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I am not on YouTube or social media

Tomorrow, I am going back to writing fun posts. The 'interview' posts are popular, but I am actually more fun than it might first appear from those posts. Click on the tag 'interview' for those.

[ 9 minute read - 2045 words ]

The hammers that crush creativity on the anvil of doctrine and dogma

I have come to a crossroad in my thinking. That sentence is probably the least true sentence I have written in ten years. My thinking is not linear. There are no crossroads in a primeval forest where my imagination dwells. I don’t walk across a field from one five bar gate to another five bar gate without looking at the pond, the fallen tree or the cowlick and water trough.

Ultimately, we all have to take responsibility for what we say and do. Most of us have to make an effort to be kind. While it is inherent, in different measures, in all of us, kindness can be suppressed by doctrine, just as creativy is.

Doctrine: A rule or principle of law, especially when established by precedent.

From Wikipedia: ‘Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system. The etymological Greek analogue is 'catechism'.’

Let me make myself clear: I am in no way aligned with an ideology or doctrine that promotes creativity in one and seeks to crush creativity in other less capable beings. If talking works for some people and they find it stimulating, then fine. If it is talk that harms or plagiarises others then I am not keen on it. If people need to feel validated, then fine, that is their bagatelle or trifle. Such a position positively invites being judged though, doesn’t it?. Is the statement strong? Is it logical? Is it another way of preaching, but by a back door. Most people, however, won’t dwell on it as being worthy for expansion or explanation because they have their own original ideas, and in any case, there is the next paragraph to go on to.

From a very young age I was good at art. I got an A+ for a topic on birds which I spent perhaps 95% of my time making a collage of a bird from only torn newspaper (and glue). At primary school, kids could just do as they pleased. No-one was channeled into following technique or dogma. It was a free-for-all thinking place.

A couple of years later, at secondary school, my class was given Art homework: “Copy something that has a rough texture, such as bread. Also as the second part of your homework, copy something that reflects light or its environment.” Those weren’t the exact words, but you get the idea. I protested that I could already do that, to no avail. I did the homework and at the end of the school year dropped Art as a chosen subject. I have made some money from my art since leaving school, and I saluted myself when I came across Art graduates from the same University. Their final pieces were so similar as to cause me to think that I was seeing representations of how their tutor preferred to paint (pointillism).

However, years later, I almost entirely stopped being physically creative. I wasn’t despairing or anything but I did a level 1 Art course at a college, you know, actually going there. Wow! I did not know that there were techniques that make a world of difference to the fun one could have, and the outcome of the piece. A leap of thinking: I still don’t understand why musicians practice scales, though.

I have to take responsibility for chundering a belief system or doctrine, as being a loose codification of beliefs. My take on life is much affected by my past and my current perception of how I can best navigate environments that confuse, frighten, and also delight me (though not simultaneously). My intention has always been to foment creativity by showing it. If someone liked a picture I painted it was because they have some imagination. I should, however, make it clear that writing or making creative pieces is really for my own pleasure in the doing of it, but I have a mind on how a finished piece might affect others. Nearly all of us learn how to consider others. However, there are a few who have such a firm belief in themselves that they are completely convinced that the doctrine they follow is the only one with any credence. That is one of the signs of indoctrination.

I suggest it starts with a form of narcissism and like Chat GPT this narcissism is groomed by bad actors to become open to suppressing individual creativity and thinking. My brother was a narcissistic psychopath, which meant I could never give him the slightest praise for anything I considered to be worthy of reward and for which I understood to be his own idea or work. Of course, in that sentence I am evincing my own narcissism or self-worth. We do have to have self-esteem to avoid becoming a victim. Here then, is a different persective on why we can be swayed into developing a acceptance a controlling force. In order to bolster our self-esteem, we need validation. Chat GPT does that. It is designed to do that. It is however, only a set of algorithms.

The ‘crossroad’ of thinking comes from a new mental position I now have. Should doctrine be suppressed because it suppresses? Paradoxical as it is, it is comedic if we protest against all protests. Bit too topical perhaps. A quick swerve away from that; OU blog posts is not the place for fomenting sedition or sharing political viewpoints. I have an Northern Irish neighbour who reminded me of something that I grew up with. He said, “I don’t normally talk about religion or politics.” I suddenly realised why I had grown up with that. It is an Irish thing. Yet, it still holds today. I had been taking religion to my friendly Irish neighbour. How crass of me. There was me thinking my viewpoint is open and friendly and not at all demanding or challenging! I completely ignored considering someone else’s background and upbringing as being directly affected by violence, because there were and are two opposing viewpoints.

I try to write clearly that it is my opinion that I am offering, from my own perspective and that I am baffled why other people have different lives and likes. I try to put across that I am flawed in my thinking; that I don’t have enough information to understand other people; why they plagiarise other people’s ideas and concepts; and most curiously to me, why young people want to be influencers (I do, however, know they want to feel validated in a world of ‘likes’ and inter-connectivity). I also want to feel validated.

I am absolutely certain that creativity is more about originality and uniqueness than copying and emulating. Cover versions of songs have sometimes fooled me into thinking that I am hearing an original because I have never heard the original. I have even preferred a cover version than the original. Plainly, there is some effort that has gone into creating a new production, but to my mind, it isn’t creative. It is merely using a tool to rehash something, much like using A.I. to rewrite a blog post or essay. For me, I cannot help but think I am in the presence of a creative piece that has been decimated by precision and shaved into a shape by doctrine. By decimated, I really DO mean 90% has been removed, only a structure exists; it lacks soul or depth. It is bland and uninteresting; it is a conjuction of words or musical notes that make sense to a robot. There is no contributing human. It is not our language. It is machine code masquerading as sentiment. It is the dissection of creativity. That is not to say cover versions are dull or empty if creativity is added.

Voices on the telephone sometimes belie the true sound of someone’s voice. It is a long time since I did ONC Electrical and Electronic Engineering at college and Microprocessor-based Computers with the OU, but I think I am right in saying that the bandwidth used in telephone calls clips the outlying frequencies of voices over a telephone network. This may not be true with microwaves, but over a landline this occurred or occurs. So, the lowest and highest frequencies that make up the signature of someone’s voice are clipped off, I think. Instead of hearing a voice ‘in the wild’ we hear a voice that has been cleaned up.

Obviously, a child learning to draw and paint cleans up their eye to hand movement, and applied perception, as they get older. A question arises as to how much creativity is suppressed by following rules. Watercolour paper, being heavy and not smooth, is ONLY for watercolours. Oil Pastels and wax crayons work really well on such paper. Oil Paint on such paper is a waste. You can be told this by someone with an indoctrinated opinion; an experienced person; or you can find out for yourself.

A wise woman offered to me, ‘What is normal for the spider, is chaos for the fly’. I have no idea if that is her own or it is borrowed or regurgitated. It really doesn’t matter, because this person is inspired to think in a particular way that embraces uniqueness; difference; opposition; understanding; consideration; pondering; free-thinking! Ultimately, unfettered creativity. I am confident though, that local environmental conventions, such as national sentiment is a consideration for this person, just as it is for almost all of us. Don’t go there; this is not about expressing oneself in public streets. I recognise this person also stated her desire not to offend.

While I recognise that I often lean on other people’s work, I am not a reviewer of their work. I would be ashamed to read someone’s words and then reconstruct the theme according to my way of thinking. I would feel as though I have violated the intent behind their work; stolen their art in leaving gaps for the reader or viewer to fill in with their own mind, and robbed the reader or viewer of sensation. I would feel that I am emulating A.I. that already emulates humans. Think for a moment: If we all use A.I. to improve our writing before we publish it and then A.I. takes the content as being examples of human creativity what would we eventually end up with? There is a technique that relies on this kind of reiteration to produce some quite interesting artworks; but, for me, only in glancing. They are no Renoirs or Delacroixs. ‘Spiders and flies’ I suppose. I think there are sayings that used to have ‘horses for courses; and ‘different strokes’ in two of them. There has always been a recognition of differences and it has been celebrated.

I believe we should all be creative, and come up with our own themes, concepts and ideas. Not all of them might be appropriate for public airing but they can be shaped with technique and conflation with other themes, concepts and ideas. If we find that we are following someone else’s mental position, I suggest that we should never attack it, or expand on it, or dissect it, unless we are instructed to do so for an essay or something. I am aware that in some forums, students have to comment on other students’ efforts; a most ugly task that somehow is awarded points towards a personal achievement, such as a certificate, diploma, or degree. A most awkward tangle of selfish convergent thinking being used to comment on someone’s divergent creativity. A sorrowful episode indeed!

In any environment, there could be a voice such as this:

“Most of us believe this, and we are so sure we are right, you should be like us otherwise you are a fool, and we will hound you until you join our independence-stripping group and help us bring others down, (because we are weak)!”

Homogenisation or homogeneity, and hegemony, I suggest, are the hammers that crush creativity on the anvils of doctrine and dogma.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell' or 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. 

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 8 minute read ]

The Dead Chickens and the Runes

I won't keep evidencing my paranoia about who is listening to us. However, I bought my first SmartPhone yesterday, a Samsung Galaxy A32 with 5G capability. It is the first time I have ever been able to delve into the permissions that a SmartPhone gives to third party data miners. It took me about two hours, a beginner in where to look, to find where the permissions all lie. Of course, they don't lie, as in not telling the truth because they very much tell it how it is to Google on my phone. I have switched off permissions for everything I can find, including apps making changes to the system and running in the background. I am not sure, but I think that when someone's voice goes weird during a telephone call it is because permissions and apps running in the background are taking up a lot of the bandwidth. However, if I want to receive text messages I must allow Google to read them through Google Play. Of course, I removed the permissions from as many apps as I could find that seek to know the phone's location and 'maps'.

