When did you last contact your friends?

A few days ago I wrote a circular letter to about 60 people with whom I have had contact at various times. They consist of those who I regard as friends but also professional colleagues. Such is the time pressure on people today that I do not expect people to read let alone respond that occasionally I am surprised, and this morning was one such when someone has taken the trouble to write back at length  to give me their news and perspectives and really sharing. I enclose that, but also another letter from someone, who I did not write to, about the decline of Christianity which has really caught my attention and I think should be propagated.

About writing letters I think we may underestimate how therapeutic and helpful it is to spend the time and energy writing to someone rather than adding comments on social media. It is the focus of mind and the concomitant love and caring the goes with it that comes across over the airwaves. Friendship must be maintained; it does not look after itself automatically. It is a bit like watering a plant, without day-to-day attention it will wither.
We should not assume that others are indifferent to us even if we have not heard from them for a long time. I’m seeing a friend to whom I wrote that I have not seen for two years and we are due a catch up. Think of this one thing. Perhaps they are in their difficult situation and maybe they either fall ill or god forbid they would actually pass.
How would you feel if you had not given them the time and energy when they needed it. You’re not going to be a nuisance inquiring about someone if you have not heard from them, 99% sure they will be glad to hear from you.
The following anonymized letter made my day
Hello Brian.

Glad to hear you are well, and I’m pleased to hear directly  from you again. and to know of the diary:  much work! It will be very rewarding.Is this email enough to subscribe? I would very much like to follow it, so please keep sending the installments / extracts/ terms of subscription.

I am recovering from a broken hip, and dealing with a heart condition which clips my walking and dancing wings, but am still planning a brief stay in Borrowdale  this summer. I’ll stay in a small hotel, (no more self catering )  A short stroll/limp  from the shoulder of Scafell on one side of the valley. And ( if I can navigate a modest low level  pass )  a visit to the neighbouring valley of Newlands, and the NTrust  cottage in which I have spent so many peaceful spring times.
I thought the UK Column team were considering some kind of event , maybe just a day. Do you have an inkling?  My last instructive/ joyful time with them was a day event in London a few years ago. Ian’s last, I think. They have since cultivated  a marvelously wide field of expertise.

Richard Vobes

Nowadays my useful, truth telling sources range from Mike Adams in Texas ( Health  Ranger),   who has developed into a very canny commentator: David and Gareth Icke and the newish kid on the British block, Richard Vobes, who nails the issues facing Brits and our threadbare local councils, as well as global issues, from behind a screen of well meaning bumbledom!

Amazing Polly, Kerry ( Camelot) and a few others. Less nowadays from the beleaguered Deborah Tavares in fire bedevilled California,
Today’s 9/10th Feb ) fascinating interview is Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin. Have a look? Its long: I haven’t finished it yet. They chat easily , like old friends. Superb editing!
My allotment is a great solace, as are our two tortoiseshells, who keep down the pigeons and voles. I sit by their new state of the art kennel some late afternoons to watch the setting  sun light up the golden coats of the neighbouring Herefords.

Ian Crane

Reminds me of early morning broadcasts from Ian in his Lancashire field of cattle, in those fracking days.      ( the company we all loved to hate is now despoiling bits of mainland US  ( Texas )  for gas. While Bill Gates buys up as much agricultural farmland as possible , in order to. depending on your chosen rabbit hole, reduce/ manipulate the population through limiting food.

I still miss Ian (picture)  as a farseeing compassionate man and a mentor. One day I will replay some of the DVD recordings of Alternative View.
I wonder if we will all ever again meet? Those brief events were an excitement and an education, tho we must all have had a thoroughly unwelcome WiFi exposure. . Zoom just doesn’t cut it!

Brer Fox

I discovered a well hidden new 5G mast installation on the farm neighbouring the forest boundary. It was well tucked into the forest shelter, but visible from a thick bramble patch on the forest edge. I’m keeping an eye, *Brer Foxlike,
* Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear – along with Br’er Rabbit share a common title, which is a term for “brother” and was an especially prominent form of address in the Uncle Remus stories.
…. but what it really needs is exposure/ removal. Unfortunately any people who are fit and strong enough to do that are unaware as is the whole town. There will be widespread unexplained illness in a few years. As in Gateshead (Mark Steele filmed that frequently to great effect ).  I’ve warned naturopath / alternative practitioner colleagues, but….
Very best wishes to you and yours. And enjoy your writing adventures. I had thought of a similar informal venture, but the material keeps going into my correspondence!
I think I don’t have the time or discipline to marshal it into anything coherent.
I look forward to reading the links below.
Very best wishes

 

It’s Over – prepare for a future without faith

by Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack

For those of you that read my other sites I give the topic and summary followed by a link to that site but on this occasion I find the content so important, especially as I am a Christian, so I’m going to publish it in full with a link back to the originating article which is via The Conservative Woman,

TOO many Christians in the UK are living with an illusion. Let me tell you plainly: it’s over. The days of being a Christian country have gone, and they are not coming back any time soon. It is imperative that we grasp this. Instead of pretending we are living in a pale imitation of the past, we have to work out how to live in the present and prepare for the future.

