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[ 4 minute read ]

Unruly Toaster

Is it just me or does everyone's toaster act like an unruly teenager?  That stereotypical teenager caricatured again? My toaster burns bread when I am not looking, but if I am watching it, it spits the bread out half-toasted. I can't help thinking it wants to join a union such is its obvious defiance towards adaptation.

       ‘What is wrong with you? Go to your space in the cupboard under the sink!’

I used to be a fire-breather and one of my friends who seemed to get in a lot of fights, asked me if a spirit drink served over the counter in pubs would work instead of paraffin. I think that it would, and that thought is not an original one either. There seems to be evidence of the thought when I was six. Brandy on Christmas Pudding burns, right? It could be warmed in the mouth though it would be a little diluted by saliva; so order a double and hold it all in your mouth after warming it in your cupped hands when it is still in the glass. If you see someone vigorously rubbing their hands together and ordering a large brandy you might want to keep at least nine feet away. 'nuff said. Of course, who has a lighter or matches these days? Anyway, it is said that the pen is mightier than the sword, so I fear only someone with a quill or empty fountain pen who orders a brandy and a piece of paper. An intention to write with invisible ink surely suggests subterfuge, doesn't it? What? you say, How did you get here? Heat the paper, with brandy ink on it, in a toaster, to see the words. Well, it works with lemon juice, anyway. 

Yesterday, 13th December, there were half a dozen eggs on my doorstep again. The 13th of December is Saint Lucy's Day, and is a Christian feast day dedicated to Lucy of Syracuse. She was an early fourth century virgin martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution, who, according to legend brought food and aid to persecuted Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs, and wearing a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way, so she could carry as much food as possible with both hands.  - Wikipedia

Well, the egg-box angels I am making might end up being a Lucy and some angels. I now realise that I cannot compress the egg-box slurry and expect it to just stick together; probably because I didn't use a blender on it. Flour and water is what we used to use for Papier-mâché dolls when I was an infant. I am however, loathe to waste food to make a token gift as thanks for providing food; which leaves me with finding a protein to bind the egg-box slurry together (like eggs), or buying a blender, which I might find another use for in the kitchen. Otherwise, I shall sculpt DAS Pronto, which is not at all what I had in mind. I am hoping I can use the clay as more of a 'slip' than a shape-holding medium and, as such, it might work as a binder for the egg-box slurry.

You know what? I don't even know if egg boxes are vegetarian. They might use gelatine as a binder. Sally, the intended recipient of the angels, and now possibly a Lucy, is a vegetarian, just as I am, except for when I ate lamb about three years ago. 

I think a gift, token or otherwise, should take into consideration the recipient's values. If someone hates fossil fuels, I wouldn't drive to town to fetch a gift for them; I would cycle or walk. Likewise, Sally won't get a gift, token or otherwise, from me, that includes real animals in it; unless it is an animal. I think Christmas donkeys are quite expensive right now though.

The Diocletianic or Great Persecution was the last and most severe persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. In 303, the emperors Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius issued a series of edicts rescinding Christians' legal rights and demanding that they comply with traditional religious practices. Later edicts targeted the clergy and demanded universal sacrifice, ordering all inhabitants to sacrifice to the Roman gods.

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution

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[ 4 minute read ]

Third Party Spies

Research Your Researching

Imagining the future

You know, I can't help thinking that there are bars to improvement in the real world simply because approaches to research are not researched beforehand. What do I mean by this? I get offers to join research teams from various bodies but they want me to register using a MicroSoft form. I think it was Groucho Marx who said he would never want to be a member of a club that would allow someone like him to be a member. 

I would never give my details to a research body by way of a data harvester like MicroSoft. Who would? Surely, the best people to have on a research team are those that are able to understand that their details should not be shared. Certainly, I know that my every comment can be, and is, traced and followed and analysed. Any answer to a question like, 'How would you improve this....?' is tagged and details added to a profile of me stored by a third party. That profile might be useful to the person it pertains to today, in terms of subscribing businesses offering tailor-made deals to individuals, but tomorrow, it will bar you from being offered opportunities from elsewhere. 

It is highly unlikely that individuals will be swamped with a constant stream of offers bombarding their phone with messages all day. The average recipient would ignore most of them and as a target audience the cost of contacting them rises as a ratio of return on investment (ROI). Hence, only a few opportunities will be sent to the individual. This means that other offers are never offered to the individual. In marketing, businesses want to build brand loyalty to stop people shopping around and instead make them pay more for their product. Many people might put this down to convenience. 'It is just easier.' I suggest that this expectation of a convenient way of life reduces jobs and negatively diminishes social interaction. It was the commodification of meat products by supermarkets that destroyed the high street butcher, not the butcher's prices on their own.

When businesses ask us to send electricity readings online, it is not for your convenience; it is to save them money because they don't need to pay wages to someone to visit your home. If you think that there should be more available jobs, make the meter readers come to your home, even if you leave a note outside your door with the meter reading on it. You do not need to spoil your day by being at home, just use analogue solutions.

Any entity that sends me an email that links to a data harvester such as MicroSoft or Amazon, without warning me that the link goes there, is placed on a 'brownlist' that urges 'CAUTION - UNSCRUPULOUS ENTITY!' The reality is that the entity has not researched how to research properly. Do market researchers want sheep who follow the crowd. Ultimately, that would be a dream come true because it wouldn't take a lot of time or money to figure out trends. However, market researchers should be keeping an eye out for innovation and viral ideas and concepts. You can't reach mavericks the usual ways, like with data harvesters; many people are too savvy to go near them.

Of course, modern businesses use other businesses to conduct activities that are not their own core activities, because they don't fully understand how to do much these days. This is a desperate move away from vertical integration, which is hugely expensive to maintain (economies of scale - that sort of thing). I however, have no intention of ever giving any entity permission to share my details with third parties. 

