Month: October 2019

To Chalice Well for the celebration of Samhain. I did not expect many people but actually quite a few turned up, about 150 I would say, and the ladies as usual made a special attempt to dress up. As usual, there was a log fire in the middle of the green at the bottom of the property. This is the focal point for fellowship.

I’m sometimes tempted to have a chat with all and sundry but this time I was quite content to hang out on my own. The talk given by one of the women is given at midday. I’m sure that what she said was of value but I couldn’t hear it because her voice was so low so I wandered away. The basic premise – or the parts of it that I could grasp – was that you go as deep into your soul as you can and consider what you want to leave behind. In other words, what is redundant, and what you want to move forward with or want to become.

After an excellent pumpkin soup we left for our customary tour of Glastonbury town. Here are some images.

I then went to my favourite place of all time in Glastonbury, Goddess House where anyone who is feeling a bit down or confused, or just in need of rest should go and just sit in one of the rooms for their own benefit. I feel that ‘real women’ need to be connected to Mother Nature, to Mother Earth and to celebrate the fact that they can be mothers and give birth to a new generation. I feel very comfortable there and always re-charged.

Then back to the car via a most unusual B and B with these external adornments.

Even the sun is getting in on the act…

So, off to Bath for my monthly eye check. The left eye has stabilised but there is a small tear in a vein on the right eye. Nothing to worry about, the consultant told me, but of course I will worry about it a little bit. She asked me about blood pressure, chlorestol level and I asked her to write to my Dr on the matter.

At lunch, I had a very nice sweet and sour pork dish with rice, followed by Apple pie and custard. A chap came along and sat opposite me at a very crowded restaurant. I moved away to get some water. A lady of colour approach the man and said, referring to my seat, is this available? He said no and I came and claimed my place in short order. I found this lady profoundly irritating and self-centred. If she had thought for one single moment she would realise that the place was taken. I felt like saying to her “do yourself a favour. Think before you speak.” She would probably have gone all defensive, use the race card, and accused me of this that and the other. This is what comes, and I’m speaking about her, of not being aware of your surroundings and being self-centred.

I had another experience in the eye clinic itself. A lady came out of the consulting room with a big smile on her face. I commented on a smile and she said it was her policy to look on the bright side of things no matter how bad things were. We had a few moments chat and departed the best of friends.

*****

As you know I always look out for art in the corridors of the hospital and as ever, I was not disappointed.

I wandered around Bath afterwards and notice various relevant imagery of the time of year and also notice the way they are trying to humanise what can be rather sterile situation, the central shopping mall.

This ivy appears to be live and I think they are trying to encourage it to take over the telephone box.

Next Saturday week we are going to start a weeks holiday in Cornwall. We are going back to Marizon which is adjacent to St Michael’s Mount. I wonder how many tourists there will be at this time of year. I decided to take a break from 911, 5G etc and have a retro time where we will play cards and board games, do some home cooking, listen to the radio and generally enjoy silence.

My sister and my brother-in-law are coming to stay with us over Christmas so we must make sure we have plenty of logs for the fire, an abundant supply of coal, and a good stock of cheer.

Spiders are in splendid form at the moment no doubt collecting as much food as they can prior to the coming of winter.

Talking about the coming of said season, here is a shot out of the Town Hall upstairs window here in Midsomer Norton, below.

This morning, Saturday, I got a call at about 8:30 from a woman whose cherry tree had fallen during the gales last night. Unless you deal with wood you don’t realise the huge differences there are in consistency and texture. If this tree was mahogany it would be impossible to cut with a  normal chainsaw. When trees are dead, they can either become more crumbly or harder, almost like concrete, and very difficult to deal with but this one was fairly recently dead so it will not be too difficult to address the situation. I have quoted a modest sum so we will see what happens.