I pray (literally) that there might be a recovery of both church and nation, that the Holy Spirit will sweep through the land and we will have godly leaders in church and state. In the meantime, until God does this, we Christians have to get our own house in order. Merely doing what we have always done in the hope that this time it will work is to embrace failure.

True reform of society will not come about by government edict: politics and attempting to transform the state is not the answer. Hungary has a pro-Christian government which, unfashionable though it may be, I admire, but go to church there on Sunday and you will find very few fellow worshipers. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban once said that as a politician he could provide people with things, by which he meant material help and the creation of a different social structure where people could flourish, but he acknowledged that he could not provide people with meaning.

The thing which should truly worry us is not the future of the Western liberal democracy we are so used to. political victories and the promotion of policies of which we disapprove are as nothing without foundational cultural change. The major concern of the Christian should be the future of the faith. Without the faith there will be no hope of recovery and rebuilding that which we have lost.

Those churches which have compromised with and embraced secular culture, especially the LGBTQ-etc ideology and the racialisation of society, are gradually emptying and are mainly sustained by a combination of elderly parishioners and the inherited wealth of earlier years. But are the churches which hold to orthodox biblical beliefs building resilient disciples able to resist the growing pressure against Christianity and counter it with faithful lives?

Comfortable in our fading position in society, we are about to encounter an entirely new situation. Our position is like that of the Israelites who left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea and traveled through the wilderness before encountering the River Jordan. They had to cross it into new territory, dangerous territory, the like of which they had never experienced.

If we are to survive and thrive in this new territory we have to change tactics. Some evangelicals are oriented towards relevance, making the presentation of the gospel ‘seeker sensitive’. Others have a transformational outlook, engaging in the culture wars on behalf of Christian viewpoints. What we need is a third option: we have to become a counter-culture.

This means more than being different from the world; we should be that already. Rather it means that we should be concentrating on building a Christian sub-culture of connected individuals and congregations who are consciously trying to support and encourage each other. We may have to wean ourselves from those institutions we have become accustomed to but which are indifferent, if not opposed, to the faith, and build new Christian institutions in areas such as education. The health and strength of the Christian community should be our main concern as we face the problems to come.

We have to develop at least two new mindsets. First, we have to accept that we are a minority. It is no good telling ourselves that most of the good people in the UK share our basic viewpoints, that it’s just a minority of radical progressives like Stonewall who have infiltrated the institutions and gained control. The reality is that the progressives have gained complete control, and through education and the media they have changed the social outlook of the West. We have to accept that biblically orthodox Christians are in a small minority and that we are on our own.

Then we have to abandon pragmatism and adopt an open mindset. In our churches, whether it is evangelism, influencing society or restructuring our denominations, we try to do the possible. One of the greatest weaknesses of pragmatism is that it doesn’t leave much room for God. We tend to review the situation, make our plans and then ask God to bless what we have put in motion.

We should be practical, but focusing on the possible can produce a failure mindset when our ‘possible’ plans fail to materialize. I am at that stage in life when I can look back over decades of ministry and seeing church bodies producing plan after plan, each of which was going to transform the church and make it ‘vibrant’, ‘exciting’ and ‘relevant’. One by one they have run into the quicksand only to be replaced by another ‘vibrant’ etc plan. This leads inevitably to fatalism.

We have to develop an open mindset, able to trust in God and explore. A couple of centuries ago risk-takers were leaving their comfort zones and going into the unknown, opening up the physical and scientific world. As knowledge grew a managerial mindset took over, a risk-averse mindset focused on control. This is the situation the church knows today. It is the mindset which is failing God’s people today, and it will fail God’s people tomorrow.

There is no panacea which will immediately revitalize the church and open all the doors now closing against us.  We start with ourselves, and our reaction to God’s revelation. We cannot impact others until we have been impacted by God personally. Every true church reformation starts at the grass-roots. I’d suggest we start with the Bible and in particular the book of Acts and I Peter, an epistle written specifically to Christians under pressure in a hostile environment. Not trying to replicate the early church but learning lessons for today’s church. We must become individuals growing into unity, prepared to question and support each other, prepared to explore our situation and share our findings.

This article is a ‘cornerstone moment’ for anyone with any faith in anything and the sooner the general population realize that the New World Order have as one of its aims the abolition of religion and its replacement by a universal so-called religion of Chrislam. The current pope and whom I believe will be the last pope believes everyone should get vaccinated, he believes that the population should be reduced, and that the attitude towards Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, should be set aside in favor of Satan. Yes really. See my link yesterday.

What is organic?

We went to a farm shop in Farringdon yesterday and I saw a leaflet that jumped out at me and reminded me of the necessity to go back to basics, or fundamentals, and see for example what we are really doing with our food. This is the front and rear side of a card published by the soil Association. We should never assume that a fact or word is too obvious to be defined or redefined.

 

 

 




Time at my computer + a Boring Film

I just felt like putting in this one. It has no relevance to the article.