The trend away from vertical integration is over a hundred years old though. Henry Ford's Detroit assembly line in the early 1900s is an example of vertical integration. They forged their own steel and had leather workshops and so on. I think Rolex (watchmakers) are still vertically integrated because they even forge their own particular type of steel, which I believe is used only by them. They don't make the diamonds though, they get them from nature (de Beers?)

All Open University students can have an email address that ends .ac.uk. However, they all have to tell MicroSoft who they are beforehand. I think that is why I almost never see a student email address that ends .ac.uk. I am certainly not going to allow MicroSoft to know where and how to listen in to my email conversation. 

I suspect it takes a little while for businesses to send emails for customers to verify they are who they say they are, because the password to an email account can be harvested once the cookie is on the users device and many people log into their online accounts before they log into their email account. I always log into my email account before I log into my bank account for example, and especially before I log into 'Indeed', the recruitment business. Note that you get a verification link on your phone while you are talking to the phone network customer service person, and not some minutes later. One minute for an email to be sent is bordering on excessive, I suggest.

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[ 9 minute read ]

Whiling and wiling away time

Imagining the future

On occasion, I come across a person who will stand me a conversation. Most people will do that funny hand movement that signifies they have exhausted all their methods for allowing time to make decisions for them on how to end something they have just come to recognise as laborious for them. 

One of my favourite things to do is to examine a subject from as many perspectives as I can, including the person I am having the conversation with. Generally though, they haven't really thought things through before I button-hole them and bend their ear. I think you might look upon this as; I intimidate people with word-wizardry. Except this kind of wizardry is not Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia' incompetently fighting a broom, or Harry Potter waving a wand and conjuring solutions to problems that only he can fathom. Most of the time I know what someone is going to say. That may sound supercilious and self-promoting, but it is not meant to be. And, here we have a problem I identified long ago. If I make statements like that the listener will immediately second-guess me. They actually believe that I believe that I can read minds or something. No, I mean that I expect to hear a common standpoint that conforms with the zeitgeist of a society. 

This is how my conversations usually work. I want to understand why something is so. Yesterday, my attention was piqued by a newspaper article I read in my local Post Office shop. 

As I approached my local Post Office shop I noticed a woman leave the shop and open the boot (Am. trunk) of her car. Mindful not to just throw my bicycle against the plate glass window of the shop, I had time to view her activity. She moved some bags around. Rather than practice my superb rendition of a gawking three-year-old with a 'why?' question on my lips, I 'thickened the air'. I do that sometimes when I sense something amiss or portentious. Anything that happened from that point on would leave a trace that lasts a few seconds; a trace that will allow me to identify commonalities to other traces and tracks within the same soup of 'now'. In plain English that means I paid more attention than I normally would and carefully stored my perceptions.

It is highly unusual for me to need to actively consider events that immediately precede the present I find myself in. Normally, I ignore pretty much everything because most of the time, stuff goes on around me and it is just thin, flavourless and clear dishwater; not worth keeping, because being the past as soon as it has occurred, it has no value; no freshness and no energy. We don't derive any nutrition from the past. It is consideration of the past, in the present, as much as it can be, that sustains us. And there it is, the present has value; which is why I like the present so much and the past not much at all. Even the future is preferable to the past because the future is bendy. (I prefer to hope that the future is bendy; 'malleable' means can be shaped and for me usually means with intent - I prefer the weather to uncontrolled manipulation by hopeful tyros). 

The future is bendy. It has curves in it that make the journey interesting. It has, within it, scenery and events seemingly scattered by the hand of a Supreme Being. Of course, there is no Supreme Being who idly chucks fantasy Lego bricks across a carpet for us to assemble or tread on bare-foot in the dark, as might suit our wit. It is the past and the manipulation of the present that shapes the future. I know this is as it is, so my playful protestations that I am prescient fall upon my own deaf ears. If other people hear me state that I am a seer they should recognise it for an umbrella position that encompasses 'I looked at the past and some futures and there is a high probability that one future could manifest as this or that'. And here is where most people I talk to get lost; they have no idea that I want to tell them about a future. They, invariably think I want to 'while away' the time, when I actually want to 'wile away' a future. 

I can't remember where I heard or read this parable. (It should be known that I did not come up with this and I have reproduced it verbatim to the source in order that in a future it may be used in a search term to establish its provenance):

A Parable

It was a chilly, overcast day when the horseman spied the little sparrow on its back in the middle of the road. Reining in his mount he looked down and inquired of the fragile creature,
"Why are lying upside down like that?"
"I heard, the heavens are going to fall today." replied the bird.
The horseman laughed, "And I suppose your spindly little legs can hold up the heavens?"
"One does what one can." said the sparrow.

We know that 'to wile' is to use guile and manipulation. In one kind of reality anyone can plant a seed of doubt and expect a change. We can't control the trickle of change when other people become involved in the making of a torrent though.

Once I had selected my items I noticed the woman was conducting a transaction at the Post Office counter and the man was close by, not really doing anything except mumbling to himself. When I do that it is soliloquy; when other people do it is incoherent mumbling. 'Scary Monsters', I thought. (It is just an expression; not an impression). Reading the marks where a wooden spoon of activity was stirring the pot of slowly coagulating sauce that was developing into the past, I predicted that he and the young woman would leave together. You know, you have to recognise the past to see a future. I had time to 'while away' so I read the front page of a newspaper. The Government will mandate businesses to tell all employees that being in a union is a good thing. Good Crikeyness! Really? Have they thought this through? Young people, whom some businesses supposedly find unemployable due to their attitude of entitlement, should be told that it is a good idea to discuss the bosses behind their backs, and form a limping team that resembles the one they have had all their school lives and is resistent to external influence. This is a good thing? Of course, I already know that these young people feel alienated when they find themselves in their first job after leaving school or training. Suddenly, they find themselves bereft of a supporting team. No matter how pathetic that team was, it was a position of belonging and a comfortable bubble of confirmation bias. In order for these young newbies to be part of a new team at work, they are going to need to impress their work colleagues of their worth. That, today, is quite difficult when no-one talks in the canteen anymore. Teams are found on SmartPhones these days. 

       'I hate it here. It is dull and boring and stupid and I don't know what to do!'

