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The Spiders recognise me

Wednesday 2 September 2026 at 07:47

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Wednesday 2 September 2026 at 07:56

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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; now they are frenetic and all excited and stuff - they have evolved into teenagers from sedentary elderly creatures.

Tags: spiders, houseflies, house spiders, intelligence, sedentary

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Technology slows me down

Tuesday 1 September 2026 at 11:26

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Wednesday 2 September 2026 at 07:49

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

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Technology slows me down

[ 4 minute read ]

Opinion

One of things I sometimes like to do is read the news. 'Ha ha ha. Read the news!' You can't 'read' the news; we never could. The 'news' has to be experienced in person, and even then we only get a single facet of it.

'Let's look at the back-story to this.'

Let's not.

Once upon a time a news story broke and the country heard about it with updates throughout the day. S'okay, because still other news got reported; like a tree got hit by lightning, which set light to a mansion where the impressive library burnt to the ground and killed the pastry chef who was stuck in the pantry with the housekeeper, but the heat from the blaze brought the daffodils out early, so not all bad then. Not any longer; there is no news other than a single story. Journalism, I feel has taken a different approach with the technology of the day leading the way. Now, in-depth coverage including satellite imagery and records of the past is the order of the day. I really couldn't care less; just tell us the new bits.

Most days, I look at a couple of websites with stories on them. However, the trend is for reporting the news with videos, which speeds the production of the news presentation up. Plainly, it takes longer to write coherently than it does to edit a video for a website upload, I suppose. Contrawise, it takes longer to watch a video than it does to read the transcript. My time has somehow been transferred to the news channel to make their lives easier, or might I suggest, to be used to help them be more efficient?

If reporters have more time to report then why don't we get a wider scope of news? I suggest the reason might be shaped in a similar way to manufacturing production runs. Long production runs are way more efficient than short production runs. Quite simply this is because it takes a lot of time to change settings on machines, and the cleaning of contaminants from one production run is paramount before another one can begin. Stopping reporting on one subject means closing avenues of information and initiating the opening of others, not least is the production of introductions for news pieces. The general public, I suggest, simply cannot get up to speed on a subject as fast as the news channel can provide information.

'There have been arrests over the fire in a Polish industrial area.'

'What fire?'

So, rather than 'waste' time with a series of introductory pieces for a wide scope of interesting news, it is preferable to just re-iterate the same waffling, especially since it all comes from the same sources. Waffling for a long time is cheap and opinions are free.

I sometimes check I have internet connectivity by clicking on a BBC news icon. The time at which it takes the BBC.co.uk site to appear indicates to me whether I have a connection or not and perhaps the speed of it. I mentioned to someone outside ALDI that I use the BBC site as a marker in this way.

'That's not a news channel!', the man on his mobility scooter scoffed. I know, and his pitted nose that resembled roiling froth frozen in time told me more about him than I could trust the BBC had told me about the world in the past 24 hours. Let's face it, if you don't want people to turn up for a planned protest somewhere in a field, just send a BBC reporter to any muddy field holding an umbrella to tell us that conditions are dire and will get worse. The suggestion of personal discomfort instead of a mass rollicking romp and general meeting up with friends sometimes de-energises willpower.

Sky News (sky.com) have moved in a quite decisive way towards uploading video instead of written news stories. I can read faster than I can understand speech. It is not the spoken word that I don't get, it is the spoken word spoken at the same rate of how we read that I find difficult to comprehend. Contrary to my former belief, competent readers don't read a single word at a time; we chunk words together, about three or four at a time. This means that spoken words are linear because they are delivered individually in series. The written word, however, is delivered in a series of what might be considered to be conjunctive words, that is 'together'. This is a far faster mode of communication. Why then has technology, which we are all led to believe will 'speed things up' been used to slow things down?

I suggest technology is not about function anymore. The washing machine was invented decades ago; there isn't now anything to invent that is both functional and innovative; the dish-washer is a washing machine without a spinning drum, isn't it?

No, technology at our end of how it works is all about getting lazier and recreation. While it is quicker to upload to a website a news video which has been made in the normal course of reporting for the television, the public readily accepts this medium as normal, even preferable. Take your brain out of gear and let someone else read the transcript for you. We all like a story read to us, don't we? Technology then, I may go on to suggest, is about never growing up and never learning to be responsible for our own decisions.

'That's right, just relax, let it wash over you. Nice and warm? Yes, that's right, almost pre-orgasmic isn't it?'

Me too! It is uncomfortable to read that and I ummed and ahhed at it.

I don't watch the sky.com videos on their site because there is no speed button. If I am inclined to watch them I need to go to YouTube because there is a speed button. It means I can hear the reporter at 1.5 and 2 times normal speaking rates. I have NO interest in the pictures or video behind them and I am irritated by the time they take to pause at commas and full stops as we should do in polite speech. Mind you, I don't want them to speak like some people from the USA who never observe punctuation.

I think public speaking as taught to public speakers from best men and bridesmaids at weddings to court officials and parliamentary discussion and on to speakers at dinners has been egregiously considered to be appropriate for visual journalists. Its the news; speed it up and cut the blooming evocative words and emotional weighting on spoken words; just 'tell' us and stop 'showing' it by living it for us. No wonder there are still newspapers that have no whining journalists' voice overlaying the information, which are still bought across the nation. Another illusion, I suspect; considered reporting of news is a far more effecctve sword than 'off the cuff' though, still scripted no doubt, video reporting in the field.

Tags: technology, video, news, slow, journalist, read

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Don't eat meat straight from the pan

Tuesday 1 September 2026 at 07:51

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Tuesday 1 September 2026 at 09:44

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

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.

Tags: banal, clutter, silly season, intense, rest, irk, autonomic

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Strange

Monday 31 August 2026 at 09:32

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Monday 31 August 2026 at 14:29

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

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Strange

[ 4 minute read ]

Opinion

I couldn't sleep last night. My face kept tickling. Of course, I know why I couldn't sleep and my face tickled; my neighbour has come back from charging the batteries he uses to power his malevolence. I kind of feel sorry for him because he doesn't know he is an ogre. Don't worry, I know I am being uncharitable, well at least in trying to understand him. I gave up trying to engage him in conversation long ago. He simply wouldn't stop and say a single unsolicited sentence. Hark! There is a chorus of elderly voices calling that he probably just wanted to be left alone; for six years?

No, he has a hatred towards the world because, I suspect, he doesn't understand it. His misanthropy I have witnessed and I have been shocked at the breadth and depth of it. My face tickled last night because his throbbing cynicism moved the spiritual air and my face felt it like single threads from spider webs being dragged across my skin. There were other parts of my body that tickled last night but I don't have an answer for that yet.

I eventually got up. Do something you are good at, I thought; make yourself happy and relax. I, of course turned on a laptop and explored. Being in my living room is a fairly safe place from my neighbour's influence even though I sometimes get the feeling there is a zombie overlooking my shoulder as I work on some of the files. He doesn't believe I am an undergraduate so I thought I should, like many other students waiting for their academic year to start, do some preliminary work. That should soothe the looming aspect of my neighbour's projection, if he stumbles across me in my home. It is incongruous for an idiot to be studying anything so his confusion continues uninterrupted. Job done; he will just move on and wake cats and dogs in the neighbourhood as he passes through kitchen and bedroom walls. A few people will toss and turn until he leaves but no real harm will occur.

Every now and then I download some stuff I think might be useful. I don't run any MicroSoft software, as far as I know, so everything is cool; if I believe that the software developers are not foreign spies or hackers. The British hackers are all kind and helpful and make software to help elderly people cross the road, don't you know? It is rare that I ignore the probability of Trojan Horses cantering through my operating system but sometimes you just have to recognise that you might have to spend six or seven hours reformatting your hard drive because you couldn't be bothered to save everything only to duplicated memory sticks, and just download stuff in that same recognition.

I might wave my laptop towards my neighbour the next time I see him, to see if it makes any difference. Files that I lost when I moved partitions on the hard drive might come back but they may also be quite ephemeral and covered in spiritual cobwebs and so be unusable.

'Hey, Camelly! Come closer. Wooo! Wooo! Thanks.'

All I need is a Spiritual File Reader or SFR. Amazon will probably have one, if not them then definitely Temu. I might not like the cost though; it would likely be a piece of my soul. Well, there's an epiphany; I think my neighbour has allowed monsters to nibble away his soul or his own introspective nature has been like a solvent on it. I think the monsters might like the by-product of his dissolved soul and that is why he is empty of empathy. So sad.

You think me cruel. I am. I have detached emotions and it is my wont to caricature real life. It is even my escape. If I am honest, which I usually am, if my soul and my neighbour's soul went into a spiritual clothes shop for a fitting we would both come out wearing the same clothes in the same size. However, I would look incredible and he would look like a muddy puddle with a broken umbrella in it. Do you know why? You have to embrace eccentricity and weirdness; claim it as your own and never hide it. You should never be embarrassed by your... (at this point I shall consult my Roget's Thesaurus for some tasty words) Cue the music 'Left Bank Two' by The Noveltones (Link to a YouTube video of the Vision On Gallery music) while I search.

Ah ha! You should never be embarrassed by your... wackiness or your oddity; by being zany, kinky or queer, or by having a funny obsession. People will love us for it. If we hide it, people will cross the road because we are weird. Wear a top hat; sing while you cycle (I doff imaginary hats to fair maidens and dowagers alike); tell people how loud an egg exploding in a bowl of water heated in a microwave is; laugh at your image on the back of a spoon; or pull faces at the moon; who cares?

Tags: strange, zany, weird, neighbour, spiritual, odd, sleep, vision on

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Rat or Boar

Sunday 30 August 2026 at 13:40

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Monday 31 August 2026 at 09:33

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

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

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.

Tags: rat, boar, Pavlov, conditioning, gamble, risk, reward, perception

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Being UKish

Sunday 30 August 2026 at 08:17

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday 30 August 2026 at 14:48

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

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Being UKish

[2 minute read ]

Opinion

07:28 Sunday 20th August 2026:

You know, tea, no matter how strong, just cannot compete with strong coffee for waking me up. Yet, I cannot help but to think, 'Why do I need to "wake up!" today?' Well, it is not a case of today being a special day that requires me to be more awake than any other day, it is more that my self-analysis checks are showing that I am in the doldrums. The doldrums is the 'Intertropical Convergence Zone' where the Northeast and Southeast trade winds converge, which according to Wikipedia encircles the thermal equator. I am not physically there. It is where there is long periods of no wind or a sailing ship is becalmed. Not good if you have to be somewhere else. Mentally, I want to be somewhere else. I don't have any coffee so I am going to the shop. It is 08:15

08:51

Do you ever start talking to someone and suddenly realise you are preaching to the choir? It is always difficult for me to talk to people from Ireland. We have very close ties with Ireland . Even the idea that we should not talk about religion or politics, I think, may be based on Ireland. I was in conversation with a lovely lady from County Mayo to whom I had to explain that the six counties that make up 'Northern Ireland' are not British, and the citizens are not British by a round-about way of saying that England is not even a real country because Scotland has never agreed that England should be recognised as such, somehow. I had heard that from a YouTube video by 'Mapmen' and I mentally logged it. True or not, it may be useful to impart such information into a hectic conversation on sovereignty when you suddenly realise you are talking to an Irishwoman outside the local village shop who thinks that the people in Northern Ireland are British. But there are layers to be peeled back in the whole issue that may pour oil on the stormy waters, ameliorate, or simply obfuscate an argument.

