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It is not you, It is me

[ 9 minute read ]

This is fiction in that I interviewed myself at home without a radio station and in private.

    mental health - PTSD

Yesterday, I rented a radio station studio and interviewed myself, live, on air. I decided that I would allow listeners to phone in with their questions, and I would answer them honestly.

       'Today, I have Martin Cadwell in the studio. Good Morning.'

       'Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here.'

       'First, Martin, let me start with a question that has always puzzled me. You are free with your words, both in public and as soliloquy. Why do you feel that you should impress your attitude on your surroundings?'

       'Well, you certainly pull no punches! Thank you. Why? Hmm! My attitude. I think our attitudes are born from our experiences. We very soon learn to take short cuts in our thinking at a very young age and if these short-cuts work in some situations, we store them as heuristics. Some people might just put it down to experience. I have experienced a lot of different people in different cultures of all ages in different countries. That doesn't make me a special person in any field of study, but it has given me an idea of how borrowing from one culture, age-group, or ideology and transplanting it into a set of circumstances I find myself in, could be a better solution to how things are actually, without intervention, playing out. I suppose I am seeking a righteous solution by speaking aloud.' 

       'You say that you are seeking a righteous solution by speaking aloud and intervention. Would you consider that you are trying to find a match to your thinking?'

       'Well, for a long time I thought that everyone was the same. Everyone has the same level of intelligence and everyone is at the same level of mental development. I was even convinced that everyone suffered in the same way from exactly the same maladies. For example, from having no experience of what a divorce feels like, I did not recognise that divorces are painful. So, in my mind, nobody suffered by divorcing their spouses. My approach had always been one in which everyone around me interpreted the world, and their immediate environment, just the same as I did. So by offering my opinion as advice, I suppose, yes, I was trying to find a match, and that match would then be the rallying point for a good solution to unfold. I felt that I was merely saying out loud what everyone else also thought but seemed to have temporarily overlooked.'

       'You speak now as though wherever you go there is conflict. Do you think you bring that conflict?'

       'Let me just finish my last answer. I was seeking a collective of similar thoughts that rally around a single banner to smother conflict.' In answer to your question, do I bring conflict: Yes, I am a very conflicted person. Something I did not realise, was that I was learning from everyone around me, soaking up my environment and trying to make sense of it. You probably know that I had some problems at a young age that made it difficult for me to experience emotions in the same way that other people do. Unfortunately, I was negatively impacted upon by the very same person's who were the people I was learning from. That is the same for all of us. Ideally, I suppose it would be good for children to spend some time away from their family and friends, in sterilised groups of people, to enable them to gain some perspective, but that simply wasn't available to me.'

       'I think they are called retreats, aren't they?'

       'Yes, retreats. So, as a child, like any child I was conflicted, but still modest enough to recognise that I am learning.'

       'And that was a fully formed thought then?'

       'Yes. And, I think it was this that set me apart from other kids. Where emotion should have been, I was filling the space with my childish logic. I knew that I had to learn from others. I didn't know who I should be learning from. So, lots of rubbish got mixed in, much like today's A.I.'

       'You are smiling. Do you empathise with machine learning?'

       'If you mean do I regard A.I. as a conflicted child with no emotion, yes, I think that is precisely what it is, and what I still am, in many ways. But, I don't think I am the only one that is like that. A.I. is supposed to emulate humans, and I think it is doing it very well. It makes, what we regard as mistakes, but if the same mistake was attributed to a human we would just say, to err is human, and look fondly at the comical blunderer, or in a court, try to discover how a fault occurred and seek redress.'

       'Do you think you should be punished for all the mistakes you have made, which in your book, you regard as vicarious mistakes? What do you mean by vicarious mistakes?'

       'If a child grows up in an environment where everyone throws their rubbish into a river that pollutes the next village downstream, it is, in my estimation, that the child will also throw rubbish into the river. This is not a mistake because, to the child, it is normal to do this. In discovering that the next village is polluted by rubbish in the river, and the child continues to throw rubbish into the river, it is a mistake to continue to throw rubbish into the river and claim that it is safe to do so. Realisation, however, is bifurcated here. It is safe to have polluting rubbish washed away from a village, and it is not safe to have polluting rubbish washed into a village. A vicarious mistake is a belief that stems from someone else's inability to reason properly. If the child believes that the polluting rubbish is washed clean by the time it gets to the next village he or she is making a vicarious mistake in not realising that the pollution is in the water, making it unsafe to drink for the people of the village downstream. So, it is a trickling down of mistakes that are absorbed by a learning entity in the formation of a supposedly reasonable decision-maker, in later years. As to being punished, I think we can only punish ourselves. It would do no good for me to punish you, and you to punish someone else. With, supposedly only six degrees of separation between all of us, the anguish I cause you by punishing you, and so on, would come back to me from hundreds, if not, thousands of people daily.'

       'We have Simon on the line in Kent. You have a question for Martin.'

       'Hello, thank you for having me on. Martin, I think you are up your own fundament. Why do you think you are so special? You have already told us you are damaged goods. Why should anyone listen to the rubbish that comes out of your mouth, when you know it pollutes us?' 

       'You shouldn't have to, should you? I understand why you are cross, why you consider me weaker than you, and why you feel sidelined.'

       'I didn't say that. I am trying to establish why you think your holier than thou attitude is useful to the everyday population of Britain.'

       'It isn't, Simon. I am not comfortable in my life, or with my life. I have, in talking to myself, told myself I wanted a divorce from myself. A complete separation. I spent many years sifting through my life trying to find episodes in which I was the instigator of conflict and lies. I have tried to forgive all the people who hurt me, failed to protect me, lied to me, and cheated me. I have not been able to do that in its entirety. I have not been able to do that because I find it difficult to forgive myself once I have forgiven everyone else. I am a product of my environment and I failed to recognise that until it was too late. Of course, Simon, I am not at fault for blindly acting as I did before I knew it was wrong. I made vicarious mistakes because I did not know differently. I cannot forgive myself for continuing to act badly, for allowing the vicarious mistakes to become my own mistakes. I did not spend any time trying to separate other people's mistakes from my own. So, Simon, I don't think I am better or worse than you, because I still use heuristics that are hard-wired into my make-up. A long time ago, someone said to me that he wished he did not know so much. He was troubled. It was obvious. Today, Simon, I am troubled. Yesterday I was troubled, and tomorrow I will be troubled. When I wrote my book, I had an idea that I would put a preface in it that read, 'If you want to know about me, observe yourself.'

       'Searing! Thank you for your call, Simon. I hope you feel that Martin has answered your question. Martin, you mentioned that you have tried to forgive everyone else but find it hard to forgive yourself. Could you go into a little more detail?'

       'Forgiveness is not something that is done on the spur of the moment. If someone stole my car, I could not simply and immediately forgive the thief. None of us can. I might just as well attribute no value to my car or any of my belongings. There would be no point in taking the keys out or locking the doors. I have PTSD. I have to make a conscious decision to forgive. I don't have the emotional connection to other people in the same way that most other people do; not all people, because everyone, I feel, think, is different and have a greater or lesser ability to empathise with other people. Most of me is made up of childish logic with amendments made by the adult-me who has experienced more than childish-me. The emotional detachment I experienced as a child left a vacuum for ruthlessness to thrive. It is that ruthlessness alongside emotional detachment, which by the way, I can to some extent, still switch on or off, that allows me to be objective about my past actions. I know I can be objective. In many ways, I live my life as an ascetic and place little value in assets. I recognise that optional and discretionary goods are luxuries, and many other people do not. I never seem to remember this though. It is this lack of enthusiasm in me to engage on a personal level with other people's perceived need for things; things that I regard as superfluous to a settled existence that I cannot forgive in myself. I know I can and should, but I don't want to because it is the last shred of who I am, or more precisely was and still am. It is a spoiled part of me which I cannot eradicate.'

