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Spirit and Alien Party

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday, 13 July 2025, 07:13

This was titled The Spirit Party, but I discovered that there is now an actual new UK political party called that.

Silhouette of a female face in profile

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[ 10 minute read ]

This is a serialised story that will have new 'chapters' added as attached documents within this blog.

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New Party

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Hakim, my guardian avatar I manifested when I was sixteen to save me from spiritual harm, made a suggestion to me this morning, when he saw me reading about Elon Musk creating a new political party.

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       ‘We should create one.’

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He meant in the UK, where I live.

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There seems to be a new trend of making new political parties. People are not at all in agreement with the existing ones. I was about to write ‘regular parties’ but Hakim was saying,

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       ‘Irregular’

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He’s right, I suppose, but I think it is more because people are, these days, more nuanced in their thinking; more flighty in their opinions; more able to form opinions in the dark when the light keeps going dim. In other words, easily distracted by new and shiny things or more febrile like two year-olds throwing tantrums. Not everyone, just the one’s I come across albeit vicariously.

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When Hakim said, ‘We should start one’, I think he meant; me, the human; him, the spirit avatar; and Harrari, the abandoned alien who I found in a wood a few years ago. On the face of it, we would make a good team. Unfortunately, Hakim’s principle role is to wake me up when there is a presence of psychic or spiritual threat while I am asleep. It is only recently that we actually converse. He wears this ‘stripe’ of promotion with bountiful pride. Harrari, is still young and separated from her absolutely ruthless brothers, who let it be known, held obscurrence of their presence, when they were here, to be paramount in their activities. While never violent in their actions to remain hidden, they could be. Oh yes! I have never met them but I never disrespect Harrari, let’s put it that way. She, (I think she is female) has all the capability of obscurrence, obfuscation and thought changing skills. Sadly, she doesn’t think she will be accepted back in her ‘world’ because she has gone ‘Indian’, as they used to say in the United States to mean that a white man had adopted indigenous Indian values.

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What we have to remember is that I am the only one that has a visible form, or at least can maintain it. Sometimes, rarely, Harrari takes a female form, and for some reason calls herself Holly Hedges, so she COULD present as a party member if we created a new party. Ethically though, she would have to reel back her thought-changing ability. She can make people change their minds, well, desire really. I will spell it out; she is a composite of manipulation, muted ruthlessness and prescience.

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But, who could be party members? We would have to gently ‘knock’ on the veil that separates us from the spirit world. Of course, there is a blending between the ‘worlds’, and our human world is suffused with what we believe is serendipity, strangeness and ‘magic’; meaning these are the things we like and we go ‘Ooh, that was fun or lucky or weird.’ There is also an aspect of the blending that we find frightening, evil, dishonest, and just plain mean. We all come across this, almost on a daily basis, even if it is a neighbour playing loud music just to spite you. (They have been infected - or you might think they are socially uneducated) To be fair though, when humans mostly enter the spirit world, and they frequently blunder in, they are, to the beings there, similar to how we view drunken teenagers with traffic cones on their heads, vomiting in people’s front gardens. We can, I think, begin to see how changing how we humans act might change the response from the warmongers in the spirit world.

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So, knock, knock. Let’s say there really is a door that is the appropriate portal for diplomatic discussion. Who are we going to speak to?

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       ‘What?’ A horned faerie.

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       ‘Hello, so nice to finally meet you!’ A winged fairy, not unlike Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.

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Or silence, just a feeling of there being something there and then a gradual forming of shape we recognise.

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What we are not factoring in, though, is whether there is a democratic system in the spirit world.

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Two silhouetted men either side of text that says Half Penny Stories     

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 stylised image of a human figure with a shadow   The Spirit and Alien Party

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       ‘We should create our own political party’, said Hakim, ‘You know, you, me and Harrari.’

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I eyed him skeptically. Harrari came to listen. Hakim went on.