Internet communication can make life much easier. It can also lead to complications. A number of us were interested in 5G and associated subjects and about 10 others got together in a group and copied each other on various views. Unfortunately, one member disagreed with another one quite violently concerning a particular matter and this caused to-ing and fro-ing of rather acerbic comments indicating that the other person did not know what they were talking about. To compound this, another well-meaning person decided to join up a few more people to the group so we ended up with about 20 people who had to witness this flak.

The mood of the group turned sour and eight people, myself included, asked to be removed from the list. This is more difficult when you don’t quite know who was responsible for adding the people in the first place. In other words, in the case of a leaderless group it’s more difficult to disband.  The lessons are quite clear:

Do not assume that someone wants to be added to a group just because they’re interested in the subject matter; if you’re copying the message use BCC instead of CC Otherwise everyone can see who the messages are going to and can copy the address is again if they so wish.

I know that privacy is an illusion but we have to try and keep our e-mails down to reasonable limits.

Today is the last day of summer time and the  clocks will go back one hour at 2am. tomorrow we have an important conference held in London to which I have bought a streaming ticket. Bearing in mind the weather I’m so glad I did not go to London and spend £200 or £300 on hotels and food and so on. AirB&B was not the bargain it once was, with prices close to many hotels and you very seldom get breakfast. People are renting out five or six properties now on a commercial basis. It is very difficult to get redress in cases of difficulty. It is all very well to say “buyer beware” but if there is no one to talk to or if there has been downright fraud as happens more and more, this would certainly spoil your holiday.

It is quite something for me to be irregular in my diary writing but quite frankly very little has happened except my recuperating, the final phase I think, from my hernia operation. I am generally in good form but I find that from time to time I get tired and a little bit cold and just have to sit on the sofa in front of the fire for a few hours. As I say, it’s better to work with nature than against it.

I recently visited the Swallow Cafe, which is a brand, designed for people with learning difficulties. The atmosphere there is very pleasant and accommodating. I couldn’t help noticing the large number of grossly overweight females, some in electric assistance chairs, laughing and joking together. My inclination is to attribute the huge amount of fatty tissue to eating junk food. I wonder if women have different metabolisms to men or is it a hormonal problem.

I’m looking forward to a week off in Cornwall in November. I know it will be very much off-season. The weather in Cornwall tends to be rather special, much more influenced by the Atlantic, and at this time of year will be blessed with far fewer tourists.

Extinction Rebellion people seem to have gone over the top by stopping the tube trains running. I think that’s the last time they do something in London, at least for some time. I was listening to Women’s Hour this morning talking about children ‘worried’ about climate change. This arises from a worldwide psy op to frighten people and thus make them more easily controllable.  The youngsters identify with Greta Thunberg and are being frightened, needlessly as it happens.

If you look at real science, we are towards the lower end of parts per million of carbon dioxide and for maximum growth it would be good to have 1200 ppm. Instead of the current 400 ppm.  Al Gore said in 2007 that the world would become unsustainable within 10 years  and we seem to have made it beyond 2017. Greta said last year that we had 11 years to go and that will prove as nonsensical as the last Prophecy.

Actual science is lost on the mainstream media particularly, surprise surprise, the BBC who now think there is no point in bringing on so-called climate deniers (aka people who really know what’s going on).

Nice feeling – I have enough garden work to keep me going until Christmas. It’s always good when income keeps up with the expenditure so I don’t have to dig into my savings. I expect the time will come when money ceases to be of any value, the Greek ‘haircut’ is the first example of this and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I continue to listen to my favourite evangelical radio station, Trans-World Radio. One of the preachers was talking about the importance of thoughts and how we can be driven by them without being aware of it. As someone said, as a man thinks, so he is. It was the book of Proverbs “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” As you quote correctly say, everything starts with the thought. It’s up to us to feed ourselves with good thoughts which is slightly easier as I write these lines with a clear blue sky. This is one way of seeing one Atlantic low following another but for the moment we have an intermission.