A fanfare in the face of chaos?

I cannot remember living in such exciting times where the stakes are high and getting higher. At stake is the human being with all its glorious creativity and spirituality which is under threat from agents that think that artificial intelligence is enough to run the planet. Each day, there is a new chapter. each day I learn something new, and each day I inoculate myself against fear through pre-knowledge of what is to come. This is a life of luxury for my inquiring mind.  This is the time when our characters and our belief systems are challenged. When we do nothing we slip back into a mass mind psychosis with all the others and lose our sense of identity

So this is confession time. I struggled to remember a time, it must have been 20 years ago now when I would use my old-fashioned PC for the occasional email mainly limited by the slow download speed.  I think it was about 256 kb per second.

To the concern of my partner I now spend the better part of my day on what is a fascinating bordering on an addiction, but maybe I do myself down here I think I will discover my motives when I am more fully into this article

#  Very beautiful love in action – short video.

#  A personal relationship with Jesus Christ must be avoided at all costs – the Pope
Pope Francis Orders Christians To ‘Pray to Satan’ for ‘Real Enlightenment’
https://rumble.com/v4c1qni-pope-francis-orders-christians-to-pray-to-satan-for-real-enlightenment.html
# the Putin – Tucker interview which was watched 75 million times in 24 hours
# Arctic Sea Ice continues its stonking recovery. the ice climbed to a 21 year high on January 8th 2024

A very boring film

I have just come from one of the most boring films I have ever seen. It was an Irish language film called The Quiet Girl. For some unknown reason a young girl of 10 or 11 years of age is transferred from her dysfunctional family (non-communicating father) to a cousin which seemed to be equally dysfunctional.  Men seem to have the greatest difficulty in communicating and can hardly get a sentence out. No one smiles. The dialogue was very sparse I suppose because the intention is to show that people are traumatized and undemonstrative.I see this sort of thing every day.

I know the local Reel Films club want to show different films but why should I pay for something when it teaches me absolutely nothing. The loudest laugh of the evening was when the young girl was asked if her mother made pastry with butter or margarine. That shows how desperate the writing was. And yet it had been submitted for prizes at this that and the other Festival. It was shortlisted for an Oscar for best international film. When I go to a movie I want a little bit of joy, perhaps even escapism and I don’t want to see acts of violence. The best part of the film was when the screen went black and the credits started.

Soon after the film started I realized that there was no escape. Francoise seemed to be involved in it. I did not feel like I could walk out so I can tinted myself with staring at the floor. How did I occupy my mind? Mainly looking for something that was even remotely interesting. I saw two people clear out a cow shed with a large broom. That is how desperate it was. I was effectively imprisoned because I did not want to walk out in front of everybody.

Occasions when I have walked out

#The last time I walked out was at a production in Dusseldorf which was a modern opera that was so ghastly that I left for the sake of my health.
# Another time I walked out of a church in Euston Road London where there was a very mathematical and avant garde organ recital.
# Another time was in Bristol when a West End show had been transferred to the provinces but the same performers were not involved and the roles had been given to local people.
# In Cardiff, I walked out of a film because the volume was so loud that it was hurting my ears. It was Oppenheimer.
# On another occasion I walked out of an organ recital because a woman had come in with three young children. She should never have been admitted and the children fretted and cried, and ruined my concentration. That was in Finland

So it will come to no surprise to you to know that my tolerance is quite low. I am acutely sensitive to sound and it is one of the reasons I don’t enjoy going to live performances since people have a habit of rattling sweet packets, talking to each other etc.

It is of course easier to walk out if you are on your own. If you are with someone we have to agree and perhaps one person will want to give the benefit of the doubt and hope that things will get better. In my experience they rarely do

I don’t know what state of mind I would have to be in to endure solitary confinement I might end up watching ants crawl across the wall or listening to distant sounds and try to make sense of them or fantasizing about having huge meals and being free. Maybe my mind would go into a state of hibernation or were still break down all together. This case I would ask a good lord to take me into his arms and leaves this transitory life




How do we write a book?

Do you write a book or does it write itself?

I find that when the time is right, a book will write itself. I have written three books on energy and auras and I wrote from my heart and the whole thing was finished in a month. The book was not up to any scientific or academic purist standard but then it was telling a story of an individual and his discovery of a particular phenomenon. In a way, this diary is a type of book. I find a theme for each day ‘discovers’ me and as I have said before, I wonder where I get the inspiration from for continuous new material I suspect from the Morphogenetic field as Rupert Sheldrake would say. We do not possess anything.

There are so many how-to books so I don’t want to duplicate. My friend John is publishing something on quite an esoteric theme and I think it is the attitudes that I want to get across not so much do this and do that. You have to read through other matters but you will get enough clues to orientate you if you read the material below carefully. John’s book is still at the first trimester stage but the fetus has life.