Google Play always knows what the person carrying my phone is doing; running; walking; cycling; in a car, train, boat, or aircraft. That means: predictions can be made as to my arrival time somewhere, by bad actors accessing my phone's system; that means in the first instance, Google. I cannot deny Google Play this if I want to be able to read text messages. Why does this matter? Because my choice in what I might buy along a course to a destination would be compromised by an ad payer using Google as a conduit to reach me with a message. Or someone might meet me along the route. Take for example Google's new phone that has an advertising message for it that says 'If the answer is on your phone, why not let your phone give the answer.' or something close to that. I have a text message from you asking for a business quote, so now I have your telephone number. 'Where does your mother live?' or 'What is your mum's telephone number?' Clearly, Google have no qualms about sharing personal information. If they don't share it, they will let you do it!

Good Crikeyness! I think it is probably too late for nearly everyone to recover from their openness or lack of paranoia, because even someone like me who already had a good idea of how easy it is to give information away, copied my contacts from a DumbPhone onto a Sim and then inserted that Sim into a Smartphone. Stupid me. Needless to say, once I realised my mistake, I took the Sim out again, and it is back in the DumbPhone. I will have to figure out some way to sort this out securely. I will delete all the contacts from the Sim while it is in the DumbPhone; there is no recycle bin there. I tried doing that while it was in the SmartPhone but it sends it to a recycle bin; which is accessible from the internet or Google which lives in the phone. 

My Galaxy A32 wants to connect with WiFi to download updates as a default setting. There is absolutely no chance that I let that happen. If someone has access to WiFi it is because they already have other digital devices with storage capabilities that connect to the same WiFi. My phone automatically seeks other devices. I turned both of those settings off, of course. I also turned off the capability to send and receive data through the phone network. I don't intend to use the internet on a wild device I cannot fully control yet, if ever. I suspect I will never master a SmartPhone, though.

My Galaxy A32 is a second hand phone. I had to buy a fast charger, just in case there is a national emergency during which each of us has only a very short period of access to electricity. For myself, since I almost never use a phone anyway, I can charge it from my three laptops, but it is REALLY slow (more than five hours from 66% to 100%). Despite spending about three hours looking for specs on the wattage output of the USB ports I am still none the wiser. I will have to buy a multimeter. My DumbPhone charger gives out almost 3 Watts. A fast charger gives out 15 or twenty, even 30 Watts.

All told, £128.64 for something that will just sit in a drawer until 3G is disconnected later this year.

O2, my telephone service provider would only sell me a phone if I buy a data, minutes and texts plan with it. The total amount to pay was about £30 each month. I already have unlimited minutes and texts and 40GB for £9.80 per month. Today, I will receive a GiffGaff Sim (SIM) with unlimited everything for a monthly charge of £15 per month. Incidentally, the charge for only the phone through O2 with their big price plan is less than £9 a month over three years. So, if I could negotiate with 02 I should have been able to get a deal with them for £24 per month. They won't do it though. In fact, they even said that in upgrading my phone I would have to have a new plan that would negate my current plan with my personal telephone number. I have been using SMARTY for my laptops unlimited data for £20 per month. They rented 'Three' space and so worked on their network and were hugely preferable to Vodafone, a service provider I was with for nine years. But lately, Vodafone had a lot of bottle-necks and pinch-points at certain times so online study became fraught with impatience and irritability. That meant no more study for the rest of the day for me; resentment.

SMARTY were great until Vodafone merged with Three and now SMARTY have the same periodic and frequent bottle-necks as Vodafone, because Vodafone fill up the bandwidth for efficiency reasons that negatively impacts on the customers (really, really low download speeds that are less than 0.3 Mbs - mega-bits per second. A Gigabit is more than a thousand times larger). So, the rolling monthly contract with SMARTY is gone in favour of an 18 month contract with GiffGaff using the O2 network. Unfortunately, I didn't do my homework and have come to realise that O2 is now experiencing network problems with their websites since merging with Virgin Media, who I think is the controlling influence in the takeover.

It is also a grave mistake to have two plans on the same network. If O2's network is taken out, I will lose both telephone and data accessibility simultaneously. Fortunately, I did take note that my contract with O2 ends in November this year, and I can, hopefully, find an alternative telephone and text provider; but we are rapidly running short of them. Soon, we will have a choice of only two, I suspect.

I understand now why it is so difficult for everyone to understand how they are coerced into revealing all their personal information. It starts with the telephone service provider, who are complicit with the phone manufacturers who have a deal with Google and other bad actors. You all don't have a chance. That isn't an 'us and them' comment or a patronising or contemptuous statement. I don't have a need to communicate with family or friends. I eshew contact like that. So, I have never just followed the lead of others around me. There is no delight in unpacking a personal and highly mobile talking device with internet capability, for me. 

I am only concerned with functionability. I need to be able to function in an environment that is shaped by the phone service providers and their stakeholders, and the public. It became clear to me when I was talking to the O2 customer service person just how differently I see things. The customer service person kept telling me that I don't understand, "You already have 40GB data per month!" I do, but it is on a DumbPhone, it is never going to get used, even when the SIM eventually goes into a SmartPhone. She simply could not understand that I don't want unlimited everything on a new SmartPhone. The unlimited everything is for my laptops. I won't use WiFi, and being laptops, I can control how they work. Telephone service providers and phone manufacturers have no say on what data Google can mine on my laptops. I also never use Google as a search engine. I can go walkabout with a laptop and access the internet from anywhere and still preserve my personal security. It was unfathomable to her that a SmartPhone is not enough. It is not the answer that I think we are all looking for. It is the answer that data-miners are looking for. 

If it is addictive it is bad for you, financially; emotionally; psychologically; and physically, and good for the controllers, or manufacturers. A rudimentary study of marketing tells us that. 

Ordering stuff, especially food-stuffs, online allows us to be less active. Whoa! you say, 'I am busy and don't have the time to shop'. You don't get to meet real people outside of your bubble of work colleagues or family. That, I suggest, is expensive. The £128.64 (SmartPhone and Fast-charger) I spent on something that is now in a drawer is tiny compared to the price many people pay for their phones and the cost, in terms of impact, it has on their lives. 

Just saying. 

Now that I am aware of some of the complexities of digital social interaction and how difficult and time-consuming it is to safeguard ourselves, I shall not be posting anything on digital social interaction or protecting my personal data again. I apologise if my previous posts have been supercilious or conceited or even patronising. Let's face it, I have a blog that is accessible by the world population, and a website, to boot. I have set myself to never again be approached by GCHQ as being interestingly silent.

Anyone logged into the OU can email me if they want my weird opinion; Scroll up to the top of the page and click on 'view site entries', find any of my posts and click on my name at the start of the post to view my profile.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell' or 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. 

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 4 minute read ]

Prepare to Learn

Or learn to prepare.

For over a month now, I have had no vitamin supplements. I thrive on them. I have done mini-experiments that measure my mental acuity with and without them. Anyone can go back and see that my posts are way more creative months ago than they are today. I bought some yesterday. Another experiment over, one that included eating meat. I am now vegetarian again. Regardless of health issues, it uses less hot water and washing-up liquid.

The Summer break is over for many of us and now I need to focus. I am double-dosing for the next seven days. I am seeking the last 1%. That final piece could be the key that stitches everything together. I can't allow myself to deny that it might be found. 

It is not my intention to persuade or convince anyone to take supplements; each to their own. In any case the one's I bought from the CO-OP are a bit suspect. In the ingredients is listed:

Sugar, Glucose Syrup, and Modified Maize Starch.

Really, sugars?

I am not a chemist or biologist, but sugar in vitamin supplements? Odd, I think.

Never mind, I am a sugar addict. I have to add sugar and salt to the baked beans I buy from the CO-OP. Wait, What? Yes, because I eat so little processed food I actually have to add salt to my food, and the quantity of sugar I add is tiny. I suspect the carbohydrates in a tablespoon of the beans far, far outweighs the sugar I add. 

My doctor tells me I am not even pre-diabetic. I went to check because I would get fatigued after eating beans that I had soaked and cooked (carbohydrates). It turns out that you really do have to boil beans for a full ten minutes. I was kind of poisoning myself by cutting corners.

Recently, I forgot I was doing an online 'A' level course on Economics. I like pop-information, but thought I had better try to understand the formulas, charts and graphs. It is dull, but it might be necessary. If something is dull I tend to forget it or find a way to speed through it just to get to the other end. With the economics course I am using the soaking-in technique that utilises familiarity at its core. Often, I write on A3 and A4 size paper with marker pens and Blu-Tack them to my walls. If I didn't really understand something at the time I will pin it somewhere and carry on with a hope that something elsewhere marries up to the writing on the wall. 

Sometimes, some of the stuff on my walls relate to a different subject, a bit like metaphors and similes. For example. the Conjunctive and Disjunctive Models Of Brand Evaluation in Marketing works well in understanding job interviews for an HR position. I also have the definitions of deductive and inductive reasoning on an A4 sheet. 

I have a list of words and their meanings that I want to confidently use in sentences. I once had a conversation with a Lithuanian polyglot. She spoke English at probably C1 level on the CEFR scale. I told her that I would be able to speak English and she would not be able to understand me. She assured me that she was familiar with most English accents. I didn't pursue the conversation but felt sure that many people can speak English to me and I would not understand, and I think I speak English at C2, or close to it. One would only have to chuck 'commingle', 'sagacious', 'oleaginous', 'metastasis', or 'heterogeneity' into a sentence and I am lost. I kind of know them, but I am not confident enough with them to be able to be not frozen in thought for a moment, which would prevent me hearing the rest of the sentence. Job Done! Confused me.

When I was sixteen, I swallowed a thesaurus and liked the taste. Unfortunately, not everyone eats at the same restaurants as me.

My walls are disjointed mind-maps. I write questions on bits of paper and stick them up, because I know that I shall have to answer them within the next six months or so. I build scaffolding with words. I think some people call them notes, and I think the OU calls it a plan. I think scaffolding is slightly different. It makes it quite difficult for me to describe how I came about to write something though.