*****

I’m not sure about “going mad.” I think that “health and safety” has gone mad. Very much like Political Correctness. My wife went into a shop to ask for knitting needles and she was told that they do not stop them for health and safety reasons. She went into another shop and asked for crochet hooks and was told the same thing – they did not sell them for health and safety reasons. My, that will reduce the crime rate for vicious potential knitters who are put off their crime by the fact that the tools of their trade are not on open display.

Françoise eventually found a shop where they sold knitting needles under the counter so to speak.

Uncharacteristically, the day started with bright blue skies. About 10 AM, we decided we didn’t want to stay at home so decided to drive south and see what happens. We ended up at Stourhead, which is one of the star properties of the National Trust. First of all we went to a place called Alfred’s Tower, a vanity Project created by King Alfred the Great.

We could not resist climbing tower which consisted of walking up 160 winding steps but the view at the top was worth it.On to Stourhead, gardens and the grand house.  The garden was packed with visitors. There were many young well-to-do families, articulate, aware, sensitive, functional, and it made me yearn for an environment where more of these people prevailed. Alas, my home town of Midsomer Norton is not amongst this environment. We just have to work harder to find the people that we resonate with.All these laurels have been trimmed recently, just imagine the amount of work involved. I guess they would be done about two times a year.

Whilst we were there, we had an excellent lunch. I had a beef stew with red cabbage and potatoes and my wife had a quiche. We then returned and I had a mint flavoured chocolate cake and coffee and my wife had a health juice drink.

So, from nothing, the day turned out to be a wonderfully fulfilling time which counteracted my feelings of depression I had felt at the beginning of the day. The most ‘common or garden’ rule I can give to anybody is “if you are feeling depressed, just do something,”

 

Today is one of the latter. I love the word “lassitude”. which means tiredness and a lack of energy and is more physically based I suspect than it’s relatives. Not the same as attitude, aptitude or even lackadaisical (lacking enthusiasm and determination). I can’t say it is depression as such.  How on earth foreigners learn English is beyond me. Indians can speak English but they do not understand it, and I think it’s the same with the Chinese. You have to feel the language.

I was due to have a meeting this morning with someone on the Internet, but this had to be put off for this afternoon but by the time the afternoon arrived I was too tired so had to cancel. I can’t only blame the hernia operation on this but I think it does have widespread effect as does any insult to the body. It is clear that I may not do physical work at least until I am declared fit by the doctor.

Yesterday evening, we went to a talk entitled “waste and plastic: it’s not all bad news.” Local entrepreneur and adventurer, Craig Shaw, explained how his career influenced his understanding of microbiology and how he developed the XO thermic technology process to recover energy from both organic and mixed waste streams. Craig shared how larger companies are tackling plastics and introduced us to research that is ongoing to resolve the plastics legacy. I was amazed to hear that microbes can eat plastic sometimese in as little as 72 hours. All that is necessary is to add a certain ingredient into currently manufactured plastics so they will become attractive to microbes.

Craig does not think that households have to separate garbage into up to 7 categories and says the two categories, biodegradable and others, is quite adequate.

Craig said that it is an uphill battle selling the idea to local authorities because they already have their views on how material should be disposed of, with concomitant financial benefits to those in the east chain so a cost-effective method which benefits the environment is not interesting to these people and he believes seen as a threat. He says that he ‘has to just keep on hammering away’. He’s had a fascinating life as a freelance diver working in many countries and I noticed in myself a tinge of jealousy when I saw how someone could pack so much in to one lifetime and currently he didn’t seem that old.

In these days of bad news, it is very interesting to hear such solutions.

This is one of the oldest documented jokes:

Three monks turned their back on the world. They go into the wilderness to repent their sins before God.

They did not speak to one another for the space of a year. Then one of the men said to another at the end of the year, “We are well,” said he.

Thus it was for another year. “It is well indeed,” said the second man.