Before setting pen to paper as we say you need to decide the target audience. If you write for everybody you write for nobody. If it is a scientific matter you have to decide the level of achievement is it for high schools, graduates, PhDs, professors, or just the so-called man in the street. There is a difference between popularizing, and dumbing down. The latter can be seen as patronizing and simplistic so do with care

If I’m in writing mode I tend to take great notice of any idea that comes to me. It is like a bird landing on my shoulder. It will not be there forever and although you think you will never forget the idea, it is remarkably easy to forget the details. I carry a mobile phone which functions as a tape recorder (that shows you how old I am) but if you don’t have one or don’t like carrying them than a notebook will do. I do not use books because I cannot read my own writing which is not hugely helpful.

Do not forget that ideas occur at night and in dreams. It is naive to think you will remember all the details when you’ve had your first cup of tea or coffee and so again it is a good idea to keep a notepad and a light by your bed

One of the best writers I have come across is Bill Bryson. He has a great talent for integrating historical detail and has a dry sense of humour which makes a real page turner, even the dullest subject can spring to life in his hands. I think with his factual books he does add a touch of creativity from time to time but then that is harmless. I have seven of his books. I read them in the evening and try and cast aside the other more serious material of the day

The meat of the comment about writing is near the bottom of this piece and is about the language used by the writer versus the language used by the intended recipients. It is very easy to write into thin air and miss your target completely by a mismatch of the cover design for example and the mentality of the potential clients. Please please get a knowledgeable person to read the script be it a smaller or large book. If you are using a standard publisher then they will do the job for you and remember if they are critical they are only trying to maximize the interest of the book so if they dismiss some of your cherished ideas then bite your tongue.

Amazon can publish your book either on Kindle or hard copy but you have to do the marketing and to be fair some people make a success of it. The devil lies in lack of detailed planning and preparation. Vanity publishing or self-publishing can be good but don’t forget that the publishers have their own well-developed network of potentially interested people. Follow the rules and don’t send your work to many people at the same time. That would be called messing people around.

Ask for technology I strongly recommend speech-to-text as you can ‘write’ as fast as you can speak. It does require considerable attention and experience to use this medium. You need to proof read as you speak. It is a good idea to shut yourself away from telephones and visitors. I could not manage an average of 1500 words per day if I had to actually type all the material.
Some people write better in the mornings, some right better in the afternoon’s and some in the evenings but with other people it doesn’t really matter. I am pretty much online all the time from when I wake up so whenever I get an idea I write it down. Most of the diary entries you see here arise from one sort. “A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.” Paul Klee same with text, one idea leads to another.

 

Here is one of my chats with my friend John.

Brian: I have a decreased tolerance or even the  ability to communicate at all with people who are not not just approximately on the same wavelength but exactly.  I think this is a refining of souls going on because it’s not personal I just look at someone and think ‘I don’t know who I’m looking at’  It seems very judgmental as in the Old Testament.

John: Being a scientist separates you from 95% of society in the first place because you’ve got a different language and people like lawyers have got a different language too, and they seem to be able to communicate with the general public a little better even though what they write is unreadable.

You’re separated as a scientist. It therefore becomes clearer  to you because you can sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of information, provided you’ve got a wide enough background. The ordinary person goes wandering off things in all sorts of different directions and then you have to point out the logic of that.

I find it fun to do that. but your biggest problem is the informed intransigents.  They say ‘yes we have the knowledge’ and you go ‘well what is the knowledge’ and they say, we don’t know but we have it.  This becomes a really big problem especially with the general public. It is a very difficult thing and that’s why they come up with this thing like covid, and the weather. All to programme people into fear and disassociation.

The ordinary person really can’t understand enough to be able to discern what’s going on, and in fact the powers that be have been controlling this for many many years with wars and all of these sorts of things. They give you a reason for why they’re having a war or a potential war or all of these conflicts are happening and in fact half of them are not happening in anything like the severity that is claimed.Some are far more serious and some are going on and they never tell you.

Brian:  Tucker Carlson’s has just interviewed Vladimir Putin and I think that will be very interesting indeed. How many wars has Russia started?

John:  not many.

Brian: With America I think they’ve interfered with 200 countries so it’s pot calling the kettle black time.

John:  whoever has got the media and political power is going to claim the high ground.

Brian.  Changing the subject I’m with a local Christian group one of whose members is behaving in a manner inconsistent with sharing . I find that visceral anger wells up within me and it is more comprehensive than just a fit of anger if say I’m going to miss a bus or something.  I cannot control it and it rises up, it’s like the tide coming up. Have you heard any experience of this sort of thing ?

John; yes, constantly. What do you mean that this person is opinionated and will not take your point of view, or is just plain wrong?

Brian: someone gave a little talk as a church service and I said I would just love a copy of that because it was so good but she refuses to give it to me on various pretexts. Currently I get the impression that although the message was given freely by the Holy Spirit she has purloined it to be a part of her intellectual property. I really hope I am wrong

John: you could make fun of them. Make light of things. You don’t have to hurt these people. If you just express your opinion and not offending them then there is no harm in that but if you call them an idiot and that’s fair enough. You can say that her attitude towards sharing is diametrically opposed to that which your ethics are supposed to encourage. Working in a scientific background everyone was trying to do things for mankind and all of this whilst getting large grants to do it,  so you want the grant or do you want to help people?