       'I know, it is the same here. I hate it too. See you later. the boss is looking at me. She wants me to work, Here she comes. Bye'.

It is plainly a good idea to cause young people to think their opinion is valued when they present an attitude of 'Why should I?' towards their work environment. Any union will leap at having someone like this on their team. 'Work to rule' is definitely on the cards and statements such as, 'That is not what it says in the job description!' will be rife. 'All out!'. I predict that the adaptive UK will be crippled. Happy empowered teenagers. That is what we want, don't we?

I don't speak young people 'Lingua-do-do' as Lady Gaga put it, or not. (She did in one YouTube video but 'Genius' doesn't think so). I might as well be Shakespeare to teenagers. Fantastic range of multisyllabic words but it takes deliberate and focused thinking to decipher their meaning, and without a team, I suggest, they shan't attempt it. So, the extremely knowledgeable chap, who lives over the road from me, had to be the only poor opening for wiling. He, though, standing in the cold, close to the Post Office shop, expected to mildly discuss unions with a handful of anecdotes brightening the environment. By this time, the coagulated past in the shop had proven to be no more than a bagatelle that was essential in snapping me into the grid of fate. Now, however, fate's train was drawing into a remote station on a heritage line.

Shaping my argument by using a second party is of course reprehensible but I can be blind to individual sentiment sometimes when the world needs to be saved. It turns out that he is not the conduit that I hoped he might be. To be honest, I didn't even have that hope with any degree of confidence that my words might stick like strands of spaghetti casually flung against the hard wall of his conscience and his concern about the demise of the horse-drawn hansom carriage. I usually cook words on the fly and without having ever read a cookbook. My 'wiling' would inevitably fizzle out in a cul-de-sac of indifference. This chap has been fired in the furnace of experience so many times there can be no expectation that any solvent will release the rigid bonds of his thinking. And, he doesn't speak teenager  'Lingua-do-do' either. But he is not the carrier; I never thought he was.

That conversation with him was stimulating, even if it was a little irritating when he kept trying to drift off into nostalgia and stereotypical views on whippersnappers voting in elections, coal, and gypsies. But I am not one to dismiss a colourful tart of delicious tidbits. Everything he said has some relevance, but like me, he doesn't join all the dots. Lecturing helps but thinking things through and trying to make sense of information or opinion bears far more fruit for a vintner of knowledge. Connoisseur, I may not be, but I do enjoy a good brandy, or distillation of loquaciousness, if you will.

Only I seem to make the connection between teams at schools, voting in elections and union meetings. I can paint futures run by teenagers both good and bad. I feel that in order to understand what we really want, we might have to use a technique that I invented after a whole bunch of people invented it long before I was born.

Imagine painting a scene of what you would like your future to be like. Now imagine painting a picture of what you would not like. What is missing from the first painting?

[ 1909 words - over 2 hours to write and edit - I hate editing so much that I had to leave it and finish with a final re-edit 8 hours later]

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[ 5 minute read ]

Doorstep Deliveries

Those were the Days

Yesterday was the 6th December, Saint Nicklaus Day. ' It is the feast day of Saint Nicholas of Myra; it falls within the season of Advent. It is celebrated as a Christian festival with particular regard to Saint Nicholas' reputation as a bringer of gifts, as well as through the attendance of church services.' 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas_Day

I first heard of it when I was seventeen and working in Bayern (Bavaria, Southern Germany). My girlfriend told me that in her town, children would put their shoes outside and St. Nicholas would put nuts and fruit in them for the children to delightedly find the next morning. I was in Muhldorf am Inn in Winter, where my girlfriend of the time lived and I can understand that anything that cannot stand getting wet from snowfall would not be in the shoes.

Muhldorf am Inn is, on the Inn river; the same one that InnsBruck is on and is one of those German towns that has a traditional Christmas market, with hot mulled wine (Gluhwein) and Lebkuchen for sale. On course, my girlfriend knew everybody and got us free Gluhwein, but not too much.

I am lucky because as a child, with two siblings, we had traditional German-type Christmas with real candles on the tree and fruit and nuts on our own Christmas plates. I have fond memories of those days, and yesterday remembered about St. Nicolas Day with some nostalgia. When I stepped out of my house yesterday, 'Lo and Behold!' My neighbour, Sally, had left another half a dozen eggs on my doorstep. This time though, she had half hidden them behind the planter that I have planted garlic in, on the other side of the path. Hmm! Does she think porch pirates might steal the gift? 

Sally knows I think things through, try to work out what is what and why. She is as sharp as you like and knows that I like puzzles. As I have said before, she might merely be trying to stimulate me, much as animals in a zoo are stimulated by zoo-keepers when they hide food for the animals up trees and things. In any case, I appreciate the gifts very much and the sentiment behind them. It is so fine that there is always a special date on which she makes her deliveries.

Despite being English, born and bred, and able to trace my family history back to the 13th century and Diss in Norfolk, I have a kind of melancholy for the romantic folk songs of Eastern Europe. Though it is not the first time I have come across Romanian folk music, I am a little bit hooked on Storm Large's rendition of 'Până când nu te iubeam' performed with Pink Martini (available on YouTube) and previously recorded by Maria Tănase, I think in the 1940s, though you will find the date as 2000 or 2001, even 2015 online with Spotify, but she died in June 1963.

I can sing a bit and have been trying to learn 'Those were the days' sung by Mary Hopkin, her number 1 hit in 1968, in the 1970 Eurovision song contest. It is a Russian folk tune and I think Mary Hopkin does not really do it justice with her clear English accented voice. But it was 1970, and the height of the Cold War, and Europe might not have appreciated a bear of a man similar to Tevye, the main character in 'Fiddler on the Roof', a 1964 musical, who sang, 'If I was a Rich Man' singing a Russian inspired song at the 1970 Eurovision song contest. Nonetheless, I am inspired by Mary Hopkin's rendition, and it suddenly came into my head a few days ago. Unfortunately, I am really rubbish at remembering song lyrics so it is a considerable effort for me to remember the words. So far, I have half the chorus in my head after a week.