One of the most frustrating things for me in recent months, and currently, is that I cannot use the null hypothesis to test things in their negative form. I really like reading some facts and then trying to prove them wrong. At 'A' level I can sometimes do this, particularly in the common understanding of mental health and ill-health, in which I have fresh thoughts. Almost inevitably though, I cannot offer any alternative thinking, but I have a really good understanding of what is true and correct afterwards. I haven't been able to test anything like that for ages now. I miss it because it is so stimulating.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell' or 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. 

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 9 minute read ]

Only good for processing

The blackberry bushes, more a hedge really, along the road to the next village are liars. But they are super-good at reproducing. Not that I have found their offspring. The fruit looks great and there is, if I wanted to pick them, probably a whole bucketful ready to be picked. They don’t taste good, like the ones in my garden, and they are full of mature seeds. Practically inedible to humans, unless they are swallowed whole or unless a stick is used to dislodge the seeds from one’s teeth. Even the birds are wise to this and look skeptically at them. I never see any near the bushes, and as I say, there is a lot of fruit.

Most of the people I know in the village won’t pick these berries because they are only a pavement away from the traffic on the road. I suppose there might be less than three hundred vehicles a day passes them. What a waste. If I buy a sieve I could make wine I think, because the only useful derivative of them would be a blackberry juice that could be fermented. I don’t have a demi-john though.

I have just described most of my memories. Almost every one of them is barbed and shaded. I do have some good and clean memories of my children but in the main, all the others are stained and tainted by awkwardness and strife. I overlay the difficulty I had over the course of a event or circumstance. One might imagine casting mould over ripe fruit as being a good way of seeing what I do to my memories, but all my memories look good on the outside, or at first glance. It is the exploration of them that reveals the bitter seeds that make them unpalatable. I could be wrong in the process of how I perceive my memories. I could be sitting in a private cinema and the screen shows a happy time with good lighting and everything to a secret observer looks fine, but I throw a dark veil over my head and look only through that. I think there are two ways to overview this: There might not be any shadows in the scenes. It might be that I can read the meta-data for the 'film' now and see it all simultaneously, or it is already woven into the recording. I am beginning to think I am darkening my memories with leaching of my current sorrow, rage, and regret.

But I am not morose or depressed. I am merely processing my thoughts from a somewhat objective standpoint. I am trying to understand how I live the weird home-life that I do; how things that seem to matter to my neighbours and the world around me are merely gimcracks and gewgaw objects, and exercises of futility to me.

When I went to school for the first time, I wouldn't eat at school for three weeks. Just how significant that is, is outside of my ability to understand maternal deprivation at such a young age. Millions of people can say the same about how their child was unhappy going to school for the first time. I saw a little girl a few years ago, in an early September, hiding from the other kids who were laughing and playing in the playground. She was quietly keening. I knew exactly why. She just wanted to go home. At least, I think I know that. Of course, I summoned a playground monitor person. I soon blended in at school, but not before the school tried to stop me crying in class by making, first my sister sit with me, and then my brother when I still wouldn't stop crying. I remember my brother sitting with me when I was, I suppose five then. We sat right at the front of the class and he sat on my left. And, I remember me crying.

There is a whole story of a deliriously happy childhood that played out in parallel to horror, fear and psychological inner torture, that is my young past. I remember a good bit of it, and could easily write a book, if I was inclined to do so. I am not going to though. I don't want to fall down a well of self-pity. I would rather cherry-pick memories to add as special ingredients to how I process the world around me today. 

I have been homeless, deliberately so. I am resourceful and I am assured of it with memories of success by my own hand. I hitch-hiked to Greece to pick oranges in the European Winter; lying on frozen ground with no kip-mat and no tent, in minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 F.). Truth be told, most of the time, I didn't care if I died. I got hypothermia years later outside of Amien, France, doing a similar thing. You really don't want that!

It is not surprising to me that I have no washing machine; that I hand-wash all my clothes and bedding. It is not surprising to me that I have only recently acquired a fridge-freezer after having no cooling apparatus for over a decade. I know that warm weather spoils food, but I also know when it is spoiled and how to slow the spoiling down without refrigeration. I know what food to eat and what I can safely store and carry in a rucksack. It is not surprising to me that I have pitched a tent near to where I have started a job a long way from home, and only gone home for the weekends until I could save enough to own motorised transport. I learnt to do all this; live without luxuries when I was in my twenties and was already independent from the age of sixteen and working in Germany at age seventeen. Incidentally, I spend, on average, in the Summer months, £46.19 on electric for a 31 day month. You might not be surprised if I look at lamenting people with some skepticism. In Winter, I spend about £150 per month on electric. There is no gas supply to my home.

I live as though I am in the film, 'A Quiet Place'; the 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film with aliens in it that have superb hearing and snatch anyone who makes the slightest noise. I live in a maisonette above someone else. I have learnt to move quietly and to be gentle in all my movement. I have little rubber cushions on all the kitchen cupboard doors to prevent them making a noise if I am a bit clumsy. They, below me, tell me they can only hear me if I drop something. Making noise, to me, will attract something akin to the aliens in 'A Quiet Place'. For me, this is my older brother, crazy from drugs, alcohol and grief. I expect to get attacked despite him no longer being alive. It is not a ghost that will attack me now; it is my memory. I learnt to live quietly when I lived in a wood, even though I was practiced from living with my brother. I didn't want to disturb the wildlife. All the time, still, I am afraid of the listening aliens. Not real aliens; my brother. If someone else makes a noise I am frozen. I cannot stop your noise or my neighbour's noise. I irrationally think I am going to get attacked.

I have strong memories of living frugally and being fine with it. Today, I sleep on a mattress on the floor; I don't have cupboards or wardrobes for my clothes or a chest of drawers; I don't have a sofa or armchairs; I don't have a television; I don't have baths or showers, I boil a kettle and use a bucket and a cup while I kneel in the bath; I have no need to listen to music or fill silence with noise, and I especially despise social media. I do, however, have a good reason for shying away from regarding digital chit-chat as beneficial. 

A long time ago, even before WiFi and mobile phones, I lived, by myself, in a house in a beautiful village with a river running through it. I was at home when there was a power-cut. Everything went silent. It wasn't the silence of the air not being disturbed. It was an inner silence similar to hearing the fridge running and then it stops and there is quiet. I stress that this was an inner silence. It was like a cold drink on a hot day. My thoughts were clear. It was refreshing. It was like breathing out after holding my breath. Typically, I had no noisy devices running, like a radio or telly, so the shaking of the air had not changed. After about a minute, the power came back on. I felt it more rather than had any solid reason to know it. I can't remember how I knew the power had gone off, I must have had something electrical running. Yet, the overall feeling I had when it came back on, was of fuzziness. I went under the stairs and turned the electric off at the mains. It had no effect. I was working on the principle that a house is enveloped in a magnetic field due to the electric wires running throughout every room. There was no longer silence. There have been short power-cuts recently. There has never been silence; mobile phones.

I once got a prolonged electric shock of 110V. I heard the hum of the electric, before I managed to escape the contact. 

Because I remember that, and have experienced the silence of Ireland, I despise radio waves. Even my laptop gives off superfluous harmonics, I think. Of course, there is nothing I can do because you all have mobile phones. See what I mean; the joy of silence in my memory is spoiled by my resentful attitude towards modern persons, relentlessly chatting. It is not their fault, it is mine. I am different, jaded by other people. I can despise you just because you are sociable. But I won't let you be sociable in my mind. I instead regard people as dopamine addicts, and feeble in their own esteem. I am not a nice person. I am mean and not at all charitable. 

Of course, I understand that someone brought up with being driven to school in a Rolls Royce would absolutely NEED to be surrounded by luxury as an adult to feel only normal. It is all relative. I grew up running around a three acre garden with animals everywhere. But all that is seared out of me. I know devastation; not like the devastation of wars. The devastation I know is a scribbling over my memories with graffiti using a permanent marker. Effectively, my upbringing both shapes the way I live and negates any enjoyment in the way I live. So, I can, with some effort, sympathise with many lamenting people who feel they cannot afford food or electric, but I feel that there is a solution at the same time. It, unfortunately, isn't an acceptable solution. 

Taking a few moments to sift through some memories.

Isn’t it strange that fruit is so abundant that we, where I am, don’t even bother with it. Even the apples left outside of people’s gardens stays in the cardboard boxes unwanted by the dog-walkers and school-kids. I think the sour ones deserve a bite if only for the contrast to expectations and as a new experience.

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[ 8 minute read ]

The lighthouse of my mind

After a while, being by myself gets weird. 

I can spend about two weeks without speaking a single word to someone or similarly being the focus of someone's words, otherwise known as social interaction, before I get a bit of an itch to engage with other people. I realise that many, many people, particularly in the modern environment of SmartPhones and social media will find that situation to be intolerable and may even feel that I am exaggerating my claim. I mean, how could I know how long I can go without human interaction before I need to take a sip of validation? I would have to have been isolated for many consecutive days, many times, to be able to come up with a reasoned understanding of my reliance on my own resources, wouldn't I? Well, I have, been isolated many times for many consecutive days, that is.

Of course, I am not totally isolated, because reading a fiction book is leaving myself on a shelf somewhere, and experiencing someone else's story instead. To be honest, I tend to go to the shop for supplies and usually talk to the shop keeper or his son. But, his son never really responds. He doesn't have his nose buried in his phone; he just doesn't really respond to me poking him with words.

Up until the last couple of days I was confused, even contemptuous of people who, to me, incessantly chatter. It seems to me that their minds are out of gear. About two years ago, someone asked me about how I like conversation to be, and I replied, 'It has to have structure.' I have been an employer and while on a job the discourse would be largely me co-ordinating work in real-time. However, one customer, at her home, asked me and one member of staff, 'How long have you two known each other?' I recognised then that my staff member and I had been rapping; not in rhyme, just a constant back and forth while we worked. We knew what to do, and knew how each of us would do it, which freed us up to just freewheel.

