Over Christmas I received a gift from my sixteen year old god-daughter. It came in a small box which had the words, 'FOR SOMEONE WHO'S PERFECT' emblazoned in gold letters on it. For it to have been perfect 'WHO IS' and not 'WHO'S should have been written there, but us perfect ones have to learn to overlook these minor flaws or our life would be even more unbearable than it already is. It is not easy being perfect, but then as a friend once pointed out nobody ever said it would be.

Inside the box was a red enamel, shield shaped badge which had 'PERFECT' stamped across it in gold. I immediately pinned in to my shirt, where it stayed until the shirt absolutely, positively had to be torn off my back and washed.

But when you think about it, what is not perfect? We have constructed imperfect concepts, such as 'nine out of ten' for instance, but what in this whole world and beyond in its essence is not perfect? A tree, misshapen by decades of wind, or the ruin of an old monastery can make the perfect picture. They are not perfect objects in themselves, but perfect in their setting.

Now, given that I am also in some sense perfect, it behoves me to say what I think makes a perfect person. What do perfect people know, for instance? They know enough to know that they do not really know anything. They only know right from wrong or what is true or false in the most limited degree and for the shortest space of time. They may know what to do, but not how it will work out. That is at best an educated guess.

Perfect people try not to take sides. They may contribute to a cause in some way but are not fool enough to think that the contribution itself is making a difference, just that the act might influence events in some way. People raved against Apartheid and went to some very extreme lengths to overturn it, but in the end it was those who simply stopped buying South African oranges and anything else South African that made the difference.

Then I ask myself can a person who has made as many mistakes as I have truly be considered perfect? Only if the mistakes are recognised and in my case that's easy as they have been real blockbusters. Perfection is then restored and like a cork held under water seeking its natural place in the scheme of things, I bob back up to the surface. Or so it has always been, but here are no guarantees. No guarantee that life will continue to treat me so kindly. But I have no doubt that recognising what I am, and working with what that is has brought me into my present state of laughingly perceived perfection.

Life is full of miracles, life itself being the main one and perhaps the lesson to be learnt is that perfection is everywhere in everything. Whether you see it or not is all about how you look at things, yourself included.

Whether 'Beak’ came from the old school expression, meaning 'headmaster’, or from the coincidental fact that most 'executives’ seem to have a particularly prominent proboscis, I don’t know. The late, famed Hammond Organist, Graham Bond penned a song of that title. Of course, the record company chiefs had no idea what he was on about.

The thing is Beaks, be they Masters of education or business are freaky. It goes with the territory. They hide it well, but you can bet your very last Twinkie that behind the calm, measured, authority there lays a bubbling, fevered brain of wall-bouncing freakiness. One minute they seem to be the patron saint of balance and rectitude, the next a mouth-frothing, megalomaniac of gargantuan proportions.

You want proof? Look no further than the present financial crisis. Exactly how long ago were Bankers and Stockbrokers making profits so obscene as to be virtually incalculable to mere mortals, such as ourselves; a year and a half, perhaps? Now, they are being bailed out to the tune of many hundreds of billions of dollars, and the political Beaks are telling us how smart they have been. Freaky, freaky, freaky! Beaky, beaky, beaky!

The question of our time, of The Age perhaps is 'Can you take the Freak out of the Beak?’ It sounds a tall order, but let us look at it objectively. Being beaky makes you freaky. When you think about it, it is understandable. Put yourself in a Beak’s position. You wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see yourself in all your beakiness. “What a very fine Beak I am,” you say to yourself, puffing out your chest as if there were medals pinned to it. Roman Generals had a man on board their chariots to whisper humbling words in their ear, Kings had their Fools, but Beaks only have themselves to listen to and that’s what makes them freaky. They are an island to themselves, and it sends them loopy.

So next time you meet a Beak, have some sympathy, as The Stones would say, but not too much or you will end up seeing them as they see themselves, and not as weirdo’s of the nth degree.

From Bank Managers to Media Exec’s, from Politico’s to City Slickers, there are ever more among us and they are all as mad as Hatters. They think they run the world, but don’t. They have made a mad world for themselves and they can’t even run that, let alone the real world which runs itself, despite their freaky beakery.

One day, the Beaks will all be gone and Little Johnny will be told to be a good boy, or The Beak will come to freak him; a very scary prospect in that far-off time to come, and not exactly something to go to sleep on in the here and now.

"With the fall of Marxism, all we are left with is Heroic Materialism", said Sir Kenneth Clark in a seminal TV series called 'Civilization' which examined the progress, achievements and possible future of the human race, originally broadcast some thirty years ago. He also made the comment that machines might not offer us the freedom they seem to promise, but instead have the power to enslave. 'Heroic Materialism' did not impress Sir Kenneth and I think that the intervening period has proved him right. It has also seen the rise of socialist capitalism, and the ever increasing control of government over the people.

Slogans involving words such as 'equality' and 'fairness' are heard more and more as the screws are tightened by new armies of enforcers from parking meter attendants, to 'community police', and managers of just about everything from hospitals to transport systems to local authorities. These legions are aided by CT cameras, speed cameras, mobile phone cameras, and microphones that most of us don't even know are there.

What is the way out of this dangerous and ultimately failed relationship? We can only find that out by a process of divorce; divorce from the philosophies and politics that we previously adhered to, not in favour of another but in the realization that we are simply not married anymore.

What is needed is a system which promotes 'uncoloured' information and the right of people, particularly those in a position of authority, to say what they actually think. The adversarial aspect of democracy contributes to society's failure in this respect. It is enshrined in The Party System by which our representatives are prohibited from backing initiatives to which the party does not subscribe and from even stating opinions which run against Party Policy. It is inevitable that this will restrict their actions and statements. In fact it would be a miracle if you could find someone in a position of political power who could truly say that they had at all times been able to speak and act as they wished.

The world is a lot more complex than it was and The Party System does not allow for anything but a very broad brush approach. Now, what if you had to make up your mind on who to vote for, without the Party tags? What if you had to make up your mind on the basis of character and policies alone? How much more would you want to know about the candidates and how much more could they tell you?

As I see it, things are moving in that direction with politicians being forced more and more to act either in cooperation with their opponents or counter to their own Party's stated position. The danger in this must be that instead of several parties vying for office, you end up with one party in absolute control, which is socialist capitalism in its ultimate form.