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       ‘You, of course, would be the leader.’ I felt he was trying to convince me rather than suggest but now that Harrari was here his efforts would be wasted. She quickly quashed any effect that flattery would have on me. But, for a moment, I was kind of hopeful of some kind of prominence in the world; ‘Hmm, Leader’, I thought. Okay, not!

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       ‘Who would we have in it besides us? Humans?’ This, I knew as soon as I said it was framed completely wrong. Fortunately, Harrari and Hakim have formed a link and they smoothed it out between them. They know I am not contemptuous of humans, just a little spoilt by having two aspects that are widely disparate but closely complimentary, to help me.

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       ‘I know some people’. He meant spirits that belong to people. The advantage of having these spirits in the party, I knew, was that they can talk to each other without the hosts knowing what they are saying. This means that they can coax and cajole their respective hosts into making a decision but the ultimate choice always remains with the human. Humans don’t always make the right decision and they are swayed by flattery and unfounded ambition, (Hmm, Leader, I thought).

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Of course, we would need votes from the nation. Harrari can make anyone think anything is a good idea and the result is that they act on a decision that she has effectively planted in their heads, but she cannot do it with millions of people by herself. She would need help from her family, but we all knew THAT wasn’t going to happen; she was marooned.

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Sooner or later we were going to have to make some ‘friends’. Unfortunately, I somehow threw away the manual on ‘Entering the Spirit World (without making a mess)’, without ever having seen or owned it. I was also known for ‘crashing the party’. We would have to tread very carefully.

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       ‘Make the introductions, Hakim.’ I said, intrigued but also mindful of burning bridges. It is after all extremely important that I maintain as neutral connection as possible with the hope of an improvement in relations.

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       ‘See,’ said Harrari. ‘You are already thinking like a politician’.

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I wasn’t pleased, because to a British human, that can be an insult, but I felt her soft conciliatory hand gently smoothing my thoughts. ‘Diplomatic. Okay’ It is strange to think that a ruthless killer has a soft hand. I rather think her brothers do not.

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Hakim came back with the spirit of the man I met in the village shop on the 29th May. He warned us that he didn’t have long because the man was about to wake up soon, but he thought he knew someone who could help and offered his support as a firm believer that the war should stop, so we had his vote. I wasn’t really sure if he meant war or skirmishes, but I let it go; maybe something was lost in translation, telepathy from both Hakim and Harrari, who were translating for me, and the rapidly replaced words on his banner, for my benefit, was a bit much for me. Then he was gone.

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We waited for a few minutes. All three of us knew that just waiting was a fool’s errand, if doing nothing even is an errand or task. I went to the shop to get bread and Baked Beans, (which aren’t really baked), because it is almost inevitable that we must interact with our own world to be open to new ‘holes’ in the veil where communication is possible. If you imagine darkness, that is not dark, and then a little hole forming that allows light through, that isn’t light, which gets bigger so a face appears, that isn’t a face, you understand how hard it is to keep an appointment that isn’t an appointment. Alternatively, we could call it coincidence or serendipity. Harrari, tells me it is alignment, which is how she is able to fill in the blanks and ‘help’ people change their minds. The prominent question was whether I should eat or wait. Slight hunger is the best state to be in for ‘meetings’ or focus. However, deliberate malnutrition is considered by the spirit world to be driving a bulldozer through the veil and it will not be met with Tinkerbell fairies; expect the angry horned faerie instead. That said, they are not nasty per se, just if you upset them. But, who knows what upsets them? My advice is ‘Best not’, whatever it is you are thinking of doing to force it.

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Why buy Baked Beans? Because they are not. The best place to look for ‘communication holes’ or portals is where there is confusion and deceit. I should like to say that every tin of Jolly Green Giant sweetcorn is a portal because it says that the grains inside are one of your five a day. No, fruit and vegetables are one of your five a day. I should like to say hang around in the sweetcorn aisle but it is just marketing, not really deceit. Baked Beans, on the other hand, used to be baked underground and still could be if one wanted to. Different kettle of fish entirely. It’s all about history and ‘is it, isn’t it?’. Certainly though, there is no magic connection caused by actually having baked beans, baked or not.