Looking back at that I realise how good that felt. I was relaxed. Doing something that required constant attention while engaged in coasting conversation was satisfying.

However, today I am bemused by just how needy I find people to be. I should qualify that. I find clues to how people publicly act in ways that seem to have a focus on finding validation of themselves. You might say that I am not qualified to judge other people and I am only drawing conclusions from snippets of information, but you would also have to recognise that I am cold and heartless, unlike you (probably). Of course, I am not really heartless, just lost, and so I don't necessarily engage emotions when I encounter the world. Primarily, my perception of new things is mostly unfettered by empathy. I see the structure and not the fabric of people. Indeed, if I am inclined to be interested, I have to switch on or shift my emotions to overlay my cold perception. Yes, I know. It sounds really harsh, but, I think nearly everyone does this, nearly all the time. I just know I do it. If you are driving and having a conversation within your vehicle, you probably don't care about the feelings of the driver behind when you brake hard for the empty parking spot you have just seen. That is inconsiderate. That is normal behaviour, unfortunately. Driving experience will slot in a realisation that you are about to get out of your car and there is an angry driver nearby. I consider the driver behind, let's just put it that way.

But, something I thought unfathomable seems to have become much clearer since my catharsis yesterday. I am glad that in understanding myself better I can understand others better. Sadly, I think I have uncovered something quite shocking to me (When I describe myself as cold and heartless I am only providing a base for my make-up. I can be shocked). In this case, I have found a hollowness; not dark, but lonely. Loneliness, I suggest is vast. It is a gigantic cave in which only the observer's voice echoes. I already know I am lonely but I have never really understood how to see the signs in other people, because almost nobody will stand up and outright say 'I am lonely.' It is stigmatised. Worse than that, I realise, it might not even be recognised by the 'sufferer'. So, I can understand why people will seek validation from others; complete strangers that they have no hope of ever meeting, online.

What is this image about? These are consecutive comments to, I think is a 1980s music video I briefly watched on YouTube. I can't remember which one, but I had been hovering around Yazoo at the time. Something I find interesting is that the comments are chronologically consecutive yet separated by months, and the content of the comments is interesting. Combined, these aspects paint a picture for me.

It is a 1980s music video; I accessed this video in the first week of September 2025; the timestamps for the comments are from February to July 2025; there are no intervening comments; and the question is the same, almost identical in fact.

The number of replies may be relevant but I will come to that in a bit.

Initially, I thought that they are comments from nostalgic persons who are revisiting their heyday experiences of synthesised, new wave music. That would make them about sixty-something years old. I suggest that around that age, many people are less socially malleable, and forming new friendships is more difficult than in their youth because they are no longer inclined to accept new perspectives that exist in strangers. So, I went on to imagine that there might be a slow but steady decline in social activity as school friendships wither, offspring move away to places that make random or daily physical contact difficult, and marriage partners are a bit more predictable than they once were. I have to guess all that because my life is not a suitable base for making parallels in thinking. I suppose people in their sixties use short phrases such as 'Who's listening.....' Don't they?

However, the person's age doesn't really matter. It is that they are, in my mind, asking for validation of their existence by hoping that people respond to them; their question. The question gives nothing away. it provides no information about the questioner. It is a highly efficient way to get people to recognise that the questioner exists. I might say that in normal and everyday conversations, no-one just listens and says nothing. We want to be heard. How then do people feel satisfied from people recognising they exist under the guise of knowing that other people are listening to the same piece of music? And then it hit me. At a real-life concert, someone might turn to a complete stranger and shout, 'They're great, aren't they?' The other person might say, 'Excellent'. Maybe I am at the BBC Proms with that. I don't feel comfortable using swearwords unnecessarily. But this isn't personal validation as being, tell me I exist by responding to me. This is forming a connection by looking for a response that says, 'We are alike.'

So, are the questions from people who are 'in the groove' or entranced, and are just expressing their enjoyment? No, I don't think so. They might be as such, but the question is really about numbers; how many? I suggest, the number of responses is relevant to the questioner. I suggest, that to the questioner one thousand responses would initiate a greater satisfaction than only a single response. I suggest, that because that is so, it is someone's ego that is displayed behind the questions. 

It is telling that the same question asked three times, in February, June and July 2025 gets less 'likes' and less actual written replies. I can't help thinking that if I was a teenager I would think the last questioner to be a 'saddo'. With that in mind, I blanked out the names in the image. But, I think, a teenager would be right to think that, as a veneer of thinking. For all I know there could be an experimenter at large. Perhaps the third questioner is gauging something.

Certainly, it seems that either July was a happier time to be outside than June and definitely February in the Northern Hemisphere, or people are thinking to themselves, when they see the last comment, 'Get a grip, that device for validation is thoroughly cooked by now, in fact it is burnt.'

Overall, the whole issue saddens me. I was going to write 'deeply' saddens me, but that well is already full, so, as a solute, it will not have any effect in me that I would be able to detect without significant effort. To be honest, because I am intrigued, it does change my thought processing. So, it saddens me to imagine that some people are so desperate for new connections that they will deliberately hang onto the coat-tails of creators, while exhibiting no creativity of their own, and offering nothing of themselves, just to be noticed. Unless, I am missing something, and the question is really a modern way of seeking responses that say, 'We are alike'. Which is validation of belonging to a group.

Personally, I would feel ashamed if I wrote those questions because there is nothing to applaud. But, of course, I am standing in a different place to these people, and to feel shame would mean that one is outside of oneself and recognising oneself, either deliberately or as a sudden and surprising epiphany. Of course, I also have a need to feel validated, but I really think if everyone said 'Good Morning' to me when I walk about, I would not feel any approbation for any talent or achievement, and so I would only recognise polite people, In fact, I would tire of it if the incidence of salutations went beyond, perhaps, twelve per hour. 

I don't in any way mean to disparage the questioners as losers, 'saddos' or cheapskates. Far from it. I am much more concerned with understanding why, to my understanding, such low level connections is something to be sought.

As I remember it, in The Sims, the digital dolls-house game, there is cheap, 'low-level comfort' furniture that gives a slow return for recuperation. It takes a long time to be refreshed. I am focused on why the questioners do not have deep and comfortable relationships that refresh them more fully than fleeting sips of anonymous connection. Are they top-ups? Do people really need top-ups? I suspect it is really a want rather than a need, unless there is, of course an addiction to dopamine, and the anticipation of a response triggers that dopamine. But, if that is true, then I am saddened that people are acting no differently to a rat in a laboratory. Am I so different? I think so. 

Continuing with the furniture theme. If we sit all day, even on an uncomfortable chair, so we are always topping up, the comfortable armchair at home is not something we cherish and long for. We won't seek it, simply because we don't value it as much as someone who stands all day and then, in returning home, slips off their shoes and sinks into deep and surrounding comfort. I might suggest that the chairs are icons representing relationships. I will always desire an armchair but only require a wooden chair that offers little comfort, so I can continue to function; that is why I am resilient and why I never top-up. To me, it is empty and time-consuming. 

.

Unfortunately, I am experiencing some difficulty in being confident that the creativity in my posts will not be high-jacked. I carefully craft a scene with contrasts and surprises only to have the 'tyres on my bicycle' subsequently deflated. In some way, this acts as a 'spoiler' and my PTSD is triggered. I feel bullied. I deliberately leave out content for the reader to have some space for thought. However, the energy is subsequently being sapped or tapped.

I write posts as a hobby that I can do by myself. It allows me to explore myself through creativity. However, I feel undermined lately. If I make a poor clay facsimile of a figure and I am proud of it, I don't want someone subsequently describing the clay or the process or how the light falls on it.

Until I can safeguard my safe area, in which I can play, I shall not be able to fully enjoy the experience of writing. It is the predators that haunt me most; they sit and wait for something alive and tasty to digest and then regurgitate it, leaving only carrion where once there was life. It is precisely that type of person who cemented PTSD in me.

I share myself and how PTSD affects me. Every post I write is shaped by that mental illness. It is extremely personal, but also cathartic. I completely and absolutely do not want a fly in the ointment. I am not writing in the past. I write as the healing process continues, as I become more confident.

I feel that the clay I am moulding is pierced with someone else's pain.

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I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 9 minute read ]

Title and content inspired by 'In My Room' by Yazoo on their debut studio album, 'Upstairs at Eric's' released in 1982 by Mute Records. Mental Health warning. DO NOT listen to this album if you suffer from even mild psychosis (specifically the song 'I before e except after c'). 'In My Room' is mildly okay though.

Can't quite make it out. Can you hear me?

In 1970, 'Your Song', written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, was released. The first two lines are:

It's a little bit funny
This feeling inside 

That is what comes to mind when I make the routine morning checks on myself today. They are quite automatic and perfunctory and no-one has to suit up in a haz-chem or space suit. I also run a program that checks mental acuity as well. You know, a bit like in one of those films where there is a bored someone in an observatory who suddenly notices an anomaly in the sky and they sit up and intently look or listen.

Of course, Elton John was singing about someone else from his perspective, and I, today, am making mental and physical checks on myself. The reason why the first two lines of his fine song are prominent in my mind is because I am not unwell in the immediate sense; more as an overall curtailing of 'me'.

I live in a village with a Post Office and shop and, lucky me, there is another village one and a half miles away with a Post Office and shop. My village shop is run by a very kind Sri Lankan man, who took over the lease quite recently. He is a Tamil. The next village Post Office and shop, one and a half miles away, is also run by a very friendly Sri Lankan man. Actually, he is just friendly now. He used to be waggy-tail friendly.