No, divorce from the entire Party structure is the only answer. Vote for Independents, because they are independent, as we would wish ourselves to be. The world is moving too fast for us to settle for anything less than divorce from the Party dinosaur. Either it is, 'for the Party by The Party' or else it is, 'for the People by the People'. Which do you prefer?

My grandmother lived near the top of a very steep hill. She and I used to bicycle down to the village and back. Strangely, I can't recall the thrill of flying down the slope, but I vividly remember the sweat of pedalling back up. There came a day when Gran could not make it all the way and had to push the bike up the last bit. She saw a practical aspect to this. It would help her gauge her strength as the years went by, and over the course of time she did in fact monitor her aging by the distance she could bicycle up the hill.

They say that you reach your physical peak in your teens or early twenties. I was a pretty good competition swimmer at school, but have always felt that my form was best between thirty-five and forty. I suppose most people are busy working and raising a family at that age, but I found myself living by a beach, writing some books and working out a lot. I had expected to find some deterioration since my teens, but particularly in terms of stamina and strength, I actually won out. A friend who is in that 'middle' age right now and works out every morning has the same impression.

But when you reach fifty you are on the slippery slope. There is no getting away from it. I could still run five miles in the evening without difficulty, but at around fifty-five running on anything other than sand or a treadmill caused tendon sprains, so I went to the gym. That was ten years ago, and I am now pretty much where Gran was at, watching the rot set in.

I was taking in an exhibition of fauvist art the other day, works from the very early twentieth century. It suddenly struck me how the nudes, mostly men and women in their thirties and forties had bodies that looked older than mine does today. Unless those people were in 'the flush of youth' their skin just sagged. Their life was full of exertion, more than ours today, but it wasn't a physical work-out and they didn't look 'in shape' although they may have been healthy inside. This made me think of those perfectly sculpted specimens who look the picture of health, but keel over from excessive exercise, or incur some impairment. The lesson is, as you get older you had better see the writing on the wall and adjust accordingly.

I have still been running a mile or so, on the soft, beach sand. I have the strength and lungs to do it, but my joints are starting to complain. I guess it's time to call it a day and look for another way to pump the blood around my system. "Your ballroom days are over, baby!" Jim Morrison was wont to sneer. He was talking about revolution, but they came to mind when I was considering my plight. Well come to think of it Jim, maybe they are not. Maybe they are just beginning.

With Russia’s expansion at the end of The Second World War, the expression 'White Russia’ went out of use, but now that Russia is pretty much back to its former size, I think that it again has a purpose. It was not a racial identification, but more a cultural one, attached to the Western part of the Country. A hundred years ago, St Petersburg (for awhile called Leningrad) was considered the City most like Paris and undoubtedly European. All European Royalty was closely linked and the Tsar was no exception, being the cousin of the English King, George V. They were not only close friends but looked very like each other and it is to George’s discredit that he failed to extricate the Romanov Family from the firing squad - but that’s another story.

To my mind White Russia is more European than, say Czechoslovakia, Rumania, or the countries that form part of the old Yugoslavia, let alone the new applicants to the European Club such as Georgia and Turkey. The cause of the problems currently encountered in Georgia, and their ramifications as regards the neighbouring countries are down to a lack of acknowledgement of White Russia’s essential European nature. It is also down to the determination to create a political entity out of Europe; unfortunate bearing in mind that there is no democratic mandate for the construction this political Behemoth, in fact quite the reverse.

What I am suggesting is that White Russia should become part of the European Community. The obvious stumbling block is the question of how one part of Russia could be a part of this consortium and the other, not. It brings us back to what The European Community actually is. If it is simply a trading entity, then there isn’t a problem. Different internal tax structures can exist in different States of America, so why not between one part of Russia and another?

Whether Russia would actually consider such a proposition is another matter, but it might be pointed out that they play in the European Soccer league, so why not at least give this proposal some thought?

Yes, it sounds an outrageous idea but given the overall state of the World I have come to the conclusion that the guys in charge are a bunch of plonkers, and in such times the great unwashed have the right to pick up the ball and run with it, and as I am more unwashed than most, this is my contribution. Have you got a better idea?

Possibly a better idea is for a 'White Russian’ to remain a Vodka cocktail, but then as the saying goes, 'If you don’t go to them, they will come to you.’ Now from where I stand, the only guy in charge who is not such a plonker is a guy called Putin and as he has all the oil and gas that Europe is going to need, maybe this silliness will put me in good standing when London is renamed Putingrad, a few years from now.

This is the heading of an early chapter in the first of Sir Winston Churchill’s six volumes on The Second World War. It comes from The Bible, 'The years that the locust hath eaten.’ - Joel, ii, 25. Winnie was referring to the years when nothing was done, although the menace was clearly there to be seen.

I had hoped that that we were emerging from just such a period, but when I hear Barack Obama pledge to end America’s dependency on Middle Eastern oil, I wonder if we are still not stuck deep in it. What then are you going to depend on, Barack? South American oil, Nigerian oil, Russian oil, or maybe you reckon on destroying the Alaskan ecology, in which case perhaps you should swap running mates with McCain?

This is symptomatic of the conventional stance towards many of the subjects that I have covered over the last couple of years, and today it seems that there is not a politician on the planet who truly gets 'The Big Picture’. But are they to blame when it is primarily down to us; you and me. The way democracy works is that politicians listen to what we say and react accordingly. That is how they get elected. It is we, the public that will cause or not '….the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries which, even so far as they have already been unfolded, are already beyond comparison in human experience’. To quote Churchill’s closing remarks from that chapter.

How unaware and perhaps uncaring can we be? Well, to return to the outset of The Second World War, by a stroke of luck my father and his sister squeezed onto the last couple of ships which left the North Coast of France, with the German Army racing across Belgium towards them. I would like to say that they were on some heroic, last ditch, military mission, but the fact is that they were on holiday!

The issues of Global Warming, Pollution, Poverty, Population, Health, Energy, Renewable Recourses, Education, Trade, and Weapons, are matters that we must all consciously address if we are to expect our leaders to pay anything but lip-service to them. In today’s world, all these titles start with the word 'Global’, and it is inanely presumptive to think about dealing effectively with them on a national scale. National moves can certainly be made, but that is as far as it goes. We need to push our representatives into the International Arena on an ever increasing basis. Business is already way ahead of us. There is little or no control over International Business, and it is not hard to see that we are suffering the consequences.

