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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Lazy and Feckless

[ 3 minute read ]

Opinion 

A long time ago I was walking past an industrial estate in the North of England during my feckless period. Some artists and songwriters have a 'blue' period, I have a feckless period. To be fair, I had just arrived from Ireland that week after picking oranges on the Greek Peloponnesus six weeks before and I had just negotiated a sign-writing job for a high-street shop. The product of being orphaned, I suppose; just keep on being a child living a halcyon lifestyle; every day a school summer holiday.

As I continued walking towards the motorway to hitch-hike back south, I watched a cyclist, head-down and pedaling hard, pass me and turn into the industrial estate. I looked at my watch and saw it was twenty seven minutes to two. He was late back from his lunch-break and he was probably using more energy in the cycling than he would minding a rubber extrusion machine. I determined then that because I had, in the past, fallen into the same circumstance, I would never hurry back to work again. That decision was not because I had a disrespect for my work, my workplace, or my employers' it was because I knew I was not conditioned sufficiently well to be a responsible worker.

      'Sod that!' I thought.

Since then I have done everything I could to avoid being a man on a bike late for work. I have been a magician, a puppeteer, a mime, a fire-breather and a juggler. I have worked in commercial orchards and picked potatoes and lettuce. I have been self-employed and employed dozens of people and I have sold my businesses after incorporating them. I have been a professional artist and a professional gambler, though in different years. I have sprayed paint and blasted grit, and I have been a lorry driver. I have written and sold spreadsheets to small businesses and I have been a web designer. In all those jobs I was autonomous when it came to either showing up or determining my start-times or the routes I took. In agricultural work you usually got paid by the quantity of produce you picked, so you could pick strawberries in the morning and spend the money in the afternoon. We used to use mopeds to tow our friends on bicycles to the strawberry fields miles away.

I sometimes think about the commuters on buses synchronously nodding every time the bus hits a bump or pot-hole. It is a twee scene of normality that could be placed in the nineteen fifties or the year 2026. Yet, every one of those people have a life outside of their work even though they are all lined up and occupy carefully crafted compartments of employment. I am jealous of them just as they are jealous of me standing by the side of the road with a torn banner that reads. 'Jam Tomorrow!'. 

       'Oh, he is so lucky to have no master or mistress to control him.' No-one really thinks that in its unfolded sense. Perhaps with a closer look, if I use a long enough stick to prise the sentiment out, I might dig out, 'You slack-arse.' Not far from calling me a blaggard is it? Well, I suppose the imagined banner does poke fun at people's ruined expectation of a brighter future. 'Jam yesterday and jam today, but never jam tomorrow.' I think is from Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' or 'Through the Looking-Glass'. I think it was revived during the second world war by a member of Parliament but he might have wanted 'Jam Tomorrow' to mean the future looks bright. I think jam was rationed in those days. In looking it up on Wikipedia just after 1330 o'clock I see that John Maynard Keynes uses jam-making, and 'never jam today' as an allusion to preserving savings for a future which ultimately stagnates the economy today.

In reality, I have different contracts for different types of jobs; one day some sign-writing, another some driving, and another just a strange handy-man with good computing skills and crazy and over-complicated spreadsheets that are fun to create but say nothing useful. In reality, I am dedicated to arriving punctually and the constraints on my life are the same as the man late for work on the industrial estate in the north of England. However, while he was worried about his lateness, I am worried that I might be late. It is the same angst and the only difference is I maintain control of the circumstance and he somehow lost it.

Now, because I have at least some worth, these days I am in my 'circumscribed fecklessness' period. With that in mind, I sometimes indulge in public self-flagellation. In 1978, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, wanted to be hit with rhythm-sticks. I want to hit myself with words. 'Hit me! Hit me! Hit me slowly. Hit me quick!' (from 'Hit me with your Rhythm Stick', written by band member, Chaz Jankel, on Stiff Records). It is about feeling people's vibes.

However, I have a nagging feeling that the older folk who actually know the song are tittering behind implacable masks hiding their glee at my faux pas. The 1970s was a time when the 'double entendre' and the use of euphemisms was commonplace and especially on the television with the 'Carry On' franchise. This had to be in light of the machinations of the horn-rimmed bespectacled Mary Whitehouse trying to shut down everyone's fun, including 'Kiss me Quick' hats and saucy postcards at the seaside. Oh Dear! Did I not understand what they were really singing about? It doesn't matter. It is all good.

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

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Every word you say is your victory

[ 3 minute read ]

Opinion Mental Health

       'Every word you say is your victory.' Why would the ALDI checkout person say that to me? Here's how the full conversation went.

       'Sorry, I realise you might want to pop off and do something different but I haven't checked my bank balance and it is easier to fail here than it is with the self-service tills.'

       'They are getting better.' He then scanned my choices and told me the amount, which I successfully paid with a card. 'Do you want a receipt?'

       'Yeh, why not? It tells me where I have been. You never know I might have Alzheimers or some other memory problem and not remember it.' It was supposed to be taken as me making light of a condition, but I really do have memory problems. Later, I checked my bank balance and I had oodles more money to spend but I simply could not remember not spending much; I might have been on a spending spree and left my purchases in a taxi in a foreign country.

       'Every word you say is your victory.' This he said in a drawling monotone.

Was he being ironic, derisive even? Was he mocking me? I have firmly accused family members of doing something I disapproved of when it was me who did it all along; but I have no memory of doing it at the time I made the accusations, and in also having no memory of a reason to act in a particular way, have on the face of things disapproved of the action. It completely supports a theory that if you saw yourself coming towards yourself on a pavement you would cross the road to avoid the meeting. That is a theory, but the glaring truth is that it seems that I have acted in ways that I would normally avoid. Clearly, I didn't think things through and find better solutions at those times.

Perhaps it was crass of me to highlight memory problems and I should have just said yes to the receipt. Perhaps though, I don't subscribe to the bovine attitude of chewing the cud while being milked. Perhaps I am not inclined to be a sheep and instead see myself as a goat. In any case, the checkout person's declarative statement, however he meant it, has affected how I will present myself in future.

Talking to checkout people has always been fun for me and I have always thought that it gives them some light relief from the tedium of their work. I have also understood that I may be inadvertently waking them up from a comfortable snooze during which, with practice, they can just pass things past the scanner without waking. They may surreptitiously look at me with a jaded eye and be seeking a way to press the snooze button on me. But, just like getting up out of bed to get some water or take a leak, the damage is done. Beta waves are replaced with Alpha waves in the head and the return to Theta waves may not be possible before the alarm goes off. Deep sleep is in the past and dozing is the only route to oblivion, and no amount of scrabbling for the fast disappearing tail of beneficial slumber will bring it back.

