Does my bag  need a burial ceremony?

To the casual eye, this looks like a scruffy old bag but to me it is much more than that. I bought it in Boston, Ma, USA in about 1995. It has served me well traveling to Sri Lanka, Singapore. Australia, South Africa (20 times), the United States and Canada, not to mention my travels in Europe. It has a wonderful combination of a lot of pockets as well as being light in weight so I can put my basic needs for two or three days within it,  but I have to say that does not include shoes.

If it was a friend, I would like to give it a burial ceremony or at least a ritual of some sort. I would like to give thanks to the bag for its service to me and the person who made it. To them it was just another bag but to me it was an invaluable part of my travel. Now all the zips have broken, strangely around the same time, so when I take it to the recycle I shall do so with respect. I recall a quote saying that ‘the evil that men do lives after them; the good is often interred with their bones’. This is a quote spoken by Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar. In other words, everything lives beyond its physical existence.

Rogue gardeners

Someone on a local social media site (NextDoor) warned about a rogue gardener called Peter who is driving around looking for work and probably taking advantage of older people. These predatory types that I call vultures are to be found everywhere. We have someone who comes from Frome who is a pikey. He has driven around more than once spotting that I needed a tree pruned. He is often excessively polite and uses the appellation on his shiny flyer Mr. (John Smith). Normally, you don’t use the appellation ‘Mr.’ unless there is room for doubt. What they will try and do is to take money in advance or give a quote that is very reasonable but escalates, or simply take your money and disappear always of course with an excuse.

When I was living in London in a community Living Estate, a man came around saying he had some excess tarmac and would we like some and it was only £1.50 per square meter. He was in a great hurry because the tarmac would of course set. We talked to the management and they agreed but they ended up paying £1500 so I don’t know what sleight of hand he used but they fell for it as I did.

The moral to the story dear people is that if someone comes knocking on the door it means that they are not being recommended by others and more likely than not will not have any loyalty to you or care about the quality of their work if indeed they do any work at all. An advert in the local paper, a recommendation of a friend, is a better route to go and if someone pushes you or puts any pressure whatsoever on you, then just tell them politely to go away.

25 Amazing Women in the Bible

We tend to think of characters in the Bible as a ‘man’ thing but women also took a great role. I am a subscriber to biblestudytools.com and we get regular mailouts (a labour of love on their part) . Today’s article is very good and worth a read.

The pages of the Bible are richly adorned with the stories of remarkable individuals who shaped the course of history and have become pillars of the faith – their narratives echoing through millennia as testaments to the strength of character and unwavering devotion. Immediately we can think of women in the Bible like Mary, Eve, Sarah, Miriam, Esther, Ruth, Naomi, Deborah, and Mary Magdalene. But there are other women in the Bible that have only a small appearance in the Old or New Testament, some as few as one verse.

The shock of being thanked

I know that many people read my diaries but sometimes they forget that it is  written by a genuine human being, with feelings. This morning, I received a  letter from a lady who appreciated my work. I have reproduced it below. I think there is a difference between being appreciated, and being thanked. Anyone can say thank you and in a way the phrase has become cheapened but the same does not apply to appreciation which is a more in-depth; it is the recognition of the quality, significance, of people and things. Gratitude is included.

‘Thanks’ is more a matter of basic politeness when you give someone something, or exchange something of value. It is an inadequate word because I have heard people say “I can only thank you for what you have done”. This is where being taciturn and standoffish does not work. You could try giving the person a hug but in professional circumstances that would not be appropriate. After thanking someone you can perhaps tell them in what way their action was appreciated, for example because you have done this I was enabled to do that and it made my job in life easier

“I took a moment to read through the diary post that you sent. You are a beautiful writer and a wonderfully engaging human being. I am certain you brighten many a day for folks along the way. I loved the lashings of custard request, which is something I would do myself. And, the lady in the black and white striped outfit sure won a lot of awards at the hospital, or she gave out the awards and got into every photo wearing her black and white show-stealer dress!”

The Dog’s Bollocks

A friend of mine said that a particularly excoriating speech by an academician, inviting other scientists to come up with an explanation for a phenomena, was the dogs bollocks.

Again, I do not want to be accused of using phrases without doing research so off I go again to the internet, this time a site called phrases.org.uk

The DB’s – meaning.