It is also no good for someone to say, “I am heavily involved in this or that very worthy cause, and I have simply no time to waste on these broad-based topics.” I have news for you, dear one. Your very worthy cause will be hit way past the long grass and into the trees unless you do spend some time considering this information.

We won’t agree on solutions, but we can agree that they must be found, and found right away. If we don’t have a clue as to what the problems really are, they won’t be. We need to see action, but without some form of conscious, individual effort at understanding the mess we are in, there is no hope of our leaders being able to tackle the situation and stay in office. That is after all, how our hard-won freedom works.

Some years before The War of Independence, George Washington, was chopping up a pile of wood (not cherry wood) when a small, British military contingent happened to be passing. In the middle of the marching infantry was a carriage containing Miss Elizabeth Fitz Herbert, the eighteen year old daughter of General Edward Fitz Herbert who rode proudly alongside.

“My good man,” the General addressed George, a tall, good looking youth at the time. “Is this the road to Boston we are on?”

“That much depends on the course you take from here, Sir.” George replied. Due to his wood chopping, he was in a sweaty, breathless state. His sleeves were rolled up and the front of his shirt, undone.

The Generals daughter was obviously quite taken by the sight she saw, and by the nature of the man’s reply.

The General himself was less impressed. “May I remind you Sir, that there is a lady present, and you would do well to arrange your clothes accordingly.”

“My apologies Sir,” George said, buttoning up the front of his shirt. “I was not prepared for such a lady to be passing.”

“And your sleeves Sir, if you please. Your sleeves.”

“Surely Sir, given the nature of my task and your wish to reach Boston before too long, such formality serves neither of us well.”

“Let me be the judge of that, Sir. Your sleeves, if you please!”

George reluctantly rolled down his sleeves, and then was good enough to direct the General towards Boston by the quickest route.

Whether due to the beauty of the General’s daughter, or the pig-headedness of the General himself, the incident remained at the back of George Washington’s thoughts over the many long years which were to follow and make him a General too.

By the time The Bill of Rights came to be considered George’s stature was such that naturally he was asked for his opinion on what should be included in such a document. “The right to bare arms,” was his immediate reply.

Coming from a military man, as it did, his comment suffered somewhat in interpretation and has led to many more deaths than the War of Independence itself.

Rather than a nation proud to be sleeveless, there has arisen a multitude limping under the weight of the hardware that they perceive is their right to carry, and all because someone put an 'e’ in the wrong place, having in more ways than one, had the wrong idea.

When I was a young man (just yesterday, it seems) girls who went to Roman Catholic Schools were in great demand, and it wasn’t for their knowledge of the catechism, believe me.

We know a lot more today about indoctrination techniques and how effective they sometimes can be, not only when applied to religion, but to politics, business, consumerism, just about anything you care to name. 'Sometimes’ is of course the operative word as these methods can horribly backfire, hence the popularity of young ladies with a Roman Catholic education. In truth, most children brought up in a faith school of one kind or another are likely to end up no better or worse for it, but it is undeniable that there can be extreme adherence to the principles taught, as well as extreme rejection.

Whether you like to call it indoctrination or not, the exclusive teaching of a particular faith is an undeniable attempt to influence and control. We are already living in such a controlled World that last week a well known British TV presenter, Noel Edmunds had cause to say, “From the time I get out of bed in the morning to when I go to sleep at night, I am bound to have broken the law in some way or other.” It is a lack of perspective that has led to this predicament; one law piled on top of another without regard to those that exist already.

Now, if by 'Faith Schools’ we meant schools that lay particular emphasis on Human Faith in all it’s forms, with lectures from Christians, Rabbis, Sheiks, Shaman, Buddhists, Ayatollahs, Agnostics (who must also have faith in their belief), Shinto’s, Hindus and the rest, that would be a different story. That surely is part of what we term 'a broad-based education’.

There is nothing to beat the wider perspective on life that understanding different points of view can offer. One of the characteristics of contemporary education is to push inexorably for more and more specialisation. This specialist tendency has brought great benefits over the past one hundred and fifty odd years, but at what personal cost and at the expense of exploring how many blind alleys which could have been avoided with more of an overview?

The story of Crick and Watson and the discovery of the structure of DNA is a case in point. These two men looked at the research that those who had spent longer and were arguably more advanced in their thinking on the subject. By considering the overall picture, it gradually became clear to them what the structure of DNA was, while this insight still eluded those who had more in-depth knowledge and experience.

People who have been abroad for some length of time also perceive an advantage over their peers when they return. Their knowledge of other ways that things can work has been expanded. They can think 'out of the box’, if you like.

This stepping back to look at the overall picture, has a lot to do with what we call 'common sense’, and the more we focus in, the more likely we are to lose this vital perspective. It is essential that we don’t get lost in the detail, but this is what is happening now, more than ever as Noel Edmunds statement suggests.

A little learnin’ can be a dangerous thing as the song says, but a lot of only one kind can be fatal.

Only in a dream world could the UK come fourth in the Olympic medal table, and currently be second in the Paralympics. From previous form this suggests a Nation that has suddenly committed itself to a more healthy, active way of life - cycling to work, going to the gym, taking a 10 K run on the weekend, families going to Pilates classes together, and crowding out the swimming pools - and you would be so wrong!

It is true that there are more cyclists on the road and the London Marathon is overloaded by enthusiastic charity fund raisers, as for the rest, the British Nation are still the couch potato, junk food, candy bar addicts that have overfilled their Union Jack shorts since the end of the Second World War, as the beleaguered National Health Service will confirm.

So, how come this spectacular turnaround in the UK’s sporting results? The answer lies in another unhealthy National penchant, that of gambling, and in particular that of The National Lottery.

The National Lottery has made enormous funds available for the restoration of buildings of historical significance, and more relevant to this article has provided grants for athletes and athletic facilities, undreamt of fifteen years ago. It was John Major’s Conservative Government that instigated the Lottery and apart from the ensuing New Labour Government’s attempts to use the money for projects that would normally be covered by conventional taxes, the Lottery has gone from strength to strength, to the point that you should also place a bet on the person in front of you at the newsagents buying at least one Lottery ticket, if not half a dozen.

Lottery fever is more prevalent than the common cold and plays no favourites. It infects Grannies who can’t find the money to turn on the central heating to entire offices who form profit (when there is any) sharing co-operatives. It is useless telling them that they would be better off buying Premium Bonds, which will never lose them their initial investment and which statistically give you a better chance to win. It is the dream of the BIG WIN that is the spur; enough money that your miserable life will be changed forever so you can do all those hedonistically indulgent things that you have always dreamt of.