Apparently, in order for a country to be a country it must have sovereignty. England does not regulate its own foreign or domestic trade; which control is determined by the UK Parliament, a body with members elected from England, Scotland, and Wales. A country also needs to have control over its social engineering. There is a UK-wide decision making body that determines this in the form of the Department for Education and Skill, a government department. (Rosenberg, M. 2025)

I really don't care whether it is the UK or England that is a country or not and always default to telling people who might want to be appeased that England is not a country because Scotland won't let them be one. I then mention 1707 and King James. You know, King of Scotland and England. I usually stick to facts because I abhor mis-information but sometimes I let my ponderings be heard with caveats such as, 'I think...' and 'Some people think.....'.

Anyway, it might explain why English people should not fly the England flag when there are no sporting events in which the province of England is competing, and why I cannot write 'English' as my nationality on some forms, and I think that included my passport when I was sixteen.

'All rise!'

'You are accused of flying an England flag when there is no sporting event in which England is competing. How do you plead?'

'Guilty'.

'Hence, you are now charged with separatism and committing an act likely to foment rioting.'

'Eh?'

'UK is a province of the country of UK and by flying the England flag you are acting in a similar way to people in Catalan who wish to have independence from Spain. Entiendes?'

'What?'

'Do you understand? You are not English! We only need you to think you are. Vous comprenez?'

'Er...no'

'England no longer exists but we don't want you to realise that your wonderful history is no longer relevant. It is a new world with no place for the pesky English or Bavarians. Verstehen Sie mich?'

At this point the judge put a black piece of cloth on his head.

'Increase his taxes!'

The crowd roared for more.

'Make the hose-pipe ban permanent for him!'

'Boo!' This time the punishment was too severe. There would be an appeal, but first a Scotsman and a Welshman would appear in a dock in Edinburgh and Cardiff, their provincial capitals.

One thing for sure, there is a world-wide mystery about the UK and its constituent countries; England - Great Britain - UK? If England was to describe its current relationship status on a dating app it might have to say, 'It's complicated'.

(09:46am)

References

Rosenberg, M. 2025, 'England is Not an Independent Country', ThoughtCo (website)

Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/england-is-not-an-independent-country-1435413

Accessed: 30 August 2026

Tags: England, relationship, independent, doldrums, UK

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Laser beam Kindness

Saturday 29 August 2026 at 10:18

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday 30 August 2026 at 11:05

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

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

Tags: kindness, generosity, dog-collar, good, evil

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Inattentiveness

Friday 28 August 2026 at 06:04

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Friday 28 August 2026 at 11:20

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Inattentiveness

[4 minute read ]

Opinion (hyperbole)

I knew it was going to be 'one of those days' when the cyclist who had just crossed the motorway slip road cycled in the middle of the cycle-path towards me on my bike.

'Pay attention!' I shouted, hoarsely because I was so angrily loud. Just before I was about to brake and pull my bike out of the way, he moved slightly left, which still gave me little room. He turned his face to me, his identity hidden behind a beard and sunglasses.

I could, in retrospect, say that day started in my village at a T junction I have to turn right at, onto the only road through my village. This means that there is a double chance for some happenstance car driver to inhibit my smooth maneuvering. Every time I need to do it, which isn't daily, a car or van prevents me pulling out, even though there is only a single car or two per minute that passes on that road. On 'that' day, however, it was a bus. Despite the unusual appearance of a punctual bus, supposedly hourly, there has to be a sequence of bizarre incidences before I am alerted.

If I had been my normal uber-observant self, which includes self-scrutiny, I should have recognised what was about to take place throughout that day, and immediately turned around and gone home, but I had an appointment in the city; my mind was occupied with avoiding only bodies of mass and broken glass, and my attention was firmly placed on not being late; I hate being late.

Somehow, all the ripples in the footpath / cycle-path at the outskirt of the city had conspired among themselves to act like bumps; they normally only do this when I am heavily-loaded on the way back from the city. I dared not let one hand off the handlebars and I was a passenger on my own bike with no rider to help me. 'Relentless!' I cried loudly out, 'Relentless!'

Car drivers and cyclists alike played 'chicken' with me. Despite having my right arm at ninety degrees to my body on the approach and on the mini-roundabout, and plainly favouring the inner side of the mini-roundabouts, I had to stop on mini-roundabouts to avoid being hit by cars when I was turning right. In the UK, when we are turning right on any roundabouts we have the 'right-of-way'. The 'right-of-way' unless the car driver refuses to look for cyclists, then they have the right-of-way, of course. Another strange law is when a cyclist is heading towards another cyclist: 'If one cyclist does not want to see the other cyclist, then this cyclist has the 'right-of-way.'

On that day, pedestrians on shared 'pedestrian and cycle paths' kept their heads down or stared straight through me; which is fine with me because I can go around them. Not all of them did this though. Some of them without looking at me beforehand, deviated by a couple of steps to claim a different space; a space that I was likely to enter in the next two seconds; all the time watching my hands to see if I was about to brake. As soon as they realised I would definitely be able to stop before hitting them, they stood still, as though they had won some kind of battle in which the winner was not the possessor of contested space, but was instead, by their own rules and understanding, the contestant who caused the other contestant to hesitate.

The few streets into the tiny city centre, after the park, had seven puddles of shattered glass fading from the roadside gutters for the next forty feet of road. Heavy motorised traffic on the roads into and out of the city, meant I was unable to keep swerving to avoid the glass. I had to stop and rest one foot on the kerb each and every frustrating time. I imagined the drivers grinning; winners every one of them; by my rules of engagement, to possess a contested space, I miserably lost, because according to The Highway Code, as the smaller of the traffic in the hierarchy of vehicle categories I had the right of way, and as a cyclist, I had legitimate claim to six whole feet (1.83m) of the road width from the kerb outward. They laughed, because I played a different game to them, and they won because I hesitated. They, of course, never saw the glass; the sun was in the wrong place.

Someone in chains sat on the other side of the desk firing unimaginative questions, so I talked in every available space during the appointment. In any case, I had, by now, figured out what game everyone was playing; 'Inattentiveness'. The pedestrians, cyclists, and car-drivers were not laughing at me; they were flimsy and shallow, and absent of higher function thinking. They never even had sensors that detected any future beyond their singular prosaic life. They could not predict a future in which all the observable features of their known world may be rapidly re-positioned in geographical space; that cyclist (me) may be in a different space the next time I open my eyes. They had simply become complacent, unimaginative, and lazy.

Tags: inattentive, complacent, unmaginative, lazy, prosaic, chains, observation

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Freeloading instruments of Ruin

Saturday 15 August 2026 at 09:46

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Saturday 15 August 2026 at 13:55

Freeloader

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

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.

Tags: freeloader, ruin, gift, roadside, neighbour, art, creativity, Sally, infant

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Eat my Food

Friday 14 August 2026 at 07:02

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Friday 14 August 2026 at 13:42

Food

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Eat my Food

[3 minute read ]

Fiction

The shopkeeper's wife, Boonie, in a village somewhere in England, doesn't see customers as integral to the business. She doesn't see them as stakeholders, or as real entities with the capacity to make decisions. As to the latter part, she has a point. Living in a village in the modern world does disrupt acting out many decisions. Is it worth it, to get in a car and drive one and a half miles to the next village for a couple of litres of milk? There is a petrol station in the same village but misplaced principles may inadvertently steer some people away from there.

'I am not paying that for a litre of milk!'

No, instead, people, rather than walk or cycle a round trip of three miles to the next village, habituate their local shop / Post Office where Boonie reigns. Habituate, as in stand there talking to the shop assistant regardless of the toe-tapping queue behind them. 'Oh! I didn't realise you was there.' You did but you are selfish and self-absorbed and you placed someone below you on the social hierarchy scale. Boonie encouraged you, didn't she? In any case the customers behind you look foreign to you, don't they?

Boonie, the shopkeeper's wife is decidedly happy that there is a constant stream of revenue to indulge her fancies once the financial liabilities are taken care of. I have deliberately demoted her position to being secondary to the shopkeeper, because I am biased towards her; not because she is female and the 'shopkeeper' is male. No, because I detest greed. In truth, she is at least equal to her husband and I would not be at all surprised if she outranked him when it comes to following through with shaping his opinion. She is, in fact, also the shopkeeper, but not the male one.

She has eaten the profits, it is obvious to anyone standing outside the shop. She and another person cannot pass each other in the usually ample space behind the counter. Her voice is loud; she is not demure or modest in her speech. She is forceful and expectant of an agreement to her opinion. She, of course, relies on her resilient energy to grind down any opposition to her uneducated thrust. An argument could go on for a week and her opponent would shrivel. Blurting her opinion she doubles down on it in a sly and unfocused manner. Her husband is kind and considerate. She, however, presents as being less concerned with easing suffering by meditation and consciousness than by easing her life through the conduit of channeling money from the shop to spend on a more comfortable lifestyle stuffed with optional, discretionary goods. She puts dishes in the dishwasher and waddles with her two friends half a mile to the village border and back while the dishes are washed for her. Red-faced and panting in winter, she is obviously absent in summer. Her children are grown now, but she wonders why there are car-washes and washing machines and dish-washers, but she still had to humble herself to kneel next to the bath and clean them.

Customers to her are a source of money and her husband has been smothered into submitting to her greed. The lure of money is strong for many. Work hard at your own expense and reap the large financial reward, of course. Eying customers and making decisions from behind a counter in terms of how gullible and lazy they are is quite another thing. She waits, toad-like, invisibly licking her swollen lips, keeping them moist so her tongue can shoot out and grab the money. A new kitchen next month; a long holiday next summer; a new car soon, and cake for tea. Like so many other people, her skin is clammy and she sticks her invisible medals of financial gain and spending to it, with a contented and self-indulgent, secret, smile; her smile, the one she lets trusting customers see. She already has a plan on how to control her husband's protests; It has worked in the past and it will continue to work. His goal is peace; hers is satisfaction.

She resented her young children, now grown and flown from her reach. When they were young a tiny slice of cake would suffice to satiate their desire. Her husband, habitually living to ease her indulgences, has always took none, leaving her the three-quarters that she had carefully carved out. As the children grew her own slices became smaller and theirs grew ever larger; and as young adults she knew they would judge her harshly if she had her own cake. She would never have accepted their truth. Now, she can sweetly say to her husband, the only other eater at their table, 'Don't fancy any? Well, we shouldn't let it go to waste.' Her husband smiles and feels his ribs and thinks of the expensive holiday she has booked. He wonders when she lost the peach fuzz on her cheeks and grew the spikes on prickly pears.

'We should keep the price of chocolate bars high; I need a new kitchen, like Molly has.' She commands. She looks forward to the best before date to pass on the unsold Mars and Twix, and counts the extra profit from the hiked-up margin.

Her greed is born out of her bovine intelligence, just like cows chewing their cud, she really would eat her food twice. Donkeys subscribe to her online lessons on stubbornness, and hamsters and chipmunks watch her home and holiday videos on YouTube, to learn how to stuff their furry faces.

I like people who are comfortable in their skin; large, small, obese or skinny, spotty, unblemished, black, brown and white, even red. I don't like people who direct other people's money - money they need for food - into their own bellies.

Tags: fiction, story, half penny, food, greed, shopkeeper, hamster, chipmunk, toad, lazy, obese, stubborn, bovine, shop, customers

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I could be a mathematician

Thursday 13 August 2026 at 15:16

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Friday 14 August 2026 at 16:38

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.

Tags: maths, lies, imagination, heckle, Friends, library, Billy

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Haunted

Thursday 13 August 2026 at 07:04

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Thursday 13 August 2026 at 14:40

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.'