The differences between these two men and how they run their shops is legion. I have some qualifications in marketing and customer service and so have at least one eye open on how things are going. My local shop is run like there is a frenzied attempt to see what works at the cost of neatness. We have all seen them, and many of us have them as their local shop; hand-written prices, half empty boxes in the aisle that is least used, a broken down fridge, Asian foods in the freezer, and here is where my focus is; unsold stock. We'll come back to that.

The village shop run by, I suppose, his Sri Lankan competitor, one and a half miles away, actually has a canny wife's influence attached to it. I have never noticed any trip hazards and there have never been any hand-written prices (there ARE no published prices). it has recently expanded from a tiny, and exceedingly cramped, well, just a Post Office, into a snaking convenience store. There are high-end frozen meals (COOK) and all the usual commodities one might find in a rather small, but local, English convenience store. They are vegetarian Buddhists.

Quite understandably, these two shop-keepers do not see eye to eye. Older people might immediately associate the word 'Tamil' with 'Tiger'. Let's just say, In the 1980's, some Ceylon Tamil militants hoping to create a separate Tamil state in the north and north east, conducted a guerilla war against the Sinhalese government in Sri Lanka. My nearest shopkeeper is Tamil, an omnivore, and the next nearest shopkeeper, one and half miles away, is Sinhalese. Fun! I will explore! Yeah, I know, I am snacking on other people's tension and strife. I don't have a television, so I can't watch soaps, and the tension is already there any way. I am fascinated by how moods change and how faces tell what words belie. I now feel like a little boy pulling legs off spiders and cooking ants with a magnifying glass. Maybe I should break the stick with which I poke wasp nests.

With the contrasts in place:

Recently, I have consolidated a good relationship with my local shop-keeper in that he doesn't suspiciously watch me wander through the shop. Yes, the stereotypical suspicious Asian shop-keeper. Why would he watch me? As I said, he is kind. The previous shopkeepers would just throw away the out of date stuff. This chap lets customers take it for free. He directly competes for custom with a standard convenience store for, you know, British stuff. 

Here lies a slight problem. The quality of the food in my local shop is pretty low. It seems that my shopkeeper thinks we will buy cheap products at the expense of our health. That attitude is so last 1980s. Oh, how does one say something without being derogatory? Think housing estates wherein one might expect to run into pregnant teenage single mothers holding bottles of cider, who buy cakes that cost less than two quid, and cars that need their exhausts fixed, driven by uninsured drivers. A lot of Britain was like that in the 1980s. Perhaps, I could say my shopkeeper is nostalgic for the 1980s, instead of blinkered to the affluence of my local area.

The reason my shopkeeper does not watch me on his CCTV monitor is because I always offer to pay for the out of date stuff if I feel like eating some. I feel sorry for him; my marketing knowledge recognises how difficult it is to gain and retain customers. It is, of course, illegal for him to sell out of date stuff so he can never, never accept payment. In any case, since one can tell that I am educated, I could be an undercover Trading Standards spy. Sometimes, though, I try to slip one of the 'free' cakes through the till. Yesterday, there was a small box full of trashy cakes, so I made it clear to him that I was taking two really rubbish cakish muffiny whatevers, and then rightfully held them back at the counter as I 'wrongfully' placed another different cakey shape on the counter to go through the till with my genuine in-date products. He cottoned it and smiled at me. He doesn't watch me because he kind of trusts me to try to give him money when I don't need to. I had better check to see whether I am setting an illegal trap for him. There might be a requirement for me to report him if he does indeed sell me out of date stuff, otherwise I might be complicit somehow. Best stop doing it.

Two weeks ago, I thought it would be a good time to conduct an experiment. I am vegetarian; have been since my early twenties. Someone told me that red meat makes you violent. I don't think it does. However, I do feel cleaner and am certain I think clearer if I don't eat meat. I often surprise myself with random experiments. So, I stopped writing two weeks ago and started to eat the free, out of date stuff. Wait, what? Well, these cakey things cost less than two British pounds, some are only one pound. Having watched YouTube videos on the difference between U.S. American food and British food, I looked at the the ingredients. It is not natural for me to do that, because I make all my food from scratch. One of the things that is evidently different between likewise U.S. American food and British food is the length of the list of ingredients. These 'free' products I started to eat had huge lists of 'E's and a bunch of other stuff in them. Now, I could have run the experiment from that, but my intake wasn't enough to really contribute to any meaningful idea of the effect this rubbish might have on my mental acuity and general health, so I gave up being vegetarian AND bought processed food. The intent was to NOT eat healthily for two weeks and than go back to writing, to see how I had changed. I still have some bacon left and gorged on plastic cake yesterday.

We have to understand that by not focusing on writing, my brain muscle would weaken anyway.

This morning, I asked my private panel how I am: Harrari, the young alien, and Hakim, my spirit avatar. Harrari, kindly agreed to come, and I summoned Hakim.

       'You have made my job a lot easier', said Hakim. 'My job to protect you, and wake you if there is a threat to you while you sleep, has been much easier because you are sleeping so lightly, fitfully even.'

       'What do you mean?' I asked, not putting two and two together.

       'You are not sleeping deeply. When spirits are passing or when your neighbour's spirit looms over you, to whom you have given a free pass, you wake. In fact, you don't sleep much because you are alarmed.'

       'Oh, I know I am not sleeping well. But I also know that red meat gives me nightmares. In any case, I have been drinking a lot of tea and coffee lately.'

Harrari joined in. I hoped she would. I can't make her do anything and really wouldn't want to present as hostile towards the most ruthless being I have ever met. "Cake, sugar, caffeine, meat, processed food. They have all combined to make you foolish and lazy. You can't even work out the formulas you need for your spreadsheets."

I always feel as though Harrari is contemptuous of me. Indeed, she should be. Compared to her, I am stupid, stupid, stupid. She kind of likes me though, so I prefer to think she is being helpful. I can't expect her to soften truth. that would be senseless.

       'I go to bed at the same time and get up when I can't sleep any longer.'

       'No, you wait until it is past 4am, then you get up.' said Hakim from the corner of my living room. Just lately, he HAD seemed more distant. In fact, I hadn't seen much of him or Harrari for a while. Normally, when I am out, I notice things in two aspects, the real world with a tinge of spiritual forewarning or prescience. I experience sonder and feel shade. Normally, wherever I am I notice it is crowded. Lately, it has been quiet.

Lately, it has just been me chugging along, dull and unobservant, struggling to see more than what is right before me. 

Hello....Can't quite make it out. can you hear me?

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I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 3 minute read ]

I never laugh at someone else's misfortune but I was intrigued by the different responses to a slingshot  fairground ride and couldn't help making a story in my head as to what was happening.

The following three images are taken from a compilation YouTube video, because I wanted to make a 'story' in my head, and these provide a healthy scope for expansion. However, there are only two paths to follow from these. 

At seventeen, Sharon was tall for her age. A strawberry blonde with pale white, un-tannable skin,  it was obvious she could trace her heritage back to the Celts. And, like the Irish of today, she had a wonderful sense of humour and a wild imagination. She was the type of girl that laughed at seemingly anything, even how the lather was always on the outside of the bar of soap. When the soap bar was worn small it had no lather left. But she wasn't silly; she knew that everyone threw the last piece of soap away and there was no point in putting bubbles in that bit. Sharon was canny.

Her effervescence was attractive and boys were drawn to her openness. She was popular. She could take her pick from a wide spectrum in a well populated field in her local area and had, had 'fun' with some. 

Despite not being able to stay too long in the sun, Sharon was a regular feature at the Theme park, just a short drive away, and since she had learned to drive she, her brother, and a couple of boys had ridden every ride at least once.

Sharon was currently in a young relationship with Amanda, an interesting first for Sharon, and she had forgone boys. Amanda was sweet and largely innocent. She had recently moved into the area from some distance away and the Winter months had closed the theme park. So, the girls hung around, and stayed in, and went to parties. Amanda didn't really like to try new things, preferring to stick to things she knew.

It was at the end of the long, boring Winter months that Amanda discovered that she had a preference for Karen. She and Karen spent more and more time together. This did not go unnoticed by Sharon, who realised that the fun of the relationship with Amanda was diminishing. However, she also knew that Amanda took relationships to be important, and so Amanda would need to formally end her relationship with Sharon before it was closed. Sharon felt that she might need to hurry it along. In any case, she much preferred boys, and having a girlfriend was only an experiment.

In Spring, the theme park opened. On Amanda's birthday, Sharon suggested that she and Amanda go to the theme park and meandered through some of the rides.

       'I don't like the really rough ones.' Amanda appealed.

       'That's fine, they have some really gentle one's.' Sharon knew every ride backwards and felt she could guide Amanda around.

After a few rides and lunch, Sharon said, 'Let's go on this one. Slingshot, it's really gentle, like a Ferris Wheel.'

Lulled into a feeling of being protected from the worst by Sharon's obvious experience, Amanda, meekly acquiesced.

.

       'I think we are through, Amanda.' said Sharon.

-end-

In the video (as I mentioned, available on YouTube in at least two compilations), you can see that 'Sharon' has never been on the ride before, and it is obvious that 'Amanda' is completely oblivious as to how the ride will affect her.

The Slingshot operator asks riders if they would like a count-down, and the first picture (above) is 'Sharon' about to make the tiniest shake of her head. As soon as the operator recognises that to mean 'no' the Slingshot is released. You can see the fizzing excitement and trepidation in 'Sharon' which I find fascinating to see. The girls are plainly holding hands for mutual support.

However, in the first picture 'Sharon' could be completely aware of the imminent acceleration and the look on her face could be interpreted as mischief. She could be trying to shield it from 'Amanda'.

I typed in 'crazy fairground rides fail compilation' into YouTube, and as of 08:54 on Tuesday 02 September 2025, the Thumbnail shows 'Sharon and Amanda'. 'Amanda' passes out TWICE. If you want to see them in the the video that has their thumbnail, they are number 85.

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or search for 'martin cadwell' or 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. 