Badinage, or 'light playful banter' to the builder's mate, is something I have never been able to accept from anyone who is not a close friend or a well-known acquaintance. I am, in almost every circumstance when I am targeted, reduced to a small boy shivering in the frigid air of acute embarrassment, and I simply will not compete in the leg-pulling, the chaffing, or the clowning of other people; activity that makes up a pseudo-competition that even the competitors do not realise they want to win. Surely, it is an ego thing. Certainly it has to be one-up-manship that in the presence of a romantically desirable person is conducted with a good deal of smugness and an expectation of favour. 'If I verbally crush this person I might get a secret clinch. I only have to show my intellect to be superior to the other person's and the prize is mine!' 

At least it is done on the open. At least the poking fun is not secretly done in dark corners. At least it is not back-stabbing; a wound that everyone else perceives except the victim; surely the cruelest cut of all. Emotional doors are slammed when they were once open and friendly faces are turned away, yet the victim is unaware of this and is left sadly wondering what is wrong. It isn't a conscious thing. It is a hidden drain on resources; a sucker of energy, and a malevolent source that inhibits progress. Indeed, it is the cruelest cut. Only a coward or a cheat would wield the sword that slashes the unwary in this way, or push the dagger forward from a hidden recess or heavy shroud. The cheat by maligning others hopes to gain favour when comparisons are made. By inference the message is, 'I would never act in that way' and paradoxically, 'You can trust me.' The coward is afraid of rebuke from someone they feel may be admirably able to defend themselves and, in the cowards mind, gain a victory over them; and this done publicly; for the coward, the worst scenario of all. For them, it means they inflicted the wound but they must bear the suppuration and the stink of putrefaction. For them, ringing bells will precede their movements and cries of 'Unclean! Unclean!' will be heard.

I shall pull my head back into my protective tortoise shell and warp some words to satisfy myself:

       'Every word you say is your victory.' Why, thank you kind sir. I shall up-cycle my wife's angry words, 'You're a wordsmith!' and take your donated words to feel confident that my intention is clearly and evidently good and I have spoken wisely.

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

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

World Mental Health Day

[ 3 minute read ]

Fact Mental Health

World Mental Health Day is on Saturday 10th October 2026

Samaritans phone 116 123 anytime 24 hour service 7 days per week for someone who listens and never judges.

It is World Mental Health Day on Saturday 10th October 2026. Make no mistake about it, I have mental health issues on a daily basis. For example: last October (2025) I fetched half a bucket of acorns for the local squirrels to save so they can eat them for Christmas Dinner, on New Years Day, Valentine's Day, and Saint Patrick's Day, and the stupid thieves are too respectful to take them. Only I would have honest squirrels in my garden! How frustrating when things don't go to plan, eh?

As an example of how I have opened myself up to honesty and taken some responsibility for my behaviour I have written about my failings in some of my posts. I have posted at least two pseudo-interviews with myself. The statements I make are true at the times of original writing - the questions I ask myself and my responses are more reflective in the present time. You can read those testimonies by searching for 'martin cadwell interview'. Or if you are logged in and on my OU Blog space you can click the tag 'interview'. Or click this link: INTERVIEW which is a link to two of my posts on the OU Blog site https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?user=852553&tag=interview

I have no mental health training and will not and cannot advise on any matter beyond directions on where to seek appropriate help on an individual basis. However, I may contribute in an open and general way with my ideas on how I see things might be different but as I say NOT on an individual basis.

I found that interviewing myself gave me power over something that takes me hostage and leaves me weakened. If I recognise how frustration affects me (honestly affects me) I can redirect my energy.

My kitchen is too small; I hate electric cookers; My neighbour is weird; My knee hurts and the doctors think I am unfit; I think I am unfit and feel put upon by my own laziness; Why do people keep complaining all the time? 

Everybody has some kind of gripe. I did have a website that would allow anonymous anguished cries but it somehow had to go because I suspect I presented as an influencer that might garner support against the politics of a foreign government. No matter, we live and learn.

It is hard being honest with myself but it is the only way I know to rescue myself from being held hostage by PTSD. My mental illness was forced upon me by the actions of others, whom I suspect had their own PTSD from environments they themselves did not have a hand in creating. If you like, I have vicarious mental health problems and I am apt to point a finger of blame but that history is entirely unreachable and the main characters have been hung for war crimes or otherwise assassinated. 

Opinion

All I have left are my own monsters to deal with so I have to be honest to be able to recognise them.

       'Ha Haa! Have at ye, you varlets! I shall strike you asunder. Your lies that bind me are my own concoction from the ingredients you offered me. You are discovered and measured. I have  control over the eating of the cake you gave me the recipe for, and it shall not touch my lips.'

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

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings

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The Interesting Real World

[ 6 minute read ] - 280 words per minute

Opinion

In Simply Psychology, by Michael Eysenck, published by Psychology Press Ltd (1996), there is this, under Intelligence testing: 'Some of the people you meet from day to day seem very intelligent, whereas others seem much less so. How do you think we could best measure intelligence: are intelligence or IQ tests adequate? Do you think that people can be intelligent in several different ways? If so, what are the major dimensions of intelligence? Finally, and most difficult, where do you think intelligence comes from? Is it something we are born with, or is it largely determined by education and other environmental factors?'

I won't pretend to know much on this subject; anything I did know has melted away or atrophied from lack of use, or I suppose lack of revision and maintenance. However, I do have an opinion that I allowed to come to my fore-mind during a conversation with a chap replacing my window panes yesterday. It is an old opinion yet it is based on something I read a long time ago, and I hold that opinion as being true for me today.

I am the youngest of three. That means that for a short period each day I was an only child while my siblings were at school, except that I had an advantage that an only child can not usually have; I had a mother to myself who had experience of caring for two other infants. I also had the opportunity to learn from my two older siblings who were trained to exhibit at least a modicum of discipline in an environment of their infant peers. In other words, they were no longer the 'bee's knees' or the favoured ones such as they might have been at home and this affected their approach to their young lives, you know, putting their hand up to ask to go to the toilet and such. I don't recall learning anything remotely academic or interesting from my brother and sister at any time throughout our schooling; no maths or English grammar or French. You know, what happens in school stays in school?

The important point I am trying to make is something I have so far failed to provide any basis for. There are two premises I need to introduce that by themselves are insufficient for a conclusion to be made yet are monumentally relevant in my leap to a supposition. I did not attend nursery school while my later infant classmates did. Apparently, there were no places local enough for me to be placed in one. Consequently, I was educated at home by my mum for that year. My mum had no realistic idea as to how much I needed to learn to be on par with my later infant classmates. This ultimately meant that I could read and write beyond the capability of my classmates in the infant class of my primary school. The important thing to remember is that there were no distractions from my older siblings, who were at school during the day. I distinctly remember reading, 'Here is Peter' and 'Here is Jane' in a Ladybird book. During those days I also spent a lot of time amusing myself, but not in the house; I had a three acre garden to play in with a whole bunch of scary goats to avoid and friendly chicks and ducks to draw. I became fairly good at drawing. Before I attended primary school I drew a picture of some scuba divers with a fish swimming towards the viewer and another fish partially obscuring one of the divers. This, I heard, is unusual for a four year old.