I also like and make marionettes which have a strong following in places like Prague, still in the Czech Republic I hope. I can't help thinking that I have a strong European link from having worked near Munich at a young age. I must have picked up something. It is easy to make these links though. All I have to do is recognise a number of memories and collate them without giving them much thought and Voila! I am suddenly Europeanese. The songs I mentioned and many others like them are the roots to many modern songs, or perhaps more so for songs twenty or thirty years ago; and my love of marionettes is inspired by the ones I saw in the bedroom I shared with two boys in another family for six months when I was ten. Of course, having a German girlfriend at seventeen probably has a strong nostalgic effect on me too.

Sally, next door, is definitely on my Christmas card list but how do I personalise it? I ask myself. Perhaps something substantial might accompany a card. I have a lot of egg boxes that I might be able to dissolve and reform into little nativity characters and angels, I think. We'll see. I am, however, really mindful of inadvertently setting up a forced situation where reciprocal gifts are deemed to be necessary. It has been weird to just accept doorstep gifts from Sally, but I did start it by leaving Sally some tomatoes I grew, on her doorstep. It is a valuable lesson, I am sure, to be able to accept gifts because someone simply wants to give them.

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    mental health issues and consideration

[ 3 minute read ]

Don't Wobble

In sitting just sit, in standing just stand; above all don't wobble.

This post has been rewritten at 16:40 on Saturday 6^th December 2025 because its original edit (Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 06:19), I believe, has been considered to be directed at a single individual. It was never my intention to do so and further sensitive research has revealed that the previous edit could be construed as purposely disruptive by an individual. I apologise if any person or persons found, or still find, my words upsetting.

I have cut and pasted the original edit and comments and attached it in order that the comment can still be read as I believe the comment has some validity to it as an example of how reason has given way to emotion and harmful intent. This now means that the commentator will not be able to delete their comment. However, I shall edit this post again and remove the attachment if the commentator wishes to withdraw their comment (and their request for this to happen).

 mental health issues – consideration for others

I find it interesting that there are people who believe that theirs is the only opinion with any validity. The force of some of these people's opinions can be so strong that they themselves unquestionably believe it is the only possible truth. It is a closed-loop scenario. They seem to confirm their own bias. How do we show these people their error? Befriend them?

I suggest that some people are victims of their own fabrication. Something went wrong somewhere and no-one was there to help out, so the victim was left to figure things out for themselves. The problem, as I see it, is that without all the important information to hand a perfectly feasible opinion can still be reached that is absent of any consideration of others, simply because no-one was around to be considered. It only takes a series of these opinions to become heuristics and we have a personality that they may eshew, yet cannot rid themselves of.

Sometimes, it is difficult to have a simple discussion with someone who will not brook any deviance from their chosen beliefs, quite simply, I suspect, because even the idea that there is an error in their thinking will bring their self-belief crashing down and their carefully constructed safe-house of reasoning, their very existence, will be destroyed. This is, I suggest, a person who is terrified of being wrong. Aren’t we all? Most of us will even lie to cover up our mistakes. Perhaps we should try to understand how an amelioration of any conflict can be initiated without careless allusion and intimation. I know I need lessons on this. So, please consider my statements here as a preliminary attempt at ironing out how I might understand how I can improve.

Initially, I thought, 'Who can reach this person?' and 'Who has the time?' I am not afraid of being wrong, only disgusted with myself because I know that recently I have not fully applied myself to reason. It is among the last sentences of the previous paragraph that gives me hope, 'This is a person who is terrified of being wrong.' I rather think that if this type of person realised that being wrong is normal and an excellent basis for understanding not only others, but also themselves, they would also discover that being wrong is a good position from which to consider something from a different perspective.

I have come across Further Education assignments wherein the content of an argument is less relevant than the thought process that precedes it. Some people will have a strong opinion on what the content should be and, because they may find discussion awkward, may prefer to follow a strategy of codified rules and declarative statements even when the purpose of an assignment is to encourage students to practice debate and offer opinion in a considered and respectful manner.

How can we reveal to strongly opinionated people that they have not seen the whole picture? Of course, we first have to recognise that we ourselves may not have a full grasp of a situation or can perceive the full scope of a subject. I think, secondly, we have to establish in our minds that our strategy or perception is suitable for translation and presentation to someone else. Indubitably, I feel, we might be wrong more often than we would like to believe ourselves capable of.

I wish I knew how to best achieve excellent conversation. But that reveals me to be less than I would like to be, or even believed myself to be, because it means that I am not inclined to spend enough time considering a problem to validate any opinion I may have. I shall have to shelve it for a while. I won't abandon my thoughts on this, though.

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   Gambling

[ 8 minute read ]

I want to play too

This is about how constrained we are by our previous decisions and I use computer games, business and gambling (all highly addictive) as examples to explore opportunity cost, which can be seen as regret or a bar to something else.

When I started my business I did it because I wanted to play in the real world. My choice of computer games at the time had a business bent to them. Not for me, the single person shoot-up or online battles with a team. I was interested in how making decisions allowed greater freedom to make more decisions. In the real world this is a desire to accumulate as much money as possible. In my head that is greed. Greed when considered to be the only source for freedom is formulaic. As such, it might be considered to be a game with software written for it. In simple terms, IF this THEN this OR this. Logic decisions. I deliberately won't expand on that. You decide.

From playing business-type games and finding myself without a job (I quit) I decided to play a business game for real. And, that is exactly how I thought of it until things got serious, which is when I stopped playing and closed the business. The thing is, I was playing against 'players' who really had a vested interest in gathering wealth, and some who just needed to pay the bills. 

In shoot-em-ups, the player is initially given a weapon of some kind or perhaps, in modern games, some attributes or skills that would enable them to make weapons. These are plusses or positives. In business-related games the player initially also starts with an asset, money or a means to make money. The crucial difference between the two types of games (in both there is deadly competition) is that in money-biased games you can have debts. This is an incentive to 'speculate to accumulate'. In other words, you can guess or forecast a better future that will be so great that it pays for past debt. That is how most people go into business in the real world. They borrow money.