You find these contradictions in religious circles a lot  because people are trying to translate something which doesn’t apply to a material universe but they’re trying to apply it in a material universe. They are saying ‘go back to God, go to heaven. Well then, go to heaven! Don’t set up a society here to try and live here. You do things for the benefit of others and setting up these societies but as soon as they become that they become these formalized religions and then there is only one way to do things according to them and that’s not true.

Brian:  I reckon the best unit is one person and if they were a hermit that will be better. I question whether I’m a social being though I will dive into the swimming pool for say half an hour a day have my swim and meet lots of people and then retreat to sitting in front of this computer and reading and if I had to be with people all the time I go nuts because I’d have to continually translate down what I was thinking I can’t take it. It’s not what I’m here for.  You really have to do as much translation between yourself and scientists as you do to normal people because each cohort speaks a different language you really do as much translation to the scientists as you do to a normal people.

Brian: they speak Greek and you speak German and you know I mean if were you I would require continuous utter concentration on getting in to the mindset of certain scientists. You could use testinomies of doctors and I think you could use that  as a bit of pepper and salt in your book.

John: I don’t have colleagues. Anicdotal material will be rejected wholly by science. They have changed the definition of science in the dictionary. It’s only an acceptance of the natural or what is called naturalistic phenomenon. In other words if it ain’t Athens it aint fact and therefore the old idea that knowledge was pursuit of the truth is not the same now. Science was in fact pursuit of truth but in any field, and now they’ve restricted it to atomic processes.

They changed it two or three years ago and then they changed other words. They saw they were on a roll here so they changed the word pandemic to mean something else. They changed the word vaccines to mean something else. All these words they had their meaning changed. This is the ministry of Truth.

Brian: so it’s a bit like being in the Gaza strip. All the buildings bombed around you and you are just walking around.

John:  They have produced all of this filth and the majority of the population haven’t got a knowledge base or the moral compass. If you have not got that you ain’t gonna believe any of this stuff.

Brian: I was thinking also about what we spoke about – so much information – but one of my memes is that we should think less of leaves and branches and more of trunks and roots and I have come to the conclusion that I’m wrongly positioned or maybe I could go for an adjustment.  I think I should reside not on the edge not on the end of the branch and not as a leaf but maybe halfway up the trunk so I can see material coming up and down, life juice coming up and down, and I should really reconfigure my brain to say ‘ah they’re doing this thank you’ or ‘they’re doing this for that reason’ So I see clear thinking as – I don’t know whether it’s minimalism, economy, lack of ego. Some people think in beautiful ways and I want to join them.  Hence I don’t want to put my snout in the trough.

John: Do the clear thinkers ever say ‘I think clearly’.

Brian; even the clear thinkers?

John: How would you know you are thinking clearly?

Brian: they would make that claim because you don’t wear yourself out, you reach conclusions expeditiously and you can see all points of view.

John: because they see all points of view? How do you know?

Brian: humorously – well if I can’t see them it’s not worth anything is it?

John: this is a major philosophical point about the concept of subjectivity.  You are saying that clear thinkers are objective.  How come that be true when you’re a human being and you don’t have all available information from the universe around you.

Brian:  well as someone said  ‘God plays ten-dimensional chess so where do you want me on the board and that’s why I like near death experience videos. People at least have a peep into the second or third floor of the building and describe what is not there as well as what is there.  I like that very much. Those two things save my sanity, apart from Francoise, is viewing near-death experience videos and my writing this diary.

The trouble with this evangelical group – back it to it again – is that they’re so concentrated on being nice that they’re sometimes boring. With the miscreant I’m going to point out in what way she has gone against the precepts of a religion or movement and that is the epitome of sharing. This I expected to see and she’s doing the opposite for reasons that she may not be aware of because people don’t do their homework on themselves. They think ‘well I’m going to give everything to Jesus’ and they don’t do the nuts and bolts,  so there’s a lot of unsolved unsorted out material as there is with most of us but when you claim to lead by example then the standards have to be high and consistent ..

John: There is a lot of the stuff that people try to give to Jesus he doesn’t want.

Brian:  he doesn’t want to be worshiped that’s for sure.  I imagine Jesus in a t-shirt with a beard having a bite to eat and we associated him with a person in white gear but I think if if we could de mystify Jesus and just have the real bloke I reckon that would be a step forward in people’s minds.

I plan to travel to another country for a cultural and spiritual experience but I’m worried that I might be stuck there because by the end of May you know that Tedross can declare a pandemic for whatever reason and that will freeze travel as happened with residents of Australia.

So your book….

John:  I’m not formally writing a book in that sense because I find I’ve read so many of these books by scientists and things like that I find them boring they are all only half the story and if I write the full story bearing in mind  don’t know the full story then that’s the point I was just trying to make about being human and everything like this. YesI could write an interesting book but it’s the same type of material as all the other people write.

Brian: well you can have permutations and combinations of familiar material.  let’s at least be original.