It doesn't take much of a leap of thinking to recognise that I may have been considered to be 'gifted', but I am not. My intellectual abilities were 'switched on' by the stimuli both my mother provided in 'one to one' supervision and my interesting home environment in the garden. In being 'switched on' I probably learnt stuff from my siblings that I otherwise might not have done. I have no idea what that might have entailed but surely I didn't ignore their attitudes or characters. I went on to secondary school and flew through the annual exams every year without any revision. However, by the age of eleven I had had an emotional breakdown and was what I call, emotionally catatonic, but psychologists say is 'detached emotions'. The upshot of this is that I had no emotional distractions at secondary school. By year 9 I was only attending school about two-thirds of the time I should have been there, yet I still kept up with my classmates. Whatever the teachers said, I encoded without extraneous information, stored it in a healthy and nutritionally well-fed brain, and accessed with no superfluous additions to the code.

After I left school, I didn't use my intellect for any work purposes and worked as a labourer. I later went to night school to study A level law because I wanted to provide for my young family by late gaining a degree in law, but I was not stimulated. I studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering but I wasn't stimulated. Years passed and I found myself divorced and living alone. I studied marketing, logistics and the supply chain and I was revitalised. The courses, although valid in their circumscription still gave me scope to explore the subjects, and the internet was at my fingertips. My vocabulary improved and people I met remarked, seemingly in wonder, that I present as 'well educated'. 

My intelligence or intellect, I propose, never changed from when I was four throughout all my compulsory schooling and the night schooling and college education. It is the same now, I suggest, as it has ever been. However, now I once again have no emotional distractions, and  I have the internet, instead of a large garden to explore. 

If I look deep into myself I think I can detect some deterioration in my focus towards study and my ability to recall information. I put this down to constraining myself to complying with The Open University requirements for study; to whit; write an essay on 'this' with 'this' amount of words. It is definitely hampering my intellectual stability. I am not studying a subject that has real-time applications. Experiencing my chosen subject area is done almost exclusively from books. I regard this form of studying as somewhat linear. However, at the same time I recognise that I am learning to use convergent thinking over divergent thinking; and I think it is that which I find dull.

The pace at which I am required to produce assignments is such that I cannot really disengage from the OU study sufficiently long enough to have my interest piqued by real-time surprises that I might otherwise be inclined to follow with a consequent journey of discovery and final satisfaction. The pace is also determined by my peers, in that I cannot submit Tutor Marked Assignments until I have demonstrated within those assignments, or by my presence on the subject or topic forums, that I have adequately interacted with other students through referencing what i have learnt within the modules. This causes me to be distracted since my impatience is triggered. This, in turn, affects not my intellect, but my ability to access it to a level that I have previously been able to do with independent study. 

Here is the quote from Simply Psychology again:

'Some of the people you meet from day to day seem very intelligent, whereas others seem much less so. How do you think we could best measure intelligence: are intelligence or IQ tests adequate? Do you think that people can be intelligent in several different ways? If so, what are the major dimensions of intelligence? Finally, and most difficult, where do you think intelligence comes from? Is it something we are born with, or is it largely determined by education and other environmental factors?'

Having looked a little bit inside myself I feel confident that I can give some form of an answer that addresses the thrust of the overall question.

I think intelligence should be measured in an environment that excludes any distraction. It is no good giving someone an appointment for an IQ test that may be the day after an emotional event; falling in love; birth of a child; losing a job or anything at all that causes any emotion to be prevalent. 

I think that intelligence comes from dedicated attendance to a fertile bed of redundant opportunities. In other words, the human brain has to be fed, but first, like any fire, it has to be lit. I saw animals grow up at home before I went to school. I heard and smelt foxes, tractors and bonfires. Sometimes I even saw them. I heard the clock strike in the village square a mile away. I walked to school past an orange bull and smelt the pub as I passed it and I knew that my parents sometimes went inside this mysterious building, while my siblings and I drank delicious Coca-Cola outside.

The question above, from the Simply Psychology book, is asking if intelligence comes from nature or nurture. It is an elementary question for psychology students and it is still widely disputed. Of course, it is both. But I strongly believe that we must be stimulated at almost any cost to other opportunities we might otherwise choose. We should not, I believe, choose to metaphorically sleep, or cruise through life, simply because it is comfortable. However, in saying that, throwing myself into danger has never had a lasting effect on my interest in my environment because it has not fed my intellect, it has only used it.

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

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

The Spiders recognise me

[ 4 minute read ] - 280 words per minute

Opinion

Spiders are strange things. I am sure they really do have a 'mind' to live among us. If you keep throwing a particular one out; by that I mean the same one, it comes to recognise it should wait until you have looked at it for a long moment, and then gone away for a glass and a piece of card. Then it will run like the wind for the hills (a safe place that is hidden from human eyes). Of course that is if the same one has come back into your home. New spiders just freeze where you find them; on the bathroom floor; on the ceiling; or among your clothes, until you come back and gently encase them in the glass. Essentially, I am suggesting that the spiders in my home have memory and are capable of learning, which I suppose goes hand in hand really. My behavioural psychology knowledge mental library has a gap on the shelf where that knowledge should be. Let me see; was the mental book checked out and never returned? Did I read about behavioural psychology and my mental library is crumbling through poor maintenance. I am afraid I keep poor mental records which might also have been contaminated, so...it's back to school for me. Fortunately, I have real books on psychology in my real five shelf library.

I have a history of mis-treating spiders but I also have a conscience that allows me to recognise and remember being dismissive of them and acting as a despot might. 'This is my domain and all creatures within it shall obey me'. However, I am moving towards understanding King Cnut, who sought to prove that even he cannot control the tide. The truth is, I don't want to seek out the spiders' food source. I am supposing that Giant House Spiders, which I think are the really big ones, eat insects and meaty crunchy things. 

Yesterday, there was a Giant House Spider, under some clothes on the floor, that was so big that it only just fitted inside the circumference of a glass with a diameter of six and a half centimetres. I had to poke its legs in with a pencil. It was so big I swear I heard it hit the ground outside my bedroom window. Believing that spiders have memories, I also have to believe that I spent too much time examining it under the glass. I think I should have worn a mask or a disguise because with eight eyes it had a good look at me, for sure. Giant House Spiders are not one of 'the three' most venomous spiders in the UK with fangs that can penetrate human skin, but they can run across your face while you sleep. The question I have to ask myself is, can it reason out that I am asleep and it has a fairly long time to scurry away before my arm instinctively moves towards my face to address the tickle; or does it have a personality that might include an attitude of laissez-faire and forgiveness. I am acting inconsistently because I threw a big one out and left a smaller one alone. I suppose I have a threshold for size in my head and once that is breached I have to remove the imagined threat. Instinctive as it may be, I think I can override it to some extent.