I can’t deny that there are those who have no such fantasies and play the lottery because it gives them more of a reason to watch the results on National TV and because it is all in a good cause, but my suspicion is that they are in a tiny minority and that it is the big time dreamers who are the spur to the Lottery’s success.

What the Country gets for its money is a proportionately miniscule number of athletes, fine tuned over many years to a condition way beyond the bounds of health, applauded by a Nation of sedentary onlookers, suffering from a range of potentially self-curable complaints affecting the joints, heart, kidney and lungs to name a few.

An extra reward has come to London in the form of the hosting of the 2012 Olympics. Without wanting to spoil anyone else’s 'fun’, if by then there is anywhere left in the World that does not have fast food and TV, can I please go there until it is over?

Hitler watched as the top German marksman was hopelessly outclassed by the Swiss competitor. “Your man is a brilliant shot,” he told the leader of the Swiss team.

“Not at all,” the Swiss replied. “We have many thousands more like him.”

This remark and the mountainous nature of the Swiss terrain were the main reasons why Hitler did not include Switzerland in his European expansion plans. It goes to show just what a protective force guns can be in the hands of a well trained citizenry.

No doubt that is what the Founding Fathers of the United States of America had in mind when they confirmed their citizen’s right to bear arms. However, there is also no doubt that the Swiss, who do not endorse the same universal mandate of gun ownership as exists in America are pro-rata, a good deal more expert in the use of their weapons than their American counterparts. Can the Founding Fathers have missed a trick somewhere?

It is a toss-up as to whether in America 'Gun Law’ reached its peak in the 'Wild West’, or whether in fact it is even wilder today, but what we do know is that in the days of the six-shooter and shotgun, when it came time to waste the bad guys the Marshall would have everyone leave their weapons on the edge of town. But surely that was in direct contravention of the American Constitution? Could it be that Wyatt Earp was a yellow-bellied pinko, and not the legendary lawman we all take him for, or was he simply doing what desperately needs doing again today?

This question might well be asked of the Republican 'pro-life’ Vice-Presidential nominee, as well as the others who are running for high office. The answers would surely be the most evasive load of bull because, like it or not America’s idea of democracy is a two-party system in which the power of the lobbyists reign supreme.

Of course the 'arms’ referred to in the American Constitution were muskets and flintlock pistols, not rapid fire weapons capable of decimating a bull elephant at half a mile. Who cares? After all, it’s just a bit of sporting fun. Say, how about having some long-legged bimbo in a bikini and Stetson loose off an AK47 at a cactus bush or a pic of Bin-Laden? That should boost sales some. And let’s have everyone carry an Ithaca pump under the driver’s seat and a three-fifty-seven Python in the glove box. It could come as standard on all full spec 4 wheel drives. How about that?

And you think that Barack will make a difference? Well, do you? What I know is that if he does a flak jacket won’t help him at all.

This is also the title of a 'Stones' song, but as to whether it is a case of art imitating life, I can't say.

What I can say, is there is not a year goes by when we don't hear of a host of natural disasters, overlaid by a series of viral epidemics. Will it, can it ever end, I ask myself or are we to be interminably immersed in this suffering?

It is the poorest people who seem to suffer the most, and there are necessarily more of them to suffer because they have more children. And why do the poorest bear the brunt of these fates? Presumably because anyone better off would not be living in those places. Of course, there are the exceptions to prove the rule; when an earthquake hits Los Angeles or the flooding of New Orleans for instance, but even then the worst hit seem to be in the poorer parts of the city.

There is nothing new about this. In Northern, industrial cities, the East side has always been the poorest part of town because the prevailing westerly winds ensure that factory fumes will cover that area.

But the dilemma goes further than that. Say, that a well is dug to provide fresh water where there was none before. Disease is lessened and everyone has a better life. Well maybe initially, but wait a few years and there will be a population explosion sinking them back into the mire that they so recently dragged themselves out of. This also fails to consider where the water was going before. A river which was fished by other people, perhaps? Who knows? All we do know is that there is a finite amount of fresh water and when it is taken, it cannot go where it went before.

At the end of the day, it is not the weather, the earthquakes, the volcanoes, tsunamis, or even the diseases which are out of control, it is us. We bring these things upon ourselves by being as many as we are, and unless we not only restrict but reduce our numbers we can only expect more, much more of the same.

We hear a lot about 'carbon footprints', but no one wants to talk about the biggest carbon footprint that anyone of us can ever make, which is to have a child. I have written a lot about the futility of the Western World lowering its carbon emissions when countries such as China make a mockery of such attempts, but China is the one country that has limited its population growth and knowingly or not, it is touching on the heart of the matter.

Not only are our numbers ensuring the continued misery and suffering of so many, but they are laying waste to the planets resources at a catastrophic rate. Unless we point the finger where it is hardest to point, we are on course for a fate worse than death in the truest of senses. We are out of control, and much larger culls than those seen today will soon be our fate.

“I vant to be alone,” was Greta Garbo’s famous wish, but she was more than just 'a separatist’. Separatists wish to be separate, but not alone, and in principle, it seems to me that their wishes should be granted assuming that they represent a clear majority of the group in question.

Classic films and stories such as 'Passport to Pimlico’ and 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill’ have long pointed out the potential folly of such separatist aspirations. Also, there is no finality attached to the separatist cause. A referendum on the issue of independence might well be held and the majority might well vote for it, only to change their minds a couple of years later.

When politicians talk about 'the sovereignty’ of a nation, they are talking so much nonsense. Over the years, nations have been changing their shape and constitution with the relentless inevitability of a chameleon changing colour. Only the name stays the same, and not always that.

However, one thing that I have noticed in the current Georgian dilemma is that neither the pro-separatist camp, nor the anti lobby have at any time claimed to represent the majority of the people in the affected (afflicted?) areas. I would be a lot more impressed if the people concerned were consulted in an open, objective fashion. This could provide a starting point from which to resolve any lack of representation that could be seen to exist, rather than provide a pulpit for the grandiose posturing of the Super Powers.

It is time that nations are seen for what they are; man-made constructs primarily placed there to control their inhabitants. All the instincts of tribal loyalty are called upon to support the construct, shored up by such notions as 'tradition’, 'heritage’, and 'the constitution’.