       'Martin Cadwell, thank you. It has been a pleasure.'

       'Thank you. The pleasure was mine.'

This is a rant and not worth reading unless you are really bored. There are references to marketing and web design that somehow float in my head, lonely and in need of fresh air.

[ 5 minute read ] 

The march of digital obfuscation

This post refers to an article 'We'll make it home together', on France 24

France 24 - https://www.france24.com/en/

'We'll make it home together' - 

https://webdoc.france24.com/nous-rentrerons-ensemble-suzanne-simone-camp-ravensbruck/friendship-at-ravensbruck.html

Web Documentaries on France 24 - https://webdoc.france24.com

The march of digital obfuscation goes on. There is an 'article' on France 24 https://www.france24.com/en/ that just plain abuses my sensibilities. Aarrgh! The story starts safely enough with a picture / thumbnail of what might be considered to be the front cover of a book about women deported from France to Ravensbrück, Germany. Yet, when I clicked on it, and expected to be able read it, I was disappointed. This is cognitive dissonance at the very first moment when the PACKAGING is revealed. Nobody in marketing wants that! Slightly confused, I worked on the mouse wheel, as one does as a automatic response to nothing happening on screen. You know, the website has loaded but the cookies banner has not yet, or the website designer has included time delays in the code for smooth transitions (waste of time).

There is an introduction, and then, by continuing to scroll, a series of chapter links; yes links! that scroll up. More delay and more action needed. This is interaction for the sake of it. What is the point of writing about kidnapped women during the second World War if it is not to help people to understand their plight, or make money? Either let us read it or reward us somehow. I am so out of touch with reality that I cannot fathom why people might feel rewarded if they have to continually click, click (as Ssniperwolf says at the end of her YouTude videos). Click, click, click, to be able to read something. Why not pause for a round of Bingo, while we are at it?>

Right! The screen has links to chapters. These could have been static icons on the first page as an aside or, I think, in website making terms, an article within the web page. As I scroll, each chapter link replaces the next, completely obscuring the previously shown button. It stops at chapter five. Now, surely, I can begin to read the story. No. More cognitive dissonance and wasted time. I have to scroll back up to get to Chapter One, and click the link to start reading Chapter One (Part One). Once that is loaded, there is a link to chapter two, and chapter two has a link to chapter three, and so on. The website creator calls these chapters 'parts'.

Each one of these 'parts' is a separate web page. Now, even though I have a web site but don't really bother with Search Engine Optimisation for Google indexing, I am aware that 'stickability' was once a metric that Google used. The longer a person spends on a web page determines how interesting it is deemed to be. So include a diversion such as a video that plays really, really really, slowly. Obviously Google is aware of that tactic. So, stickability is not so useful as a metric. So, it seems there is no reason to have web pages that take a long time to read or absorb or something (a guess). Yet, my new web site analytics measures bounce rate AND stickability, and entry points, and stuff such as the operating system used by the viewers and other stuff. I don't really care.

But let's not get bogged down in that. France 24 is the host website and the piece about Ravensbrück is a subdomain of France 24, titled 'webdoc', as in https://webdoc.france24.com (Web documentaries on France 24)

Something is going wrong when the fuss of a web site means that, for me, it can only be a taster, I won't continue with it, and I will seek information on the subject elsewhere. Except I am wrong. The whole purpose of existence in the modern world is not to communicate, or be good at it; it is to show that you can be considered worthy in that we have impressed some computer code that ranks our work as relevant. Surely, it is only relevant to narcissism.

In reality, I will get an idea that I know something about French women locked up in concentration camps, but because I am used to getting thrill after thrill I will never seek to actually learn anything by looking for relevant information. I blame MTV for that. They are the ones who put ticker-tape style messages across the bottom of our TV screens, when we were watching music videos in the 1980's.

What would I do differently? If having multiple pages is important to be highly ranked, I would have all the links to the parts on the same page, and all the links to all the parts on every page as an article to the side of the page. As someone who wants to go back in text to check for relevancy or as new ideas come into my head, I might want to go back to a part/chapter with a link and not as backward steps. The bounce and entry metrics would show this more accurately to the webmaster and adjustments could be made by them to suit - as in why did the viewers go back? Did I leave something out?

My last thought? A classic case of worshipping digital technology as being greater than analogue humans or God(s).

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I am not on YouTube or social media platforms

[ 7 minute read ]

Who changed my future?

In a world of lies, is it appropriate to manipulate a future by planting signposts in the here and now? For someone who doesn't lie, it is a question I ask myself about once a year; not very often because I am aware of how manipulation is a form of deceit. There is a moment we all experience after a confrontation, disagreement, or heated discussion, when we have walked away and THEN think 'Oh, I wish I had said......' whatever it is. There is a word for this, which escapes me right now. I have looked in my box of ideas and my lost property box and still can't find it.

One can't help thinking that our lives could be improved if we just have all the keys to unlock the bars to success, before we need to take that path. If the doors are all open we have a wider choice, right? Of course, there are two questions that need to be addressed: how many different futures, or avenues of choice, can we open up for ourselves, and what are the shape of the keys. We also have to bear in mind that we can't all have the same scope of activity in bettering our lives. What if I thought it would be a good idea NOT to go to a place where I would otherwise meet my future partner. Worse still, what if my future partner had a future partner that 'engineered' that they attend the place where I meet both of them and I then never pursue a relationship, with someone who WOULD have been my future partner.

Yesterday, my letter arrived at Saffron Walden Community Hospital. It said to cancel an appointment that was too far away for me to attend. Once I had sent it, I phoned my doctor's surgery to make an appointment to see my doctor for the same problem that initiated the need for an exploratory x-ray.

       'All her appointment slots are taken up,' she explained, after I had identified myself. 'Does it have to be her?'

       'Well, maybe I have an outdated outlook on doctor appointments, but I feel that if someone sees their own doctor there is a lot of saved time where the doctor does not need to look on the patients record for any clues on what the patient is rattling on about. I think it saves time if the doctor is able to recall the original complaint or know where the malady lies. But, that is just me I suppose, so yes, I would like to see my doctor, please.'

       'All her appointment slots are taken up. I can put you on the waiting list?'

       'Fine, let's do that then.'

That conversation happened on Tuesday. What should have happened was that my appointment with a doctor outside of my surgery, the week before, which resulted in the appointment for an x-ray in Saffron Walden, would be completely stymied and reduced to a dead-end. After all, a letter stating that one wants to entirely cancel an appointment does not open up an avenue for conversation. However, that is not how it works in the NHS. Someone needs to make a record of the cancellation. And THERE! Right there! The last entry on my medical record is an insistence that I will see only my own doctor; someone who he / me is familiar with. This insistence is dated the same day the letter is sent. The receptionist I spoke to in person at my local doctor's surgery the same day, had also made a note that I would only accept hospital appointments close to home.