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Harrari decided to chip in.

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       ‘Being ‘open’ is about suspending rationale; it is about being in a liminal state of ‘maybe’. It is a balancing act between being immutable and trapped in reason on one side, and psychosis on the other; neither is the optimum state for success in either world.’

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       ‘That is the rule for engineers. It doesn’t apply to scientists.’ I said.

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Hakim laughed.

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       ‘Hah, I would like to meet a scientist with a spirit avatar and an alien friend.’

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       ‘Quite a lot of maybe, isn’t there?’ I agreed.

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We waited and I was beginning to think that politely ‘ringing the bell’ in a hope of avoiding a bellicose and belligerent horned faerie, and the super-nice, though at times spiteful, winged Tinkerbell fairy, in favour of the ‘something’ forming in the ether, might be a waste of time. But, thinking about it, expecting the spirit world to be at our beck and call is just plain arrogance.

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- end -

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I should like to continue this little story; it’s fun, and I think I will come back to it.

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I met myself and now I want to be a better person

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Tuesday, 15 Apr 2025, 20:47

The link to all the my posts https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

four stylised people talking

[ 8 minute read ]

You make me want to be a better person

Because we cannot hear what our voices sound like to others we are surprised to hear it when we first hear a recording of our own voice. Similarly, I once heard that if we met ourselves in the street we would always thereafter cross the road whenever we saw ourselves to avoid another meeting; such is the distaste we would have at our own selves. In other words, we would not want to be friends with ourselves.


two silhouettes of men surrounding text Half Penny Stories

The man in his fifties

      'What, you don't need me anymore?', said the man in his fifties to me as he came down the library stairs. This man did not seem to be offended nor surprised, merely bemused. I suspected he was not significant in improving my day, and he seemed to be wondering what he would do before he finally disassembled after gradually fading, if I continued to ignore him. At least, that is what I was wondering.

I ignored this familiar, though not recognised man. I had no idea who he was, simply because I had never seen myself before without prejudice, and never heard my own voice coming from outside my own head, without the resonances in my mouth and nasal passages acting as feedback.

At the time I didn’t realise that I had imagined and created him to guard me and warn me of impending danger, which he had so far done exceedingly well, though not in a language that I understood, more as an uncomfortable feeling, of concern in a particular direction. I knew that it had been useful, really useful, to be somehow connected to someone unbiased and disconnected from the world by a slight phase shift; a delay of a few milliseconds. I had also used him as a counselor, or just someone to act as devil’s advocate; a sounding board, if you will; this was, after all, someone I had never met in the real world, would never be punitively accountable to, or ever expect him to tell my secrets. But at this time of first meeting a visible, seemingly solid, manifestation I was still clueless.

Later, when I was talking to an elderly lady, the man in his fifties came back, talking nonsense, well, almost nonsense; certainly interjecting himself in a boorish manner. He seemed to be someone else's idea of confident and open, and desperately, though dismally, trying to demonstrate some kind of learnedness that encompassed the current situation and everything in it.

Disgusted, I walked away and left him to it - not wanting to become engaged in any kind of difficult dialogue with him. I felt sorry for the elderly woman, leaving her talking to, what was really just obfuscation of her slight problem with a shopping trolley; a bit like inclement weather. I didn't know it was myself she was talking to, me just a few days, weeks, years ago, but now projected as a probable future outcome. It was that same person, me in the past and recent present, compressed into a single moment. I had, in fact, two decades ago as a teenager, created a manifestation to fill the gap in my own emotional mis-education. No wonder no-one liked me now if I was going to be like that.

During the next few days a few people, strangers I met, looked at me a bit too long as though they recognised me, or  puzzled as though I had sworn out loud for no reason, or saw a change in me. How could they? They had never met me. No, but it soon became apparent they had met the man in his fifties. To be fair, they hadn't actually met the man in his fifties. Instead, their own being, imagined, created or organically existing, inside of these strangers, who in their cases happened to be the same age as themselves, had met the man in his fifties; this being my future self if I did not change my ways. They knew each other, and on days off had sometimes met and wildly pontificated their theories on everything; they were, after all, not bound by a fear of failure and consequently were supremely confident.