In Europe, the politicians are trying to ignore the fact that the population don’t want the larger political framework that is being foisted upon them, and in Scotland we have the ruling political party demanding autonomy from the rest of the UK, although whether the Scots themselves want it, is far from clear. These are two very different types of separatism, one swept under the carpet by the European bureaucracy, the other legitimised but with no substantiated mandate on the separatist issue itself.

Separatists can be very dangerous people, particularly those who in no way relate their wish to any kind of democratic notion. This breed of separatist is very likely to link itself to a larger outside entity, and have highly suspect motives. Such people are simply power seekers, using separatism as a front.

At the end of the day, what should be important are the people’s wishes, not those of any particular party or group, or the so-called 'sovereignty’ of any nation. As long as we allow these matters to be dealt with without specific reference to the people involved, we cannot expect a long-term solution of any kind. There will be patches put over the wound, but no healing of the wound itself.

The goal of any political construct should be to serve the people. Our goal must be to ensure that this is in fact the case. Without that prime imperative, freedom can only exist in our imagination.

There is a book called Oscar & Lucinda by Peter Carey. To me it is an ugly story, badly told by a writer of great distinction. As a piece of prose, it is a tour de force but that does nothing to temper my dislike of it. Mr Carey has since written many other stories from which I have derived much pleasure, and as so many people seem to think that this particular book has great merit, I will leave it at that.

The reason I mention it at all is because of the parallel Mr Carey draws between faith and gambling. Oscar, one of his two principal characters is brought up by a father of sternly puritan persuasion, so stern as to see Christmas as a fabricated creation, designed to corrupt. Behind his father’s back, Oscar is given a taste of Christmas pud, and it doesn’t taste at all sinful to him. As a result, while still a young boy, he rejects his father’s faith, seeing him as on the pathway to perdition, and throws himself on the doorstep of the local Anglican vicar, who takes him in.

Later, at University he is confronted by the fact that the Vicar does not have the means to support his studies, and it comes to him that God can lend a hand by making good a wager or two on the horses. His reflection is simply that faith is also a gamble. You place your bet and take your chances.

If you accept this premise, it would follow that you can play the odds. For instance, if you say, 'I believe in God’, you are probably on evens. Then again, if you say 'The world was created in seven days’, or 'It is a sin to be homosexual’, or 'Women clergy are ungodly’, or 'Catholics will roast in hell’, then you are surely on an outside chance, even though you know that the nag is going to win.

To make an outside bet that comes good would surely give you extra brownie points at the Pearly Gates, but then you are never actually given the odds so you could be told, 'Well, you were right, but you could just as easily have been wrong, so down you go!

I have based the spread around Christian beliefs, but it is actually a Global Book with countless other faiths in the game. We tend to stick to our local track, but in this cyber age we are sure to run across many other bets, ehh, beliefs. This of course includes Agnostics who have put their money on there being nothing there at all. From where I stand this has the same 50/50 chance as the bet on God, but if they are right there is nowhere for them to pick up their winnings. No wonder they don’t seem that happy about it.

But betting on God is one thing, saying who or what God is, is another. It’s as if a bet on God is a bet to place, but a bet on the nature of God is a bet to win. Me, I’ll go for God and say that God is in the mind. In other words, God is abstract and is as much a part of us as we are part of God. Think of yourself as a nerve ending. It is through you and all other sentient creatures that God feels and sees at all. Without us, God is just a Universe waiting to explode.

So I am just like the rest. I can’t wait to lay my money down, and just know that I’m going to win. Not that it will get me into the land of milk and honey with twenty virgins to doodle with, or resurrect or reincarnate me in any way. Just to be part of the game is prize enough.

At some point in the mists of time, someone chewed on a cannabis plant, a coco leaf, a peyote button, a magic mushroom, or imbibed some other natural intoxicant to enter a changed world. As with all such changes of perception, the human reaction to this was mostly positive. We know this, because whether you take the aborigines, or the civilizations which came out of the steps of Russia and made their way to the Indus and the Ganges, or the Druids, or certain African tribes, or the tribes of North and South America, or the people of China, mind altering substances have played an integral part in both mystical and war-like ceremonies as well as in many cases, their day-to-day lives. Even where drugs were not used to obtain an altered mental state, as was the case in the medieval Church, priests and the like would place themselves in such physical distress as to promote a hallucinatory experience. The Judaic sojourns in the desert must have had much the same effect. In retrospect, it seems that in Northern India they found some very effective and less punitive methods of achieving 'heightened awareness' in a drugless state. This involved certain transcendental techniques which have only become known to us in the last century.

During that same period, perception altering drugs have been analysed and refined to the point that you can now 'take a trip', simply by touching certain substances. Opium has become heroin, cocaine has become crack, the mould on rye bread has become ergot crystals and hence LSD, and any number of new drugs, or combination of drugs have come into being. This bewildering multiplicity of mind altering chemicals has led the authorities to conduct a costly and ridiculously unsuccessful war against them. It is said that the first thing in war is to know your enemy. Instead of obtaining such knowledge, they have and are conducting a campaign of such blatant misinformation as to be laughable to those who know anything about these drugs. Some of these substances are truly life threatening, some are not, some are physically addictive, and some to certain people are mentally addictive and again some are not.

These classifications are no less true of the mind altering substances which are legal, but there is no possibility of them being outlawed, no matter how life threatening or mentally dangerous they are. They are simply too deep rooted in our culture.

What is clear is that the mind like the body is capable of great resilience, given the right training. There is the story of a man, (later to become Baba Ram Das) who visited a Tibetan monk and gave him a prodigious dose of LSD to take. The monk duly took the drug and the two men then entered into a long conversation. Two or three hours later, there being no noticeable change in the monk, the man enquired what the monk thought of the drug. 'Very interesting,' came the cool reply. 'Very interesting.' The monk's daily regimen, both physical and mental, had given him the power to look at himself from the outside, so to speak, and drugs to him were of slight interest and even slighter effect. But it is not all of us who would wish to dedicate our lives in this way, anymore than we may wish to take holy orders, and my preferred route coincides with that of Aldous Huxley who on his death-bed scribbled, 'LSD - try it!' He was on a substantial dose of the substance at the time, and if I was to be given a similar opportunity in such circumstances, I would also take it. In fact, from where I stand, LSD is by far the most important of all these drugs, and probably one of the most important discoveries ever made. In its pure form, as was kindly provided by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company in the late fifties and early sixties, it is capable of providing astounding revelations and has changed many people's lives, including my own. It has also inspired the remarkable book 'Storming Heaven' which details the early history of its effects and usage.