Excellent – the absolute apex. In other contexts the word bollocks (meaning testicles) has a negative connotation; for example:

– ‘that’s bollocks’ -> ‘that’s rubbish’
– ‘give him a bollocking’ -> ‘chastise him’
– ‘He dropped a bollock’ -> ‘he made a mistake’

The reasons why the ‘dog’s bollocks’ are considered to be the top of the tree aren’t clear. It may be linked to an associated phrase – ‘stand out like a dog’s balls’, that is, ‘outstanding’, although I can find no evidence to indicate that phrase as being earlier than the ‘dog’s bollocks’. Dogs do enjoy licking their genitals of course but again, there’s no evidence that links the coining of this phrase to that. It is most likely that this is just a nonsense phrase, coined because it sounds good. In that, it would join a long list of earlier nonsense phrases, e.g. ‘the cat’s pyjamas’, ‘the bee’s knees’ etc.

I would say that historically the negative use of this word, never mind it’s use as a swear word, outweigh the positive uses of this word although its use as an affectionate compliment may be on the increase. When you know someone well, an ‘insulting phrase’ can be a term of endearment.

A friend visits

From time to time I get to meet with my friend Terry who shares with me the political and existential scenario that we are seeing in the world today. We are on the same wavelength. This means that we can finish each other’s sentences without interrupting and we instinctively know what the other person is going to say before they even utter the words.

I had set up an hour long film about the Khazarian Jews but after the first opening statement we were still talking an hour later. So if 30 seconds of the video produces one hour conversation you can see that for us to do justice to the video the total elapsed time office watching would be 120 hours. I think you can safely assume that we are a catalyst for each other.

We, as human beings, are but one reflection of the enormous variety of consciousness that exists in the universe today. Although Homo sapiens in its human form of head torso and legs is assumed to be some sort of universal standard; there may be other forms of sentient life do not follow those formula. We are a minute point in the fasteners of the universe, of which parts are still expanding at the speed of light. I find it difficult to understand what one light year is. I know that it means the amount of distance covered by light in one year, but….

Light travels 5,88 trillion miles per year. Again that means nothing to me. How can I, being such a minute being, have any significance to anybody? The answer is that we have something called consciousness which is independent of space and time and which gives us the existential markers to feel significant. Without consciousness we would just be a robot or a rock. Just to give us an idea of the speed of light, it would take us 1.2 seconds to reach this worthy satellite.

I find it incredible that people should think, in fit of parochialism, that we would be the only inhabited planet when there are more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. I believe the number of stars is 10 to the power of 22 which by most standards is very large. Let us suppose that we were intercepted or at least visited by some other supposed civilizations and, being more advanced than we are, suppose they took an interest in our raw materials e.g. gold and indeed our very humanity itself. Would they not leave a visiting card?

Would these beings if they exist seek to ingratiate themselves with the poor naive human being, interbreeding in a form that would be beneficial for them since they would produce slave workers. This may sound far fetched, but if the information was fetched from afar then that would be a mere description not an opinion. (joke).

When the great prophets and teachers came visiting the Earth they always adhered to the principle of free will. We had and have a choice. We can  either use the ancient knowledge to build ourselves up into almost demigod status or we could use it to destroy ourselves. If we believe in Atlantis then we would know that the latter is possible. In a time when we can only sit back and watch the minority who have all the cards in their hands, it seems to me that our only hope is to raise the level of our consciousness. As I  have said many times before, we are conscious beings in a world of matter, in other words occupying a suit of clothes, but we are not the clothes themselves.

We may see acts of deliberate destruction and evil take place around us on a daily basis but we do not have to identify ourselves with these acts. However we cannot entirely insulate ourselves from the effects of shedding whether it be by a virus or by a thought so it *behooves us to maintain a healthy independence both of thought and of belief so that we can maintain our integrity without losing our humanity.
* behoove = to be necessary, proper, or advantageous for us to do this action

By the same mechanism of mind that enables me to write this diary day after day, so would it not be impossible for two friends to run out of conversation, because creativity is the mother of other creativity and this process will or can never stop. As I have said before – and I stand in danger of repeating myself – if you were to give away every last bit of information you had, you would end up by being more wise and knowledgeable at the end because the brain, in the act of rehearsing what it knows, will make further correlations or connections within itself and this will have no end. For this we should thank our creator.

Preparing for the future

Brighteon Broadcast News, Nov 8, 2023 – SEVEN INSPIRING characteristics of self-mastery for surviving the end times that are now upon us. This two hour broadcast will help anyone and everyone who is awake to what is going on, not what the Main Stream Media are told to tell you or withhold from you.