Tags: magic, haunted, half penny, story, hyperbole, hypnosis, emotion, catatonia, perception, eclipse, neighbour, neighbor

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Despondent by my own hand

Wednesday 12 August 2026 at 07:01

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vegetarian

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Despondent by my own hand

[4 minute read ]

My family ate our pet ducks. At least they were pet ducks in my mind. The chickens, being chickens were just egg-laying animals with feathers that the foxes liked to savage. At least that was what happened in my mind; because I was told that was what foxes do. I wasn't bothered about the chickens but the ducks? They were different. To be honest, I don't remember eating duck; it probably would have just tasted like a strange chicken to me. Certainly, my parents never asked us kids what 'Quackers' tastes like. I do remember my sister crying one week because her duck was missing and then our brother's duck had gone a few weeks later, and then a bit later there were no more ducks. I took it on the chin, by the time the last duck, my duck, had disappeared I had come to realise that ducks simply vanish; it is what they do. Sometimes we had pheasant; at least I remember seeing braces hung; but they probably just tasted like strange chickens to me.

I am vegetarian now; have been for a long while. I used to believe that eating red meat makes people violent, or brings out their violent tendencies and I didn't want that to happen to me. Eventually, I gave up eating meat completely. I did experiments; eat meat for a while and don't eat meat for a while. I seem to be super-sensitive to my mind and body. If I ate meat it felt like my blood was similar to old engine oil; gloopy sludge and full of grit and stuff. I had bad dreams too. If I didn't eat meat it felt like my blood was like, weirdly, washing up liquid; slippery and lubricating. You know, if your head is stuck in railings your parents don't drain the car engine for its oil, they reach for the washing up bottle. I think cleaner and clearer if I don't eat meat.

A long time ago, I started eating vitamin supplements; cheap ones. Most people are skeptical of cheap ones or even expensive vitamin supplements. The supplements work. I might guess that my mental agility is 30% more springy than if I have no supplements. I also don't eat much processed food. I don't eat yoghurt and pro-biotics. Maybe I should, but most of the time I have too much mental activity to deal with anyway, so I have to take a break every now and then. Yesterday, I ate a £1.10 Pepperoni pizza from ALDI to calm me down. Of course, they taste really bland so I 'souped it up'. That expression was probably last used in the 1970s to mean 'tuned' in a funky way when a car was mechanically improved to go faster. Anyway, I added tomato puree, and vegetable oil, basil, ground ginger, mushrooms, frozen mixed vegetables and cheese, and baked it. Tasty!

Even the small amount of pepperoni on an ALDI pizza is sufficient to clog my mind. Today, it is slow and clumsy, and instead of there being a wide panorama of envisioned opportunities it is a polluted stream in a Mumbai suburb outside a Fast-Fashion textiles factory. My liver is a rubbish tip with scroungers clambouring over it for anything of even the tiniest value. If I had a gauge that showed my mental proficiency I would be tapping it and it would still say 60%; but that means that most of the horrors that jump out at me pretending to be interesting thoughts every day are today barred by the clogging pollution.

Most of my thoughts are turned away. 'Not today, we are closed! There is a technical problem. Come back tomorrow. Get back!' They dissolve and many of the important ones get caught in the press and can't get forward to show their pass. They don't get a stamp of approval.

Outside of myself, I watch from an upstairs window and see the crowded thoughts. I shall clear my desk and go home early having done no work. Only the normal function of my mind and body shall be attended to. The books on my doorstep yesterday shall be glanced at but I shall not make coherent notes. The something that came through my letterbox last night shall be unread and my overfull bin in the living room / office shall refuse the 'thing' when I toss it there. It will bounce off the top of the heap and land on the floor, like empty toilet rolls on a bathroom floor it will remind me of my laziness.

Despondent by my own hand, I shall again vow never to eat meat again, even though I know I am dishonourable because I shall forget. There will be another day when an irresponsible idea is given charge of my shopping and its friend will take the same choice out of my freezer days or weeks later and tell me to cook it.

'Look! This will be nice!' No it really won't.

Tags: meat, vegetarian, despondent, sluggish, pollution, gloopy, sludge

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Time as a resource, wasted

Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 11:37

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Thursday 13 August 2026 at 15:15

Time

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Time as a resource, wasted

[4 minute read ]

Opinion

You know, it takes longer to log into a website these days than the amount I spend on the website. Online banking takes about four minutes because my bank uses a secondary security protocol that means I have to pick up my phone and find a text message to enter the code. Even that takes longer than looking at my bank balance; I mean picking up my phone takes longer. I am not stupid so I never do any transactions online if I have logged into my bank account that day.

Some websites send codes in emails which then means I spend about eight or nine minutes logging in and about ten seconds to do what I need to on the site. Someone suggested I store my passwords on my laptop! Really? There is not even a single file or document on any of my laptops with any of my personal details on it. Storing passwords on a device that has access to the internet is, to me, like unfurling a banner from Nelson's column, the Eiffel Tower; the Statue of Liberty; the Petronas Tower; the Hagia Sophia; and The Burj Khalifa with my family's names, addresses, dates of birth, and where and when they go on holiday. It is quite simply monumentally idiotic to leave a wide open door to your life. It's fine if you never go online or never store ANYTHING on you device but a single visit to a website that, today for me, was on 'Functional Imagery' will set a chain of action in motion to discover why I went there; and that happened before we had A.I. being automatically downloaded to assist with our spelling and grammar in real-time. I have predictive text all over the blooming place now. I have to regularly format the Hard Disk and re-install an old operating system with no technical support. I long to be able to make Windows XP work again. I have the disk but I cannot activate it. There used to be a CD / DVD that you could buy with an activation function in code on it. Alas, that kind of essential function has been overwhelmed by brain-washed optimism for an invasive future.

How did we get to this? Once upon a time I could do things really quickly; now it takes about ten times as long to do the same task. Modern technology has slowed me down because I don't need help and support from additional software because I never, ever do anything that I don't understand and never do anything that cannot be done as a stand-alone action. There simply is no reason to complicate anything outside of data mining to add to the ability to mine ever more information.

Things just don't add up. I can work through the OU books for my next module(s) but I have no direction in the form of requirements for associated TMAs and EMAs. I am largely kicking my heels. The only thing I can do is guess what I need to do and write several essays which I shall be able to use as donor essays to amalgamate components into a single essay on the same day I find out the first TMA questions to answer. Submission should then be in the first two days from the module(s) opening date. I suspect though that I shall have to wait for everyone to catch up because my module(s) also require interaction with other students. I know why the OU think it is a good idea for their students to interact but it really is so time-consuming.

Giving free-rein to thoughts and ideas means letting them breed unfettered in my mind. I, like everyone else, have the capacity to be mean and selfish, to steal intangible emotions, to worry and deny, to coerce and control. Some of us are better at it than others.

Tags: time, module, OU, resource, mine, data, personal, detail, family, landmarks

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Thanks for the moment

Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 07:21

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 16:10

moment

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Thanks for the moment

[3 minute read ]

Opinion and Reflection

Isn't it strange that we can get more than we bargained for, or hoped for, simply because we are 'on the list'. Suddenly we are taken seriously and the choice of words we hear from voices in the group are so much more pertinent to us than they might otherwise have been. Indeed, there are seemingly specific people within the milling crowd who are there for such a purpose as to guide more effectively than others may be able to do so. 'Ah, good evening Mr Bond! We were expecting you.'

I think it is the relevance of an approach that makes our ears 'prick up'. 'Oh, I think you are talking to me in a language you expect me to know, be interested to know, or will by default through a continuance of expected action come to know'.

Plainly, I am reluctant to outline where my experience of this focused intent is located. It is a worthwhile secret. Keeping secrets is a little bit against my deliberate attitude towards openness and honesty. However, I do understand that The Open University has good reasons for making sure its students are not too brazen with their truth. 'Woo hoo! I am on target for a first!' is wholly inappropriate, since that level of achievement is, I suspect, unusual, and so publicly celebrating one's ability to succeed is bound to cause other students to feel disappointed with their own work or ability. In any case, anyone who brays their celebration loudly is likely to alienate themselves from a group; quite simply through demonstrating a crassness that most of us consider to be an abomination.

I am not on target for any level of achievement. 'I have always despised the saying, 'That was then; this is now'. Yet, today I find it kind of fits, but only if I wrestle it to the ground and hold it still long enough to be able to deconstruct it.

'We used to be good friends,'

'Yeah, that was then; this is now.'

I think the intent is to shrug off the underlying and forthcoming question of, 'Why don't you like me?' which requires a detailed explanation. 'That was then and this is now' carries with it a sentiment that the speaker considers that things have changed; time has passed and their emotions have evolved and are now directed towards more current and more emotionally rewarding issues. However, in the deconstruction of this statement I find that I can reconstruct it as 'This is now; it is not the future.' This might be said by someone sharing a bed with a person they hooked up with at a nightclub the previous night, when the other person asks for a phone number the next morning. It keeps the interaction between the two people in the present. And, just like there being a ruined expectation of a present based on the past (That was then...) there is a null expectation of a future; any imagined or expected future based on the present is quashed. Hence, anyone who says, 'I am on target for...', needs to rapidly realign their thinking. (This is now....)

Often, I would get into trouble on student forums for writing cryptic comments that, once the student has untangled their own confusion as to the task they need to undertake, may have made retrospective sense of them. No student as far as I could tell, ever figured out my clues. Of course, they would never have been allowed to offer a translation of my coded message in a forum, and it is disruptive to other students to acknowledge perspicacity and accuracy in a comment that appears not to be lucid. It may even inadvertently encourage too much time being allocated to attempting to deconstruct my code, when all it was there for was to act as a reassurance that the student had independently and correctly figured something out. The trouble came not from tutors or moderators, but from students reading my comments. 'Shut up! You are confusing us with your philosophical drivel.' is one attitude I encountered. Stop reading it then! I thought.

It is a terrible thing to be confused. I do not have the skill and ability to leave a trail of carrots into a stable to encourage a donkey to go where it needs to be. I think it is Amazon who have the 'If you like this, you might also like this.' statement on their website. In some recent feedback I received, there were groupings of words used as focus points that indicated an education beyond my own in my chosen field of study. I know the words and I understand the meaning when they are grouped in a particular way. These focus points act as 'carrots'; not to encourage me into a smelly stable but instead out into fresh air and with new eyes to see new horizons with fresh curiousity. It makes me feel valued. I never seek validation for my efforts, and I am surprised that it snugly fits. I actually consider that to be a weakness in me in that I, for a moment or two, held onto the soft comfort of being the recipient of someone's respect. Thanks for the moment. I suppose that is not much different to 'This is now; it is not the future' but that is not the drive behind my gratitude and it is not an indication of any intended redistribution of my focus; just thanks for the time and effort that was put into the feedback; feedback that was clearly constructed with an idea of what I need and carried with it a good deal of respect.

Tags: moment, thanks, feedback, code, encouragement, donkey, this is now, achievement, reflection

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Why wheat matters to me

Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 05:52

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 16:14

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Why wheat matters to me

[3 minute read ]

Opinion

Well, that was weird! But not if I switch to spirit-world thinking. I put a bucket in the bath under the cold water tap and turned the tap on. I am familiar with the sound of the water running into the bucket and can tell by the frequency of the sound when the bucket is almost full. I am less familiar with a tap just running into an empty bath. I left the bucket filling keeping an ear out for the sound of a full bucket. I had left it filling to do something on my laptop in the meantime. I focused on the laptop document and then, coming back to reality, I noticed that the sound from the bathroom did not sound right. It was not water hitting water. It was the sound a of a tap running into an empty bath. Upon investigation I noticed the bucket had been moved away from the stream of water and only had about six centimeters of water in it. How odd! It never moves of its own accord. I suspected an external and invisible influence.