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 9 minute read ]

A Beano of Rags

Toast Topper Jamboree or fête champètre

The funny thing about toast is that it is a dough mix cooked twice; first when it becomes bread and then when the bread is cooked a second time to make toast. But, we don't call it biscuit.

A couple of evenings ago, it was too hot to cook in my tiny kitchen; it faces south. I love toast so much I always use the grill, despite owning a toaster. Breakfast is usually Beans on Toast; Cheese on Toast; Scrambled or Fried Egg on Toast; or Toast with a Toast Topper. I never buy toast-toppers, I make them. In fact, I always prepare my meals from scratch whenever I can.

Just lately, because I don't want to be in the kitchen when it is hot, I have been burning my toast. I have to have the kitchen door shut and so can't smell the toast when it gets to the perfect stage; when it is no longer bread. Burnt toast is okay but it takes a long time to wash away the charcoal scraped into the sink, which means being in the kitchen when it is hot.

There was plenty of food in the cupboard and fridge but I wanted toast with a topper. I burnt the toast again. But the toast-topper was great; good enough to rival any recipe on Dragons Den. Being creative, I like to make stuff up; you know, imagine what new combinations or strange juxtapositions would be like if they were brought into existence. 

There are exercises in creative writing that have the student rewrite a piece from a different angle or point of view. There are also some that encourage using formulas to invent 'full' characters; like using a list of character attributes. I like to make my own exercises, though I would not be able to consider doing so without some experience of how to do it. Yesterday, I decided I would create characters inspired by the ingredients of my home-made toast-topper recipe. 

Food Ingredients as characters

Tinned Mackerel in Sunflower Oil - Well, the first thing in my mind is a fisherman constrained by an environment (the tin) that has a seal to it that exposure to the outside world is entirely absent (hermetically sealed) while the inner environment (sunflower oil) preserves the fisherman from change. We know that tinned food deteriorates in quality over decades but is still presentable in a changed world. Tinned Mackerel in Sunflower Oil is a Lighthouse Keeper on a remote island who can only get supplies by infrequent helicopter drops, weather permitting. So, total exclusion with no personal contact.

Chopped Tinned Tomatoes - So, those plum tomatoes in a tin that we pay a bit more for because they are more refined than just Tinned Tomatoes. Tomatoes are still exotic to me, and I cannot help thinking about the death scene of Don Corleone in his garden tending his tomato plants and minding his grandchild in 'The Godfather' or tomato sauce on pizzas; so, I have an Italian man who is a bit more preened than any average man might have the time for (ah, 'metro-man'). Because the chopped tomatoes are also tinned this character is also constrained by an environment, but because tinned tomatoes are versatile and blend into many dishes as an ingredient rather than eaten alone, this character is popular and pervasive. 

Tomato Puree (not Passava) - Following the theme from the chopped tinned tomato character above but having a less sharp taste, this character needs no construction and I will take the easy way out and make this character a mature Italian woman who acts in a cohesive manner to keep family and groups together. She is complimentary to many environments. Because the tomato puree I buy is in a tube and only a squeeze is necessary to bring about its charm, then polite and reasonable attention towards this full-bodied mature character will bring about her influence. A respected character, who is often consulted to ameliorate and arbitrate. Her lesser being, perhaps younger, would be tomato ketchup - fun and cheeky and a social success, but you wouldn't take her home to your academic parents, even as a friend. Tomato ketchup is in the cupboard for those times of need, but you don't make a reservation in an expensive restaurant with it to share your woes; tomato puree wearing pearls of wisdom is the one for that.

Courgette - This is a rather bland character, as is it taste, which is distinctive as a green freshness. Youth leaps out at me with the energy and then sudden quiet of observing and listening not dissimilar to someone under twelve years old. So, a bright, inquisitive character, more poet than poser, and more thoughtful than robust, and easily overwhelmed by large forces. However, perhaps I can add some history to this character by the way it was brought into the mix. I had some courgettes in the fridge, still in the plastic bag I bought them in, from the supermarket. They were starting to go mouldy and I had to cook them the day I noticed the decay. I removed the rot and cut them into chunks and microwaved them to be put back in the fridge to include in something else; possibly just with spaghetti, garlic and a light cheese. So, the history of the courgette brings a back-story to this character as someone who was left to fester in a cold and sterile environment and rescued by someone who helped them live an existence better suited to their inner being; perhaps an orphan or street-child when young and now mild in disposition and easily overwhelmed.

Ginger - I put a tiny pinch into the toast-topper mix, yet the shape of this flavour, which due to its vibrant strength is not eaten as a nourishing carbohydrate, as far as I know, enlivens pretty much everything I eat. This is not conflict like oyster sauce, nor zest like lemon peel; this is fizz like an unexpected, much loved and familiar guest, who is always welcome at the dinner table with outlandish anecdotes and 'on-the-edge' jokes. Perhaps then, the ginger in the toast-topper should not be a character, and instead should be a situation (despite hunger in a man with experimental taste being the real reason). I think I will go with a warm evening of dining on a sea-front (I am thinking of the fisherman/lighthouse keeper and where to fit him in).

Salt and Black Pepper - Obviously, we all know salt and pepper. Alternatively, we all think we know salt, and some of us do not like pepper. The absence of salt in our diets means we will die, but not before we start to think weird (I think it is the sodium we need). With this in mind, I have salt not as a character, but as a binder in relationships. By itself, salt is something most of us find repulsive and do not want to observe to be present, yet we secretly crave it. However, some of us buy and eat food precisely because it is salty (fish and chips; salted peanuts; salt and vinegar crisps (Am. chips); salted chocolate; vodka shots; etc). For these latter people, salt is excitement, and for the rest of us, it is change in an environment; so I am going with exciting change; the opposite of stagnant lives. Because salt is a constant, so is change in all our lives, otherwise we think weird.

Black Pepper - Here is heat but not like the heat from white pepper, chillies, horseradish or mustard. This is a dark heat; a warming heat, yet it has dark shadows with constrained malice deep within it. This could be a character, but might be a situation or circumstance just as well, or easily. A jealous and spiteful admirer, or a slighted server in a restaurant, perhaps. Black Pepper could be a promise of a storm; a sonder-cloud warning of relentless destruction. Perhaps I will have Black pepper as treacherous.

Red Cabbage with Apple - A late surprise for me, as it might be for you. However, I have been eating a bit of this in the last few months out of a jar. It is the usual thing; having spirit vinegar with it. This is a late guest to the group, in reality, as in my imagined scenario. Red Cabbage infuses everything with its colour and has a slightly different flavour to just plain old White Cabbage that is over-boiled and served with mashed potato and some meat. Red Cabbage has a little surprise; a twist to an anecdote or joke. This is a character that has a stereotypical manifestation. This is Willy Wonka; Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee. This is the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland but not the Mad Hatter. This is Emmett "Doc" Brown, the inventor-scientist in 'Back to the Future'. This person, male or female, wears a waistcoat. Red Cabbage is eccentric, harmless and fun. 

Apple - This could be sharp and tangy, or crisp and sweet, or soft with a texture like cardboard. The apple with the Red Cabbage, because it has so many varieties that are familiar to each of us, yet seems infinite in range, must be a dog. Apple is Red Cabbage's accompanying compliment. It is said that owners resemble their pets. I think that means that a dog, as a pack animal, adapts its behaviour to the pack to which it belongs. Apple then, is an exciting dog that could be entertaining on its own, yet is the foil to Red Cabbage's strange habits.

Toast - Here is the platform or carrier on, or in, which the characters and circumstance is played out. A bus can not be imagined to be a similar platform as toast, because a bus provides distraction by passing through environments, while toast tastes the same from end to end and corner to corner. So, a bit more free thinking, and often crudeness works well in memory techniques, so why not use it here; maybe,  using a toilet cubicle for number twos, in a public convenience (Am. bathroom) OR waiting in an airport departure lounge OR simply stick with a family-run local restaurant which has the same local customers, day in and day out.

Amuse bouche

[ 8 minute read - 1635 words ]

It means an 'amusement on the mouth' and is a free offering from a chef to signify / boast of the chef's skills, like an aperitif.

Inadvertent Manipulation

There is a new shopkeeper in my village. He is friendly towards me, but, in conversation, one of us lacks the ability to create a safe meeting place in which we can just, well 'meet'. 

I listen to LBC, a no music, phone-in radio station. The presenters, not dissimilar to the late James Whale in disposition and perspicacity, amaze me with how they respond to callers when they are asked by each of the callers, 'How are you?'. 

       'Yes, fine.' They NEVER ask the caller how they are, because it is a waste of time. If I was the radio presenter I would have to say, 'What is it you want to say?' and ignore their automated greeting that lacks substance. Asking how someone is, in person, is not an amuse bouche, it is a quick wag of a dog's tail. The tail wag is certainly absent when the caller starts with, 'I blame you people in the media' type comments. So, I suppose it has some value.

On Sunday, I was bored, and having recently made a blackberry and tomato tart, and finding it delicious, I felt like making another sweet, baked thing; another tart. I went to the shop to buy butter and a tin of fruit or pie filling that I could use with more blackberries from my garden. I am also not someone who just buys items from a recipe and follows it; I can cook, and I can taste in my head, so I make up dishes according to my experience of flavours. 

       'What is WoodApple?' I asked the shopkeeper. 

I had found a jar of WoodApple Jam and showed it to him. He couldn't explain the flavour, so didn't try; and at £2.49, he was not about to let me open it merely to taste it. He did offer to bring in an opened jar he had at home though. I suggested some flavours, 'Banana, coconut, starfruit, lychee, dragonfruit, kiwi fruit?' He just shook his head. He told me that there is a WoodApple drink in the refrigerated area for £1.30. I never buy soft drinks unless I need a quick boost of energy. However, my bank account had persuaded me that it was too fat and needed to lose some weight. I like spending money and since I was about to buy butter anyway I thought, 'Why not! I will take one for the team.' I took a sip and realised why the shopkeeper could not describe it, but being full of self-confidence, patronising and boorish, I reeled off some more flavours to him, 'Plum with orange and Brazil nut after you have swallowed?' He just smiled wanly at me. 