I can only say this having, over the course of the last forty years tried just about everything that doesn't involve a needle. In this respect, I am, or rather have been what they like to call a 'weekend warrior'. My day-to-day commitment to any of these drugs is non-existent and I actually believe that there is no mind altering drug, legal or illegal that should be taken on a daily basis. The effect is bound to pale with constant usage and the best case scenario is that it will become 'a habit'. The worst case is that you will need larger and larger hits of whatever your fix is, and slowly but surely it will take you down. Cigarettes, booze, psychedelics, cannabis, cocaine, opium; this is true of all of them to a major or lesser degree. What I am saying is already well known to many of my readers, but I feel it worth reporting, as like it or not these drugs are something that was an integral part of our make-up way before recorded history, and in my experience they can be as enlightening as they can be lethal. At the end of the day, a controlled environment and controlled usage is a far better way forward than the vain attempt to stamp them out. Some of the most revealing moments of my life have been experienced while on these substances. They have shown me the true power of the mind, and how once free of restraint the amazing perceptions that it is capable of. I believe that with supervision almost everyone could and should be allowed access to this fantastic world, and that those who cannot grasp this are blocking the way to an expansion of our character which will not only help us realize who we are, but also who we were.

I have seen two television programmes based on the presumption that world events will lead to our extinction. This is based on one of two arguments. The first is simply that 99.9% of all life forms become extinct. The second is that we seem to be doing everything in our power to make the first proposition come true.

Given our present situation, this seems entirely reasonable. We shall run out of just about everything in the next fifty to a hundred years, which must lead to the mother of all wars, mass anarchy and mass starvation. It is almost impossible for me to honestly believe that we shall find a way out of this mess without a great deal more human misery than already exists in the world, let alone the heart-rending (because it is so blameless) suffering inflicted on the creatures of the natural world. Nevertheless, can we assume that this forthcoming catastrophe will wipe our species off the planet? I am inclined to think that at least some of us will survive.

There must be a multitude of groups and families who have stored many years worth of survival supplies in areas capable of keeping a significant number of people alive for an indefinite period. Even if the world is turned into a nuclear cinder, the resilience of Homo sapiens must not be underrated, and my bet would be that if any mammal survives, it would be us.

It is nice to think of a lucky few left to inherit this world of ours, benefiting from much of today’s technology, without our overwhelming numbers to compromise their resources, but that is also extremely unlikely. Much more probable is an immense amount of hardship being the survivor’s lot for very many generations to come. Their numbers would simply be too small to be able to generate many of the 'essentials’ that we take for granted today.

The reason for writing any of this is the certainty that something catastrophic is on the way. As soon as we stand back, take a look at our numbers and what it would need to provide us all with what would universally be called a 'minimum’ standard of living then the hopelessness of the task becomes clear, particularly given the ever growing scarcity of non-renewable recourses. As far as energy is concerned, we might be able to get by with a combination of nuclear fission, hydrogen fuel cells, solar, wind, hydro, and the present mix of carbon based products, until finally in fifty years or so nuclear fusion comes on stream, providing a virtually unlimited, non-polluting energy source. However, there seems no possibility of the worlds farming, forestry and fishery sources providing anything like the minimum sustenance that our huge numbers demand. They have already started to provide less, not more than before, and inevitably these precious commodities will continue to diminish as we continue to overstretch the supply chain.

Only perhaps in Scandinavia, could a politician run on a platform that would have the slightest chance of addressing these massive issues, and I only pray that I am long gone before things get too messy. I am in no way equipped to survive in the shadowy times that lie ahead. But this is where we are indeed different to the 99% of extinct species which have gone before us. Crucially, we do not all act and think alike.

Hail to the survivors! May they learn from our crass stupidity and cherish their inheritance, however hard-won it may be.

Dean is the narrator of the 'Eggs Benedict’ trilogy of stories, and is currently recording something else I wrote, which I hope will be freely available to listen to and download from my audio site (the link to which is at the bottom of this article). However, I am not here to publicise my audio books, but to turn the spotlight on Dean himself.

Dean is a songwriter and recording artist, who has three albums of his own and a presence on myspace which I understand to be growing at the rate of 1,000 downloads a month. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=167481372 will get you there and will probably get you listening to 'I Found You’ (the title of his second album). This, I regard as Dean’s signature recording, but of course no one song is definitive in itself.

There is a certain balance to Dean’s work, and he follows his own star with a gentle insistence which as gentle as it is, is probably harder to turn back than the Viking hoards. Not that he hasn’t worked successfully with some of the top songwriters in the western hemisphere, and is generally a cooperative soul, but he is a man who has his own vision and is not about to lose sight of it.

On visits to The States, I have taken his CD’s with me, and have played them when on car trips with friends. They thought they were listening to the radio, which is understandable. His music is main stream, well produced, and features Dean’s own incredibly rich and vibrant vocals; well suited to the play-lists of thousands of radio stations around the world.

Not for the first time, I find myself listening to songs which could easily be part of our common culture, but are not. The reasons are invariably the same, old reasons. Success in the world of popular music consists of a subtle mix of talent, technical and promotional back-up, arranged under the umbrella of big business commitment. Yes, you have your internet success stories, and Dean is on that route with his thousand downloads a month, but at this point in time, the media’s attention is not his to command and neither major stage tours nor plum recording contracts are being waved in his face.

If you are in London, Dean appears at 'The Green Note’ in Camden Town, accompanied by Chris Newland on guitar, but for my money The Dean Dyson Band provides the handle to the cup, so to speak. Nevertheless, catch him at 'The Green Note’ if you can.

You might assume that my aim is to bring Dean’s music to your attention, but that is only partially true. It is the man who I salute; the man who without being indiscriminate in his affections, is a major fan of so many other performing and recording artists, who is always there to go that extra mile for you, who makes what is best out of life, in both a creative and a personal sense.

“Bad, bad boy,” he says on reading some of my grubbier stuff. Not his forte perhaps, but he will delight in it anyway. He will delight in my delight. In my experience this is the essential quality of those who are truly capable of delighting us all.

As I close in on my fiftieth article for Netlistings, I can’t help reflect on what I have learnt from it, about me, and about you out there.