John: No one is really interested.  I’m writing stuff from me, I’m not writing it for anybody else. I will show people if they want to see it at some point. I’m writing a piece at the moment about neutrinos and life and consciousness but the amount of background you got to know is just enormous.

Brian: this is a really daft idea but what about a comic book

John:  that means that I will have to spend my time going to  incorporate the illustrations when all I want to do is put the facts out.

Brian:  you get someone to do it for you I don’t know anyone   I reckon that people they’re overloaded with information, not surprising, but they’re not overloaded with images which are meaningful.  I reckon if you did just one chapter and tried to portray everything a but let me put my mind to it.

A common denominator with my current friends is that my friends are all doing things and I find that I attract the doers and don’t repel the others but they I don’t even see them. They look like bits of cardboard and I have no mechanism anymore to deal with them.  I mean I talked to some I went to yoga this morning, you have quite nice conversations with people but they’re very much on one level and reaching up is a different matter altogether.

John: this concept of I’m writing a book I suppose I am but I’m not writing it in the conventional sense. I don’t have characters in it. I haven’t found a major point I really want to put forward because it will as I write it, I realise how much my words contradict everything in the world.

Brian: so why not think of the most boring book you’ve ever read and then do something completely the opposite. I’ll look out,  I’ve got a mission .

John: I have a character I will call Nathan the Nutrino

Brian: sounds good. I will keep an eye open for an illustrator.




The complete Guide to booking hotels (in the UK)

I may be teaching my grandma to suck eggs* but this is the total of my experience over the years. The first hotel I ever stayed in was in 1955 when I was 11 years of age and it was at Number 7 De la War Parade, Bexhill. It was run by three formidable ladies of a certain age and all arrangements were done by telephone and letter. In those days letter writing was de rigeur. Everything was confirmed by letter,  normally handwritten. I remember the ladies because they had huge hearing aid batteries strapped round their waists.

* the meaning is ‘do not offer advice to someone who has more experience than yourself’ . These days this proverbial saying has little impact as few people have any direct experience of sucking eggs, including grandmothers . It is quite an old phrase and is included in John Stephen’s translation of Quevedo’s Comical Works, 1707

so why do people suck eggs? Many years ago people would suck out the egg contents by piercing the air at both ends and then sucking on one of the ends. You could reverse the procedure and blow out the contents also.

Just thought you’d like to know

A blast from the past

Anyway, I digress. Back to the 1950’s. Three months in advance my father would write a letter of request. An answer was received and we sent a cheque. This was acknowledged by letter so the whole thing took about two weeks,  what with one thing and another. The telephone numbers were different in those days it would be something like Bexhill 1234 and we had a rotary phone, quite spring-loaded, so it took some effort to dial the numbers. If I remember rightly this was classed as a long distance call and had to go through the operator. We traveled around by car. It was a black Morris 7 car with the Reg. EVB 829

How times have changed

As we would say, how times have changed. All information we need about any hotel anywhere is instantly available. You could almost say that too much information is available, so the skill is knowing what to look for. In a quaint recall of past times, search engines ‘crawls’ hundreds of billions of web pages. I always thought that crawling was associated with slow and laborious actions but I seem to get results in .06 of a second so I suppose it is what Terence Donovan the photographer called a speed of light job.

The main players

So if you want a hotel and use the word ‘book’ you will get The Usual Suspects: Trivago, Booking.com Hotels.com last minute.com kayak.co.uk Expedia .co.uk agoda.com and not forgetting our old friend airbnb. It should really be called Airb because very few of the establishments offer breakfast. Booking clients are often linked with review sites such as TripAdvisor. Hotel chains have their own system for example premierinn.com and travelodge.com.

The competition for the small percentage that the booking client gets means that the market is very competitive and therefore unless their standards are high they will drop into oblivion. If something is difficult to use, then find another booking agent. If the managers of the site cannot be bothered to keep their software  up-to-date then their services are probably not very good either.

Invisible establishments

I nearly forgot, some of the local establishments do not like advertising on the internet and if you can find a local information bureau, you might get a very good recommendation normally associated with an old-fashioned small bed and breakfast which will give you brilliant service.

Air B  and B?

I have had varying experiences with air BandB because there are so many places, and inspectors do not have the chance to visit every establishment (if they ever do) and check for quality so I have often discovered that what is offered is not what I actually find. When you have paid your money and you arrive on a dark evening at 7 o’clock it is really too late either to complain or two change. I can only repeat my recommendation of checking reviews and making sure they are recent ones, and going for places where they havevisitor’s photographs. Also, if you write an email query and someone does not respond then that is not a good sign

A test example of a booking situation

Anyway let’s imagine we are going to book three nights at a hotel at a seaside town we have not visited before. It is a good idea to decide why we are going to visit this particular place. If we are going to visit someone then it doesn’t really matter where it is, so long as it is within reasonable distance of your conference or meeting. If you are going for relaxation purposes the distance from the sea is probably a key thing. It is my preference but I always go for a hotel that provides breakfast. Sometimes a low rate does not involve a breakfast, I think we got that habit from America, and you need to allow up to 10 pounds for a ‘full’ breakfast as it is called. I have known £12.50 or £15.