Later that day, I met the elderly woman again. The wheel on her stolen shopping trolley was still about to fall off, much like it had been ‘borrowed’ in the 1990s and had never been properly maintained up to today. That in itself was strange, but that she looked like how my wife might look in forty years was overwhelmingly disturbing.

       ‘Who was that awful man?’ she asked. I had a strange feeling then that I was not going to remain married. This fleeting feeling of deja vu and prescience broke the veil of incomprehension. I understood in a small way who the man in his fifties might be.

Hakim, my outrageously handsome childhood friend met me at the bar in the pub that evening. He was much more sanguine about how my day had played out. When I say handsome, I mean that I try not be seen with him in public because, although my features are plain, in comparison with his, I would be arrested for being in possession of an offensive face. My only advantage was that being slightly taller than average height I towered over his diminutive one metre fifty stature.

We stayed sitting at the bar, our usual place. ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing’, he said, ‘I have had whole conversations with animals about re-incarnation.’ He climbed down from his stool and flambuoyantly limped over to the docile dog in the corner.

      ‘Jean-Paul', he said, ‘When will you give me that ten Francs you borrowed from me twenty years ago in Paris?’ Hakim has a sense of humour that makes it difficult for me to know when he is joking or just crazy.

While Hakim was in the toilet, the man in his fifties came in, stood briefly at the bar, then took a stool there, two stools away, waiting to be served. My heart sank. It plummeted into depths of despair when Hakim walked jauntily back in without his limp and climbed his stool again. Please don’t talk to him, Hakim, I prayed.

‘Long time no see, Martin! Have a beer?’ My name is Martin but Hakim was not looking at me. I was beginning to realise that Hakim might actually have whole conversations with dogs, and why he is supremely confident; he could see my older self, just as I could. For the first time, I regretted reading that book. ‘Mind Games’, when I was fourteen, and particularly the chapter titled. ‘How to manifest a being’. A kaleidoscope of jigsaw pieces fell into place as developing thoughts in my mind. Most of these I knew to be only suppositions, such as virgins have a greater ability to manifest in the spirit world, like Oracles in ancient civilisations. I had manifested ‘Martin’, my avatar, before I had scratched the itch of carnal desire with someone else. ‘Martin’ was consequently, not a temporary being.

Alarmingly, it seemed that my manifestation now had agency over itself. I suspected that Hakim already knew this. I knew that I would not shake ‘Martin’ off, as me in thirty years time, without help. I looked hopefully at Hakim, who ignored me.

       ‘Get Martin whatever he is drinking, please.’ he said to the barman, gesturing to the man in his fifties.

Oh no! I thought, This is the being that guided me, without tripping, through a completely dark wood, after I fell in a ditch. I didn’t like this manifestation but I should.

- end -


silhouette of a female face in profile

Are these the persons who precede us? 

Do these persons judge us before we ever arrive? So when first impressions in the real world count, they really don't?

Realistically, I think first impressions in the real world do count, yet not necessarily in the ways that many people postulate. We can tell if someone is fit by the way they walk. We can tell if someone is polite or merely aware of social protocols. I am fairly certain that it is how we perceive ourselves that causes us to shape ourselves to a reasonable conformity of our expectations. I slouch, not so much because I am tall, but because I am jaded. I make mock gestures of tipping my hat to strangers to let them know I have a sense of humour and a recognition of manners past, because I feel isolated. There are a myriad of tiny things I do which I do not recognise because I have not met myself and can’t see them. If I met myself coming down the street, I would see a man tipping an invisible hat and jauntily and happily moaning about his perception of the world. I would cross the road to avoid myself. The little story is about how awkward I would feel if I had to introduce my embarrassing invisible friend (me) to my other friends, as someone I love and respect. Strangely, this invisible friend is someone my friends and family have already met.

‘Old Martin, You make me want to be a better person.’


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