I looked around my home for the usual spiders. There are a few Cellar Spiders scattered throughout and I think that's a small House Spider in the kitchen. I have noticed less single threads across the doorways that brush across my face first thing in the morning. I can't identify the really small spiders; they might just be baby big ones. The smaller of the two Giant House Spiders is smart, even though it didn't see its colleague get caught with a glass placed over it, it has, in plain view, positioned itself behind an used television coaxial lead that hangs from the ceiling. It will be hard to capture it without alerting it to my intent beforehand; to whit, I have to move the coaxial lead first.  It let me measure it at 45mm. Yesterday it was, in plain view, on the other side of the room, where two walls join. Is it telepathic? Or did I not give off an attack smell. Certainly, it knew the flavour of the air near it changed just now. Oh, I so hope that spiders realise I am not aggressive, only instinctively worried.

House Spiders die if you put them outside, so the big one is probably already dead. I feel sorry for it, but would I call it back and welcome it in? No, and that decision will haunt me for the rest of my days; I know that because the one I squashed three years ago, that looked like a Black Lace Weaver Spider, one of 'The Three' that ran up my leg asking for help after I sprayed it with permithrin in my bathroom, still plays on my mind. At least I think it was asking for help and wasn't aiming for my jugular. I mean, after it had watched me for weeks taking showers, how creepy can it be? Right? 

I have been bitten by a spider and it ran away to tell the tale. It was in bed with me one cold winter morning. It hurt, a lot; not dissimilar to a mild bee-sting that built in intensity to a point at which I thought it might not stop building; somewhere close to my pain threshold, but it not being a bee or wasp, and with having no experience of spider bites, I was alarmed by the intensity. The bite mark occasionally itched for four years afterwards. I think it was a lucky strike because it seems that the skin over my pelvis is thinner than most other places on my body, and so its fangs were long enough.

I am going to leave the 45mm Giant House Spider alone until I see it on my pillow; but it is too clever to be seen there. I am fairly sure they are nocturnal and of course, it knows if I am asleep or not. I really am convinced they have more intelligence than I ever considered them to have years ago. Saying that though, I remember when houseflies would just sit on the wall, rubbing their front feet together and smoothing out their proboscis ; now they are frenetic and all excited and stuff - they have evolved into teenagers from sedentary elderly creatures. (about 08:30 am)

10:25 a.m. Don't you just hate it when spiders try to second-guess you? The 45mm Giant House Spider has upped and moved away somewhere. If it is trying to be kind, you know, out of sight is out of mind, it is not working. Now I have to check inside my shoes and shake my clothes before putting them on. The overwhelming issue for me with Giant House Spiders is that that they are really, really fast runners. Yesterday, the 65mm Giant House Spider didn't run away when I found it under my clothes but I cannot help thinking that this 45mm one might make a break for it; after all, it waited until I was not watching before it hid itself, and it knows the other one is missing. 

11:58 am. I didn't have to look far for the 45mm Giant House Spider; it had gone back to its favourite corner and hidden behind a large mirror leaning against the wall. It may be lonely because the mirror faces the wall and it would definitely be able to see its reflection. I shall leave the window open to see if the bigger female comes back.

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

or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser. There is a space between my name and the minus sign and NO space before 'caldwell' to eliminate the name 'caldwell' in the Google listings

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Don't eat meat straight from the pan

[ 3 minute read ] 

Opinion

Let it rest.

You know, I forget how the English weather changes so swiftly. Weeks of intense something and then a few days of equanimity and then average cold or hot depending on which season we are in.

September is my favourite month. It is the only reliable month and the one with the best smells and colours. It has hope in it and I have only a loving embrace for its days. September, for me, is also a month of cooling off. The intense summer heat and long days seem to stretch my nerves. I can almost hear the pitch lower now when it seems that somehow they are played with a bow drawn across them. I suppose there is a bit of Synesthesia at play there. Being in an English September feels like a gradual recovery after a long journey. Bit by bit I relax. After it finally rained following the months of no rain, and the humidity levels during the day went from below 40% back to over 70%, I felt like I could breathe properly again. Perhaps that is what I seek. Perhaps I am even dehydrated and never recognise it. Perhaps it is because I almost drowned twice that I am a little more concerned about breathing than I might otherwise be.

I like to control my own temperature. Of course, like everyone else I have an autonomic system that controls my breathing and heart-rate and tries to maintain my temperature. I really do not want to have to spend all my hours remembering to beat my heart or draw a breath so I am happy to let that just happen. I mean I want to be able to put clothes on and take them off according to how uncomfortable I feel. This isn't a new thing; as a twenty-something I longed for a metaphorical zip in my skin to let some heat out. Nothing has changed. I am incensed by outside influences on my life. I just want to 'get carried away' in the moment. Just like an alarm clock shatters comfortable drowsing before we must get up and do what we do, there are aspects of my day that shunt me from rich and colourful drifting straight back onto the tracks of a speeding train. That's me, see? There I am in seat E26, indistinguishable from all the other passengers; except we are not passengers, dead-weight; We are contributors. 

I really don't resent the real world as much as it might appear that I do. I love it. The problem I have is I let it control my life. Something that really irks me is people in my way. In summer, if you are close enough to me you would hear me, sotto voce, railing at the people 'who crawl out from under rocks on sunny days'. I like winter because the 'silly people' are all indoors and it is only the people who are getting on with their lives who are 'braving' the cold, rain and wind. Let the reptiles who need to be warmed by sunlight stay under their rocks.

We don't have winters in the south of England that might mean we have to do anything special to get through our days. We don't need snow-chains on our car tyres; we don't need to have a hot-water bottle tucked under our clothes, or even carry an umbrella at all times. Winter is a time when we have to put more clothes on, that's all. It is also a time when I get to decide how much effort I put into exercising outside. For me, it means there are a whole wealth of opportunities that, in summer, just don't exist for me.

I like winter weather because it encourages people to stop treating pavements like their living rooms. These people who espouse the weather with enhanced sociability are absent. They don't clutter up the paths while they chatter about banalities. I like cold weather because people get on with 'getting on' when they feel the temperature or the rain, sleet and snow; they move from one place to another with purpose; they go to the shops because they need something and not because they want something; 'Let's go shopping. We can have lunch there and get a cup of coffee afterwards' becomes 'Do I really need those things?' Sensibility returns. The roads are emptier and traffic moves more efficiently in cold southern England. There is a valid basis for the understanding that summer is the 'Silly Season', I feel.

Finally, it is over. We can just wake up and make our own decisions on how to improve. I am no longer tied to watering heritage plants twice a day. I can go out and have full conversations with people without interruption by 'day-trippers' who live locally. I can relax again. At last!