They were there after that for another year. “I swear by my habit,” said the third man, “if you do not allow me some quiet I will abandon the wilderness entirely to you!”

I am propagating my new site on the Internet by mentioning it around. SEO agencies make a lot of money out of promising page 1 on Google but as a generic promise that is being optimistic because it depends very much on the keywords they can use and the popularity of the subject. Also, Google and YouTube and Facebook have inbuilt prejudices which they call algorithms to marginalise sites, the subject of which they disapprove.

This has been the ’emptiest’ week so far as external activities is concerned. I’ve been out of the house about twice but inwardly there has been plenty going on.

I have been relaxing by watching Youtube. This channel is very deceptive in that once it figures out what sort of videos you like it puts them in front of you and it’s very easy for an intentional 15 minute viewing to turn into an unintentional two hour viewing.

I received a letter recently from a contact whom I had informed about my new website. She wrote back saying I was a conspiracy theorist and sending me a list of links which referred to honourable and reliable aspects of her belief  or so she thought. I do admire young people for being committed to something but in this case they chose the wrong subject.

I reminded her that before attacking someone it is a good idea to actually read the material that they send and not just summarily dismiss it. I realise that with many people there is an element of fear and insecurity and I’m sure as same thing myself in the past so I just reminded her politely but firmly to check the facts and don’t rely on everything you read.

The sky is blue at the moment and I wonder whether it is a good idea to go out for a walk. Yes I did and yes it was fine.

My mind thinks it is well before my body reminds it that it is not, so I have to calm myself, be patient, and wait another week at least. At least my mind has not been affected.

Now, that would be a disadvantage.

 

 

As my body returns to normal, I’m finding more strength to function, and keep my daily record-keeping up to date. I have three remits; BrianSnellgrove.net  5Gexposed.com  Extinction-rebellion-exposed.com.

Although it is two weeks away, I decided I didn’t have enough oomph to go to London for a conference on Sunday, 27 November. All in all,  it would have  cost us £400 ( three nights hotel plus food plus travel) plus another £100 for the conference itself.

I am sorry in a way, as the day will have a lot to say on climate change, the back story.  Unless you understand the back story you don’t understand anything. We are therefore going to apply to stream it and watch it from the comfort of my own home.

My hernia operation is certainly working through. My male member has turned almost black. Funny, it is not hot or painful, but that’s just the way it is. As I said before, nature must carry on do what it has to do. I turned to the Internet and found the answer “ Bruising tends to track down from your wound, and if you are a man into your testicles and penis. This can be quite dramatic but looks worse than it feels. Don’t be alarmed – it will fade within one or two weeks“.

Once again, nothing wildly exciting to tell you. Françoise has been feeding me easy to digest food  and I have had two lots of painkillers instead of three.

Rain continues incessantly but I’m glad I’m not in Tokyo, where a hurricane is due to hit tomorrow.

I spent most of this morning in bed but feel strangely refreshed now. My wife Françoise went out to buy some coal and made a real coal and wood fire. I sat in front of the fire this afternoon and dozed. I feel the strength is coming back into my limbs now. I took my first walk, which was to go about 200 yards to post a letter. I was a bit wobbly but managed it quite well. Nature knows how to heal us far better than we do so we must just let it get on with it.

I had an ambitious plan to read many books but I haven’t had the energy to do it. My appetite has been down and I’ve lost a little bit of weight but I can afford to lose it because I was slightly overweight before.

It is very strange how when I’m in this discombobulated state, things that seemed important including such simple things such as watching the TV seem more distant. It could be another world. It’s a bit like being on drugs I suppose. Mind you, I am on a regime of drugs so I suppose this is to be expected.

The recent record lottery win of £171 million has been bought by someone who was not aware that they have won the money. I wonder how long it will take before they realise their fortune. PS I have just heard that someone did claim it.

Anyway, I’m turning off this computer early and will sit slumped in front of the fire this evening.