When the bucket did get full, after I had moved it back under the running tap, I carried it towards my back garden. Right there on top of my green recycling bin there was an head of ripe wheat, cleanly cut from the stalk. 'What could this mean?' I thought. I have a poor memory; it is bad too because it seems to be exceptionally good at highlighting mostly uncomfortable episodes from my past, so I carried the head of wheat to my front door step and left it there. 'I shall look up the significance of wheat online.' I determined.

While in my back garden I pondered the significance of wheat and felt I knew that it was associated with fecundity and harvest. It is. How did it get there? I noted, yesterday that Harrari, the abandoned alien who has somewhat befriended me, hasn't swerved me away from potential hazards for a while. Perhaps, I thought, the spirit-world, or indeed Harrari, had delayed the filling of the bucket with water sufficiently long for the head of wheat to be left on my green recycling bin. That bin I associate with adding nutrients to my garden soil since I never let the recycling teams take it, and haven't in over ten years. Instead, I empty it in my garden and dig it in. If the wheat had been left on any other colour bin it would be insignificant; I mean who wants good metals and plastic? So, it is to do with harvest and wealth, and perhaps fertility in relationships.

Do we need tokens to be able to be in receipt of help from the spirit world? Or are we only encouraged by the token because we feel as though we have been recognised as a candidate for spiritual assistance? Either way, there it is. There is a signal of being recognised. One might consider a bird had dropped it, but the ears are ripe and a bird might eat them on the spot. In any case, Sally, next door, supplies seeds and grain in bird-feeders.

'Give Me History', https://www.givemehistory.com/symbolism-of-wheat Accessed: 11 August 2026 has: 'This nutritious food has been seen as a symbol of productivity, fertility, resurrection, mystery, and life in many places around the world.' Oooh! Mystery!

The Give Me History site continues with, 'In essence, wheat represents the idea of progress and constant improvement. Whether it's in terms of personal growth, career advancements, or financial stability, the symbolic meaning of wheat encourages us to strive toward a better future.

It serves as a reminder that growth and success require hard work, patience, and dedication, much like the process of cultivating a wheat crop. It inspires us to stay productive, strive for progress, and continuously work towards our goals.'

And, 'In spiritual terms, it can also represent happiness, contentment, and a sense of fulfillment. This symbolic meaning serves as a reminder that there is always something to be grateful for. It also shows that one can attain wealth and success in various aspects of life with hard work and dedication.' Oooh! I had just minutes before I found it expressed in a post, my gratitude for dedicated feedback I have received from a respectful and keenly educated person. I like the happiness, contentment and fulfillment part!

That site goes on to elucidate on dreaming about wheat.

Dani Rhys, (September 19, 2023) on the website, 'Powerful Symbolic Meanings of Wheat', https://symbolsage.com/symbolism-of-wheat/ Accessed: 11 August 2026, offers:

'Wheat, historically more than just food, carries rich symbolism across diverse cultures. Its meanings span from wealth and togetherness to renewal and life's essentials [...] Wheat has many symbolic meanings that relate to life, hard work, renewal, and community.' And, pleasing to me, '[...] this symbolism of wheat goes beyond just the physical aspect. After all, it's not for nothing that we say the bread of life, which means a source of spiritual nourishment.' Oooh! Cool!

Jodie Lawrence on her website, 'What Does Wheat Symbolize in Different Cultures and Historical Contexts?', https://brainwisemind.com/what-does-wheat-symbolize/ Accessed: 11 August 2026, writes:

'Wheat frequently appears in various forms of art and media. Artists use it to convey themes of abundance and nature. Paintings feature golden fields as symbols of harvest and hope. For example, Vincent van Gogh's “Wheat Field with Crows” presents wheat as a powerful element of the landscape, symbolizing vitality and the passage of seasons.'

I am taking the passage of seasons to represent a change from a position of spiritual stagnancy and stalled productivity to one of growth and acceptance of things new.

Happy Days!

Tags: wheat, fecundity, progress, harvest, spiritual, spirit, fertility, community, gratitude, pleased, support, token, folklore, superstition

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Ogre

Monday 10 August 2026 at 07:11

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Monday 10 August 2026 at 09:26

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Ogre

[4 minute read ]

Opinion Fiction

There is a great deal of peace when my neighbour has been absent from his home for a while. The air, instead of being bleak and thin and strangely suggesting it has astringent qualities when he is home, is silky smooth and full, like a soft cover that welcomes and refreshes after a long struggle. The birds don't call 'alarm!' so much and they relax with an expectation of comfort and safety. Plants grow straight and even different insects arrive; ones I have never seen before when he is at home.

He is due back today, with his carer, whom I think he regards as his girlfriend. Perhaps she does too by now. She is his first and only lover. It is not romantic, he did not wait for the right one; he waited for the only one that is immune to his ogre nature. He is no Shrek though, he is a monster with a headache that pervades our space with his brutal and confused nature. His spirit haplessly wanders through our homes and looms over us as we sleep.

'Who are you?' he questions our silent and still bodies. Our deep sleep is broken; he knows no boundaries and has no respect for our peace. We are troubled by his presence and our day will be marred by our poor rest.

During the days, when he and we are awake his aspect gives out strange energy that saps our own. He is a leech; a parasite and a seeker of power. Wherever there is energy or creativity; wherever there is discovery or explanation, interest or peace; he will somehow invisibly barge into that space and shatter the idea, the dream and the concept. His lumbering presence is like a boulder falling down a cliff into a still pond. It knows nothing of the delicacy and the unity; the depth and the breadth of unblemished nature.

The atmosphere will be as sandpaper against our skin, and our nerves will feel as though they have been caught in a machine; stretched painfully into some kind of fabricated shape that he tries to manipulate to suit his wooden dreams of what being alive might have been for him. He will never know it. He fails to understand simple things and years of mental isolation have been the only canvas on which, with broad brush-strokes he paints how he sees our world. The colours are weak and his black and red figure is painted larger than the image of the discoloured planet.

He is due back today. There will be a buzz in the air, silent but disruptive; completely inconducive to orderly thinking; to creativity and relaxing. Like infra-sound it will resonate in our homes and cause us to shift position to try to shake it off and escape it. Our hearts will skip beats and our chests will feel bloated. Our appetites will lesson and we will spend less time looking into each others eyes. With downcast heads we will, sapped of our energy by his draining presence, fumble and make clumsy mistakes as he draws us closer to being like him; clumsy and foolish.

He is not evil. He is a controlling psychopath. Failing to understand how social interaction works he seeks to overpower it; to own it and bring it into his domain; his bailiwick and scope. No amount of education, of patient teaching and instruction will change him. He simply won't take it in and hold it long enough to make sense of it. No amount of time in the village stocks will convince him of his separation from healthy society. He scorns and pillories anyone he doesn't know and tries to bully those he does. It is his unchanging warped nature.

He is due back today and the birds will fly further away. The cats will run faster past his garden and the dogs will bark longer and louder. The sun will penetrate the thinned air and burn the plants and people alike, and the nights will have an undetectable stench of putrefaction that no-one wants to breathe. He is due back today and we will shut our windows and secure the doors against his clumsy encumbrance. We will look behind us when there is nothing there, nervous of something that we cannot see; not convinced that he is there and not realising we secretly know that his influence fills our space. We would be uncomfortable in conversation with him, if he paused to speak, because we will detect his falsehood. His speech and actions are not natural; they come out of a manual he wrote for himself. If he stopped to speak he would be like a troll dashing out from under a bridge to demand payment or to steal our precious loves. Instead, he rushes past us to hide in his car; the shell of it a barrier to the world he does not understand. He drives aggressively away with no understanding of the damage he wreaks on his vehicle.

He is due back today and the world near us will lose some of its light. Plants will grow crooked and moths and butterflies will hatch with parts of their wings missing. Insects will invade homes and people will be bitten by their dogs. Children will fall off their bikes outside his home and their normally kind and patient mothers will scream and shout at passers-by from their doorsteps. There will be more delays, and more typos in emails and texts. Phone calls will be missed. Washing up will be unwashed and clothes will be musty. Carpets will get spills and car doors will be slammed. Long-loving couples will sleep with their backs to each other, buses will be late or not turn up at all, milk will curdle and go sour, and tap water will taste like it has been used too many times.

He is back. I am tense and stressed, my toast has burnt and the plate has fallen to the floor. I didn't hear the donkeys announce his arrival, but hear them now. Wiser than him, their braying loud now, and stridently clear, the donkeys call to the intractable and ignorant nature of their spirit-world familiar.

Tags: neighbour, clumsy, parasite, psychopath, influence, bully, ogre, troll, half penny, story

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Savage Emotions

Sunday 9 August 2026 at 06:40

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday 9 August 2026 at 10:37

savage emotions

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Savage Emotions

[3 minute read ]

Opinion

For a time, I was secretly in love with an exotic woman. I looked for clues that she secretly loved me back. Eventually, I concluded that it was unreciprocated love and I was getting close to psychotic in my fervour to recognise a favourable response from her. It isn't unusual to feel that way, I suspect we all have at some point in our lives. We have to know that we are savaging ourselves if we do it; to continue to seek love from where it has not germinated is a fools errand. We have to admit that we are not the sun to which all plants grow.

'I am in love with my friend but she doesn't feel the same way. What should I do?' I was asked by one of my customers in a pub after we had finished the job. I don't have the answers for those sorts of questions and I knew that whatever I said would be wholly inadequate and downright wrong. At best it would swerve his approach onto an entirely different tack that would likely have her ridicule him through her puzzlement and embarrassment.

'Don't be silly. We have been friends for years!' she might think, even if she never said it.

I told the, plainly inexperienced, man to vocalise it. The worst advice I have ever given. I used to wear a denim jacket with patches sewn on it when I was a boy. They had witty statements on them. I don't know if they were aphorisms or epigrams as such, but one of them said, 'Don't ask me I am lost too.' I should have kept that patch. I knew as soon as I said 'Vocalise it' that even though the pub didn't go silent in shock and disbelief, I didn't need to look behind to see the girls looking at the boys looking at the girls at the table they shared behind me; perhaps with secret questions in their minds.

Telling a long-term friend, whom you know is sexually active with other people but not yourself, that you are attracted to them is, I suggest, a risky move. It may be pertinent to separate lust from love here and that can be messy if the words are not exactly right. I am not the sort to spend much time adding in clauses that act as explanatory snippets. Quite frankly, I just expect everyone to feel the same as I do and have the original thoughts that I have sorted and condensed to make actual written sentences. If I was ever to be a writer I would definitely need to spend some time forking through my lexis and writing long passages to drive home a point. Tucking in and trimming, sawing and planing, stripping and polishing is not my thing. So, despite briefly and initially choosing that path I have turned from it.

'I like you.'

'No, I really like you!'

'Oh, I like you as a friend.' She or he might be flattered and one night, confident that there won't be a rebuttal, and full of alcohol, there might be a regrettable encounter. It will end in angst or if they fit together, no regrets and consequent exclusivity. He or she, however, might need to be experienced to hope for exclusivity. Disappointing idea? Yeah.

In 1982 RCA Records released the Eurythmics second album, 'Sweet Dreams'. The opening track is 'Love is a Stranger'. During my crazy near-obsession with the exotic woman who didn't notice me, I choreographed some dance moves to that song. I never intended to dance in public or privately while she watched; I just listened to it so many times that I started to hear things, beats and instruments in it that became intensely familiar, so I danced. One of the verses in 'Love is a Stranger' goes like this:

'It's savage and it's cruel and it shines like destruction
Comes in like the flood and it seems like religion
It's noble and it's brutal, it distorts and deranges
And it drenches you up and you're left like a zombie.'

https://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/e/eurythmics/love_is_a_stranger_lyrics.html

Don't click on the play button on the site if you don't like Amazon. I just did, so I now have to clear the clipboard, delete the history and the cookies, and restart my laptop.