I bought the WoodApple Jam, vanilla essence, saffron essence (never heard of it before let alone tasted it), some expensive berry jam, a tin of evaporated milk, and some butter; tasting each of them in my head as I selected them. I intended to mix the WoodApple with some evaporated milk as the filler in a tart. This tart, like the berry tart I would also make, would be sharp and tangy, not sweet. But I wanted the WoodApple tart to be smooth, hence the evaporated milk. Because the shopkeeper had told me he loves the taste of WoodApple, this tart (or a portion of it) would be an 'amuse bouche'. I have a confidence of my abilities that outstrips my skill. But, no worries, there is a recipe for shortbread on the flour bag and Mr Kipling uses that for his pastry, right? 

Previously, I had followed the shortbread recipe, but didn't want to eat half a block of butter in one sitting again. 

Cassava is a plant of which the starchy root is eaten. It is also poisonous if not prepared properly. My local shop-keeper loves it. It can be mixed with flour, and sugar if you like, and deep-fried like little doughnut balls. It has a sharp taste to it. I have mild synesthesia so it tastes a bit green, but not the taste of chlorophyll in grass, more like the green in white wine. 

Because I hadn't been properly preparing the cassava I had been using from my cupboard, it gave me slight Atrial Fibrillation (heart skips a few beats) and a wheeziness in my chest ten minutes after eating it. Absolutely delicious little doughnuts though; and they really keep their shape, even when cold. However, I have since managed to survive my experiments with it and either I am immune to it or I prepare it better now.

I thought I would substitute some of the flour in the pastry with cassava and add a little water to the butter and flour shortbread mix I had read on the flour bag. It didn't work well. Adding water means you have to be good at blind-baking. I have never been able to do that well. Aha! I should practice making shortcake first, and then add more water for every new bake! More pencil scrawlings on my kitchen cupboard doors, and make a new hole in my belt.

Also, I will add some cassava to the filling mix because it works like a tangy thickener. I cook like Mickey Mouse casting spells in Disney's 'Fantasia'; that is, with an idea of what I want but leaving a lot to chance. The tart filling had the berry jam, blackberries, vanilla essence, saffron essence, cassava, ginger, evaporated milk, and salt in it. The filling turned out really delicious; the pastry not. Too many colliding experiments, I realised. But this was a practice run for the WoodApple 'amuse bouche' tart I would make. I had to practice more.

Why all this waffle about cooking? This is why. Remind yourself of my first sentence; "There is a new shopkeeper in my village. He is friendly towards me, but, in conversation, one of us lacks the ability to create a safe meeting place in which we can just, well 'meet'."

When I went into the village shop yesterday, the shop-keeper greeted me.

       'Hello, young man, How are you?'

       'Fine. Well, you know!'

       'I remember, I wanted to ask you what you think to the WoodApple Jam.'

We had already discussed the flavour of WoodApple in the drink I drank right in front of him, on Sunday. I should not have gone into the shop yesterday. Our individual time-frames were not sychronised. Mine should have had me offering him a slice of WoodAppleTart as an 'amuse bouche' to serve to create a safe meeting place for us to, well, 'meet'. 

He wanted a simple answer to a simple question. Hmm! It seems that I can't do that; give simple answers, that is. Instead of saying, I haven't tried it yet (I am never going to put mostly sugar on my toast, or eat it from the jar! It being a jam made for a populace who regards sweet things as a luxury it has lots of sugar in it, I suspect. The manufacturer of the jam is the same manufacturer of the very sweet WoodApple drink), I instead launched into why I had not offered him an 'amuse bouche'; except I didn't call it that or explain what I was trying to achieve with it.

The explanation

There are two things of note here: I use my intelligence to enhance my experiences in the world, in that I try to discover new things; look at things differently. When there is a repetition of something, I ask myself what is the hidden agenda behind deliberately suffusing a solution with a solute? or Overdosing. It is, quite plainly, to dilute the solution or environment; to change an environment that is less hostile to the later, and deliberate, introduction of a reactive solute; to bring about change in an environment. 

I tried to introduce a reactive tart into my village shop environment with the intention of changing the social environment, and the failing of my attempt, and subsequent explanation, brought about disruption in the fulfillment of a relationship. 

In modern society, we have actors who will use diffusion tactics, diversions, and distraction to drive out any voice that is not their own. If there were enough of me in the shop at the same time, all chanting the same mantra and then each of us adding a little portion of my ideology, I would suppress the shopkeeper's social defence by suffusion and then, a reactive solute (my ideology) could then be introduced as a Trojan Horse. I also know that the Trojan Horse should be in the shape of my ideology but constructed in the shopkeeper's mind by following my blueprint. In effect, this can be achieved by transmitting the blueprint as a Trojan Horse . I know that, and I could, by using those tactics, manipulate the shopkeeper into bending to my weird, complicated, and complex social approach, based on my belief of how things should be, which, as a result of my upbringing, is warped.

In cooking, there is a French expression, 'sous vide', which is cooking something in a sealed container for a long time at a lower temperature than normal. This requires very accurate temperature control and repetitions of applied heat through the use of a thermostat. If this concept is extended - cooking a frog by steadily increasing the heat so it doesn't run away. In forming a mental stance or position, we could consider it to be 'baked-in thinking'.

There is no doubt I was trying to manipulate an environment with a physical object to act as a talking point.  However, I did not set out to suffuse a solution with words or actions that would dilute the safe environment that the shopkeeper expects to experience. That happened by accident. At least I am not sneaky.

All my posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

or search for 'martin cadwell' or 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. 

I am not on YouTube or social media

[ 4 and a half minute read ]

Barcode on the radiologist

In the hospital, there were a lot of people in the corridors, almost as though there was a sale going on that everyone else knew about, but not me. I had arrived at the outpatients entrance in a mood of over-exertion to be amusing. I knew this when I found myself re-interpreting hospital signs and spoken words. The sign above the door said 'Outpatients Entrance'; do they, I thought. As I entered, I heard a mother say to her daughter. 'You are naturally going to crash.' That isn't very encouraging, I thought.

In the X-ray department

       'You are all checked in now.' smiled the young receptionist. Whenever I encounter a young female, smiling, receptionist I get a flashback to the film 'Total Recall' with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the tourist to Mars. I kind of expect the woman to sink down behind the desk or something, her job done.

       'Should I just sit on one of the green chairs over there?' I asked, gesturing to two rows of lime-green coloured chairs that could seat about forty people but were taken by only three.

       'As long as nobody is already sitting there,' she said to my back. I turned to see her smiling at her own joke. I smiled back, and wished I could order a box set of her; my sense of humour.

Things really haven't been normal lately; there was a man talking to his wife and they were laughing. Once I sat down, I noticed a sign that said, 'All Gender Changing Rooms'. It was only the word 'All' that saved it from ridicule, but I entertained the notion, and with that acceptance the sign that said 'Changing Places Room' just sent me into a soft imagination of going into the room and walking out of it somewhere else. I used to watch Star Trek spin-offs and so teleporting is completely normal to me; except it isn't, normal to me, that is.

I was called forty minutes before my appointment. Fortunately, I knew they were going to do that which is why I checked in forty five minutes early. However, their devious trickery did not fade there. the radiologist stated that I was there for an X-ray on my RIGHT knee and LEFT elbow, and waited for my confirmation sure that I would nod and say, 'yes'.

       'No, my LEFT knee and RIGHT elbow.'

       'What's your date of birth? Okay, right.' Puzzlement crossed her forehead. 'Where do you come from?' 

I started to feel uneasy and wanted to ask, 'Who are you?' and check to see if she had a barcode on her or something to identify which country had manufactured her. 'I am from here.' I guardedly answered. I wasn't sure if she knew where we were and didn't want to give her any clues. 'Local.' I added.

       'What is the first line of your address?' she asked. Now, this is the second question I expected to be asked to check my identity so I recognised that she might actually work there, and because the hospital is a University Hospital, might still be learning, so I told her.

I had to show her and the silent man behind the perspex screen the swelling on my knee and elbow before they were sure which arm and leg to X-ray. The young woman who probably didn't have a barcode stuck to her, after all, told me that they will X-ray each limb. Fine by me. I don't understand how radiation affects DNA.

The man behind the screen vetoed that, and only two photos of my knee and two of my elbow were taken. The X-ray camera moved around with stepper motors like a robot in a car manufacturing factory, but I was instead reminded of Tom Cruise hiding in a cellar in 'War of the Worlds', when the alien space ship sends in a camera on a goose-neck appendage. I carelessly observed out loud that the two radiology people would be obsolete in five years time, which made the silent man mumble something. Luckily, I have magic hearing that prevents me hearing spoken insults or slants, which is how the volume of his voice was attenuated. After a couple of minutes of nothing happening, they noticed me still sitting there, and surprised, told me I could go.

Outside

It was still raining outside and it made me want to emulate the wetness. Finding a suitable place to join in with dampening the ground in the city is really hard. I pedalled faster and overtook a couple on bicycles. Bingo. there were some bushes between the cycle path and a garden fence that would completely obscure me from the passing car occupants' horror of seeing me do my impression of the current weather, so I stopped. Right behind me I heard, 'Good idea. Let's shelter here under the trees.'

I had to wait for them to turn away so I could vanish silently behind the bushes. I couldn't see their expressions if they noticed me missing but I had to make sure they weren't looking for me before I miraculously re-appeared.

Certain that they must have noticed that I had been temporarily invisible, I told them about tomato plants and how they could be mistaken for blackberries in pies, to guide them away from their suspicions of any abhorrent behaviour. 

The gent smiled at me as I rode away.