One thing is clear. You guys don’t comment much. A week or two after something I have written goes 'live’, I maybe read another article on much the same subject as mine, the only difference being that they have ten or twenty comments. It is true that the comments are there to be read on those sites, whereas Netlistings just sends them through to me. It is also true that their articles have a higher readership than mine, but still my proportion of responses is much smaller. However, I know that you readers are out there, because of course, there are stats .The feedback I do get is from friends who occasionally read my stuff, and get told when a new article is posted. These comments tend to be on the more esoteric articles or something which possibly relates to our common background.

Anyone who reads what I write can see that my own reading is mostly fiction and historical biographies, plus some contemporary political thought. For current events and matters connected to the natural world, I mostly rely on the television, plus my own observations. I don’t read newspapers, except when I Google an article, so I am not your average correspondent by any stretch of the imagination, but one who hopes to stretch yours a bit.

The title of my column, 'Loose Talk’ gives me a very large remit, which naturally follows my own inclinations. One thing that I am sure of is that these articles will continue to expand into new areas, and hopefully I will look back on the next fifty articles with as much satisfaction as the first.

Before starting this column, I had written some pieces entitled 'Smoke in the Air’ back in 2003. They were not poems exactly, but in that general style, each fashioned around some discovery, or event that had recently taken place. They were a conscious attempt to find another way to write about contemporary events. Apart from that everything I had previously written dated from the late seventies and eighties and was based on my love of tall stories, or what can loosely be described as fiction.

The work I have done for Netlistings has been as near journalism as I am ever likely to get, and at the same time has been an fine way to get my writing chops back together, to find out if I have any more major stories in me. As I am presently about seventy pages into something new, it seems that I have. Although I had one or two ideas which would have relied on factual events, I find myself drawn back to outright fiction, but what changes have taken place in the writer and his writing over the last twenty five years!

This has in part been brought about by these Netlistings articles, but they have proved to be an end in themselves. They have mapped the progression of my thoughts, concerns and amusements as well as my familiarisation with basic journalism. To my mind writing this column is better than a diary, particularly because you are there to read it, and if it is not worth the bother, you won’t.

Looking back over these articles, I can see that 'Loose Talk’ has defined and refined both my writing and my take on any number of things. In short, as long as you are there to read a page every two weeks or so, I am more than happy to write it. What can I really say about a column like this? Well, in truth everyone should have one.

'You hadn’t read that? I read that before I was…… I thought everyone had read that!’ is what I am expecting on the airing of this article. 'How can anyone not have known about that!’ Well, I didn’t and thanks a lot friend for sharing it with me!

Antoine de Saint-Éxupery wrote 'The Little Prince’ which I understand to be a classic and also have not read, but my eyes have never smarted, my breath has never shortened, and my heart has never missed so many beats on reading anything as on reading the first seventy pages of this other small book of his.
It was previously entitled 'Terre des homes’ (Land of men), which the author was subsequently persuaded to change to the heading above, and it is important that you obtain the Penguin published William Rees translation, which follows his original text. Saint-Exupery’s writing is, quoting The Spectator, 'Some of the finest prose written in this (to us, the last) century, lyrical, at times visionary, polished and still fresh.’ This translation is full of these qualities.

At its most basic, Saint-Exupery’s story is a 'first hand’ pilot’s account of some of those who flew for the pioneer French commercial airline Latécoère, later to evolve into Air France. These men opened the world for us at a loss of life probably proportionate to that incurred over the skies of Europe in the Second World War. But we soon discover that his saga is interwoven with a host of other obtusely related and equally moving stories, all pointing as inexorably as his aircraft compass, not simply to the exploration of an unknown world, but to that of man himself.

Saint-Exupery’s approach is philosophical rather than religious, and he sees the onrushing modern world from the vantage point of his 1930’s aeroplane. He sees the impact of modern machines and what defines them. He sees their inevitability, their fascination and their danger. His writing style and ideas are not modernist, but with statements like: “It seems that perfection is obtained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away. At the climax of its evolution, the machine conceals itself entirely.” you would be forgiven for assuming him to be not only modernist, but the first minimalist and a religious man at that.

The book divides itself into three parts. The first seventy odd pages, briefly described above is followed by an account of Saint-Exupery and his engineer’s miraculous survival from a crash in the middle of the waterless Libyan Desert, and finally there is a fourteen page reflection on the sense, the meaning, the 'truth’, which in the very act of being we all seek. By this time he is a reporter caught up in The Spanish Civil War, and sees our world 'cracking apart’. He is prophetic as he is profound and the dilemma he describes is as real today as it ever was. The beast has many heads but one sword will cut them all off. He has such a blade and a mighty weapon it is!

He cuts deep. He shows us our diseases and how that to truly be alive we cannot be caught up in the machine, but must be out of its control and larger than life itself.

Since the end of The Second World War, a new European identity has begun to emerge. This has been partially manufactured by 'The Authorities’, (a conveniently anonymous phrase) but there are certain people in certain places who we can all say, are 'European’. As someone who under protest holds a European Passport, I have to ask, who are these people, and can you please define Europe, geographically? Suddenly there is not 'An Authority’ in sight.

The problem concerns what kind of Europe you are taking about; the Lisbon Treaty Europe, the Sporting Europe, the Eurovision Europe, the Euro Europe or the 'Weights and Measures’ Europe.

The Lisbon Treaty is a new accord which most European governments are proceeding to ratify, when it is clear that the majority of people, at least from the main founding nations do not want it, and have had no direct say in its acceptance. What was originally envisaged was a Common Market which has morphed into an all-powerful, political institution, to be given yet more authority by this new treaty. Like being in hospital, and not allowed to go home, the only recourse is to walk out in your smock, which the Irish (who have the euro as their currency) have just done by voting 'no’ to it. They are the lucky ones, having been given the opportunity to vote at all. The reason that the UK, France, Germany and the Benelux countries have not been afforded this inalienable right, is that opinion polls show quite clearly, that they would also vote 'no’. The Lisbon Treaty is therefore an undemocratic travesty of the highest order, unequalled since the days of Napoleon and Hitler, but considerably more insidious than anything either of those so-called gentlemen ever cooked up.

We are on much happier (but not always solid) ground with both Sporting and Eurovision Europe. Crucially, both Turkey and Russia are included in this version. As with all International Sports, the time and distance measurements are universal, so there is nothing for anyone to adjust to. Moscow recently hosted the final of the European Championship for European 'A’ League soccer teams and Austria and Switzerland hosted The European Soccer Cup of Nations. In a sporting sense, the larger version of Europe is shown to be a very workable construct, although England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all field their own soccer teams, rather than compete as team UK. Therefore they get knocked out prior to the main contest. Good thinking, guys!