It is 14 degrees with 78% humidity. Bliss!

The cooking analogy title: Don't eat meat straight from the pan

Many of us just cook meat and serve it immediately. I am led to believe that pan-fried and roasted meat should be left to 'rest' before carving or cutting. I am pescatarian (fish-eating vegetarian) so I have no idea of what differences may be observed if meat is 'rested'. However, very rarely, I will eat meat, but I don't look upon it with any seriousness. Like many people, I will eat a bit of meat as soon as it is cooked, almost from the pan, while I plate up the rest of the meal. It is the time between this 'picking' of the cooked meat and the settling at the table with knife and fork that is September for me. There is the 'Oooch of the meat burning my tongue and lips remembered from the immediate past while having an understanding of the expected flavour of the semi-rested meat that is to come. For me, the taste of the meat straight from the pan (the past) is enhanced by an expectation of a known future. I need summer to be in the immediate past.

October, harvest time and a time of plenty, is eating at the table. September is between kitchen and dining room.

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Rat or Boar?

[ 6 minute read ] 

Opinion - WARNING - mentions self-abuse

Wild boars operate under what wildlife biologists call, 'High Reward Risk Tolerance' - when calorific payoff is high, their feeding drive overrides fear signals. I am not a psychologist, but I try to be one, so I am hugely interested in this. Hmmm...I think this fits in with the A3 pages on my wall on Uncertainty Avoidance.

What might constitute a high risk action or position in the human world that avoidance of a probable negative outcome is ignored because the payoff is so high? Sex, money and fame? All three as a package?

I think there is an underlying condition that might need to be thrown into my cement-mixer-type blender of information before I can make a mud-pie conclusion that might hold together long enough to be half-baked. The perception of risk is entirely subjective, and I happen to know from a personal conversation with a Cambridge University PhD graduate who was interested in a cure for malaria, that some rats are less afraid of cats than other rats. We'll come to that.

Applying my own knowledge of mental ill-health conditions and my attempt to revitalise the understanding of self-harm by offering that alcohol and drug abuse is self-harm and unprotected sex also falls under this category, I shall also offer speeding as being pursuant to self-harm. Driving fast is thrilling and also has a high probably of death or serious injury attached to it. I suggest that many of us might find that we resemble boars more than our parents know. If not a boar, then a rat.

Rats not being scared of cats. Toxiplamosis is a condition caused by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite. These parasites are typically spread in cat faeces. They also have a similar two-stage life-cycle as the plasmodium parasites which cause malaria; hence the Cambridge PhD graduate thesis. So far so good, right? 

One of the wonderful effects, if you are a cat, of Toxiplasmosis, is that it has a neurological effect on the intermediate host (a rat) that results in that host becoming less receptive to risk. In effect, take a dump and wait a day or two to catch some brave (stupid) rats. Unfortunately, the cat can also more easily catch some humans through the same process. Hopefully, that is not too graphic to be able to get the picture.

There's more.

Parents - if you love your children and expect them to go to parties in a car, make sure you cook your cats properly, because the Toxoplasma gondii can also be passed on in uncooked or poorly cooked meat, and in humans has the same effect as that found in brave (stupid) rats. (Don't cook cats).

The weird thing is, many governments across the world are trying to create brave super-soldiers (at least they were). What they should have been doing is creating a nation of cat-lovers. Unfortunately, that is like tying a bomb on a dog and sending it over to the enemy trenches. When it was tried the dogs tended to come back still carrying its load. The cat-loving soldiers will, while in training, drive too fast to parties where they will drink too much and have unprotected sex with other cat-lovers. 

       'How many do we have left, major?'

       'None sir.'

       'Six months training ruined practically overnight. Send the dog-lovers, and tell them to leave their dogs behind, we don't want any more accidents!'

Rules

Low Uncertainty Avoidance: People act first and then get information; Comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty; they work hard to minimise rules and laws that infringe on people's diverse perspectives. 

Sounds like a teenager to me. One who wants to drive too fast to a party somewhere. Should they be allowed to proceed? Are they instead infested with a parasite as an intermediary host? We could set up roadside checkpoints to check to see if they perceive risk well or not; after all speeding to hopefully get into a sexual encounter in the presence of alcohol and drugs is one thing but would they do it for Bingo or another type of gambling?

       'Right lads, we are going to play 'Chase the Lady' okay?'

       'Yeah, yeah, let's go.'

       'No, no. We use cards.'

       'Whoa, bro. I'm not handing over my card. I'm not paying. See this face? I don't need to pay!'

Seated in the mobile casino, how much would a teenager gamble on a game with a known outcome when negative or positive framing is used? There would be white coated scientists everywhere; economists, marketers, psychologists, medical students, and aviation officials everywhere, prodding and poking.

Aviation officials? Of course! Never mind how drunk the pilots are; will they try to land the plane in thick fog using the autopilot or will they try to do it themselves? What are the outward and testable symptoms of a Toxiplasmosis infection?

Conversely, by the roadside:

       'This young man can go, he's infected, so drinking alcohol will make no difference to his perception of risk. He will have unprotected sex whether he is drunk or not.'

       'Bingo, miss? Hit or miss for you is it? Interesting. Very Interesting! Oh, wait there. You! Yes, you with the dog! Yes you, miss, you can go.'

Of course, the opening paragraph for this post comes from watching YouTube videos on the wild boar problem in the southern United States of America. The locals have learnt valuable lessons in both reducing the incidences of wild boar congregation and trapping and consequent 'culling'. Yet, there is an underlying current of understanding that, I think, many people fail to perceive. Even, if we could speak 'Wild Boarish', attempting to persuade them that a moment on the lips means a lifetime on the hips during one of the times when calorific payoff is high and their feeding drive overrides fear signals would fall on deaf ears donated by, I suspect, humans. We have to recognise that it is not just teenagers that are self-harming; I am not specifically talking about food here.

Many of us, in the Global North, eschew a healthy life-style for immediate gratification. Ivan Pavlov the Dog Whisperer (not) might have had some success in conditioning wild-boar behaviour with bells and electric shocks and so prevent some of the damage done to farmland, but it seems to me, it is humans which need constant reminders that they are indeed the very animals they despise.

       'Quiet please, class 4A. Today, we are going to face reality. That's right, put your books away. Today, we are going to ask ourselves what we want to be when we grow up. Do you want to be...Quiet...Do you want to be a rat or a boar? Quiet.'

       'What's the difference other than their size and shape?'

       'A boar is driven by an overwhelming desire for pleasure that causes it to ignore danger and a rat takes a chance that it will not have to eat food that will ultimately bring about its demise through disease; it lives in hope. Will you gamble as a rat or just stick your head in the feed-bag. In other words, are you all in, in a game of Poker or not? Do you really care?'

       'Can't we just be human?'

       'No.'

       'Do we have to gamble?'

       'Yes. You are already playing the game.'