A couple of things here: I was seen by someone outside of my doctor's surgery (not one of the surgeries doctor's) and then a complete reduction of that consultation, by the patient, to have no significant outcome. What went wrong? Here then, there should be an investigation as to why I cancelled the hospital appointment and made a new doctor's appointment. The reality of it, is that I needed to completely start again - that future of going to Saffron Walden Hospital may have turned out fine or not. I might, with some effort, have gotten myself to the hospital appointment and discovered an Anglo-Saxon hoard somewhere in the hospital grounds, and received a significant reward; or I might have been kidnapped because I was mistaken for being valuable. (Let's not rule out the Stockholm Syndrome making me fall in love with one of the kidnappers before they recognise their mistake and let me go). In any case, there were openings for different futures. Even though I did not even consider imagining any amount of futures, my main aim was to just STOP one of them.

Yesterday lunch-time, I managed to answer the phone before it went to answer phone mode. A mature woman's voice. It was Saffron Walden Hospital. Gears crunched in my head after my initial cheery greeting until I had the right attitude - fun and not at all tense or peeved. Got it!

        'It is amazing how your letter got here so quickly.' she gushed. Do mature women gush?

'Yes,' I thought, 'first class letters get delivered the next day. Oh, of course, everyone wants next day delivery; it is so new and fresh to have that kind of service; and you have forgotten that it is not a new phenomenon'.

        'Ha, Yes!' £1.70,' I said.

        'We can make an appointment for you on the same day, closer to home, if you would like.'

She then gave me four different times for available appointments at a hospital seven miles away. All the times were for the same day I would have attended the hospital appointment, if I had not cancelled it, in Saffron Walden, one hundred and seventy miles away.

I accepted one for late afternoon and then, curious, I played with her. 'If I set off at seven in the morning on my bicycle, I should get there in time.'

       'We can make it later, if you like.'

This person is bending over backwards so much to help me, she must be a contortionist. How come, though, there are suddenly at least five available appointments on the same day, two days away, at a hospital close to my home? There are three solutions. The doctor who saw me made a mistake and referred me for an x-ray to her local area hospital; there are multiple universes and I have been transported into one of them; and when I stitched my day together after it had been shredded a couple of days ago, I accidentally included my hope as a reality.

My ego crept in and said, 'It is because they know you are clever and will probably make a coherent complaint. You consistently make them look silly.'

Hakim, my spirit avatar whom I had manifested to keep me safe from my violent brother, while I am sleeping, chipped in with, 'They are confused by someone who knows analogue techniques. It is now considered to be an arcane and mystical art. Someone who can use both the digital AND the analogue world is a strange being today, a strange being, indeed.' He would say that though; there is nothing digital about a spirit avatar.

And then, Harrari, the abandoned alien I found in a wood I was once living in, whispered to me, 'Because they think you are nuts and just want you to cancel the appointment with your own doctor; she is busy, FOOL!' 

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Personal Blogs | learn1

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[ 8 minute read ]

You make me want to be a better person

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

The man in his fifties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- end -

Are these the persons who precede us? 

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

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

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

[ 6 minute read ]

The man who gets his news from the past

Outside of Aldi, I met a man unlocking his bicycle from the bike stands. I am one of those bumbling fools that thinks everyone is free to talk. I almost always talk to people I meet. This one was in his late twenties and smartly dressed. His voice settled it for me; a university student. Well, it was probably because somehow I got him to tell me he doesn't watch the television. Too old to be an undergraduate.

       'Postgraduate student?'

       'Yes'

       'What's your subject?' I asked. You can imagine I said this around a half-chewed piece of raw carrot in my mouth. I wasn't eating, but the casualness was there.

       'Archaeology.' 

       'I have seen Alice Roberts on YouTube doing stuff on archaeology,' I said.

He looked at me blankly.

       'Alice Beer? before she got married? No?' No.

       'I don't watch YouTube videos.'

It was then that I realised that I should tell him that the UK is no longer in the EU. I didn't though. There is a good reason I didn't.

I am an idiot 

For a long while I have been thinking that my neighbour is weird. He does things quite differently to how I have experienced other people doing things. He once tried to cut the grass in his back garden with a push lawnmower. 'S'okay.' It had just rained. 'Hmmm, maybe!' The grass was eighteen inches high. 'This will be hilarious, I thought.'

Let me spell this out for you: wet grass is quite difficult to cut with a push mover if the rotary blades are not perfectly aligned with the fixed cutting edge. His mower was new so it would probably be fine. However, push movers have a roller immediately before the rotary blades. They flatten the grass and the grass that flicks back up gets cut by the blades. If the grass is taller than the distance between the roller and the blades, it will not get cut because the spinning blades will pass over it before it can spring back up. Simple for any nine year old child to understand. At thirty one years old my neighbour should know this. He didn't.

Incidences with power tools and his handling ineptitude also caused me some concern. I was convinced that he had a learning difficulty which he was not admitting to the world. That is, until I saw his parents. They were in my neighbour's garden, picking green plums from a branch that was semi-severed from the tree, but still bearing good, plump fruit. They cut each little twig from the limb and then plucked off the plums off the twigs, and put the plums in a plastic carrier bag. They did not take the plums from the rest of the tree. My neighbour, Sally, thought it was hilarious that I took my tomato plants indoors with green plum-shaped fruit on them, to hide them from my neighbour's parents and their weird grazing.

You might think that they just wanted green plums, except they had always waited for them to ripen in earlier years. 

My neighbour used to park as close as he could to the concrete path parallel to his gravel drive, so his girlfriend would not get her shoes dirty from the gravel when it had been raining until I told him that one of the qualities of gravel which makes it so desirable, is that when it rains, it gets washed completely clean. He had been making her walk further on a dirty and wet concrete path in the rain, than when it was dry! She doesn't wear high-heels. 

He also put straw around his strawberry plants which were not planted on a midden, or otherwise fertilised by human or animal excrement. He could have wee'ed on the straw to release nitrogen, but I don't think he had thought of that. Somehow the words 'Straw' and 'Berry' had got separated in his head, and then rejoined, to mean you can't get strawberries unless there is straw somewhere. Straw was a waste product in years gone past, and placed around the plants so the fruit would not lay on excrement.

Yesterday, it finally hit me, he is vicariously ignorant. His parents have never showed him anything in the world. All this time, I was thinking that he had just come out of a twenty-year coma, and now I realised that it is his parents that don't understand things the same way as other people I have met, and they have not passed on knowledge that most of us take for granted. The most strangest thing!

With this in mind, confronted by a PhD Archaeology student outside Aldi, who in all likelihood does not know that Russia and Ukraine are fighting, and Trump is President of America, I could not help imagining that his parents might not know we were ever in the EU and had never told him we were. That is why I didn't give him any current affairs, or topical, news. 

I couldn't help thinking of the PhD graduate I took to the Sorbonne in Paris, a decade before. He kept wanting me to stop the van so he could urinate. The day was not hot, but he was constantly drinking water; I mean constantly. 

       'I can't just stop on a motorway.' I protested. 'Why do you keep drinking water? 

       'We have to stay hydrated!' he wailed.

       'No,' I said 'I have to stay hydrated, you do not. I am driving. You are not.'