In order to borrow money from a bank you need a Business Plan which includes a revenue and profit forecast. I think there is always something missing from these Business Plans though, but the question can never be framed adequately: Is it a game to you? The upshot of this is in an underlying question: How constrained are you to sticking to a formula or can you afford to experiment and innovate? In a game, which should not affect real life (We will come to gambling), the player can pause and consider, quit, or make wild choices. After I have played a computer game many times I try wild choices to see what happens and it is then that I discover the constraints of the software. In real life, if a business owner has borrowed money, they cannot pause or quit without significant penalties that affect the rest of their lives in the real world (Opportunity Cost).

It seems then that someone who started playing a business 'game' for real has a significant advantage over someone who relies on their business to survive and is not playing 'the game'. I started my business from having experience in logistics (you can buy that but the cost is measured as opportunity cost). I used my own money which meant there were no stakeholders other than me. In business, the customers are stakeholders too but my customers were all ephemeral; the chances of them returning were practically nil, though it did happen. I could do as I liked including pause or quit. Against someone with debt I was the one who could afford to innovate. The key here is in understanding the constraints that someone in debt places on themselves. To me, making a mistake meant I learnt something; to someone in debt it means incurring a financial penalty that could cost them their home. 

I think this is why my marketing attitude to giving advice to my local shop-keepers is not taken seriously. They are way too far invested in their business activities to consider deviating from a stasis of do-nothingness or 'I have an idea how a shop works because I have been in shops so I will continue to run my shop as I have seen other shops being run' syndrome. To me, that is running a business using only peripheral knowledge. People too often do this with their lives.

'Game designer Will Wright was inspired to create a "virtual doll house" after losing his home during the Oakland firestorm of 1991 and subsequently rebuilding his life. Replacing his home and his other possessions made him think about adapting that life experience into a game.' 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims

I seem to remember The Sims game with only six motives for the little dolls but it looks like there were also eight: Hunger, Hygiene, Energy, Social, Comfort, Bladder, Fun, Room.

I never cared to find out about the creator or how the game was derived. I did however, go through a tough time and thought if I stick to fulfilling the same motives 'The Sims' dolls have then I should be okay. I still consider today whether I would be happier with a more comfortable chair or more friends.

In real life, if I have financial debt or am close to, or in, poverty I cannot speculate to accumulate. If my motivation to work is low it might be because I need better furniture or more friends or a better diet. However, if I skimp  on food this month in order to pay for dance lessons will the extra sociability and exercise pay dividends that exhibit in greater freedom by creating a larger financial revenue? Not directly from being able to dance, but again we are looking at 'opportunity costs'. 

Someone who relies on their daily business revenue to pay them a wage MUST work tomorrow. The opportunity for them to do something else is not available to them. So, doing their business has an opportunity cost as well as financial costs.

If I go to dance lessons I cannot do something else instead but my motivation in the wider field of my life might be enhanced and ultimately I might be able to afford a new armchair after all. Greater sociability and fitness can result in greater resilience and, importantly, a wider scope of opportunities. 

Gambling

Essentially, I am talking about gambling. The types of games I mentioned, 'shoot-em-ups' and 'money-related', or any competitive computer game, have an element of risk associated with them. They have to; it is what gives us a dopamine hit - anticipation and reward. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and hormone that triggers the 'pleasure' part of the brain. It reinforces behaviour, even if the behaviour is ultimately destructive. Simple gambling is deliberately incurring a loss that may result in a greater gain. Getting a loan for a business is direct gambling. Not eating as well as last week so I can go dancing is not gambling. Not eating at all for a week is gambling. So what is the difference? There is a presumption in the eating and dancing example because the premise has a time constraint of one week that more food is available or could be available after one week. If we don't eat for a whole week we are gambling that we will make correct decisions in a week's time based on a premise that food will be available and health will be restored. A gambler in a booking shop does the same with money. Perhaps the rent did not get paid for a week and the intent is to pay two weeks rent in one weeks time, which might turn out fine if food is still available in one weeks time. If not, the gambler needs to gamble again. The dancer on the other hand, has sacrificed a weeks good diet for a dopamine hit that may pay later dividends without incurring any more costs, or may not. However, exercise is guaranteed even if sociability is not when we dance.

Guarantees

We are looking for guarantees, right? Walk to the shops guarantees exercise and driving there guarantees incurring a financial cost. Many of us opt for the both the financial cost and a health cost. Why? Because we would rather do something else with our time. But what? In 'The Sims' we might need to empty our bladders, or relax, or continue to socialise at home, or sleep; but in the real world are we actually believing that we are Sims? Are we inadvertently playing a game but we are in someone else's game as Non-Playable Characters (NPC) in everyone else's game, but we are still afforded limited autonomy but not outside of the algorithms for health? 

Hunger

Hygiene

Energy

Social

Comfort

Bladder

Fun

Room

(The Sims)

This is why we must not be constrained by decisions we thought we had no choice to make. Crudely, in my mind, this comes down to whether we are playing or not.

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[ 5 minute read ]

Fey, Feeling and Funked

I have always been fey, though not especially knowing. Others have spoken of glimpsing something from the corner of their eye; a movement or a shadow. If I am tired and have not slept for days I see that too. I see shade that languidly spills from an armchair but never directly; the lights are far too bright for that. On occasion, I feel a cold fingertip on my neck or a 'spider' that runs across the stubble on the top of my head. These are the fringes of observance when you are close to the veil.

My Chilean girlfriend of long ago used to say, ‘Bettre’ instead of ‘Better', as in ‘That is bettre than that.’ I let her word slip through my lips sometimes, and sometimes wonder if she can hear me, feel me, know I am near; not in her space but in her void. Perhaps she has been somewhere and left a trace which I feel, like our hands have momentarily almost touched and a breeze, for a moment, melds the thinness of our essence together, though only near our hands. I try not to say ‘bettre’ too much in case I disturb her, just as I only look at photographs of my family with one eye. I am not a holder of the past and I have no intent to keep people from their present. With binocular vision we are hunters and our focus is seen in the animal and spirit world, However, I have seen many monsters with only a single eye remaining. I know they are monsters, but I am certain they do not.