I have deliberately not included references or links because you probably don't want to know about Toxiplasmosis.

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Laser beam Kindness

[6 minute read ] 

Opinion

Knowing me for who I am, the vicar's dog-collar I wore wasn't about to fool my friends. Well, I say friends, but this morning I am certain they are not. I had spent some time selecting which dog-collar to buy, and at least one person was skeptical as to whether it really had any legs.

       'It's quite yellow.' said one. I agreed and thought it also cheap and tacky.

Last night, I met up with some acquaintances, a rowdy bunch. One or two jeered me for the vicar get-up but I felt I should present myself as not being fertile ground for mischief or wrong-doing, such as I know the rest of them are.

It was a morning dream, rudely shattered by I know not what. I can guess, but it would only be a guess; one with significant weight of belief behind it, but still only a guess.

When I was sixteen, I dreamt that I awoke and in my bedroom I made out two semi-opaque figures facing one another. There was a question in the air, 'You need to choose. What will you choose?' I suppose there can never be a question as finite as 'Do you choose to be good or evil?' since there is a small element of evil in everyone and vice-versa. Yeah, I know, the truly evil person surely cannot save a kitten from starvation, right? The answer is wholly outside of my bailiwick of comprehension. 

I didn't ponder for long; I was sixteen and just like how a lot of cartoons portrayed teenagers way back when, the only thing that resembled any conviction of intent or might volunteer for comprehension was the singular, 'I dunno.' Hence, the answer I gave was 'I can't answer that right now. Let's wait and see.' I have been chased by that indecision for all the days following. I don't mean I plan to be bad or make people miserable; I mean, in trying to be good, I suppose without the support I would have received if I had made the right decision back then while still malleable, I recognise my badness. I don't steal or beat people up, and I am pretty certain I don't lie anymore. Yet, I think by being remiss in 'giving' in some ways (which I still don't seem to have fathomed yet), there are fissures in my wall of determined kindness.

In the dream, meeting with long-standing acquaintances whom I know are just representations of real people, in the real world who live next door to us and love their families and so on, and deliberately wearing a vicar's dog-collar during that meeting, for me meant that I was re-taking my vows to try not to be open to making mischief and deceit; a decision I made some years ago after recognising my 'bad'.

Not being open to being 'bad' is one thing. Yet, it means I am only neutral in all things emotional; which, of course, I largely am. I make efforts to be generous; and it is always with effort. I have to decide to be generous; shall I buy some art stuff to leave outside for the neighbours to take? Gladly, though, I embrace the idea as soon as I make the question. 'Of course!' How can I not? If the question arises it is because I can be generous; I am in a good position and, selfishly, I know it will not noticeably impact on my life in any negative fashion beyond having the carry the stuff. Except, It does negatively affect me. I possess the items until they are taken from outside my home so I guard them against free-loaders. I suppose that means I have created a scenario in which my kindness should be received in only the way I intended without recognising that the bed in which I have sown the seeds of generosity may need me to stop tending it for a while. Stop weeding and manicuring, if you will.

       'Children, come here. You may only feel my love in the way I give it. You may not reinterpret it in any way. If you find you are loving and kind because I love you, you must not be kind and thoughtful to others, unless you ask me first. I gave the love to you but I still own it, okay? And by the way, if I give you a gift you must use it only in the way the manufacturer intended. Understand?'

The freeloaders I despise may indeed take all the items because they really need a couple of quid for food and they may, in my mind unlikely, trade the cheap art supplies for a couple of metaphorical meat-pies or something.

Perhaps the book I lent my sister, which I hadn't fully read, was lent out of a desire to help her and when I was annoyed that she lent it to someone else to help them I was bad. I was bad because I placed a condition on my 'generosity', one which we might all expect from lending something; to whit, you get it back. I failed to recognise that my sister gained more than I intended from the book. Not only did she read the words and grew from them; she also contributed to the strength of her friendship with someone elsewhere. I suppose at that time, had I recognised it, I would have resented that. 'I haven't finished reading the book! You was supposed to give it back! You have disrespected my 'generosity'!'

Yup, that's about it. That is a black mark on my character. Even today, it is hard to establish a firm footing on exactly where I am on lending something out and then someone beyond the person I lent it to getting the benefit of it. I didn't aim for them. My kindness is a laser-beam and should not be shared! If it is diffused it might become so weak that it becomes insignificant. However, it will, I hope, find its way into a pool of kindness that everyone can bathe in, even if I don't know their names.

Religious people have their own very different scripts; doctrine that is so far from this that there can never be any comparison. 'Love because I love you!' Their beliefs grant them something they believe is an absolute, and perhaps it is. I shall not disparage anyone's beliefs, but neither will I plagiarise religion and call the good bits my own. Life lived with others takes effort, understanding and respect. If you will: I want the Open University to just give me bullet points of information because it is speedier for me, but the OU wants me to understand the information by working through it. My efforts to build on any comparison between my wants and the Open University's focus are so ineffective that it leaves me only frustrated. I am compelled to do as the Open University commands otherwise I am not worthy of merit. Bit of a dichotomous turn-around, don't you think? I want doctrine and absolutes in my Arts and Humanities studies, yet it is anathema to me in the real emotional and social world I need to be in.

My intent was not for my views to be taken up as banners to support or portray how religion may be useful, desirable or necessary, yet I must abide by my own drive. I should recognise that my views should not come with any conditions and they might be used to love or hate in equal measure, in far places and in many futures.

If you want to write on this subject, 'vicarious love and kindness', which is not my own invention, and you want to use any of the points I have made in this blog to support your take on it or argue against, then you should cite and reference accordingly. Since this is a blog post and is on the Open University server, of which I have no control, be sure to include the date you accessed it.

Cite this:

Cadwell, M (2026), in 'Laser beam Kindness', The Open University Personal Blogs (online). available at: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/editpost.php?blog=1&post=354959&referurl=https%3A%2F%2Flearn1.open.ac.uk%2Fmod%2Foublog%2Fview.php%3Fuser%3D852553%26amp%3Btaglimit%3D500%26page%3D0

Freeloader

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Freeloading instruments of Ruin

[4 minute read ] 

  Opinion

Yesterday, I bought four cheap art items; not paintings or shapely vases or anything. They were two little blackboards with five attendant coloured chalks, some crepe paper and a pack of fifteen sheets of black A4 size paper for use with the chalks to make more permanent pictures. I left them outside my home on the pavement for the neighbours to choose from. Exactly as I expected, the freeloading family up the road took three of the items. They always strip other people of opportunities. I provide opportunities for creativity and nurturing; they deny the community of the same. They are freeloaders.

I didn't leave any young tomato plants out earlier this year because the freeloading family just take as many as they can carry and then come back and do the same again. Unchecked, they will take twenty or more plants for their own selfish wants. How can I prevent them from being vultures feeding on what they see is the carrion of a generous person?