I hadn't had a drink since 4am and it was now 11am. You won't die in Southern England or Northern France from dehydration today, if you were hydrated yesterday, in April. Most days, despite sweating heavily, I would drink only about a half a iitre of water, maybe a tin of Coca Cola and a sandwich in nine hours or so, during Summer. If this PhD graduate had parents that never showed him how the world works and he had to go on YouTube and hear that drinking a tablespoon of hot water before going to bed would help him lose weight, or listen to some ranting health freak, it is no wonder he kept needing to wee everywhere.

Looking back, I should have realised that my neighbour's father does not understand the world the same way I do, when he pointed to his son's pear tree and suspiciously asked me if I had made the branches grow over the fence into my back garden. My garden is south of his son's and the branches had grown towards the sun. 

Yet, maybe it is my neighbour's parent's parents who never showed THEIR children how the world works. 

Having experienced my neighbour's parents I now have an understanding of how immensely dim I am. I simply did not understand that some people have never been shown stuff because their parents had never been shown stuff.

But someone getting all their news from dead people and shards of pottery, is just too much for me to work out how the archaeologist, outside Aldi, had ever learned to ride a bicycle.

[ 5 minute read ]

Ironing my words

I am going to write another story. I think it is hard work and I especially hate editing. Editing is like ironing clothes. I prefer just having fresh washed clothes; most of the time they smell good - you know, mellifluous washing detergent, or that weird outdoor smell. I regard the smell as the gloss we put on a finished piece of writing or presentation. For me, it means the work is finished.

       'Done! What do you think? I hope they like it.'

But wait! I started by saying that I like clothes that are already made and I recycle them by repeatedly washing them, and I was using ironing clothes as a metaphor for editing written pieces. If I mistakenly iron a crease into a shirt, I have a lot of work to do to iron it out. I don't like that. That is not progress. To me, that is careless action resulting in a lot of resources being used to return to retrograde conditions.

It won't come as a surprise if I tell you I don't iron my clothes. Similarly, I find editing tedious. I find it so tedious that I have tutor comments that say 'Use Harvard referencing'. That is because I have written something in an essay and highlighted it to myself with my own referencing because I don't want to break my chain of thought by stopping to finding the exact quote or source. 'I will fix it in the editing.' I tell myself. But, just like ironing clothes, I iron in creases in the paragraphs. I can use commas and semi-colons to 'pin' the piece down. But often the 'finished' piece is a patchwork of crumpled areas adjacent to smooth areas. It is like looking at someone's garden and seeing rough, freshly dug, areas next to pristine, manicured lawns. I like the potential of the dug area and despise the controlled environment. I simply cannot resist planting daisies, buttercups, and clover in stripy lawns. It is the prospect of trampling on the 'Keep off the Grass' sign and inviting people to play that makes writing interesting, for me.

I have tutor comments like, 'Don't separate this paragraph from the one before. Make it one paragraph'; 'Link this paragraph to the previous one'; and 'Move the paragraph above to a place after this paragraph'. 

        'You are far too late with this advice. I got bored with editing this essay eight thousand hours ago.' I think to myself.

I have considered making story templates and 'hanging' them in a story cupboard in my 'Story Fashion House'. 

       'Okay! Here we have a lovely piece that can be fitted to you. A seasonal aspect to it with a dark mood. You will notice the threads of mystery woven throughout, that resolves into this effervescence of joy. Do you fancy trying it on? No?'

       'Ah! Yes! Here! I have just the thing for you! A strong and robust piece with bright contrasts that belie the subtle tones beneath. You can see the adventurous nature that steals from the muted background creating a feeling of desuetude that jars one's senses. No? Perhaps not for you, then. In any case, it WOULD need a lot of ironing to keep it in shape. (Desuetude - discontinuance, dis-usage, disuse)

       'Oh, here we are! This is it! This one! Oh Yes! Just look at that! Monochromatic, the tones are the key to unraveling the intent behind the creation. You will note that one's attention is led in one direction as the shades naturally incline to an expectation of continuance only to be left puzzled when it does not resolve to its conclusion. Here, if we look carefully, we can make out that there are repetitions of the pattern that, taken together, create a sense of uneasiness. It is only when we stand back. Step back a bit. That's it. There, do you see? Right there, before our eyes, though hidden if we are too close, the meaning and intent of the design is evident with a quite beautiful aura. What do you think? Want to try it? This is just pure creation; very little ironing needed at all. It just wouldn't stand it; far too fragile. Of course, it would need a hanger. You know, it could easily lose its shape. Oh goodness! I talk too much! Forgive me, please. Marnie, could you take over here please? Goodness!'

It could be like that. I have a collection of stories that wriggle around and never take shape. They are coloured threads needing a warp for their weft. I am so happy when I am waving an invisible net in the air and catching original ideas to set down. The best of all though, is when original ideas catch me. 

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

[ 9 minute read ]

Well, that was weird.

I had a doctor's appointment at 9pm last night. 

'Come to the field behind the ruined church,' I had been told. 'And bring a live chicken!' 

Well, it might just as well have been said that way.

I couldn't get an appointment for four weeks with any doctor in my local surgery, not even a telephone appointment. My knee hurts. Google had told me I have a sports injury to my knee. That was when I absolutely knew that I needed to see a doctor. I imagined a conversation with my doctor, 'Doctor, I have no memory of playing sports. I think I must be sleepwalking.' Sometimes, I think I do, sleepwalk, that is. People I don't know seem to know me. Perhaps I have met them before but can't remember, or maybe our spirits met while we were asleep, and they became friends.

I thought, it is probably not a good idea to obliquely tell the doctor that I might be crazy. My self-written certificate of sanity might not be enough to convince the police that I am fine really. Who wants to be convicted of fraud while being held under the Mental Health Act? Not me!

I had tried everything I could think of to convince the doctor's surgery receptionist that it was a good idea to cancel someone else's appointment, employ a new permanent doctor, make the doctors work longer hours, or just send me for an x-ray because I think that is what any right-minded doctor will do anyway. 

'The waiting list is four weeks for a face-to face appointment.' 

It is anti-useful to pontificate on how you know anything about the process of triage and the results of examination for a joint injury. All that happens is that you get sidelined for being 'difficult'. 

        'Ooh, It hurts!' I moaned. 'Is the waiting list still four weeks?' I asked, hopefully. Keep it light, Martin. Frustration is your worst enemy.

       'The waiting list for a telephone appointment is also four weeks.'

I knew that something was amiss. Somewhere, in some dark corner, there was an obstruction, a blockage of some kind. I thought maybe there is an overall resentment in the whole doctors surgery. Maybe, feeling overwhelmed, the doctors had reverted to a wooden approach to dealing with their patients. When you can't think of a good solution to a problem, use a regimented approach. Tick-Tock, by the formulaic clock. Why not? In most cases a spreadsheet provides all the answers I need, so I have to allow in my mind that doctors secrete themselves behind logic to save themselves from being too nice. In any case, how do they show support for junior doctors if they just keep on working? 

I was pedaling fast in my mind and getting nowhere.

The waiting patients behind me were either having the time of their lives in silent, and still, fits of laughter, or suffused with contempt for me. I couldn't really tell. People are like that in doctors surgeries. You have to poke them with a stick to make sure they are still breathing.

By now about six or seven minutes had passed.

        'I kind of need to know if I should rest it or use it. Different injuries have different things that need to be done to help it heal.'