This link will give a snippet of the song so you can remind yourself of it or consider playing the whole song:

https://genius.com/Eurythmics-love-is-a-stranger-lyrics

The link for the whole song goes to an Apple site.

I use YouTube, even though it is owned by Google. Since I know I cannot completely deny them access to my computers I stick to just one data-pirate; Google

Something that I find alarming is that I accepted the chorus as being indicative of my state of arousal and thought it normal and acceptable under the circumstances. Once I considered it from a different and more realistic angle, however, I dropped the whole idea of ever impressing the exotic woman. Clearly, my intensity would foul any relationship simply because I had a head-start with it. Quite possibly the chap in the pub would meet the same problem.

'[Chorus]
And I want you
And I want you
And I want you so
It's an obsession
And I want you
And I want you
And I want you so
It's an obsession'

The song is really good at hiding how dangerous obsession can be.

Annie Lennox in the Eurythmics was, I am fairly sure, singing about requited love, being 'in love'. I rather think that even though it fits best with being in love, obsession could be applied to a number of other thoughts and feelings. I have to open the gates of my mind to let my thoughts tumble out while garrisoning them in a strong castle so they don't escape. We are not yet a species that is kind by default. I think William Golding (1911-1993) Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, and author of 'Lord of the Flies' would agree with that. I also think that Stanley Milgram (psychologist) who conducted experiments in the 1960s on how far people will go in committing cruel acts that go against their conscience, might agree. To be honest and realistic, they both might say we are kind by default but have the capacity to inflict intense cruelty on others. I am of a mind to say that we like order and our thoughts are running around willy-nilly until we wake, and then they are corralled into ranks and files with a lot of weeding out of the ones we don't like; completely automatically and sub-consciously. No matter, the point is made.

I should like to think that the chap in the pub asking for my stupid advice did get the girl, if 'get' is not too strong. Might he 'win' her? No, she is no prize at a carnival. It is just language used clumsily. Perhaps he allayed her fears of rebuttal and she felt confident to let her love for him flow and she showed it to him.

I should like to believe that the two girls and two boys sitting at the table behind me looked at each other with the right kind of eyes and woke happy in their chosen one's arms the next morning. Flowers and sunlight cast over my shoulder. A veritable fountain of love. I am a hopeless (hapless) romantic, I suppose.

My dancing to 'Love is a Stranger' at the time led me to believe that I might actually be able to impress someone with my dancing and I bought two Stevie Wonder CDs. 'Hotter than July' for the track 'Master Blaster (Jammin')', and 'Talking Book' for the track 'Superstition'. I kind of like funk. Now I am back to normal, I have given up on that idea as being one that would only reveal my moves to be wobbly; just like everything else about me.

Tags: romance, love, savage, thoughts, rebuttal, happy, cruel, advice, emotions

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Honesty is a religion

Sunday 9 August 2026 at 05:57

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday 9 August 2026 at 18:39

honest religion

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Honesty is a religion

[2 minute read ]

Opinion

'Release the hounds!' I called.

They are not real dogs. They are raw thoughts kenneled in my mind. They are savage and cruel but they are tempered and restrained and only the ones with no teeth get through the gate; the tamed ones; the domesticated and the 'chipped'. The rest are culled.

The one fundamental truth seemingly shared among all mainstream religions is that we are all imperfect. The overwhelming strategy in line with these religions is to try not to be imperfect. Right there is where I would interject and prise open an obvious crack. Into that gaping hole I would stuff a single maxim; recognise your faults, be honest with yourself. You are far worse than you think you are. You are ruthless in your drive to survive.

I had a conversation with a vicar or minister a few years ago. I mentioned that if aliens came to earth and razed cities we humans would eventually capitulate and if they said 'Worship Us!' there would be billions of people who would. They would be Supreme Beings if they managed to get to Earth and defeat the whole world. The only thing we wouldn't recognise in them is an ability to actually create the world and its flora and fauna, but that may be because they have had no need to demonstrate it. If they had the ability to bring dead animals and plants back to life we would be satisfied that they have god-like powers, or at least spooky powers.

Conquering aliens would need to protect themselves from any potential uprising that could interfere with a status quo that exists hundreds of years from when they might have fabricated a lifestyle for us. They would need to know our truths, and they, no doubt would encourage us to know our own truths too. It is expensive to keep killing people who are untamed. Just like the husbandry of my thoughts, wherein I allow two thoughts to engender another safe one, aliens would only keep honest people on their people-farms for their eugenic husbandry.

Accepting this as being close to a possible future we have no choice but to also accept that we have to be honest with ourselves before we can be honest with others. 'Why do I feel a need to use people as a stepping-ladder?', for example. I don't, it is merely an example question. I don't compete because I get no joy from making people come second or third or last. I don't want to win because someone else always wants it more. I don't want to be in charge of people; I can't even look after animals well.

This kind of thinking is not to everyone's taste and it is difficult to swallow for nigh on everyone who has the capacity to justify their actions and behaviour. Of course, much of what I have outlined is unworkable.

I watch Sally's cat next door wait for her to come back from work and she runs up to her car once she is parked. But, at 6pm is it feeding time?

Tags: truth, religion, cat, dog, alien, deceit, honest, supreme being, raze

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Can't get on with it

Saturday 8 August 2026 at 10:55

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Sunday 9 August 2026 at 10:31

Inexerienced

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Can't get on with it

[5 minute read ]

Opinion

I have just finished reading Oscar Wilde's, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. To me it is overly mellifluous in its flowery word content. The best bit is the end when Dorian Gray just gets on with action and Oscar Wilde has stopped waffling on about how the character's thought processes unfold. I have a book list and bought four of them at the same time despite the four not being relevant at the same time in my studies. Oxford University Press charge £5.50 delivery charge for a single book or a number of books, so since four of the books on the book-list are published by Oxford University Press I bought them together.

I am not one for reading introductions, but I know I shall have to at some point. However, I opened Mary Elizabeth Braddon's book 'Lady Audley's Secret' and read a bit in the foreword or introduction section which alluded to why there is a sort of glossary or list of explanation at the end of modern Oxford World Classics books. Incidentally, having read a paragraph or three, I know I shall immensely enjoy reading 'Lady Audley's Secret'. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was clearly a clever woman, just as Oscar Wilde was a clever man, but she, I feel, didn't pontificate about 'Classics' as Oscar Wilde did in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. I can't help but feel that gentlemen of his time were judged by how well they might orate, and on what subjects. Thankfully, it seems that women of the same time were not expected to do so, and this may be why Mary Elizabeth Braddon was considered, no doubt by prominent men critiquing her work, as being somewhat unruly and even 'second-rate' in her writing, but good at being so. My kind of writer, to be sure.

The explanations in the Oxford Classics are there to, let me quote, '[...] Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers.' (From the second page of the first leaf in 'Lady Audley's Secret')

Initially, having read that, I thought 'I can understand pretty much all of the words or sections selected for explanation in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. I have a good bit of healthy experience of reading and an avid curiosity that compels me to learn, and a number of years that have been available to me to indulge myself in learning. I immediately understood that many younger people have not had the same opportunity as I to tap into the same resources I have been able to do; the most obvious and crucial is, of course, time. So, fine, without having links to people to whom many of the archaic expressions were familiar to them, young people may be clueless as to the shape or depth of an expression and not have ready references to fill in any blanks; which is how we all learn; we have to make leaps of insight, and try out our expectations of what we think something means. We can't do that if we are isolated by our learning and knowledge (no-one nearby can understand what we are saying or trying to say). For example, I know what a 'mullion' is but only when I read it in the appropriate context. 'The windows were uneven; some small, some large, some with heavy stone mullions and rich stained glass; others with frail lattices that rattled in every breeze; others so modern that they might have been added only yesterday.' (Mary Elizabeth Braddon, 'Lady Audley's Secret' p7). I wrote that section at length, such as it is, because I love semi-colons and many people are confused by them. Here we can see how they are used as separators between sentences that are fundamentally linked as one following sentence adds to the content of the previous one, AND they are used as may be substituting bullet-points in a list.

After a little more consideration, I came to think that these Oxford Classics would not be read for the joy of reading them so much as being used as study aids for studying English Literature. One of the important messages I have received of late is that good story-telling must flow, sentence after sentence, and not cause the confused reader to leave the text to discover its meaning. In other words, it should not be disjointed or confusing or jump about too much from scene to scene or time to time. The Oxford Classics by dint of necessarily including the explanation for the perceptive explanations, must recognise that they fall into the category of poor writing for the modern world. This however, is not the fault of the writer, who wrote for their period comtemporaries.

I, myself, adore the Victorian-style written speech in Thomas Hardy books; its complexity, respect and manners. I should like to emulate such speech patterns in my everyday life. In truth, I changed something in my speech some years ago. A Columbian girlfriend, who had like so many non-native English speakers learnt English differently to me, an England national, introduced me to a different option. Indeed, the beginning of the previous sentence shows it. Instead of saying or writing 'I would like...', I say and write, 'I should like....' Breaking it down, effectively I might be saying I am compelled to think in a particular way but I reserve the right to negate what I am saying with an explanatory following clause: 'I should like to thank my esteemed colleagues (but I owe the nothing).' Nonetheless, I am wholly comfortable with 'should' instead of 'would'. I don't use it with any reserve. I even think it shows a smidgeon of education.

Just like it takes me a little time to get used to the Victorian speech patterns in Thomas Hardy books simply because I am so time-distanced from people who may have spoken so, I am also, in the same way, saddened that the same erosion is continuing and younger people than I need to be coached in understanding words, expressions and meanings that I find quite easy to fathom. Perhaps reading books by Victorian writers is as difficult for them as reading books by 17th and 18th century writers would be for me without translation into modern English language. I haven't seen a Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) 'Gulliver's Travels' book, but I am certain the ones I have seen, using modern English, can be easily read by both young and old in the modern world. It may seem that there has been considerable ironing out of the archaic text to make it acceptable. Shockingly, the story has the protagonist weeing on a burning castle. Try putting that in an animated film for infant children! But I am talking about language, not actions.

'Robinson Crusoe' written by Daniel Defore, was published in 1719. It can be easily understood in modern English and it for me distinctive because it is just a story, like Swift's 'Gulliver's Travel's'. The author is not trying to show off their word-smithery or classical education. But as I said earlier these aspects may have been essential in the kind of world that Oscar Wilde either did live in or aspired to live in, even if he imagined he did or didn't. I suspect there was a good deal of fantasy and falsehood abounding in the higher levels of Victorian society that the poor found utterly shameful.

Normally, I find books written by many modern women follow a distinct rule for writing; 'Show and don't tell.' This is a writing technique, that I find abhorrent and is currently taught as being essential in Creative Writing courses and degree modules; I can easily do it, and I think quite well, but I definitely won't do it through my own volition. I find it wordy and boring. Having detached emotions most of the time, my enjoyment in reading books is not heightened by reading, at great length, about other people's emotions. I certainly don't want to waste time scrutinising my emotions to get someone else to feel the same way. If my emotions are bubbling to the surface then fine, here they are, otherwise make them up yourself.