       'Oh, look! Free stuff! Let's take it all!'

       'Definitely!'

Sally, my neighbour who delivers free eggs to a few of our neighbours, including me, was putting oil in her car. 'Ah ha!' I thought, 'I have an opportunity to ask her a few questions.' She ever so slightly smiled when I outlined the problem. I, you see, have a different approach to community spirit than many other people do. I said to Sally, 'I don't want people to say how wonderful I am or how kind.' She smiled. 'I don't want them to even recognise me in the street. I just want some people to try new things, other people to indulge a hobby, and the rest to start to think in a more community-minded way. I want the people here to think this is a friendly road to live in. I am not interested in supporting only a single household with infant children.' Sally smiled again. She smiled the first time because no-one does praise me. They think I am weird. She smiled the second time because she targets individual homes with her free eggs.

We are at the same carnival but spinning on different rides. Sally is sharp and I cannot help but think has an untapped high IQ. I can start sentences and not necessarily need to finish them and she has got what I am saying and not just flimsily.

I get why people are freeloaders. I get why people eat too much and I get why people are hoarders and greedy for money. I have been hungry with no food and no prospects of getting any money. I have eaten out of bins and sucked on the chicken bones that late night Friday and Saturday revellers have gnawed. I have picked discarded sandwiches and filled rolls, thrown out of moving vehicles, that were made by loving partners for people starting new jobs, from the roadside and eaten them. There is an intense desire, deep down in many of us to make sure this hunger is not revisited. At food banks, years later, and only feeling slightly peckish, I have craved full carrier bags of food even though I know I have access to money in the next couple of days. If my cupboards are bare I am in a mild state of panic even if my bank balance is healthy and there is cash in my wallet. This is not a desire to be comfortable; it is an obsession not to suffer in a way I have full and hard experience of. It is irrational fear that compels me to consider self-preservation. But it is not self-preservation before the health of others. I hope I never get there. It is also not self-preservation at the expense of others.

At a food-bank some years ago, I got into a conversation with a young woman who proudly told me why she was there.

       'If I take the food here, I can buy luxuries with the money I have saved!' I was shocked; actually shocked that someone might consider denying food to hungry people just so they can have luxuries.

The freeloading family in my road certainly don't need to take two little blackboards for their two infants in order to survive. They don't need to develop their infants' creativity because the infants both go to a local playgroup (which I might add financial costs, but does give the parent some time off from their kids).

My target for my gifts are people who have never considered applying themselves to creative pursuits during their long working life; teenagers who have a creative drive but limited finances to keep them interested in their hobby; and infants that are new to creative outlets, and their parents who find a good way to interact with a small person when they have struggled to do so before. My target is young people who want to give a gift to a family member but cannot think of anything to give and have left it too late to choose something, because they are distracted by the drive of modern social interaction. My target is a young person who, finding something free, decides to give it to their sibling.

My target is not a freeloading family. What can I add to the sign to make them realise they have the very attitude I despise? 'No freeloaders!'; 'Please consider that others may like to be recipients of these items'; 'If you regularly take free stuff, you are not welcome here - these are not for you'; 'Not for number 36 - Get your own stuff!'?

Sally made some suggestions which I immediately negated because the clauses for eligibility to take free stuff would stop non-selfish people (my target) from taking anything. I have had years to think about it.

I am so sad that the only things that can be left outside for others to take cannot have any value at all to the contributor; no extended plan to spread happiness and suggestions of surety for a safe and comfortable future; no value if they were bought with money that could have been selfishly spent on something else; and no comprehension held by the contributor that there will inevitably be entities that will completely undo good in the world, and are, in being freeloaders, instruments of ruin.

Library

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

I could be a mathematician

[2 and a half minute read ] 

Opinion

Waiting outside the village library at 2pm I kicked myself for being a fool. I felt better after I recognised a man perambulating towards the library and spoke to him.

       'Hello Billy. How close to half past two do you think it is?'

       'Very close.' He looked at his watch and I noticed the minute hand on the '3'.

       'Quarter past. The library opens at half past.'

       'I thought it was two.' he replied. As I said, I felt much better.

We spoke for a while and then he suggested going back towards where we both live; well, at least the other end of the village. After a while I asked a burning question.

       'Provender, the shop-keeper, told me you are really good at maths. How good? Provender is a bit light on most subjects and 'really good' is subjective. Just to prove it Billy replied.

       'Not so I can help you with what you need maths for.'

       'You don't know what my maths capability or understanding is. What kind of level?

       'PhD....at sixteen. They have only just awarded it to me though.' He was surprised to learn that I am an Open University graduate and might know something about PhD graduates. Indeed I do; but largely through the course of my work-life.

       'What was your PhD paper on?' I asked. I just had to.

       'Everything!' He said. 'Everything in maths.'

       'No, what was the title?'

       'OT. That means everything.' I had no idea what he was on about by now. A PhD on everything in maths with a paper titled 'OT'. I had a friend called Minnie who liked to say 'How odd!' a lot. I hadn't thought about that crazy girl for years.

I told Billy how English Literature studies are weird. 'I think people make a lot of stuff up about books from things they know about the author. I've read books and never even considered the same as a book-reviewer did.'

He didn't answer. The subject was a dead dog to him.

       'I'm going back to the library.' I told him, and cycled off.

Later, I thought how old would someone need to be start studying for a PhD and finish at sixteen? Nine, ten? Maybe eleven or twelve for the actual PhD and nine for a first degree. I don't know. As a lie it is difficult to disbelieve, incredulous as it may be. It is a bit like being told that there are more connections in the human brain than there are stars in the known universe. If you say so; I am not about to start counting.

I am, however, much more interested in how people with a degree in maths immediately expect someone to say. 'Oh, I am really rubbish at maths', when they learn that the person has a degree in maths. I noticed one of my neighbours pull that funny face that is chained to, and I think unique to, the subject of maths. If I asked someone their job and they said they are an astronaut, they wouldn't pull the same face because they expect me to say, 'Oh, I am really rubbish at orbiting planets!'

What is it with people who are good at maths? ('Not the type of maths I could help you with!') Just like Mr Heckle in 'Friends', I could be a mathematician.

His name is not really 'Billy'. I was reminded of Sheryl Crowe's 'All I Wanna Do (is have some fun)' 1994 song.

'And Billy likes to peel the
labels,
From his bottles of Bud and
shred them on the bar.

Then he lights every match in
an oversized pack,
Letting each one burn down to
his thick fingers
Before blowing and cursing
them out.'