After a minute, the receptionist said, 'There is an appointment available at nine o'clock tonight. How about that? It won't be one of our own doctors though.' Most people would have leapt at that. 'Good Crikeyness. Yes! Oh Yes! Thank you sooo much.' Not me. I have PTSD which makes going to sleep really hard for me. I don't want to go to sleep. In my mind, it is dangerous to sleep. I have spent years building a bedtime routine that lets me go to sleep at 21:30 o'clock / half past nine / nine thirty in the evening/ 9:30 pm. (Choose one according to your age group). It takes three hours of preparation for me to be ready for bed. Coming home at half past nine in the evening means bed-time would be moved to midnight or beyond.

I ummed and aahed. The air in the doctor's surgery grew frigid as the waiting patients collectively thought, 'What an idiot. He is a most difficult person. What is wrong with you?' Good question. I hope they never find out, because it won't be through the use of words; it can only be known by personal experience.

        'Okay, I will come back at nine o'clock.' I have had one of these emergency appointments before. The doctor at the end of that appointment gave me a rictus smile, you know, frozen and fake, but her smile did not have the gaping mouth of a skeleton; her teeth were firmly clamped together. That was months ago and it still troubles me now. I was certain it would be the same doctor and I started to plan what I might say to prevent her from giving me her limited version of a Pan Am smile. Oh Goodness, what if she has been practising in front of a mirror, and that is the best she can do? I don't want to hurt her feelings.

I hate appointments. I can't concentrate on anything. I can't read or think. I cannot switch off and wait for my internal alarm clock, timer thing, to alert me to my responsibilities to other people. I know; many other people do exactly that, and are late. They will never be my friends. 

I went to the surgery at twenty five minutes to nine, freshly bathed and smelling fantastic. I needed everything I could get to help me speed the doctor into just glancing at me and saying, 'I will send you for an X-ray.' If the examination is really short, I might be able to pretend that I had never been there and go to bed soon after returning home. 

I thought that the surgery would be locked up and I would have to ring the bell on the door or something. As I came up the lane towards the car-park, in my mind, the glass-paned door, that was usually there, had turned into a heavy oak door with a large knocker shaped like a gargoyle, and I expected someone to answer my pounding knock by peering round the cracked-open door while a scream faded in the background. Bringing in a doctor from outside the practice could only mean someone who was struck off the medical register, surely. 

The door was acting normal though, and it was unlocked, just like it always was between the opening hours of 0800 and 1800 hrs (8am - 6pm). There was a Polish receptionist with earbuds in her ears behind the counter. 

I sat down and had a one-sided conversation with a man wearing a hearing aid. He could hear me, but I could not make out his words. I don't even know if he was speaking English. Have I arrived at the right place? I thought. It looks like my doctors surgery, but the patients are not quite right. Either I am supremely interesting or this man wants to eat me. 

Having accidentally ignored the receptionist, she called me over. That is how I know she is Polish. She told me that there was a half hour delay because the doctor had seen 'a complicated woman' who had taken an hour of the doctor's time. Oooh! Lots for me to work on with THAT statement. Untangling a person's thoughts might take a long time, I surmised. Getting that woman to lie still so the ghouls out the back can harvest her energy might take a long time. Finally, I settled on, 'Oh! Poor woman. I hope she is okay!' Well, obviously she isn't, but you know. I made a mental note to make sure I am coherently succinct in future. 

When the man wearing the hearing aid was called, I foisted myself onto the receptionist's attention and we ended up talking about striking doctor's, no! doctors striking, and nurses' pay. When her eyes started to glaze over very slightly I stopped talking.

       'Do you work in sales?' she asked.

I used to be self-employed and so, yes, I did. 

       'You are very......convincing.' she finished. Oh dear, I thought. Too much. eh?

I have had so many conversations on wages and unfair pay that it really isn't difficult for me to organise an argument for only paying high wages to kind people regardless of their qualifications, and stuff everyone else. Well, I always leave the last bit hanging for the brow-beaten person to independently come up with that. The thought is already formed in their minds, it just needs to be brought out into the open. Hopefully, THEIR open, not 'the' open. Selfishness has no place at the boardroom table in my head.

When I was called by the doctor, I was delighted to discover that she had been shaped by whoever was controlling this wonderful world of mystery, into the type of mature woman who would, if she is in her garden, have a woven willow basket full of flowers and a straw hat with roses tucked into the band around it. Well done! I thought. This is a woman right out of the 1950s, who belongs in an Enid Blyton book, and was probably schooled at Mallory Towers, a private girl's school. This, I thought, is the wife of the man who is a retired vicar who wears slippers and smokes a pipe while petting their Red Setter dog by an open fire. 

Suitably reassured that I was in safe hands, I let her manipulate my leg into different shapes for about ten or fifteen minutes.

        'You need an X-ray.' she said. I knew that. I told her I would like an X-ray on my elbow as well, because there seems to be a bone chip that isn't in a good place. She acquiesced, because she knew she had already shown herself to be competent, and a cursory examination of my elbow would suffice to demonstrate to me, that she was paying attention. I told her that I was familiar with the triage process and the passing on to the local hospital for this kind of elbow injury. She was content with that, I think.

When I got back to the waiting room, limping, there were two patients there. 

        'Sports injury.' I said. I had noticed that one of the men was wearing shorts that had embroidery down the side that indicated he was a member of a rugby club. At first, he saw a pathetic limping man, but now he saw a powerful and energetic brute!

Of course it's deceit, but Google had told me that I had damaged my medial collateral ligament, and that means it's a sports injury. Maybe I just can't remember playing sports in the middle of the night a month ago. I prefer to think I was merely offering options. Let's leave it at that.

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

[ 7 minute read ]

References to gambling

In a dog eat dog world be a cat

Once upon a time I needed some money. I was living with my brother at the time; he was my legal guardian on account of our ages and our parents had fled; first our mum from our dad, and then our dad from my brother. My dad is the sort of man who would rather put himself in hardship than put hardship on others, so he would never have thrown my brother out on the streets.

It was five in the morning, I was sixteen and I needed money because I was going to run away from home; from my brother. Romanced by the story of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, I stole some potatoes from the sack in the larder. My brother wouldn’t buy anything else with the ‘rent’ I had to pay him; which was practically all the money I had each week. There was never anything else in the home. My friends told me that every time I farted, they could smell chips. I think when my brother farted, his friends smelt burgers, pizzas and beer, lots of beer.

With the potatoes and a duvet in my backpack I hitch-hiked north in the direction of Nottinghamshire, England, where I knew Sherwood Forest to be. ‘I will live inside an old tree that has been hollowed out by time and rot, and is now clean, I thought to myself’. I had only about two English pounds of money; enough to buy four bags of chips when I got to a town near the forest.

After a few lifts up the A1 and frequent long looks at the map I had I decided that Ollerton was a town inside Sherwood Forest. When I saw the sign for Ollerton on the A1 (major north-south road in England)

I used to read maps for bedtime reading; and dictionaries. They were the only books I could persuade my brother not to burn to keep the house warm in Winter. During that cold season, he was convinced that I was possessed and evil because his bedroom was above the living room, which was the only room that he would allow to be heated. My bedroom was above the kitchen, which was scarcely used, other than for making chips and cups of tea, so it was really cold. All the doors in the house had to be kept shut for some reason.

I set off walking towards where I thought Sherwood Forest was at the time. When Robin Hood was around, I would not have to have walked far from the A1. After a while, I came across a small town, and weary from my travels decided that I wanted to go home. It is strange that when we are young and tired we just want to go home, even though it would be an ordeal to get there. All I really had to do was rest. I was used to sleeping rough; I had done it countless times in the village in which I lived, to get away from my brother. But, sleeping rough in your home village is not the same as sleeping rough in a strange place.