Sometimes, I let creatures too near and I have to live my hour by the skin of my teeth. But it is never only an hour because the clock started ticking a long time ago. If I could draw I would draw a hill and a picnic table on top. That is where I would draw the people I know, because that is where the people I know think they are. They are not there. They are near a sea of torrent, of relentless waves trying to reach for them; greedy and cruel. It is not water and it is not wet. It is suffocating and it is cloying and sticky. Sometimes, I see people drenched in dry smoke that is neither the air or the sea. There is never a cleanness when I see them. I never smell flowers that shouldn’t be there, like I do when my hand almost touches the hand of my now gone Chilean girlfriend. 

The shade that was near the door has gone now and only shivers cross my body. They start on my back and ripple down to my legs, like throwing a stone into still waters. They are not cold and I know they are not to warn me of heavy danger. There is only something near-by and, though keenly watching, it is only trying to move its hands past my own. I wonder then, if I had a secret word that some woman I loved, and was loved in return, knows about and she is silently but loudly speaking. We are not practiced at love or how to show it, she and I.

It is late and the ogre who diurnally stumbles near me has slipped into sleep and his presence looms near, asking who I am in confused and never comprehending stupor. Hakim, my spirit avatar, nods invisibly to me to signify that I am correct; the troll is around. He moves from room to room, short-sightedly peering at my things and Hakim follows to make sure he leaves no spiritual trip-hazards. Hakim against this lumbering fool is no match; their aspects do not match. Hakim’s experience and sensibility is clearly defined and closely controlled, while the tendrils of despair and gloom that break from the miasma of complex endings of everything attempted, that is the ogre, dissipate, but not before they choke the tiny creatures that try to take a breath. The ogre never coalesces enough to be grasped in any world. Lost and fumbling, there is only a question of why, about itself; why is…?

The air heavy with its passing, still has within it inquisitiveness that squints past the acrid swipe of its passing across stinging eyes. We are all impatient but we know we are wasting our time. This is not anything that can reason; it has no background and no support; it is riven from anoesis that is, in fact, only dried and discarded slim succour. As such, it is separate and has no knowledge of from whence it came. It sees and then forgets, but it is disturbing. It is a reflection, a poor facsimile of a living entity who is disturbed. Hakim offered me a piece of paper with angry scribbling on it, such as someone might randomly cause a pen to make a mark on with no attempt to make a shape or a word, and I agree; it is so. 

Because I am mindful of its spiritual pollution I cannot feel anything else. I know that Harrari, the abandoned alien, would reprimand me now. It is I who is the cause of my imperception, I have a headache. She is right. I made the headache myself.

I can’t hear ‘bettre’ now and I cannot feel or smell a mellifluous breeze as our hands nearly touch. But she was never my love; it is someone else who makes my tears come now. I mostly hide her. I see her face and I call, but never her name. I quietly call but I don’t know her secret word. Sometimes, I fancy I hear her voice. Once, I think she waved. Hakim tells me not to form her image or her likes to surround her, because we, in life, were so close, but I couldn’t help it just then.

I am fey, feeling, and funked.

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[ 1 minute read ]

Tick

One of the people in my village is a woman who helps me tick. I think, because I know which road she lives in, she is comfortable. She always allows me to throw my thoughts and ideas at her; 'Blah'. 

I spent, though this is not the right word, over an hour verbally twisting her ear this morning. I don't think she minded because she is cool. She is cooler than I have ever imagined I might one day be. 

I have a collection of people in my head who make me feel safe. They are ordinary people who believe in themselves and their community.

I live in a village environment wherein we sometimes come across one another. We regard protesters across the world stopping traffic, disrupting sports events, and defacing Stonehenge, to be as dangerous as any sociopaths who force teamwork, and contrary to a steady and free life. Some institutes and other establishments also create forced-teams. I was lucky because I had an education with some of my teachers wearing black capes. Think Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' song, in which there is an overdub(?) 'Stand still laddie!' and 'How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?'

Since I wrote this, everybody in the village has phoned me and politely told me stop to speaking for them! 

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[ 4 minute read ]

Humbled AGAIN!

I am so lucky to have a shop keeper that comes from Sri Lanka. I live in the centre of the known world. As Al Murray, 'the pub landlord' says, 'We invented time because everybody sets their clocks by our invention of the Greenwich Meridian, or zero degrees East and West. If I want to, I can go and look at where it is, if I care to walk for fifteen minutes. I am definitely in the best country in the world, where only European history is important, we invented that too! You know, The Industrial Revolution and science and stuff. However, we 'Brits' have the Vikings who settled in Normandy to thank for our 'amazingness' because they came and taught us French and chivalry and things in 1066, and by so invading England killed a tyrannical family. Merci!

Or so I thought. As far as I was concerned, up until recently, everywhere outside of Europe, in the same time period, was a swamp peopled by the same type of people who we think inhabited The Fens in East England who breathed the miasma of putrefaction; a place (Ely) that supposedly harboured 'Hereward the Wake', who rebelled against the kind and polite Normans in 1070, and later reincarnated as Robin Hood in the 12th century.

Meanwhile, in Southern India one of the 'swamp people' built this: 

The Brihadishvara temple, built in the 11th Century by King Rajaraja Chola, is a Unesco World Heritage site (Anirudh Kanisett, BBC, 2025) Chola dynasty and Brihadishvara temple (opens in new window)

I have heard of and seen pictures of the Taj Mahal in India built in the seventeenth century, and separately, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, built in the first half of the 12th century by King Suryavarman II. (tourismcambodia.com)

I used to imagine how countries are in the present day from only considering marketing material that travel agents used to tempt people to distant countries for Summer holidays. It was once about getting British people onto white beaches and they used pictures of muscled men in boats with sponsons surfing onto a beach with women wearing grass skirts serving drinks to Europeans wearing white shirts or a one piece bathing suit. (A little bit of extension there, into the 1950's and '60's.