(lyrics from the poem 'Fun' by Wyn Cooper in 1987) https://www.poemist.com/wyn-cooper/fun

which Sheryl Crowe adapted for her breakthrough hit 'All I Wanna Do (is have some fun)' in 1994. It just popped into my head when I thought back to the chap I had the weird conversation with this afternoon.

haunted

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Haunted

[4 minute read ] 

Imaginative Opinion (hyperbole)

Apparently, according to one of my neighbours across the road there were a whole bunch of our planets lined up yesterday. He was looking at the image of the solar eclipse passing through his reversed binoculars onto a piece of white paper. For two weeks I had thought I had been relaxed because the troll who lives under a bridge, who is my nearest neighbour, had been away for a while. 

       'My planet is Saturn,' I mused. He wasn't interested. He speaks ancient Greek in his sleep I imagine. 'It goes around the sun every twenty-nine years,' I continued. 'So nothing changes much in my life very quickly.' He still wasn't drawn into commenting.

I have to face it, my mind is a bit loose sometimes. I was, respectfully, casting a handful of dots in the air for him to join up. But he wouldn't enter the game. Horoscopes are plainly not in the breadth of his interests. I wondered if I live a life of perceptual duality; a consciousness that other people do not share. Surely, I am not the only one who throws templates of my fancies over real events. Of course not. I am merely a fool who voices them inappropriately.

       'I should like to be able to describe this light,' I said in the silence between us. The light was the light from the partially occluded sun. 'I am used to it now but if I just stepped out of my door without seeing it beforehand would I say to myself 'What's going on? Things look different.'

       'You would,' he replied trying to refocus the sun's image on his piece of paper.

We tried to describe the light. He made reference to practices of yore that sent smoke into the air over fields. 'Look, the sky is grey and the light also grey as though it has passed through smoke.'

Later, at half past eight, when the momentous event of the rare partial solar eclipse had passed, I looked out into the evening and saw the same light. The houses opposite were no longer bathed in the golden glow of the sun and the sky was grey. The light, just as my neighbour had earlier suggested, seemed to have passed through smoke, yet it was a normal evening light. I suggest that it is the rapidity of the earlier change in light that caused my neighbour to add in a contributing factor to explain the phenomenon. His past experience of stubble-burning; a now outlawed practice of burning the remains of harvesting wheat while still in the field - the roots and the lower stalks; had played in his mind. Anyone who has noticed the shadow of smoke from a bonfire has experienced the same. 

I was eager to record the effect of the partial solar eclipse in my mind. Keen on writing, I wanted to be able to obliquely reference the effects of a sun that is partially obscured. When I consider that a cloud does the same thing as a moon I realised that I was following a path to nowhere. Except, it was not an entire waste of time. I was after all, perceiving an event or set of circumstances in an elevated perceptive state. That can't be bad, right?

       'He lived his life like a solar eclipse; grey with diminishing energy.' I randomly said, mostly to the air but in the presence of my neighbour. It wasn't something I would ever write with any expectation of leaving it as it is, but it fixed the moment in my head.

Over the road, on the pavement, the strange family from up the road were about to pass my home. The tiny girl, probably only two years old, had, a few weeks earlier, approached me and said, 'You're my friend!' I had bent to talk to her a couple of times over the past year and chatted with her four-year-old brother a few times. She seemed to have remembered me on that occasion of stated friendship. It was indicative of an approach to calm her at playgroup. 'Look, the children you know are your friends.'

       'There's my little friend.' I mused aloud. Really it was to attract the family's attention to our little group. The little girl ran on with only a swift glance. Even her brother made no comment. Usually, he would shout an excited greeting at me. I considered that their mum had issued them a quiet command. She is the weird one in the family. It won't be long before I shall be able to detect a strangeness in the kids, I thought. Perhaps, though, she won't have too much of a negative effect on them, even if I can detect a growing reticence in her husband to talk outside of their group to the neighbours.

I noticed another neighbour from across the road, who had been living there for over three years without us ever meeting. She was watching me and beamed every time I glanced at her. 'There's a Starman waitin' in the sky; he'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds'. - (Starman - David Bowie, 1972). I suspect she thought I was talking to myself since she could not see the neighbour with the binoculars and paper behind an overgrown shrub. 

       'Come and look at this,' I called. 'He has an image of the eclipse on a piece of paper.'

       'I can't stay long.' she replied and approached us. I suppose she was placing a verbal wedge down, to keep her exit clear and easily attainable. I had no intention of detaining her. I just wanted to make sure she realised that I was talking to a real person. However, I did recognise an opportunity to greet someone I had not had the chance to do so before. You know, what do you do for work and stuff. Before we got anywhere the strange woman came back without her kids and husband and snaffled the neighbour I was engaged with. For a few seconds we formed a triangle on the pavement but before long I realised that the conversation was going to be all about how the poor woman was ill and had just finished working nights. I talk about myself a lot and I know how boring it is to others but somehow this woman could cast spells on others and compel them to listen and sympathise even empathise with her. 'I know, I know! Poor you!' She reminds me of an idea of how someone might look like if they are haunted; gaunt and grey and with an air of despondency, yet still in possession of a tiny ember of hope. I am going to have to look at her with different eyes, I think; see if I can 'see' something.

Her husband wandered over but left again when no-one greeted him. I was going to but I was a little lost in contemplation of how my conversation had been high-jacked and my conversation-partner's attention diverted. The grey woman works for a party that is sent to curtail my progress, I thought. 

I am convinced I have been hypnotised as a child to help me forget childhood trauma. I think my mother was given a secret word that would cause me to forget the previous few minutes of my life.

       'Five, four, three, two, one. You are now in a deep state of relaxation and free from pain. When you hear this word, 's$%*m#' you will immediately feel relaxed and free from pain and have no memory of the previous ten minutes before you heard the word. You are waking now and when I click my fingers you will be wide awake and never be able to recall this session, but the magic word when your mum says it will relax you and erase your memory.' Click!

I think there has been some erosion in the containment of the process and if I hear the 'magic' word these days I have no recollection of a short period preceding the utterance of the word; or the word, whatever it is. There is just a feeling similar to going into a room and wondering why I went there.

Suddenly, all my neighbours were gone except for the one with the binoculars and the piece of paper. I noticed that the orange-grey sunlight on his face was significantly darker than I remembered, as though an hour hand had just jumped from one numeral to another on a clock-face; that notion comes from 'Lady Audley's Secret' by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, but it fits how I felt. 

There is a chance that I am psychotic and I imagined the participants in a fantastised scenario but the countless instances of no memory of an immediate past are more indicative of either 'perceptual catatonia' or hypnosis gone wrong. I have no idea if 'perceptual catatonia' is a thing. I know I have slammed two words together in a hope they, when combined, suggest an emotional state in which my mind is wholly quiescent and non-receptive to external stimuli. I have always described the period following my nervous breakdown as a child, as 'emotional catatonia'. I am trying to move on from that expression; probably because I like words and like a toddler, also like building blocks.

       'It has pretty well passed now,' my neighbour said. I was a little confused, stunned I suppose, so I thanked him for sharing his image-making time and went home.

       'Not at all,' he politely replied. 'Not at all.'