This may seem a strange way of starting a diary but I am blown away by the naivety of this person that thinks that the skip company will take away this carefully constructed mountain of material. Hope  springs eternal as they say.

This is the beginning of a lovely summers day. Pity it arrived a bit late in the year, but I feel I should be elsewhere than staring at this computer screen. We have therefore decided to go to West Super Mare for our annual visit.   High tide is around 10 am so if Françoise is to swim, we need other than mud to walk out on.

Why don’t I trust more people?

As a child I trusted my parents because they were my parents. In my teens I trusted everybody because I didn’t know any better. In my 20s I realised that some people had weaknesses and they could not be trusted.   Now several decades later my criteria  for trusting people has got much more sophisticated alas through being disappointed many times.

However pleasant someone is and however much my senses tell me that I can trust them come out I need to interact with them and preferably work with them for a while before coming to any conclusion. Everyone has feet of clay*  and may show we say a propensity for weakness. I believe that when people get a taste of power, there is a previously unused piece of DNA that clicks in and the individual finds themselves putting power and money above people and very few people seem to resist this.  The number of people I have heard of who have won the lottery and subsequently  gone off the rails is quite  extraordinary.

* The phrase originates from the Book of Daniel in the Bible. In it, Daniel interprets a dream of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In that dream, a magnificent statue is seen with a head of gold, but weaker and less valuable metals beneath, until finally having feet of clay mixed with iron.

Ed Dowd.

Public figures who I trust can be numbered on the fingers of two hands on a good day.  The list includes Piers Corbin  who runs a long range weather service,  Ed Dowd, clear thinker ex Wall Street,  Simon Calder who is a travel correspondent;   money saving expert Martin Lewis;  Sandra Lee aka Dr Pimple Popper; Dr. Martin Israel who was my priest at one point; Dr. Carie Madej,  a doctor and campaigner and person of faith;   Michael Portillo who spends most of his time going round the world and reporting on it,   Peter Wright, the Yorkshire Vet;  Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi, fearless campaigner with a desire to explain things clearly; David Lorimer, who is the Chair of the Galileo Commission here in the UK.; Dr Mark Trozzi, Canadian doctor, fired for his views, Andrew Bridgen MP who spoke out for what he believed, against great opposition.

I trust all the people listed because they walk their talk.  I consider them incapable of lying or deceit.  I know they have been abused for standing up  for what they believe to be the truth.  Our life on earth is not a popularity contest and they have suffered. They have nothing to gain from lying.

It takes years to build up a relationship and I recall a couple of quotes which some may find helpful.

” I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I cannot believe you” Friedrich Nietzche

” when you completely trust a person without a doubt, you’ll automatically receive one of two things dash a friend for life or a lesson for life “

”  loving someone is giving them the power to break your heart, but trusting that they won’t” Julienne Mann

”  Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair “

”  I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me,’I love you’  ” Maya Angelou

a text from the Bible has a bearing on this

” be as innocent as doves and  wise as serpents “

This is a very clever phrase but put in a very simple way in terms that people could understand at the time. A dove has the overview, it is not connected to anything, it looks down from above, but a serpent is street smart, slithering here and there, sniffing, checking out, verifying, making sure about it’s own safety.

Can I really trust others?

It is really boring and can turn you into a paranoid person wondering if you can trust others all the time indeed who you can trust indeed who you need to trust. When someone does your garden for you you assume and trust they will turn up when they say they will.   When someone promises to do an errand for you you assume they will. As someone said to me many years ago, if you don’t trust anyone, then no one can do any business.

In business transactions there is a very good rule that if it seems too good to be true then it probably isn’t. I refer to the frequent emails I get typically from Nigeria who says that someone has a fun for me for 24 million dollars or any amount come to that and if I would part with my personal details they will be in touch. What happens is that you are required to give some service charges followed by other charges and  by the time you smell a rat you are out of pocket and they are in pocket.

If you receive  telephone calls from someone claiming to be in a certain business then ask why are they calling. They are not calling because they love you. They are calling because they want something from you.  A rule of thumb is to never give any confidential information  no matter how charming or official they may sound.