I bought a picture postcard, which had ‘Greetings from Sherwood Forest’ on it, and a stamp, wrote a message on the back, signed it, addressed the postcard to myself, and posted it. Being young, it was not difficult to hitch-hike back home. I walked back in the front door at eleven in the morning. My brother asked where I had been. He wasn’t able to find me for some task he had planned for me.

‘Sherwood Forest,’ I told him.

‘No, you haven’t!’ he cried, in disbelief.

‘I bet you five pounds that I have.’ I offered.

He took the bet, certain that I could not prove it. Two days later, my postcard arrived and I showed him the picture of Ollerton with ‘Greetings from Sherwood Forest’ across it. He turned it over and read, ‘Told You.’ Surprisingly, he paid up, but it was my money he paid me with anyway, so no great loss to him really.

I slept in his abandoned seven and a half litre Ford Torino car in the rented garage up the the road that night. His pride would overcome any sensibilities he had over the course of his drinking that night and I was sure I would be woken with a series of punches in the face until I was unconscious again. He liked to surprise me like that. 

I managed to escape a couple of years later and lived in a Bed and Breakfast place in the nearby market town. About a year after that, I got my own place and turned to gambling for money. No, no no! Not like the gambler who loses his weekly wage or chases his losses. I had a formula that actually worked.

It came about when there was nothing on the telly and I decided to watch horse-racing. I thought I would make a small bet at the local bookmaker, to make it more interesting. Don’t do this! I don’t get addicted to ANYTHING, not alcohol, cigarettes, or gambling. I don’t know anyone else like me. Don’t do it.

My bet won. I immediately bought The Sun (English newspaper) which had the racing form in the back pages. I studied the horses, the distance, the course conditions, and the jockeys. I made my bet with my formula and won. In fact I won forty-six consecutive times. People would ask me to make bets for them and I always paid them their winnings. The reason they didn’t always want me to make more bets for them is because they didn’t trust me to pay them the full winnings; but I always did. They didn't understand that each-way betting pays less than betting to win, but increases the chances of a payout. Disappointment with a windfall will do that to some people (cognitive dissonance). However, I made, on average 120 GBP every Saturday for the whole Summer. When I say I am not THAT sort of gambler, I mean this: I said to myself that when I lose my stake and do not win, I will not bet again. I had been betting on the horses running on courses without fences. When that season ended, the jockeys were able to cheat a little because they could make their horses hesitate at the jumps (fences). I lost my stake money in the first race of the steeplechase season on which I made a bet. I stopped betting.

I stopped betting, until Lewis Hamilton didn’t win the 2007 Formula 1 championship. He was the first black man in the sport and 2007 was his first season. No rookie had ever won the World Championship. He only needed to come third in the last race of the season, and was leading the race right from the beginning. Suddenly, his car developed engine problems and he got overtaken by a series of cars until he was tenth. Then, miraculously, his car started running well and kept up with the cars in front; race pace. He did not win the 2007 Formula One World Championship. I was certain that Formula One cars cannot develop engine problems and then return to race pace; they fall apart really quickly if they are not efficient. It had to be that his engine was electronically controlled to run slower. Of course Bernie Ecclestone, the man in control of Formula One knew the public would soon tire of another superstar like Michael Schumacher, who had just retired from the sport. To my mind, Lewis Hamilton was promised the win in 2008, before the 2007 Championship was finished, during that last race. Lets face it: how exciting is it for a car in tenth position to fight its way through the pack and the driver become World Champion?

In 2008, amazingly, in the last race Lewis Hamilton only needed to come third again. I had already staked quite a large amount on his Championship win. At the third to last corner of the entire race Hamilton was fourth. ‘Hang on’, I thought, This isn’t right.’ Then it happened, and this is why I don’t gamble like THAT gambler. The third place driver made a mistake and went wide two corners from the finish line and Hamilton overtook him. He finished third as the 2008 Formula One World Champion. I am not going to say that I saw the driver deliberately go wide. Oh No! 

I have mentioned it before. There is always a clue. There is always something that isn’t right. There is always an advantage that can be gained. Seeing it is the hardest thing in the world if you are honest.

For a while, in about 2017, I analysed the Formula One tracks, the driver attributes, the cars, and the weather, and using probability made small bets across about five drivers for each race; hedging my bets. I always came out on top. Because I am not THAT type of gambler, the total stake amount for each race never exceeded two GBP, and I only ever won about thirty or forty pence for each race. Just Fun. DON'T DO IT. If you need the money, do something else - look for a misalignment or an advantage, not a probability. Misalignments precede probability assessments. 

Most of us are familiar with the saying; ‘In a dog eat dog world, be a dog.’ I have adapted that to ‘In a dog eat dog world, be a cat.’

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

Wealth

[ 4 minute read ]

There is one thing you cannot accuse me of; and that is greed. The shopkeeper in my village shop is a Buddhist, in the same sense that someone in the UK who believes in God is a Christian. That last phrase only works, as it is, in an area of the world that has been traditionally Christian for centuries; or for agnostics, in countries that have been wallpapered with a belief system that likes stained glass windows and rules. 

What I mean to say is; the shopkeeper wants to be on the right path to achieve enlightenment, but he has a duty as a husband and father. He, I am sure, does not savage his mind with regret or ‘What if…’ questions. Yet, I could not help but think that he was jealous when I told him, ‘You can give me a million pounds and I would buy a little island to get away from everyone once in a while, but I will never make my workers earn the money for me to be able to do that.’ Surprised, he told me about 'arhats' who have achieved enlightenment. He shouldn’t be jealous, if he was; I am not special, I am simply not greedy. I have had enough money to buy whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted; not cars, yachts, and houses; just no budget. Many of my customers thought I was wealthy. That comes down to attitude and composition of behaviour. I suppose there was no sycophantic wheedling to ease any contract through to pay a specific bill. My attitude was, ‘We are going to do this my way. I am the one with experience. I don’t need money.’ I think that is the effect that one can expect to be evident in wealthy people. I suggest it is, in reality, confidence and self-control while recognising one’s own financial security and solvency; especially solvency.

The shopkeeper was a little stunned when I told him that despite having had money, I have never had more than one thousand three hundred English pounds of ‘free money’; recoverable cash from all my efforts in my entire life so far; or if I had ever cashed my life in for money. If I had sold my assets, such as houses, cars, furniture, and so on, the amount I would have ended up with, in cash, would have been only 1300 GBP once I had returned my position to where it was before; living in a furnished house with a car and a job. I told him that often my bank balance would exceed 600,000 GBP, but it was never a liquid asset. I suppose he had never looked at wealth and money that way before. i don't know; just speculating.

The shop assistant, behind the counter, looked at me with interest. I suspected she had savings that totaled more than 1300 pounds. She didn't say anything, but almost blurted,

‘Really? Is that all? I am nineteen and have more than that!’

I couldn’t be bothered to explain that, in all likelihood, it would take all her savings to set her up in a similar position to living at home with her parents, if she were to leave home. She has savings because she has security. To buy that same security is expensive. Her shop assistant wage and her savings would be insufficient to replicate it.

