known, in my house at least, for his role in Stand by Me, the Rob Reiner directed film, from the short story by Stephen King, The Body.  A favourite of my son's when they were growing up and one I still watch fairly regularly. 

River's parents were a couple of hippies who became part of the Children of God cult in the US and who travelled around and lived for several years in South America, preaching and recruiting on their behalf.  The leader of the Children of God cult, David Berg, advocated sexual relationships between children, and between children and adults.  River's parents parted company with them when they started prostituting women to attract more recruits but there is evidence in the book of River being introduced to sex at a very young age.

There is no doubt his death was a tragic loss. He was quite heavily into drugs and although, he had been clean for a couple of months while shooting what turned out to be his last film, the moment he got back to LA, he was straight back to the drugs.  How much of his drug use was a result of his upbringing, we can only guess at but the lack of education and involvement with the Children of God, I'm sure, played a part. 

I never knew that he was interested in music but it turned out that he was more interested in making music than movies, and there are some videos of him with his band, Aleka's Attic, on Youtube, if anyone is interested. Sadly, the talent he had, never got to play out into maturity, like so many before him. That's the thing about drugs, it only end one of two ways, you either stop or die.  But an excellent read and highly recommended as it also contains snippets about many of the other actors who came to prominence in the 1990's, like Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Leonardo Di Caprio.

Since finishing the degree, I have re-discovered the joy of reading for pleasure again.  It took a few months after finishing to settle down as I kept getting the anxiety 'I should be studying' attacks, then realising that no, I didn't actually have to study anything and could indulge in reading for reading's sake.

I've got through several tomes and a few stand out in the memory, Jon Krakauer's, Into Thin Air, for one.  You may have seen the film that was based on the book, Everest, starring among others, Jake Gyllenhaal.  I had read Jon Krakauer's, Into the Wild, a few years ago, which was also made into a film and I really enjoyed it.  I could also certainly identify with Christopher McCandless's wish to escape from the drudgery of life and go live in the wild, but climbing Everest is something that in a million years, I would never have a desire to do.  Even if I had ever entertained the notion, this book would have killed it off forever.  The pain, the suffering, why would anyone want to put themselves through it?  Cerebral oedema's, pulmonary oedema's, it's beyond me, or maybe I've just suffered enough!  

Another stand out, is Waris Dirie's, Desert Flower.  Waris was a desert nomad from Somalia who went through female-genital mutilation at 5 years of age.  She ran away as a teenager to escape an arranged marriage to an old man and ended up becoming a model in London, and hung out with people like Naomi Campbell and Iman, David Bowie's wife.  It's amazing how she came through it all and how it all happened. Definitely, worth a read.

Other notables in the biographical genre are Tom Michell's The Penguin Lessons, a heart-warming tale of a man and a penguin; Carol Drinkwater's The Olive Farm, and that other famous tale of life in France, Peter Mayle's, A Year in Provence, both of which had me dreaming of upping sticks and moving!

On the fiction front, I enjoyed Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, and The Savage Garden by Mark Mills.  I got the Mark Mills book in a local charity shop, and it still had its original receipt in it.  It was bought in Borders Books, Music and Cafe, Briggate, in Leeds in August 2007.  It's interesting to see how it has travelled since it was first purchased.  I wonder who the original buyer was!

Another gem I've had sitting on the shelf for a while, and finally got around to reading, was Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes.  It was given to me a few years ago by a friend.  It was originally published in 1969 and it does show its age in parts, but on the whole a good read and quite a long one too, at over 500 pages.

I read mostly biography and one of the most heart-breaking, and frustrating, was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.  Paul was a brilliant, highly-driven doctor and this is what made it quite a frustrating read.  He was diagnosed with lung cancer and I just wished he had stayed off work longer and given himself time to recover but he didn't.  Maybe the outcome would have been the same but then again, maybe not.  

So, there’s a few recommendations, I'm now on Philippa Gregory's, The White Queen.  I'm not a fan of the historical novel, it was lent to me by a friend but I’ll give it a go and it isn’t too bad so far.  I still have many more to get through but with the telly being so bad at present, at least books offer a respite from 3^rd rate reality shows and endless cooking.