The approaching storm on the horizon means people are going to get wet and the trees and shrubs will continue to live. It never means, to me, that one of the characters is in for some personal trouble. I suppose, just like inexperienced readers of Oxford Classics, I don't have the internal tools to help me 'get it'; to make appropriate association and connections when I read books that freely utilise the 'Show and don't tell' technique. I do, however, seem to enjoy books written by Victorian women. If I am honest, I just now questioned myself on why this might be, and briefly considered that it might be that they were bound and circumscribed by their circumstances; circumstances that, I understand were largely created and ordained over by men. I am not a sociologist and had to dispel any notion that I had hit upon something that may be slightly significant. Yet, I cannot dispel an idea that Mary Ann Evans, who used George Elliot as her pen name when she wrote 'Middlemarch' had to be believable as being a man. I think I am supposed to understand a little more about English Literature to even hold this notion in my mind. It is, I should add, not my considered opinion or even a suggestion that there is any validity to my thoughts; they are just questions. As questions they are interesting. As premises for an argument much less so.

It remains that I abhor flowery and wordy messes in books that seem to be there for only three reasons, to show off; or because the writer is inadequate to succintly explain; or because they had fun immersing themselves in an imagined scene. The last is the one that scares me the most since I cannot help but feel they likely live their lives the same way, just as it seems to me the Victorian gentleman lived in a fantastic theatrical sphere that required him making clear his education to all and sundry. If I was better educated I would fit right in, I feel.

Tags: flowery, wordy, Victorian, theatrical, fantasy, show don't tell, writer, modern, reader, inexperience

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Folded and Discarded Imagination

Saturday 8 August 2026 at 07:02

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Saturday 8 August 2026 at 20:13

Folded and discarded imagination

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Folded and Discarded Imagination

[7 minute read ]

a man either side of text that says, half penny stories Fiction

In the corner of my living room are the remnants of my former self. Like a snake shedding its skin I left it draped over a chair; a husk that resembles me from a year ago. Almost translucent, it is difficult to make out in the silver dawn light that tip-toes through the window. But when Hakim, my avatar spirit protector held it up and Harrari, the abandoned alien whom I met in a small wood ten years ago, shone a light through it I could see that it is my size and has a vaguely human shape. What is interesting about it is that it represents a better version of myself while still being obsolescent.

'Try it on.' Hakim mocked me as though I would be able to slip into the delicate shape of former me and wear the same mantle of creativity I once had; as though there is a zip at the back that can be drawn up to make it securely fit.

Harrari, the amazing alien, pushed an image of a vodka bottle into my head. She knows that it won't make me crave it. She does it to remind me why and how I have changed. But, unusually, she is being unfair. She knows my train of thought has recently been tempered by focusing on rigid aspects of life that demand convergent thinking. She knows that, unlike her, I have had to make sacrifices, and opportunities to wander aimlessly in a fantasy world have been curtailed over the last two years. But she is, of course, correct in her decision to remind me that I have drank too much over the same period.

The shape of myself is grey as Hakim lets it drop to the floor and I wince at his carelessness. But he is not careless. It is only an artifact from my past; a useless one beyond reminding me of who I once was.

Harrari picked up on my wistful thinking, 'It is not you; it never was. I detect her voice as a soft sussuration, like a swift breeze through a weeping willow overhanging a stream. 'You are greater than this. That is not your generosity or your honour or integrity. It is a small part of your imagination; fascinating, but no longer relevant. It is the shape of your creativity bound and circumscribed by your experience. You have grown since then and it no longer fits.'

I wasn't entirely convinced and a part of me sobbed at what I had done to myself; the image of the vodka bottle still fading in my head. I was irked at Harrari's honesty at the same time as grateful. I do forget about my mind, because I sometimes want to forget about me. She and Hakim know that. In fact, I haven't seen them for a while. More accurately, I haven't seen Harrari very much at all; she is, in the main, completely invisible to humans. It is to do with phase-shifting or something. Hakim, my spirit avatar, I have ignored and, miffed he has miserably hidden in the corners smoking his imaginary pipe; the one he likes to smoke when Harrari is near because he thinks that the imaginary smoke will choke Harrari's ability to communicate with me. He likes to pretend to pollute the air. I am not sure if it is his wonderful and unique sense of humour or he really believes it. Suffice it to say I am of a mind to say he is jealous of Harrari's abilities.

'You did, after all manifest me to protect you in the spirit world while you slept.' He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes.

'Sly and wheedling doesn't suit you, Hakim. Where is this coming from? I manifested you when I was sixteen, we know that. I did it to protect myself from my brother and you sat on my bed while I slept. Thank you. But he is dead and has been for years now. As a person he can't reach me anymore.'

'From you! It is coming from you. I am nothing without you and you are letting things slip. That shapeless mess on the ground that was your imagination is still flexible, useless now but flexible. You have grown an armour that won't lie quiescent in nature when you take it off; if you can take it off, that is.'

'You are rude and insolent,' I replied. I noticed Harriri fade in and saw her nodding. My Crikeyness! She can be beautiful, but she would be, wouldn't she? She can be whatever she likes so long as she is still an alien. I had an inkling about what Hakim meant and realised that Harrari was agreeing with Hakim and not me. She winked and became ancient for a moment, like a woman who has lived a hundred lifetimes in eighty years. She probably has, I thought. Looks don't mean anything to her and she mocked my human fallibility. She stayed semi-transparent and strangely sat down on the floor. She would never do that under normal circumstances because she is ever-ready to act and that means moving swiftly to another location. This is a full-frontal attack by a united force whom I call my friends, I thought. I didn't feel threatened but I did feel unsure of myself; it was unprecedented for them to gang up on me. This has to be important, I thought, at least to them. If it is important to them they must feel it should be important to me.

'Armour? You mean I am using subterfuge to protect myself from something, don't you?'

Hakim was still rude but I could see he didn't really want to be so. His, 'Bingo! Give the man a prize!' came out as 'By Jove! I think he has got it!' I mentally thanked him for putting in the effort but still felt humiliated. It was, I suppose, his temporary and fabricated wont to make me feel that way.

Harrari, devastatingly ruthless and violent if she chose to be, could not be dishonourable or mean. 'You have lost your way. You have given yourself over to become fertile ground for the seeds of dishonesty and hate. You once held a idea that hate comes from believing lies and now you are listening to unfounded ideas built largely from heuristics. That is not you as you were when I first met you in the wood. If you was like you are now, I would never have let you see me, or offered you a place to join me.'

'I know.' I didn't know, but I cast the template she had woven over my current life and compared it to how it fitted over my life in the woods. She was right, I had and have changed; each time a little further from how I once was, never returning to a better me.

'You was about to do it, but you stole from a homeless man and that marred your beauty', she said.

'I didn't want to die, Harrari, and he wasn't a homeless man. He was an undercover policeman spying on the Greek kebab shop. In any case, I only took what I had given him, the cakes he had thrown into a corner or another operative had moved for him. I know how close it was; you even deleted all the contacts in my phone.'

'It's no good feeling sorry for yourself' Hakim chipped in. He kicked my old imagination disdainfully to add weight to his point. I winced again.

'Hakim, stop it! You are kicking my good imagination.'

'No, he isn't.' Harrari breathed, 'He is kicking something that you yourself spoiled and cast off as being unimportant to you. You humans like to honour the bodies of people who have died but you did not give the same courtesy to yourself. It might only be a shaving of yourself on the floor but your imagination is your greatest asset and you treated it as nothing.'

I knew she used the past tense but only just. I felt that she was hovering on using present tense and only decided not to because she realised I was listening. I should be kinder to my imagination. I felt her smile when I imagined digging a hole in my garden and having a ceremony for my past imagination. It wasn't a kind smile. I felt a chill. It was the wrong time to be facetious.

'At least it is working now.' I countered. She made that moue of passive and weightless agreement. 'Meh!' is not in her lexicon; Nor mine as it happens, so it seems that I borrowed it from Hakim's current truculence. That must go, I thought. And right there I fully realised the scale and scope of what they were saying. I had given Hakim full autonomy to do as he pleased once my tormentor brother had died. Yet, here I was foolishly believing I should shape him to my will. What would be the point of doing that? I would be listening to myself mocking myself and only Harrari would have an independent say. I say 'only' Harrari. I should make it clear that she has, in the past, telepathically entered my head to smooth my thoughts so I could sleep. And I know she guided unwanted visitors away from my camp in the woods; except for the man who wanted to honour the loss of a Stirling bomber crew in 1943 in the same wood; the man who broke my tent zip. It was time for me to move on then and Harrari knew it, and he was an honourable man.

'What would you have me do?' I asked them. Hakim picked up my cast off, and now torn, imagination and folded it. He placed it on the chair he had been sitting on and walked towards the door. 'I think you know what to do', he murmured.

'What's going on? Are you still miffed at me? I asked what you would have me do; you and Harrari.'

'Do you want me to be so crass as to say you should treat me more kindly and listen to me more often. I would be like you have been for the past year if I said that.' He raised his eyebrows to make an arched quiz on his forehead.

'But that is what you mean, isn't it?' I was annoyed because I like straight conversation. 'It's not about what I like, is it?'

Harrari saw where this was going and stopped me going any further. 'You are being confrontational, Martin.' She never uses my name and I could almost hear her patronise me with, 'We are only trying to help.' But she detected that I had picked up her intent, which was to show me how I have been; a pontificating pillock in my neighbourhood and in the supermarkets; patronising.

Hakim gently picked up the folded and dead imagination and handed it to me. He sat down again where it had been and just looked at me. I knew it was a kind look built from concern. He didn't need me to imagine him any more. That day had long past. He is as real as me. Harrari, of course, I have never had any control over; I should never try. One doesn't try to exert will on a entity that might be described as a Supreme Being by overly-religious people. She isn't a Supreme Being or God. She is an alien abandoned by her brothers when she didn't get back in time for their predestined departure. She had used the high tension overhead electric wires that cross the country to signal them but they never came back for her. Ruthless is not strong enough to describe her species. She reminds me of a Praying Mantis sometimes, but she was very young when she was left behind, and she grew up along with the flora and fauna on Earth, and the spirits that initially haunted her. She is truly an enigma.

We three sat looking at each other until Harrari faded and only Hakim and I sat in silence. I had gotten the message, and he is kind enough not to rub it in. He too faded, and then, sad for Harrari; she must be incredibly lonely, I told myself to wake up a bit and stop feeling sorry for myself. I hoped that I had reached the nub of my malaise and I might now focus more on preservation and not consumption. I hoped it would be exciting and the future would be spent more with Hakim and Harrari. If it was to be so, I knew it would be at least intriguing and that will be enough.

I knew that Hakim would chat up the spirits of dog-owners with his opening line directed at the dog, 'Hello, Bob! Have you got that five Francs I lent you in Paris in your previous lifetime?' I also know that Harrari would sometimes run behind cyclists to eavesdrop on their conversation. She clears the way of potential accidents for the ones she likes by making them stop to pick blackberries or flowers or tie their shoelaces or something, even puncturing their tyres, which is quite hard for her to do. She hasn't done it for me for a long time and I have run into trouble a dozen times in the city. I must make myself more attractive.

'Talking to yourself?' My beautiful wife, from we know not where; she was adopted, was leaning against the door-jamb in her pyjamas. Her jet-black hair normally in a high bob hung around her shoulders and she tossed her head to remove a strand from her eyes and then slowly shook her head at me, her eyes locked on mine, unsmiling. She turned her back and, with our two infants in tow, went into the kitchen. I could hear the smile in her voice, 'What shall we have for breakfast leetle ones?' I knew she was kneeling on the floor stroking their heads with her finely shaped fingers and kissing their foreheads.

I really must make myself more attractive, I thought again.