My local shopkeeper is proud of his ancestral past and was keen to tell me about the Chola dynasty of the early Medieval period in India. He told me how they transported elephants on ships to conquer Indonesia and how they were mighty conquerors. The Chola dynasty ended in 1279 (Britannica, 2025) Chola Dynasty (opens in a new window

'The Cholas were as important to the Indian Ocean as the Mongols were to inner Eurasia [...] Medieval Tamil metalwork, produced for Chola-period temples, is perhaps the finest ever made by human hand, the artists rivalling Michelangelo or Donatello for their appreciation of the human figure [...] The Chola period was what you'd get if the Renaissance had happened in south India 300 years before its time.' (Anirudh Kanisett, BBC, 2025) 

Well, I got told. Something else I learnt was that my local shopkeeper, rather than being only interested in retail is a remarkably interesting man who wanted to lend me his book on the Chola dynasty. 

In my head, there are men in chain-mail poking each other in their eyes with arrows, and in my local shop keeper's eyes for the same period there is an empire building temples.

Of course, in England we have a history of Norman expansion back into France and further into the Muslim world. And there, along with the achievements of many other countries, including Portugal, lies a connection between East and West trade. 'Merci', 'Tak', 'Tack' or 'takk'

References

Anirudh Kanisett, BBC, 2025, BBC website https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm27zn0vl33o on 14th November 2025

Britannica, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chola-dynasty on 14th November 2025

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[ 4 minute read ]

Stand still and walk about a bit

‘It’s no good, I have made my mind up!’ Well, sort of. How about we, like Germany is trying to do, conscript a hundred thousand young people into the army for a couple of years. This would mean that the jobs that the conscripts would have had in the ‘wild’ can be filled by immigrants who will then contribute to the British economy. The future 'recruits who many employers currently regard as too entitled in their estimation of themselves will learn to live away from their Smartphones, thereby improving their IQ level and learning discipline and how to follow instruction to a satisfactory standard.

I have never served in the military; I regret never being focused enough to do so. At school I paid attention and didn’t get into trouble. However, if my habit of absconding in the later years was a template for my behaviour in the armed forces I would have had to carry around more than a report folder for teachers to sign. Perhaps, I would have been a sorry failure, yet I do consider that a far better future could have been laid out for me if I had understood that discipline from a good and safe source is quite different to bullying by a bad authoritarian in the shape of my brother.

Let’s think this through a bit. Some of us might ‘off the cuff’ expostulate that all migrants should be pressed into service. While others would reason in their own way that we don’t want to teach dissidents how to defeat the British Army by learning its tactics and training regimes. So, if we play it safe by using unfounded paranoia we make sure that migrants never get a chance of military service in the UK. Now, we have a two-tier society: migrants who have no proof that they will follow instruction, and proven young British born people, militarily trained, who have evidence of being not only functional but also evince a degree of teamwork, support and discipline. Hmmm, I wonder which group the employers might pick their future employees from. 

Of course, if conscription was introduced tomorrow and migrants were also included, there would be moaners that these ‘trained’ people are taking the jobs that the earlier, non-conscripted, ‘feckless’ youths were never fit for. 

Would there be a different pay scale introduced for these different groups?

Perhaps employers could instead poke into job candidates’ childhoods.

       ‘Where you in the cubs, brownies, Girl Guides, the Scouts or were you ever a cadet?’

       ‘No.’

       ‘Next!’

       ‘How did you arrive in this country? Excellent! Good negotiation skills, evidence of teamwork, personal resilience and perseverance. You are over-qualified, We won’t be able to control you. Next!’

As an employer, I would ask this: ‘When you was at school did you sit facing the front or around a table, and did your teacher call you by your nickname or not?’ Then, I would be able to bypass the military training and the childhood evidence of discipline and recognise one type of person from another and employ them accordingly.

10:36 Wednesday 12^th November 2025: 

Germany inches close to agreement on contentious military service but questions remain

https://www.euronews.com/2025/11/12/germany-inches-close-to-agreement-on-contentious-military-service-bill-but-questions-remai

The link above is complete though it does not appear so.

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[ 4 minute read ]

Dogs with typewriters

First the BBC tricks us into thinking that Trump meant that everyone should fight at the Capital and now Sky News is being lazy with their news. On their website they ostensibly tell us where the worst areas in the UK for uninsured drivers are. Yet, their list is for defendents per 1000 residents. Surely, there is a question on whether there is adequate police coverage to catch uninsured drivers and what percentage of residents even have access to a car or motorbike, in any given area. Certainly, if a whole city is below the poverty line we can expect that whenever we see a private motorised vehicle on the road there is a strong probability that the driver is uninsured. Lets face it just keeping a car legal for driving 165 miles a week on the road can cost about sixty pounds a week for many people, when we consider insurance, road tax, fuel and repairs to meet MOT requirements. Can we expect people solely reliant on benefits to shell out three thousand pounds a year for driving locally? Should we expect the police to prosecute uninsured drivers beyond a certain number? I mean, if there are only a few police officers in an area they can only catch so many uninsured drivers before they need to go and do something else, right?

I suggest that road users are not considering the number of people in a city as a threat to their safety; they are instead considering other roads users, including cyclists, horses and pedestrians (who – the latter three, by the way, would never be defendants in a prosecution for having no insurance unless they previously drove and got caught).

I cannot help thinking that Covid 19 made everyone think, ‘Well, my effort is good enough’ without them recognising what good actually is. It seems that, nowadays, mediocre is good enough and ‘good’ today, is what would have been considered to be not enough to get a second interview for a job prior to 2019.

I know The Guardian a few years back had an article that stated that studies had shown that frequent use of a Smartphone temporarily snips up to 15 % of the user’s IQ. When the average IQ is 103 today, with a 15% reduction we have an IQ (87.5) that is only just above the AVERAGE IQ of a dog; 70. Some dogs have a higher IQ then that. 87.5 is halfway between an average human without a SmartPhone and a dog!