There are people out there who are just plain and simple bad. They are very convincing liars  and are saying all the right things to lull you into a sense of security. They are what I call 50/50 people. They change as quick as the wind and have an excuse for everything. If driven into a corner they will run away or change the subject. They are a colossal waste of time.  Run- in the other direction

As for friendships, when I meet someone new and interesting I have a system. I put them in the outer courtyard.  I then spend time with them if it gets to this and only when months have turned into years do I admit them into the inner courtyard.  I know this goes against the instant gratification syndrome that we are all in but in the long term it avoids us getting needlessly hurt.

As for dating, if on a first date a person speaks a lot about their ex-wife or even worse the wife that they have not yet divorced, or their previous girlfriend, you know that they have not learnt their lessons and are not free to move on.

When deciding to trust someone I watch how they treat other people. I also listen to their gossip and if they speak badly of someone, that is a terminally bad sign because it means they will gossip about me as well to others.  If I hear such things especially if they are accompanied by bitterness and anger, my opinion of them goes down to somewhat south of zero.

If we are lonely and keen to have a relationship to fill the vacuum in our lives, that is an extra reason for being vigilant. It is better to place ourselves in a community situation for example going to a group rather than so-called dating on a one-to-one basis which can lead you with scars and giving you further cause to distrust someone if and when you discover they are not quite who they claim to be. This is the problem with dating agencies. Swipe right – could lead to danger.

There is another aspect to this –  that we will benefit from becoming  the sort of person that requires or even commands respect. I don’t quite know how to say this but people must feel they  should not trifle with you.  It’s respecting yourself and being boundaried. I meet some people and you just know that they are the real thing, have nothing to prove, and need to be treated with respect. Hopefully the feeling will be mutual. Penny Power OBE is one such. I have known her for many years.

I’m sure I will think of other factors but basically if you don’t trust anyone you are going to have a miserable and lonely life. If you trust everyone you’re also going to have a miserable and lonely life because you will have been let down so many times. It is an unfortunate feature of human nature that the  law of the jungle does apply and the strong will attack the weak.

If we can trust our intuition this is a great help. The number of times that people have said ‘I wish I had trusted my intuition’.  It was heart over head…  I should have thought…. I should have taken notice.

We should stop beating ourselves up for things we did in the past because we did our best with what we knew from our accumulated experience and wisdom.  Now  we would not do the same again.

It is called ‘learning by experience’.  We all do it, every last one of us.  There are no exceptions.  That is why they call the earth a school.  The school masters are the lessons you need to learn.

The previous transcription matters now close.

I wrote to the organisation (see previous) that I was not able to perform the promised action and giving reasons why, and then proposing a stance for using my talents for future needs.   This could be a useful template for  others in a similar situation.

I recently offered to do some transcribing for the Galileo Commission on August 29th that we were privileged to be part of.  I’m afraid the devil does indeed lie in the detail.

Inter alia,  In a scenario where technical terms are sometimes used it is not clear even on audio what the person is saying or even meaning and that has to be checked with them.  I cannot timeously complete the job in hand. It involves going back to the author and getting a response from them.  I cannot release anything in my (our) name that is less than 100% on the grounds that it will confuse people.

In other words there is no such thing as a straightforward transcription. Basically one hour of talk means at least three hours of work plus correspondence.

I would like to revise my offer albeit in retrospect. I think transcription is most appropriate as a plan B, when the normal way of recording an event has (partially) failed for example a technological glitch and when the information given was unique to that particular meeting or conference or talk.

In plain language there is nothing to stop people watching the video of something should they so wish and I would in general need to be convinced of the marginal value of a transcription, though aesthetically there is a certain degree of satisfaction in making something that is more ‘permanent’, whatever that means.

Meanwhile I hope that the visual recordings of the event have been sent off. 

There is of course an argument that individual recipients should take it upon themselves to ask for clarification at one of the many events we have or even write directly to the speaker.

As a spin-off, it might be worth instituting a system where speakers could submit their paper for common scrutiny,  but I agree that this would be a matter of medium to long term consideration not to mention possible intellectual property rights issues.

If anyone feels sorry for themselves, see this blind person. Video HERE