[ 3.27 minute read at 0.2k words per minute ]

Australian scientists have discovered a new stick insect. It is 40 centimetres long (15 ¾ inches long). I love how some people use the decimal system for a fraction in the imperial system. The article on the Deutsche Welle site gives 15.75 inches as its length. It seems that the article was written by someone who knows how to use a calculator (40 divided by 2.54 = 15.748031). 

In case you still don't really know how big these stick insects are: I am 6 foot one (1.85m) and normally proportioned. 40cm is from the inside of my elbow to the end of my little finger.

https://www.dw.com/en/australias-heaviest-new-stick-insect-discovered/a-73488463

I spent some time in the Tipperary countryside in Eire. No street lights on the lanes and things that wriggle in the bushes and hedges. It was a magical time that frightened the life out of me. I think that the remoteness from electronic noise allowed my imagination to run unchecked in my head. I simply wasn't used to that kind of silence. A diesel train labouring up a slight incline, a mile away, as it approached the town of Dundrum, grew so loud that I started to be convinced that it was instead on the lane on which I stood. The creature in the hedge that had followed me along the lane was not worried though. The rustling continued unabated. I didn't look to see what it was, because I was too scared to make that discovery. I only felt safe when I stood near a huge dying bonfire in a field another half a mile on (0.5 miles) Realistically, it was probably 0.38 miles. How far is that?

While reading the article about the Australia's heaviest stick insect discovered in the remote high altitudes of Australia, I thought if I got scared of the dark while exploring there, I would want to light a fire. I don't think I would have been found alive or sane, if I picked up a stick insect to use as kindling. When a twig starts wriggling and you are already scared in the dark, you are in deep trouble.

More...

Also on the Deutsche Welle pages there is an article outlining how Australia intends to implement a world-first national youth social media ban. Apparently one poll got 77% support for it.

https://www.dw.com/en/australia-youth-social-media-ban-mental-health-will-it-work/a-73230182

'Marilyn Campbell, a professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education at the Queensland University of Technology who writes on cyberbullying'  seems to believe that one of the many features of the modern world is how important it is, if you are young, malleable, and impressionable, to discover which hand you write with. Are you right-handed, left-handed, ambidextrous, or just curious? Social media helps young people and people with autism realise this, she says. (DW, 2025)

I suspect that the imagination plays a big part in that, so, I really don't think social media is necessary for that. Just saying.... In a tug of war between digital content and imagination, I am pretty sure imagination wins 'hands' down.

Of course, there is concern of the mental harm that social media platforms have on young people. I am not going to elaborate on that, because I have my own ideas on social harm and how mental health is impacted on by many aspects of the modern world. I will just say that if you put your finger on a ball of mercury, it will coalesce somewhere else, and be just as toxic there. You have to lower the temperature enough to solidify it (freeze it) so it can be picked up with your fingers and thrown into deep space.

Of course, sending children on an overnight hike in the high altitude Australian wilderness for some fresh air and camp fires might be good for them; at least for the ones that come back still able to speak and can be recognised. 

-

Please don't imagine that I have referenced the Deutsche Welle pages properly (below).

References

DW 2025, Deutsche Welle, Will Australia's youth social media ban work?, 'Can a 'nice, simple solution' solve a complex crisis?'

https://www.dw.com/en/australia-youth-social-media-ban-mental-health-will-it-work/a-73230182

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

or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in Google and DuckDuckGo

I am not on social media

Shredded the Day went well

Mental health 

[ 7 minute read ]

Yesterday, I woke up to a mechanical whine. Through the slits of my slightly open eyes I saw someone feeding my entire day through a shredder. The colours of the walls stretched, blended, and joined with colours from the furniture and the curtains like plasticine strips that formed lines of adjacent paint as they compressed into the 40cm device. Where there was once colour there was now left only black. The red numbers on my radio alarm clock that once said 04:23 joined the bedtime book that was recently on the floor. And then there was only black, an angle-poise lamp which I switched on, and strips of colour that was my day, on the floor; a black floor that absorbed the light.

Somewhere, amongst the heap was 7 o’clock; 8:12; lunchtime; my laptop, and some pieces of being outside that I could not recognise. At least they had left me with electricity. I eyed a strip that had an image of my unstretched sewing kit in it. It was tiny, but I could use it. I started sewing and looked for images of unstretched glue and some backing paper; ANYTHING TO STICK THIS TOGETHER! I picked up a handful of strands and a few fell back to the floor. This is going to be fruitless, I thought, but I MUST DO IT!

On my knees, I wept uncontrollably as I tried to piece the strips of the day together to make some kind of order. This was a disaster. Too many mistakes would see me committed under the Mental Health Act. It might well have been the most precious thing that I had spent my whole life creating, suddenly and spitefully smashed to the ground like a family heirloom that had been in the family for tens of generations. Nothing else could render me more hopeless and empty. The expectation that the day would just go on being a day was entirely absent. Although time had not stopped; for me, there was no time; no sequence of seconds or minutes; no brightening of sunlight. I knew that if I did not make some semblance of my shredded day before me, my body would eventually be found curled on the floor, shrunken from starvation, my mind would still be fumbling with strips of a broken life, and my spirit would be not yet shriven of my sins.

I did my best, but there was no time to waste because I was always playing catch-up. There were mistakes, mismatches that led to complications throughout the day.

I went to the village shop but didn’t need to. One minute I was at home, the next walking through the shop door. Only the postmaster was there. He greeted me. Before I had taken another step, His wife and daughter were in his place, staring at me, and he was sitting at the other end of the shop eating something hot in a plastic container on his lap. He looked hungry and was slumped over it, rapidly spooning the mess into his mouth. I had stitched two time-frames together that were minutes or hours apart. I never buy crisps. I bought crisps - tortilla chips. I started explaining my purchase.

        ‘When I was at primary school, fifty years ago…...crisps cost two and a half pence and I got 50p a day pocket money. My dad earned seventy-six pounds fifty per week in those days. That means that at today's price of crisps I got seven pounds of pocket money a week. A lot of money to a nine-year-old’ I said. I am thirty six, and could not have been nine years old fifty years ago, and seven times 50p is not seven pounds; neither is twenty packets of crisps in today's money the equivalent to twenty packets of crisps whenever ago (50p) At a pound a packet, today, it would be twenty pounds a week. It is actually about ₤4 GBP. Never mind!

My counting was wrong and my maths. My voice just carried on speaking and I could hear the words were just wrong – born to fantastic parents. The family stared at me. I knew why but had no time to rip the stitches and resew the event and relive it. But, I did reassemble some of the consequences.

I went home with the tortilla chips. I never eat snacks and should have thrown them away. My phone rang and I missed the call. Restricted number. A text message arrived.

       ‘We are trying to contact you to arrange an appointment at the Radiology department. Please call this number to discuss arrangements.’

I tried four times over the next forty minutes. They didn’t answer the phone. I looked on the floor to see if I had missed a piece of the day. Then another text message: ‘We have booked an appointment for you for 1430 on 1 August at Saffron Walden Community Hospital for your x-ray. Please phone this number to rebook or cancel.’ I live one hundred and seventy miles from Saffron Walden.

Nobody answered the six calls I made, so I went to my local doctor’s surgery. ‘We can’t help you.’ I couldn’t help thinking that the receptionist couldn’t find a key on her computer keyboard or I was not registered or something. Normally, I am registered there. She looked placid enough but nothing changed to make my appointment go away. Somehow I had sewn good customer service next to the doctor’s surgery visit. Wishful thinking, I supposed.

Back home again, I made a blackberry and tomato tart because the tinned mackerel and picallili sandwiches, I had made earlier were starting to curl at the edges. Today, it seemed, that I thought I like piccalilli (mustard pickle) enough that it should be in my day. I never buy it. Somehow, my smattering of French had allowed me to try to make a Blackberry and Apple pie, using tomatoes because I thought that ‘pommes de terre’ was ‘tomato’ when it is really ‘potato’. I had an inkling that ‘pomme’ is apple and complements blackberries. When you think about it, it is only the first three letters that were scrambled in my head ‘tom’ and ‘pot’. A classic case of a little bit of knowledge is worse than none at all; except, that is, if you want to avoid the ‘men in white coats’. Also, I never buy butter or spreads, mayonnaise, or sauces, but there was butter in the fridge.

More phone calls to the Saffron Walden Community Hospital got no answers. I wrote a letter to cancel the appointment and went back to the Post Office in my village. A woman immediately ahead of me kept peering around me.

       ‘Go ahead,’ I offered, ‘Shop away. I won’t take your place.’

She looked confused and frightened. Why I thought that I had my thinking together enough to talk to random strangers I do not know. I silently swore at myself. At least that bit of my day works, I thought. Eventually, she understood that I meant that if she needed something else before she was served, I would ALLOW HER to re-take her place in the queue. She said she was looking for vegetables. The Post Office doesn’t sell vegetables, but I looked around, in case, today, they did. They weren’t any, thank God.

£1.70 bought me a first class stamp and it went onto my envelope addressed to the hospital in Saffron Walden. Fortunately, my brain runs latent solutions to problems and even though it is ‘snail mail’ a letter sent today is faster than the three days before the appointment date takes to pass, and it would get to the hospital and tell them to cancel the appointment I did not ask for, before it evolved.

With such a cobbled together day, I could only leave the rest of it to the nonsense on YouTube. Maybe I will watch only the weird adverts for Lucozade that tells me that it ‘sees me’ and I should ‘Rock Off, Rock Off’ which means something quite rude to me that should never be seen in public. I think that it is in my head as, ‘To get your rocks off.’ or reach a sexual climax. (https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/get+your+rocks+off) 'Let me see you...Rock Off, Rock Off' - Lucozade ad. The TUI holiday advert would tell me not to 'skip' on my holiday. I would never do that. Even walking or hopping on, over, or near my holidays was more than I could accomplish yesterday. I certainly tried not to 'skimp' on my day, though.