Find a clever dog and give it a typewriter and a job at Sky News or the BBC and we might just get some sensible and varied content.

09:07 Monday 10^th November 2025: https://news.sky.com/story/worst-areas-for-uninsured-driving-revealed-as-hit-and-run-victim-says-he-was-left-for-dead-13465600

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[ 4 minute read ]

It's all relative

I spend a while watching YouTube videos, searching for the meaning of life! Now that YouTubers can make serious money out of posting videos there are a lot of ads in some videos. Because I never sign in to any Google, MicroSoft or Amazon product it is inevitable that the non-tailored ads are going to be a bit random on a 'hit or miss' basis. Of course, Google knows all about me somehow because there does seem to be a common theme to the rubbish ads I get. It seems though that they have no idea on my attitude towards climate change, and I shall not open myself up to discussion by sharing those views with anyone. In any case I always, always skip the ads as soon as I can but there is invariably something that gets through. Here is the opening statement that I heard yesterday morning, at the beginning of an ad : 

       ‘All the problems with the planet, bar natural phenomena, are caused by human beings.’

What does that even mean? Take away humans and there would only be problems caused by natural events. I think the animals would like that but they wouldn't celebrate because they wouldn't realise that there are no humans to mess them up, because quite simply they don't have measuring devices, the internet and SmartPhones to compare environments with their family or friends abroad. Effectively, Earth would be merely a terrarium; nice to look at and discuss with visiting aliens.

I can't help thinking that we bash humans over the head a bit much sometimes. With square eyes I blundered into my local Co-op and mentioned to the checkout person that the mild Autumn in the UK is contributing towards 2025 being considered to be one of the warmest years on record. He may have thought, 'CLIMATE CHANGE!' and alarm bells may have rang. I realised my crass attempt at conversation wasn't working well so I offered him, 'It means that we are all using less energy to heat our homes.' Maybe he then considered humans in a more favourable light.

With two tins of tomatoes in my bicycle basket I went home and the YouTube algorithm sprang QI on me. You know, that quiz show hosted by Steven Fry and latterly Sandi Toksvig. Steven Fry told the studio that Ghengis Khan killed forty million people during his violent expansion. This, we heard meant that land that was formerly farms reverted back to forest. Ultimately, we have a murderous hero to thank for saving the planet (a bit).

Nature gets its own back to save itself in a different way than raising the temperature so we end up using less energy to heat our homes and thereby reducing carbon emissions. It releases its own carbon emissions so we don't have to. The volcano (Eyjafjallajökull) in Iceland that went off a few years ago (2010), I think spewed 300,000 tons of carbon into the air but by creating a huge ash cloud prevented aircraft flying, which would have contributed three million tons of carbon into the air. The numbers are not really important to me because this is not about climate change, aviation, or geological or Black Swan events. It is about relatives.

I have seen posts that express dismay that the contributor has missed an important historical site simply because they didn't realise that they were in fact standing at the important historical site. They did not 'perceive' the site. However, they have the photos, but only because something else interested them and so they took a photo. I also have experiences of reading modern opinions used as templates to understand historical customs. I can't discuss them though because everyone is doing their assignments.

Whenever we get off a plane, bus, or boat in Greece we are landing on a piece of land that is steeped in history; a history that is only relevant if we care to be interested enough to learn about it. I lived in Piraeus, Athens area of Greece. I think I might have been able to see the Acropolis from there but I also might not have; I remember seeing something but it might have been a picture in a book. I really wasn't interested at the time and can't remember ever going to it. I was more interested in the deer in a pen that had really long hooves that needed cutting years ago. Fortunately, I had the addresses for animal protection organisations in about nine different countries in my address book when I first came across the animal. (The French police scoffed at me after they threw my belongings across Forbach railway station and went through my address book on the French - German border, weeks earlier).

I hitch-hiked from Cambridge to London a long time ago, and got a lift from someone with a PhD in Romano-Britain. Somewhere around Royston on the A10 he suddenly said. 'There was a Roman settlement here.' All I saw were fields. Obviously, he saw something else. I didn't waste the opportunity though. Well actually I did because I didn't know enough questions to make good use of my time. I asked him why when the Romans went back to Italy the local populations here reverted back to living as though the Romans had never arrived.

       'The Romans were really good at organising people.' he told me. We might have thought the oppressed people were merely stupid but it turns out they just weren't good at making plans. Maybe, sunny weather would have helped them figure stuff out. Or maybe, the damp Summers allowed ergot to grow on the rye they ate, and they were 'tripping' all the time, and pretending to be witches.

The point I am trying to make is: if we have no knowledge of something we can't overlay our sentiments on a circumstance or event. And yet, here in Britain we are surrounded by history that only the descendants of the original immigrants that went to Americaland now appreciate. I lived in a very picturesque village with a camp-site and one day met a girl from Clacton, a sea-side resort in Essex, England. i asked her why she came to my village for a holiday and she basically threw the question back at me by asking why I would go to the sea-side for a holiday. In growing up by the sea in a holiday resort she eschewed its attractiveness and sought countryside and river, and a slower pace to relax. It is all relative. 

Whenever we step out of our homes in the UK, Britain, or one of the countries in the UK, we step onto historical ground, we just don't appreciate it as such. I have been to Norwich countless times and driven alongside the Roman wall that partially surrounds the city. I have been to London thousands of times and ignored the Barbican, and the Tower of London; the latter built by William the Conqueror. I ignore them because I grew up seeing them and I am not a tourist. My modern outlook sees them as just part of the scenery. The Tower of London was built to scare the locals and now it is a fun place to learn and visit.

In the picturesque village I once lived in with the camp-site, I saw a man walking quite quickly across the pasture field that was next to the camp-site; obviously a tourist. Nobody who lives in the countryside walks quickly across a field. Quite simply, there is only one reason a villager is in a field and it isn't to get to somewhere else in a hurry; we have cars now.