What is more subtle are the services. If you are coming by car, it is quite rare for sea front hotels to have free parking. In big cities you have to be prepared to pay up to 20 pounds per day to park your car. In seaside towns there may be some free parking or you may have to use the street parking which unless it is a place like Brighton which I call London by the sea, may not be too bad. If it is free overnight and starts charging from say 8 am you have to be on the ball and go and feed a meter or pay your charges to avoid a fine.

This one should be examined carefully and the content read because the number of one star reviews are significant. If you wish to stay there provided the prices are good, then see what people found lacking so when you go to your room you can check that all is in order.

Trip Advisor – how to use

Of prime importance are reading the reviews before you make any bookings. Looking at TripAdvisor is an art in itself you will always get someone to give a one star review. You will find that they found a hair in the shower, and the staff were rude. They will say they will  ‘never darken their door again’. Strangely other reviews describe the staff as pleasant and cooperative. Why is that I hear you ask. As the old saying goes, It Takes Two To Tango and if you are polite and positive you will receive good service in exchange.

Dizzying price variations

I think it fair to say that you get what you pay for but here we have the problem of the airline type booking service. At one extreme I recall a hotel in Las Vegas that changed its prices every 15 minutes according to the weather and thus according to the demand plus if there was a pop concert or convention going on at the time. It really is a free market. Yesterday I wanted to book for a hotel with booking.com for a date two weeks away.

In my recent case It was a certain price, I think 130 pounds for two nights when I looked yesterday. It did warn me that only two rooms were available at this price. When I looked today, the price had gone up to 146 pounds. It is really a game of cat and mouse. The booking client is trying to figure out when people are most likely to book and therefore how much they need to charge in order to tempt people. If I look at the same hotel looking for tomorrow, it was 67 pounds.

A word of warning. Such are the systems available today that it knows when you have visited a site and got a quote. There is some software that interprets the revisit as a decision to go ahead so frequently the price goes up a little bit. You might like to make your final booking on another PC or mobile device.

Another warning – premium numbers.  You can pay 14 ppm if you call 0870 or some such. Search and find the local hotel number (you can tell by the prefix) so you do not get ripped off.

Test case

So now I am going to try booking at a hotel that I stayed at before, which was the Holiday Inn Express near Swansea. If I book in for tomorrow it’s 144 pounds with free breakfast and free parking. It is described as best value and the most popular. If I book in for a night two weeks hence the price for free breakfast and free parking is 125 pounds and that’s for one night.

Each hotel chain and system has its own policy so it is really worth spending time and energy doing your research. It does not have to be a lengthy process, just a focused process. You will find inevitably that Saturday nights are more expensive probably because there is entertainment for which people are prepared to make a special journey. I remember a travel lodge in Cardiff which was normally about 45 pounds only but went up to 110 pounds on the Saturday night. It is worth considering whether you are prepared to travel during the week or whether you have to spend weekends away particularly a Saturday.

There are some hotel groups who operate near or at service stations on motorways. Inevitably they do not offer breakfast but you will find a cozy arrangement with an adjacent shopping centre where there is an establishment that will do the job.

Check the booking conditions

Booking.com have a very good arrangement that you can book the hotel but not have to pay until a few days before. I find this respectful because if you change your plans it doesn’t matter, you just cancel and you don’t pay any money. Many hotel groups have different rates depending on the flexibility you might need. For example, fixed non-refundable rates are normally the cheapest and the most expensive are the ones where you can change your mind even at the last moment.

Complaints

What happens if you are arrive at a hotel and find that the room is not to your liking? Proprietors are very well aware that you could give a black mark to them on TripAdvisor so they will try and accommodate you. This happened to me when I went to a hotel in Milton Keynes which by the way is a god-awful place full of concrete and no soul but never mind. The room did not feel right so I asked for another one and got one straight away and it was great. Don’t do this Oliver Twist thing ‘can I have some more porridge?’. You are paying for a service, don’t forget.

If you’re not happy then you’re not happy and that’s it.

I remember on another occasion the TV did not work and because there was no engineer in the evening they gave me another room. I advise you not to unpack unless you are satisfied. On another occasion the room was very near a large ventilation fan. The hotel was fairly full but they did move me. On another occasion the room was right down the end of a long corridor and I asked if there was a room closer to the reception.

Dealing with receptionists

A word of advice here about dealing with receptionists. I noticed that they are often abused especially if the day of the new arrival has not been particularly good. I always treat receptionists with respect. I do not grovel to them but just treat them as human beings and if I have any questions I’ve tried to bunch them together. I like to make a joke or two. I will complement them on good reviews if they had them and if I’m returning a second time I will ask if anything has changed and say how much I’m looking forward to staying with them.

I have had very few bad breakfasts in fact I can’t remember the last bad one I had but having a quiet word with someone, not forcing them into a defensive position will always bring better results.