Tags: folded, discarded, story, half penny, Hakim, Harrari, selfish, honour, honor, imagination, doubt, past, faded, beauty

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Those Martian Politicians

Friday 7 August 2026 at 11:40

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Saturday 8 August 2026 at 12:20

Martian Politicians

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Those Martian Politicians

[4 minute read ]

opinion

Dogs will roll over onto their backs and expose their bellies as a gesture of submission, or in the case when the pack leader is a human with no teeth on their hands, when they are happy or want to be tickled. Different strokes for different folks. My brother had a dog that would smile at me because I often saved her from attacks from her vicious sister. A dog showing its teeth, in their dog-world, is usually a threat or warning, yet they show their long canines outside of a closed mouth to smile at humans. I suppose they have learnt that humans smile without opening their mouths but do show their teeth; and that is the difference. Dogs exposing their under-bellies are trusting that they will not be attacked while in an indefensible position.

'Don't run, we are your friends!' The Martians say in 'Mars Attacks!' holding a translator in one hand while shooting with the other. 'Don't run, we are your friends!' Have we heard that before? Did we instead translate something similar into 'Trust in me'? such as Kaa, the fictional snake from Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book' stories, says to Mowgli, the man-child.

I can think of so many instances when a confident person has tried to impose their opinion on others and caused them to act inappropriately, Husbands do it to wives and wives do it to husbands. Adulterers do it to other people's partners; and bored people try to impose new ideas on themselves, by justifying their behaviour with inadequate information.

Every time the American Government, run by Jack Nicholson as President in 'Mars Attacks!' charitably forgives the Martians for killing swathes of people because there may be a cultural misunderstanding , the aliens apologise and say 'Quite right! We come in peace, we come in peace' and then they kill a whole bunch more people with their ray-runs. They do this at least three times in the film before Jack Nicholson gives a heart-warming speech of togetherness. The listening alien ambassador sheds a tear and immediately kills him.

I am reminded of a fable of a scorpion and a frog, which Wikipedia tells me first appeared in writing in Russia in the early 20th century. Hmmm. I might not believe that as the origin. I think the scorpion wants to cross the river but it will drown because it cannot swim so it asks to be carried across on the frog's back, but the frog is frightened that the scorpion will sting it. The scorpion swears it will not do so, and the frog agrees to carry it across the river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog despite knowing the frog will die and itself will drown.

'Why did you sting me, you will drown?' asked the frog.

'It is in my nature. Sorry.'

The voice in the Wikipedia says: 'The fable teaches that vicious people cannot resist hurting others even when it is not in their own interests and therefore should never be trusted.'

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

I am not at all comfortable with that conclusion; not one bit. It is the use of the word 'vicious'. I can't help but think that the voice belongs to a wounded and biased person. Scorpions are not vicious. They sting to survive; defensively or to kill prey. I am pretty sure they have no intent to injure just because they are psychotic or psychopathic. Scared or hungry fits a scorpion sting I suggest. I realise that the fable is warped to present a message not dissimilar to 'A leopard cannot change its spots.' which has the same moral message to it, but a scorpion is not vicious.

'Thank you, Martin. let's go to Roget's Thesaurus to see what word could be better used.'

'What do you have?' asked another.

'Starting with the word 'vicious' the index has 'furious'; 'evil'; 'disobedient', 'malevolent', 'wrong'; and surprisingly also 'vicious' ,'

I had to butt in, 'None of those words are right. We are imbuing sentiment on a scorpion; anthropomorphising it in ways that are only applicable to humans when they find themselves in the direst of circumstances. You know, cannibalism when they are starving, and the like. We might as well say it is vindictive and hates all frogs for some prehistoric affrontery. I might say, there is a huge difference between stealing food because the thief or their family is hungry which is to survive, and stealing luxury goods to sell to gain riches, which is vicious.'

'What word would you substitute for 'vicious' in the Wikipedia entry, then?'

'Well, the entry in Wikipedia might be more accurate if it says that people who act instinctively and hurt people should not be trusted to act benevolently or be considered to be benign. This talk of vicious people being unable to resist hurting others, is nonsense.'

Psychiatric problems may lead to having no compunction to refrain from violence but that is a different kettle of fish to something like accidentally drowning the rescuer by climbing onto them. The drowning person is acting instinctively. So it is a question of rationale and reasoning in a time of extreme stress or utter terror that overrides all sensibility. I wouldn't trust the same drowning person to not accidentally drown the next rescuer, but I might trust them with my family at a picnic; even if there is a nearby pond I would not expect them to throw my family into it and sit on them. I would expect them to stay well away from the water and wild horses would not get them near. No, the person who wrote the Wikipedia entry has a vindictive axe to grind, or at best is extremely clumsy with their words. The third option is 'sensationalism'. This is vicious in that the writer cannot resist 'bigging' themselves up by writing in a manner that is exciting and divisive, and in so doing disrupts other people's understanding of something that is really quite simple to understand. The fable is about instinct not cruelty.

A little further analysis of the Wikipedia entry reveals an obvious flaw. In the first paragraph it says the fable originated in Russia in 1933, and then in the third paragraph it says the earliest known appearance, which means written, was in Russia. The fifth paragraph mentions a story called 'The Scorpion and the Turtle', which appeared in Persian texts in the fifteenth century, as a precursor to the (Russian) Scorpion and the Frog. (Note I used the word 'precursor' and note how many websites on the subject also do). The whole entry is suspect and rather than being factual is, it seems, initially written in an emotive way. This catalogue of significant deviance is not instinctual, it is either by design for which 'evil' might fit, but 'wrong' definitely does; or it is clumsy and offered as fact which is 'wrong' but not malevolent; or the writer is viciously attempting to pervert the course of a transference of knowledge.

It all started with a single misuse of a word, 'vicious'. It should be noted that there quite a few websites that are closely similar to the Wikipedia entry in their content; 'AmericanLiterature' being one of them.

'Don't run, we are your friends' and then shooting the people if you are a Martian, is no different to deliberately giving false information to anyone, as far as I am concerned; but only if you are a Martian.

Fact or fact-based

English courts long ago recognised that it is the value of the theft that is the tell of the character of a thief and stopped hanging beggars but not highway men or burglars and robbers; as is suggested in an interesting article 'The History of Judicial Hanging in Britain 1735-1964' under the subheading, 'Multiple executions at Newgate in 1820.' https://capitalpunishmentuk.org/the-history-of-judicial-hanging-in-britain-1735-1964/

Hungry thieves were sent to America, and then Australia after the American War of Independence.

From another Wikipedia site: '[...] before abolition of the death penalty for theft in 1832 [...] In 1808, the lawyer Samuel Romilly KC successfully had the law changed to remove the death penalty for pickpockets and lesser offenders, starting a process of reform that continued over the next 50 years. The death penalty was mandatory (although it was frequently commuted by the government) until the Judgement of Death Act 1823 gave judges the official power to commute the death penalty except for treason and murder.'

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

From Hansard, 'ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS', HC Deb 27 March 1832 vol 11 cc948-55: 'Mr. Ewart rose to move for leave to bring in a Bill abolishing Capital Punishment in the cases of horse-stealing, sheep-stealing, and cattle-stealing, also in cases of stealing in a dwelling-house, no person being put in fear therein.'

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1832/mar/27/abolition-of-capital-punishments

Tags: false, lying, instinct, scorpion, frog, fable, malevolent, vicious, knowledge, Martian, politician

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Lost in a Tunnel

Friday 7 August 2026 at 07:35

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Friday 7 August 2026 at 10:05

Tunnel Vision

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Lost in a Tunnel

[4 minute read ]

opinion mental health

I feel as though I shall be thwarted in some way today. Dreams have that effect on me. I got lost in a tunnel on the way to a place I know didn't have a tunnel between where I started in the dream and where the place is. The tunnel should have only been under a road bridge, but it went on and on and seemed to be curved. After a time I noticed it was blocked by an abandoned excavator (JCB digger) but I could see daylight beyond it. I thought the pursuing vehicle would not see it and would smash into it. I had no desire to warn the driver. Then, the end of the tunnel vanished and it continued on and curved almost back on itself before I came out into twilight, completely lost. I saw, in the distance, a large group of people moving towards me and that worried me. I walked away in the opposite direction, frequently looking over my shoulder, and found a smaller group of three men ahead, whom I approached to ask for directions.

'Hey, don't talk to them!' came a cry from behind me. Another group of five were running. 'They are not allowed to talk!'

'It's alright, he's only asking for directions.' called one of the group of three. I know he should not have spoken at all.

I never got the directions; I suppose puzzlement woke me up too much. That dream, or unresolved dream, has kind of sapped my confidence that I shall achieve all I want to today. It could be disappointment from not completing an important task (not getting to my destination in the dream) or the sense of foreboding that lies crouched in the undergrowth of my peripheral consciousness.

When I was seventeen and working in Bavaria (Bayern) in South Germany, I had a semi-violent argument with a black man. He was staying in the same Gästhaus as me (Pub with rooms). I was quite argy-bargy and physically confrontational, but we did not come to actual blows. He was a lot older than me and probably didn't want to beat a child up. That night, in the early hours, I woke with a heavy black weight pressing down on me and holding me still. There was no-one there and I immediately conjured up the idea that the black man was putting a Voodoo spell on me. Of course, we are paralysed in our sleep, or should be, in order that we don't live out our dreams and thrash wildly about when we fight monsters, and it was the middle of the night and my light were off, so it was dark. I have since then awoken paralysed and it is always from a nightmare with evil spirits attacking me. I doubt that the instances are connected by association at those times, but you never know. These days, however, it is so easy for me to dispel my rationale in place of fantastic stereotyping quite simply because I can apply memories of other instances of woken sleep paralysis being a consequence of waking from nightmares of evil intent, but only because I am awake and scraping my mind for similarities. Plainly, I have an active imagination and seek solutions outside of reason. Here's something: I heard that black magic only works if the afflicted person believes in it. My teenage stereotyping of black people likely allowed me to believe that all black people know and practice Voodoo because they all live in Haiti. After all, I was naïve and I had never seen any before. I probably didn't read enough Ladybird books, except for the one that had a mid to late 1950s illustration of a black Kenyan on a red tractor!

Tenuously, I might link the nasty neighbour who stole my food-waste caddie to my bad dream last night. He, I am fairly sure I know who it is, is the sort of person to experiment with the occult to help him navigate through what probably seems to him to be a very confusing experience of other people in the world. Yes, I know; I give with one hand and take with the other. I have to be true to myself though, I am emotionally upset from my dream last night; well, more disrupted or discombobulated I suppose, and I am giving deliberately free-rein to my imagination to iron out any wrinkles that mar clear thinking.

I very much believe in the spirit world (and aliens) and it would be dishonourable if I denied myself that declarative statement. While I can use convergent thinking such as would be used in writing a good essay or report, I much prefer to look at the flowers and the hedges on any journey, metaphorically speaking, and in real life. That said, I won't stop to look at Chartres Cathedral on the way to Madrid, even with ample time to spare.

I can't help it. Today, I feel, will be one of gossamer veils of fantasy that shroud reason. Subjects such as Mathematics and Chemistry will have to make way for fairy-tales and sitting round bonfires today. I am supposed to go into the city today, but there is too much reality there for it to be fun. I think I understand now why I don't really like the city and all the people there. I have to use convergent thinking and I am wholly focused on achieving my shopping goals, which Is why I think everyone is in my way. Not realising that the other people are using both convergent and divergent thinking, as they happily graze in the shops and boulevards, I get irritated. Ha! Lesson learned. I need to chill quite a bit.

Chartre Cathedral; focus on a destination; fun; diligence; get the job done nothing else matters; imagination; ruthless. All these thrown in a cauldron and cooked together taste like I am socially isolating myself with convergent thinking that completely displaces any divergent thinking (the fun stuff). Hmmm. Maybe being in a circuitous tunnel that exits at where people do not explain anything has given me an insight that I can use, after all.