I didn’t say it, but thought, ‘No, you really don’t have more than that. Ever penny you have is in an escrow account as a contingency amount. You can’t spend it because you are not yet in control of your own security.’

Maybe she didn't almost blurt anything. She might have no money at all.

So when Antonia, in 2010, said to me, ‘You are really wealthy aren’t you?’ and I had only about 800 GBP in the bank, I said, ‘Do you mean money?’

‘Of course, is there any other kind of wealth?’

‘Absolutely! Love, confidence, friends, freedom, to name just a few.’ I returned.

She didn’t pursue it because she still thought I was rich and a bit interesting too. But then she was studying to be a psychiatrist at the time, so that flies.

I never thought that I would ever tell a Buddhist that he possibly had to learn about money in his current life but might still reincarnate to learn other stuff, and I was simply learning in a different order. I couldn’t help it; he looked so crestfallen that for all his concerted thoughts, he had not achieved the same position as the person standing before him, a non-Buddhist, had. That really isn’t the case though. I am no better nor worse than him. I understand living hand to mouth and homelessness. I understand exclusion from family gossiping sessions because I have concrete values, that to me are righteous. I understand how I became the recipient of consequent backstabbing, whenever I was not there to defend myself. I understand why I never defended myself, if it meant accusing someone else or apportioning blame. I knew that the accused would be gossiped about. My mantra was, and still is, 'Talk TO me, not ABOUT me.'

The most important attribute I have, is my striving to be honourable and to have integrity in everything I do. I am still learning, but, yes Antonia, I am wealthy. I am also not greedy; despite valuing it so highly, I do not want your honour or your integrity.

'For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.' (Matthew 6:19-21, NIV of the Bible). A person's time, attention, actions, and energy will be focused on whatever they value above all else.

   The last 'chapter' of the Spirit and Alien Party story has been uploaded as a docx file in the post entitled Spirit and Alien Party, with the tags spirit party, spirit and alien party

Spiders like me

[ 4 minute read, at 259 words per minute ]

I have just watched a Thunderfly meander across my view inside the screen of my laptop. I hope there is not a nest of them gathered around the CPU.

Spiders seem to like me and come to me for help. Yesterday one came over to me unsolicited. As predators, we are attracted by movement. However, we tend to filter out little jerky movements; otherwise we would always be frightened of leaves trembling in a light wind. Spiders, with their eight legs cause their bodies to move smoothly but with jerky leg movements. I think that is what is so scary for many people; it is something we simply do not experience in combination in nature in our safe homes. I suggest that if we have an expensive analogue watch with a sweeping second hand and a clunky minute hand that changed position once every minute, we would be scared of our watch.

There are three spiders, I think, in the UK that will bite us and it will hurt. I have been bitten by two of them. However, the spider I saw yesterday was either a House Spider or a Cardinal Spider, I think. It was a BIG Giant House Spider. It came running towards me across the floor on my right side. My peripheral vision picked it up as a threat, just as it should be considered to be. 

       'Hey, Big Guy!' It might have been saying that. However, I tend to think it was about to run up my bare leg and up to my face. I wouldn't have liked that.

I rather think spiders might be more intelligent than we give them credit for. Garden Spiders also come into our homes and are friendly. I don't know anyone that has been bitten by a Garden Spider, but any kind of tickle on my legs is an alarm call to me that I am about to be bitten by a fly of some kind. Sometimes, European Hornets angrily bump into me, even at three in the morning. You can hear them loudly beat their wings and they just fly straight into you with a significant bump. 

Once the Giant House Spider knew I had seen it, it stopped about three feet (one metre) away from me. Seeing that I stood up, it moved to one side, right up to my shoes, which I wasn't wearing, out of the way when I went into the kitchen. It didn't try to hide, or run away though. It didn't seem to be in the mood for fun, like some spider-rascals are; nor did it show that it was scared because all its legs were touching the floor. 

I fetched a mug, and a piece of card to gather it up, expecting that it would have moved on and I would have to hunt for it. But, it was patiently waiting for me to come back. It hadn't even turned round to watch me. I couldn't help thinking that it was expecting to being handled and wanted to go back outside.

The mug was too small to completely cover it. It obligingly pulled in a couple of legs and I trapped it. (I have just now measured the diameter of the mug I used - 7.5cm or 3 inches). 

With the card slid under it, I carried it to a window and threw it out; just like it has been thrown out countless times before. I think I might even recognise it, except it is always bigger than last time. It scampers in the front door sometimes, because there is a good hunting ground for it right outside and I suspect it just wants some shade, and maybe eat some house-spiders or the numerous long-bodied cellar spiders in my home, or something.

I hope it comes back. They can die outside in some weather conditions.

I know that many people are scared of spiders, so I won't tell you about the one in my bed that bit my hip three years ago. I will tell you that it hurt for a full week that had me eating paracetamol daily, and then for the next week, before I forgot it. I have been stung by a bumble bee, a wasp, a hornet, this spider, and bitten by ants. In terms of immediate pain the hornet wins; in terms of consistent pain, the little 2cm spider in my bed, wins by far. The black woolly caterpillar, whichever kind it is, hurts as well.

The reason I think spiders are clever is because there was a black one that looked like one that might try to bite me, in my bathroom. It kept getting into a little crevice where I couldn't reach it. Eventually I called on my friend, Permithrin, which lives in an aerosol can labeled insect killer.

I stayed in the bathroom doing something else and then went into my living room. At the time, I was wearing cargo trousers and checked the side pocket for anything that might in in it, by putting my hand on the outside of it. I felt wriggling and cupped the spider in my hand (very, very briefly). It had scampered out of the crevice, down the wall, across the bathroom floor, over my socked foot, and up the outside of my trousers (thank goodness). Permithrin will kill spiders, insects and goldfish. Plainly, this spider was asking for my help. Spiders do not run towards humans with binocular vision unless they are going to attack. Ah, maybe it thought, 'If I am going, I am going to take you with me.' But, I don't think so. I don't think spiders are so intelligent that they know we use chemicals to kill them. I think it thought it had just been poisoned somehow.

       'Help me!'

I threw it on the floor and hit it with a wooden spoon. I think it was one of the UK indigenous spiders with a painful bite. I feel immense guilt for killing it. It could have been asking for help. I panicked. I looked up what it might have been and settled on either a Green-fanged Tube Web Spider, or a Black Lace Weaver Spider, but it could have been a less venomous Mouse Spider, I suppose.

A couple of young Queen ants have looked at me funny too.

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Updated Tuesday 15th July

  Part 6 was uploaded on Sunday 13th July

  Part 7 is uploaded ready for downloading (06:10 am Tuesday 15th July)

The tag is spirit party and spirit and alien party for the post with the uploaded episodes titled 'Spirit and Alien Party' posted 6th July.

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

Part six of the spirit world story has been uploaded as an attachment on an earlier post, 'Spirit and Alien Party - 6th July' Tagged - spirit party

          Mental Health issues

[ 7 minute read ]

Some people call it 'Getting out of bed the wrong side'; some people call it 'A bear with a sore head'; some people call it, 'impatience' and some people might call it, 'discrimination'; I call it, 'being in a new alternative world'.

A long time ago, I was in Tesco buying cheap T-shirts. There was a pink one in my size. 'Oh No! I can't wear that one because people will think I am gay'. At the time, it bothered me if people thought that about me. At the time, I was also learning how to be more comfortable with myself and more importantly honest with myself, because I recognised that being honourable means having a solid starting base from which to work. 