Advice about reviews

So back to reviews for a moment, ignore the one star ones and ignore the gushing five-star ones. If you find 80% of the reviews are five star and four star then you have a winner. Oh, and do check the dates of the review. There should be at least a couple per month and if no recent ones appear it may be that the management have changed. Some bad reviews are prior to a management change so the last year’s worth are the ones to take notice of.

Extras and conditions

Another thing to look out for is the provision of Wi-Fi. I don’t need it myself but sometimes in areas which don’t get a decent signal you may need one and be prepared for fairly substantial charges. Sometimes the hotel will have a Wi-Fi which is free for say half an hour. Be prepared for a little bit of confusion in finding the service provider and signing in. If you go to reception and tell them you have difficulty it will only be the fifth time that week that they have been asked so they will help you.

When I enter the room I do look for a letter of greeting from the manager and it gets my attention if it is up to date and relevant. It is also very nice if the details of the food available in the restaurant – if there is one – is announced. I do not do food in the room because I find on the one occasion I used it the food arrived cold and I had to pay a lot for it.

As for drinks, hotel prices I am afraid are more expensive than pubs though this is changing what with the recent tax on beer thank you Jeremy Hunt our UK Chancellor. If I was really mean I would sneak in the bottle of white wine and drink it while watching TV but that would put me down as a cheap skate wouldn’t it.

Noisy neighbours

As for noisy neighbours and shouting in the corridor I’m afraid this is part of being in a hotel and I don’t recommend that you get in your dressing gown, open the door and complain as you might get a response that is more direct than you might wish for.

The noise will die away but if it doesn’t, a call to the receptionist could send the night porter up to have a word. Friday and Saturday ‘post party’ guests can be a pain.

As for choosing a room it is sometimes a good idea to avoid a street facing room though you can never tell because if the double glazing is good it doesn’t matter and sometimes room spacing the back is just as noisy because of fans, delivery vehicles, dust carts that arrive first thing in the morning etc.

You may be tempted to pay extra for a sea facing room or a larger room but let’s face it most of us just want to go back into our room, watch TV and flop into bed.

Are you sure you need a car?

As for the location of the hotel, I should have mentioned this before, it may pay you to leave your car and use the existing bus service to move around . Seaside places normally charge quite a lot for parking and you don’t want to have to think to yourself, ‘will we be here one hour or two hours?’ . If you are of a certain age like I am you have a free pass (don’t expect that to work in Wales) then just get a day pass and save yourself some petrol and the worry about parking.
Coaches are ridiculously cheap (outside holidays). I can get to London from Bristol for £2.99 via Flexbus.

and finally

When I have finished my holiday I consider it a point of courtesy to write a review in TripAdvisor, I have written about two thousand over the years and I like to think that I have made some difference to the quality of someone’s experience.

Anyway folks I hope that has been of some help for you. The summary is, don’t feel rushed by pop-ups saying these are the last two rooms, decide how important a sea front hotel is, what to do with your car, and look for unmentioned add-ons.

Happy Traveling

Ed.

 




Poem – Still He Walked

For me, a quiet day. I rose very early to make some bread. Not every day has to be full of activity. I did come across this poem on WhatsApp and I think it is worth all our attention, at least from those who believe in Jesus and his mission.

He could hear the crowds screaming *”crucify” “crucify”…*
He could hear the hatred in their voices,
These were His chosen people.
*He loved them,*
And they were going to crucify him.
He was beaten, bleeding and weakened…
His heart was broken,
*But still He walked.*

He could see the crowd as He came from the palace.
He knew each of the faces so well.
*He had created them.*
He knew every smile, every laugh, and every shed tear,
But now they were contorted with rage and anger
His heart broke,
*But still He walked.*

He searched the crowd for a loving face and He saw very few.
Then he turned His eyes to the only one that mattered
And He knew that He would never be alone.
He looked back at the crowd…
At the people who were spitting at Him
Throwing rocks at Him and mocking Him
*And he knew that* *because of Him,*
*They would never be alone.*
So for them, He walked.

The sounds of the hammer *striking the spikes* echoed through the crowd.
The sounds of His cries echoed even louder,
The cheers of the crowd, as His hands and feet were nailed to the cross,
Intensified with each blow.
Loudest of all was the still small voice
Inside His Heart that whispered *”I am with you, my Son”,*
And God’s heart broke.
*He had let His son walk.*

Jesus could have asked God to end His suffering,
*But instead He asked God to forgive.*
Not to forgive Him, but to forgive the ones who were persecuting Him.
As He hung on that cross, *dying an unimaginable death,*
He looked out and saw, not only the faces in the crowd,
*But also, the face of every person yet to be,*
And His heart filled with love.
As His body was dying, His heart was alive.
Alive with the limitless, unconditional love He feels for each of us.
*That is why He walked.*

When I forget how much My God loves me,
…I remember His walk.
When I wonder if I can be forgiven,
…I remember His walk.
When I need to be reminded of how to live like Christ,
…I think of His walk.
And to show Him how much I love Him,
*…I wake up each morning, turn my eyes to Him,*
*…….And I walk.*

Author Unknown