I will make myself go into the city today, and I will chew my cud while I graze, like the bovines around me. Maybe, if I use magic I will be able to see them as human. Yeah, I know, I am cold, harsh and uncharitable today.

Tunnel vision.

Tags: honest, spirit, tunnel vision, mental health, tunnel, honour, fun, divergent, convergent, imagination, ruthless, dishonourable, integrity, dishonorable, honor

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Ribbons of Peculiarities

Thursday 6 August 2026 at 08:12

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Friday 7 August 2026 at 10:04

Ribbons of peculiarities

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Ribbons of Peculiarities

[5 minute read ]

Opinion Mental health

I think one of the most difficult things in life is not only keeping track of all aspects of our lives but managing them successfully. I like to think that we have streams of existence; not so much as running bodies of water, more as ribbons of peculiarities.

I think I am on fairly safe ground when I assume that most of us will happily stereotype successful people; some time ago it was bankers who were widely portrayed as being ravenous and uncaring beasts who set out to make personal financial gain at the expense of the known world and all its inhabitants. Yet, I feel we should understand that the only people who are devastatingly affected by 'bad actors' are those who have formed a fantasy world around themselves that has links to the same resources as the selfish and greedy monsters of the same world we draw our resources from, or even other worlds. Take for example having a mortgage on a home. What is the purpose of incurring a debt such as this? Somewhere and at some time in someone's thinking a fantasy was formed. Perhaps it was similar to this: 'If I buy a small house with a mortgage I can upsize as my family grows and eventually I will have no debt to pay, so when I retire I shall have more spending power and even downsize and have a lump sum to spend on holidays.' Pretty common I should think. But we might note that there are a lot of 'I's in there.

That is just one stream of existence, one ribbon of peculiar activity; although more accurately it is commonly called a lifestyle. To whit, the style of someone's life is devoted to securing sufficient money to pay debts, usually through work. To be honest, I am quite reluctant to use the word 'lifestyle' because to me it denotes a style of living that encompasses a whole life from beginning to end to the exclusion of everything else, and I am trying, here, to not only separate life into streams of existence, but also dissect it into manageable chunks.

Single-mindedly aiming to pay a mortgage has opportunity costs; family time is reduced or fractured; deep relaxation is denied; and crucially to my mind, creativity is compromised; it might still be there but the outlet of it may be held in check. These are some other streams of existence.

It doesn't have to be a mortgage, or a goal to feather a nest in another way, or even paying off a large debt. It might be attaining a degree or working towards self-sufficiency or aiming for owning a large business that is the goal. The overriding factor needs only be ambition.

Ambition is one of the positive attitudes to have in life. Personal positioning in some kind of hierarchy is quite another. It is no wonder that fans of pop stars and actors express surprise that their idol seems really down-to-earth and friendly. There is an assumption that the position of the star has only been made possible by ruthless barging and guttersnipe tactics, including negatively framing other people. It should, of course, be noted that pop stars and actors are ambitious and creative people. Meeting a multi-billionaire, on the other hand, might reveal some entirely different traits that were used to accumulate such huge sums of money. A loose conclusion to this paragraph might be that the accruing of wealth somehow attributes a positional stardom, at least among their peers. Taylor Swift - nice; Elon Musk - not so nice, perhaps. It is personal choice built with inadequate information, of course, that determines our feelings towards any other person.

I am a big fan of 'Black Swan' events. At risk of over egging the pudding because I am certain we all know what a Black Swan event is, I will just say it is an expected set of circumstances that directly affects our lives in an extreme form. Another way of seeing it is; any unforeseen event that disrupts our plans. And here is the nub of my thrust. Plans, and moving on from plans: 'systems'.

'What would you like to be when you grow up?'

'A refuse-collector!'

'And how will you go about becoming one?'

'I will go to school and learn about recycling and environmental issues.'

Its a plan but it needs a system for the plan to be implemented.

John Gall, a systems theorist, (1925-2014) came up with the theory that all complex systems are derived from simple systems that worked, and that a complex system will never work without it first evolving through real iterative tests. That is why prototypes are made. Unfortunately, we humans cannot prototype our lives. How often do we hear the wail of regret: 'If only I could go back and start again?' Probably not often enough I cry; not that I embrace the idea that people should regret their actions or decisions.

It is easy to devote oneself to a simple system. Get educated while living with our parents. Get a job. Get a mortgage. Keep working to pay the loan. Retire. What a wonderful life! A psychopath might find that rewarding, but it really does demonstrate an empty mind to me. Where is the love and the social interaction? These are ribbons of existence most of us have that disrupt our simple systems of achieving a soul-less ambition.

I think, somewhat belatedly, modern businesses in the UK have determined that their employees need a good work/life balance. That attitude would be an absolute bane to me in job interviews because I don't have a plan with a system that is disrupted by work. I am so flexible that running water is positively solid when compared to me. My current constraints are only human fallibilities; I need to eat and sleep, and I cannot disassemble my molecules and reassemble them at any other geographical location.

There is inevitably something else that disrupts our dedication to our system; social hierarchy. We need to feel powerful. Most of us need autonomy. One of the first things we give up is indeed autonomy when we get married or have a romantic partner. We have to consider the feelings of the 'significant other'. How many of us ever considered how disruptive those emotions will be to our simple system? With emotional intelligence there comes a cost.

Complicated and Complex are not the same.

On their website, the Simon Fraser University, a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, offers 'Simple or Complicated' to be 'predictable; controllable and designable'. It gives 'Complex' as being 'Unpredictable, Self-organising and emergent'.

https://www.sfu.ca/complex-systems-frameworks/applications/complex-and-complicated-are-not-the-same.html

I would suggest that being in a romantic relationship instantly makes one's life complex, and 'complicated' and simple, has left the building. Only a divorce or dumping the partner brings autonomy back, quite simply because planning for a separation has a large degree of predictability and is indeed designable. For example, 'You have the kids at the weekend and pay x amount of money for their upkeep.' That is not what we want though, until we actually do. But that is the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA); the tacit agreement was that child-rearing would be shared in a single home. Unfortunately, the goal of paying the mortgage to attain an imagined freedom, and positional wrestling for power in the workplace, or even in a social hierarchy, get in the way of another imagined happiness. Why imagined happiness? If one of the partners envisioned a mortgage-free home, there is usually a fantasy that the other partner will share in the fruits of long years of hard work. In other words the simple system, although it is not consciously considered to be changed has a different outcome. And there it is, really. A change in an imagined outcome is the driver for a change in a simple system.

Life is unpredictable. Our needs change as we get older; other people change as we get older; the environment changes as we get older; our values change all the time - we decide what is worth more or less of our time.

Maintaining equilibrium in a changing world is difficult. One of the prerequisites for good mental health is the ability to deal with, and adapt to, change. I find it incredibly difficult to understand many aspects of the modern world, not least is that I have never desired or sought to be rich or popular. I have never really had a simple plan with an absolute outcome. Some might call that feckless. I have to consider that I don't make plans because I know things will change and I will find it difficult to adjust. I am, in that respect, quite unforgiving.

Tags: mental health, plan, ribbons, complex, complicated, ambition, peculiar, EQ, intelligence, emotion, emotional, partner, mortgage, peculiarities

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Windows on the World

Wednesday 5 August 2026 at 20:43

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Thursday 6 August 2026 at 18:46

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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Windows on the World

[3 minute read ]

Opinion

Oh my good Crikeyness. I have spent most of the day poking Windows 10 with a long stick. It is the slowest and most cumbersome operating system i have ever had the displeasure to deal with. It constantly wants to update and sucks up loads of internet bandwidth. YouTube videos freeze or buffer or something. Well, there is a periodic 'brrrrrr' noise every four of five seconds or so. What is that about? 'Starman' by David Bowie slipped into my head in the kitchen a couple of days ago and I thought I would have a little listen. 'Will You' by Toyah Wilcox was also on the cards for the sax-solo. My Windows 10 has a Spotify link buried in it and I thought why not. What a palaver!

Of course, I don't usually use MicroSoft products or services in the course of my daily life. I mean, who would, when they have three identical laptops that run Linux operating systems that are phenomenally fast? The important thing is they don't try to update all the time. Why would they? It is a complete waste of time. It is not hackers that we need to be wary of; it is large corporations like Google, Amazon, and MicroSoft that are the data pirates. Knowledge is power and they sell advertising by offering the appropriate targets to other businesses.

Sadly, Joe and Joanne Public are not interested in securing their private and personal information so websites like Spotify pretend to do it for us by have the two-stage security check. Namely, they send an email with a six digit code for people to enter online so they can log in. Cookies are already on the device that can read the email password as it is typed in. Why do you think I have multiple laptops? The one that is online is never the one that I get my emails on. Duh! Also, I use a SIM with unlimited data to access the internet from my laptops, so it seems like I am using a phone until websites interrogate my browser and devices.

Anyway, it took longer to get into Spotify than it took to fire up a second laptop and access 'Starman' via YouTube. How nuts is that? Windows needed to spend half an hour checking for updates and installing them which completely stopped me using the operating system for anything else.

Even my local Council needs my telephone number and email address in an online form to report that I don't have a food-waste caddy while all my neighbours do. Ultimately, it wouldn't allow me to report a missing caddy because It said it had never been delivered. I had to phone the Council, who only needed my address to tell me that the log says the caddies were delivered to my home. Oh goodness! What do you say to the A.I. voice that answers the phone to trick it into letting you speak to a real person and not be directed to a website with another link sent to my SmartPhone; a device that is most assuredly, and strictly, denied access to the internet? I tell you, even I ummed and ahhed today.

Of course, I know who has my caddies; my neighbour, the one whose spirit used to loom over me while I tried to sleep. There is some evidence that points to him being the weirdo thief. Today, he put one caddy out, for the refuse collectors to collect, that had no food waste in it. Instead he had put plastic and cardboard in it! They flung it to the floor and he will never figure out why they didn't empty it. We all received an advisory pamphlet a couple of weeks ago. Someone like that would be likely to assume that anything that is outside my home belongs to him simply because there is never any package outside my home. My neighbour, Sally, has to hide the eggs when she leaves them by my doorstep for me, in case he takes a fancy to them. There is no point in asking him if he stole my caddies, he would just lie anyway. He lies like he is ten years old in a school playground, you know lies mixed with fantasised insults like, 'You pooed your pants' except he says 'You are drunk', when no-one is. He refuses to believe I am an undergraduate. He doesn't have a degree and so I am definitely not going to get one because I am way more stupid than he is; everyone is, don't you know? He is the one who tried to cut wet eighteen inch tall grass with a push-mower. I would not believe it if I hadn't witnessed it myself. Anyway, I wrote a sign warning the other neighbours that there is a porch-pirate in our road and that their pets are not safe. Well, sort of.

Is nothing safe any more? My online safety protocols are constantly eroded by more and more security checks that require me to reveal more and more about me to the very people who will absolutely exploit the information. It is all entirely normal though. Let's assume that I am not stupid enough to tell a third party logistics business my telephone number and email address when I did not order something to be delivered. How come then the business that delivers the OU course books knows my contact details. GDPR has not just been eroded but tossed of the White cliffs of Dover. Is there any wonder that I never look at my phone for messages or even carry it from room to room at home. Since I bought it two years ago it has never even left my home. Why would it? I have three laptops an external monitor, and Unlimited Data on a SIM that all the laptops can use through one laptop acting as a hub with a dongle. Duh!

Tags: lap top, unlimited, data, operating system, caddy

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