In Hamlet, Act One, Scene 3, Polonius says to Laertes: 

"This above all: to thine own self be true. 

And it must follow, as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Oscar Wilde said: "The truth is rarely pure; and never simple."

It was a challenge to be true and upright that I just could not shy away from. Not least, because I thought that there is something else to see. William Shakespeare summed it up for me, in Hamlet, Act One, Scene 5:

HORATIO: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

HAMLET: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in Heaven and Earth.

I felt that I needed to discard duality; shed falsehood; and see with fresh eyes, because I wanted to see strange things.

I bought the pink T-shirt in Tesco, a long while back. People probably did think I was gay. I was definitely biased at the time, because I didn't want to be roped in with gay people. I had to buy the T-shirt because I had to wear it like a hair-shirt. It must, I vowed, keep causing me discomfort until it does not. I thought that when I feel that gay people are just like me, like any other person, I can stop wearing it. In any case, if gay people suffer because they are gay, I want to at least taste some of that pain, even if it is discrimination. Two things may have prevented me noticing any homophobic discriminatory behaviour towards me: I was a very well muscled, 6 foot 1 (1.85m) man, and there was a Rugby team that played in a pink strip on the television.

Of course, that pink T-shirt eventually stretched and wore out, so I bought another one, and another one. While I had been wearing the first pink T-shirt I became comfortable 'being gay'. It didn't matter one way or the other, and I quite like pink. It really doesn't mean 'gay'. 

I colour matched a pink T-shirt with pink socks today, and wore black shorts with them; the actual Rugby team colours as it turns out. I am pleased to say that it is, for me, not the colours that are important; it is the smartness, the matching, that is paramount.

I suntan really quite easily and have thick skin so I really do colour well. The looks I get from strangers are more sustained and frequent in Summer than in Winter. Perhaps it is because I am so handsome and magnificent and they are jealous. I think we should really be thinking the opposite though. I can't help thinking that I am living in someone else's country, like I am a trespasser. I even feel guilty and move towards meekness. Meekness is great if you want to be meek, but as a defensive attitude it doesn't really sit well with me.

I was in Aldi this morning, wearing a pink T-shirt and pink socks. My skin colour matched the man paying at the checkout, immediately before me. He had many facial attributes that suggested, to me, that he possibly has an Asian heritage. I don't care about that. I had a little chat with him about packaging. Our skin colour matched the checkout attendant's skin colour, who may have South-East Asian relatives. We three shared a few words, but did not delay any progress in the shopping/paying process.

All I had to buy was a single tin of Tuna, and the woman behind me placed a large multi-pack of toilet paper first in her queue of items; effectively hiding her view of my tin of tuna.

This woman, behind me, rearranged her chosen items on the conveyor belt. I could see that she moved the crush-able items to be the last that would be scanned and so be placed back in her basket on top. Now here is the rub: I always make sure the crush-able items are last in my queue of goods as I unload my basket, because it is important. I suggest that if someone does not do this at the outset, but then later changes the order to make it so after three or four minutes, it is because they were not thinking and were on auto-pilot and then snapped out of it because there occurred a strong enough thought to bring them from their secret alternative world into the 'here and now'. This 'here and now' has a gay Asian man impeding her progress, who seems to know the man paying because they are talking and have the same skin colour, and this gay Asian man will not advance along with the man paying; you know, past the checkout till. 

The woman kept pushing her items forward and rearranging them. She alternated between doing this and giving me long looks. I think she was trying to tell me something like: 'Look, gay Asian, I am next; will you move so I can be attended to?' I am only guessing, but I don't think she was including. 'Please'.

I am only guessing. I suppose some may say I was making an educated guess, but that is a bit of a misnomer really, isn't it? In any case, I felt certain that she would very soon realise at least one of her mistakes. A mistake that fomented her impatience which came about by being woken from her alternative, secret, dream world, which heavily relies on her using heuristics to navigate the real and mundane tasks of everyday life.

Shopping, for me, is never boring. It is never dull or mundane. There are always people who are in alternative worlds around. They are blind to me; they are blind to you; they will never remember you or me. You and I do not matter to them. Effectively, we are beneficial to them; a hindrance to them; or indistinct in every way.

If a person enters into a fevered state; angry, impatient, or discriminatory, they are most certainly in an alternative world to one they more often inhabit. It is as though the kind family-oriented person has swapped places with the domestic-abuser who also has road-rage. I think illness can be like this. People do recover and their kind persona comes back, just as their irascible persona flees back to another world.

By the way, I am not going to say whether I am gay or not. Not because I am proud one way or the other; quite simply because I couldn't care less (Could care less, in American English).

I will say though, that when I first experienced racism directed at me, I was hugely surprised. I had no idea that I come from another country, or have relatives outside of Europe. Thanks for opening up a new line of thinking for me. That first hit was twenty years ago and it still hurts. 'The first cut is the deepest'.

  Part Five of the Spirit and Alien Political Party story has been uploaded as a downloadable document in the post 'Spirit and Alien Party', tagged 'spirit party'.

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

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Can you see what I see?

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History shows us where we have trodden before, or something like that. Literally, where I have trodden helps to reveal what I have done and not done. Allow me to explain.

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I like fried food. I like to make patties and fry them. I can put pretty much anything in them; just think of a home-made fish-cake. Why not a chicken-cake? (not a beef-cake though because that is old slang for a heavily muscled man, and the words don’t sit right for me when I think of cooking).

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Cheap frozen fish has usually been in a pressurised environment that forces water into the flesh. More water and less fish to make up a required weight means more profit for the supplier, and I suppose the retailers. You have to defrost these fish before you fry them otherwise there is a lot of oil spitting all over the place. This is invisible to me because I have eyes that don’t see everything as your eyes might. I am also kind of forgetful and, like many people, easily distracted, particularly when it comes to cooking and eating. Although I will wash the dishes, plates and utensils that I use for food preparation as I go along, I always seem to not clean the cooker. Not really surprising because it is hot when the food is cooked and ready to eat and I just want to eat. Even when I clean the cooker, I forget to wipe the tiles above and at the back of the cooker. There is nothing that I can see to remind me that tiny spots of oil have accumulated there during the cooking process. And, oil doesn’t really have much colour anyway. I know many people can see the oil and tiny drops of water. But, if you consider that I have always been amazed that the people in football (soccer) stadiums can see who has the ball, you will begin to understand the difference between my vision and normal vision. I can only guess what detail other people can see.

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If I use clean water, which is what any self-respecting and clean person should use to clean things, I cannot see where the tiny oil spits have landed, and most often, dried out. These dried ones are the ones I have to scrub with actual detergent and one of those green scourer things. If I use dirty water, these dried oil spots are very visible to me; yellow.

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Even though it seems disgusting to practically everyone, including me, if I was to wash the kitchen floor and then use the same water to wash the tiles by the cooker, I would be able to see where I need to scrub. I don’t do that, but if I did, the history of where I have trodden would show me some of my cooking and non-cleaning history. In my head, this equates to: if you want to reveal invisible dirt or rather contamination, use dirt.

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I turned on the television and turned to a shopping channel.

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        ‘Want your home to be clean and smell like it has been recently cleaned? For the low price of sixteen ninety-nine you can have not one, not two, but three bottles of the new improved formula ‘Dirt’ by LMS. Your visitors will envy you that musty smell.’