Eurovision is another thing. There are TV Euro News channels, which must have an audience, but who knows where, and there is famously the Eurovision Song Contest. Here we have a true indicator of the less than solid ground which culturally Europe stands on. The UK’s popular music stems from America, and it punches well above its weight with it’s own top class productions, but whilst Europeans listen and buy this music in great quantity, they are not natural producers of it. The exception to prove the rule are the minority, ethnic populations of some European countries who have made Hip-Hop their own. The natural beats of Europe range from the Northern Oom-Pa-Pa to the Southern Latin rhythms. It is no surprise that the UK regularly registers a last place in The Eurovision Song Contest, while its musical product easily outsells the grand total of all the others. Jazz is Europe’s only universal music, and does not feature in the Eurovision Song Contest, the last winner of which was a Russian vocalist, accompanied by a solo violinist and an ice skater.

When it comes to currency, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and the UK all have their own money, and not the Euro. The fact is that the UK’s economic pulse, as with music, is tied to America. This is clear historically and particularly at present where the Euro is surging ahead of both UK sterling and the American dollar. It is an inconvenient truth as far as 'The Authorities’ are concerned, who are particularly determined to create a 'critical mass’ by adding both the UK and these other very prosperous nations to the Euro currency world.

In terms of weights and measures, the European land mass has a single standard throughout, but again, the UK is a half-way house. It has now adopted kilos and litres, although many are still not sure of exactly what they are, and yes it has Centigrade not Fahrenheit, but it also has inches, feet and miles, not centimetres, metres, and kilometres, although metric measurements (at least in terms of property) have to be given by law. The UK therefore has two sets of measurements, metric and imperial, on all property details.

I have written all this to show how desperately Europe is trying to be something that it is not, while not being something that it is. And yes, of course Russia and Turkey should be part of the equation; the trading equation. As in sport, greater Europe should share the same terms of measurement, but let us leave it at that. Individual liberty and basic democracy is being sacrificed in the name of European 'unification’, when there is nothing there to unify. The European nations are as different as chalk and cheese. They can either be united in the glorification of that fact, or under the cloak of those who know how to make jobs for the boys and ram square pegs into round holes. And you know what they will say when things inevitably come apart at the seams? After decades of secret deals, of avoiding referendums, and of carefully seeded misinformation, they will all claim that it was nothing to do with them, but just an unfortunate accident.

Relationships are incidental, work is incidental, being is not. Most of our day-to-day involvements are split between relationships and work, and up until very recently, this was necessary for all but the most rigorously spiritual of beings.

What is surprising is how the wealthy seem to have stuck to this relationship/work regimen, when their money has freed them from the necessity of following that path. Those that break away for this stereotype seem in fact to come from all backgrounds, and have many different philosophies. They are proportionally few in number, and often they reject their family and friends or a 'steady job’, but not always both.

The merit that society attaches to a person being 'hard working’ and 'popular’ obviously maintains the status quo, but is overworked to the extreme, and in it’s present form is nothing short of insidious. A moment’s thought must be given to why we are here and what we are for. This can only be given perspective by looking at where we have come from, what we are doing, and why?

It is often said that 'the best things in life are free’, but it seems that the best things are not as important to us as the things that cost, be they children, houses, cars, white goods, etc. I hear you say, 'But children are the best thing.’ Well maybe they are, but you can’t possibly say that they are free. They are free to make, although people often spend as ton of money setting up for the event, but they certainly are not free to have around. Children are part and parcel of life, but they are incidental to your being; yes, as is the rest of your family, your friends and your work.

I am not advocating some kind of a spiritual solution, but I do see that our social environment is beginning to threaten the personal freedom that we have fought so long and hard for. Whereas communism was something to be battled against, Chinese totalitarianism, for example seems to be something to be almost admired and it is easy to see left wing political thought in the west looking over it’s shoulder somewhat enviously at a structure which allows those in charge to get on with things without the inefficiency and bother of the democratic process. I would also accuse the most capitalist, the most democratic of the world’s nations of turning both rich and poor into hamsters on a wheel. Technology is what makes all this control possible and it recognises no political boundaries.

No, it is not enough to be hardworking and popular. It is not enough for anyone’s life to be reduced to an education, a job a family and so many weeks of vacation a year. If you think that is why you are here and what you are for, then I am truly sad, not just for you but for all those who you probably think you are doing so well by.

It is also not about adventure, and the wind in your hair. It is more about who you are, as 'The Who’ asked. If you don’t know, it is time you found out. Be yourself, know yourself, have time for yourself, positively indulge yourself, be someone special or be no one at all.

We witness evolution on a regular basis. Whether it is Scottish mountain sheep forced off grazing land onto an island shore, where within a few generations they become dependant on seaweed, or welsh hedgehogs who in fifty years no longer freeze in the face of a car’s headlights, but run as fast as their little legs can carry them, or lizards placed on an island with few insects but much vegetation, where in thirty years they develop a new digestive system capable of more efficiently processing their new diet. In the case of the lizards, they say that thirty years for them is equivalent to a few hundred years for us. Evolution is dependant on generational turnover and ours is a lot slower than the comparatively short lived lizards.

The examples that I have listed above depend on the animals being placed in new circumstances which require their adaptation. Over the last few hundred years, our physical circumstances have become easier, so on a physical level, we have nothing much to adapt to. I don’t doubt that this is the root cause of the increase in allergies, cancers, and the like. While in earlier times, the subjects of these illnesses simply died, now they often survive and procreate, thereby perpetuating the illness which they suffer from.

However, on a mental level, we have every reason to adapt to our rapidly changing situation, and I wonder who we would meet twenty-four generations ahead of where we are today. As I say, I doubt whether we would be physically changed (unless we become the subject of genetic engineering) but would our mental make-up be the same?

We live in an increasingly specialist society and one 'Brave New World’ scenario might be for specialist minds to evolve to the point that there would be little correspondence between the various groups. This makes a good story, but the inconsistent way our genes work, picking out facets from our grandparents and beyond make me doubt it. Added to this is the human fascination with physical beauty, causing unions between those who otherwise have little in common.

But there is a possibility that a more objective, sympathetic strand might develop within us. Our tribal background has been sufficiently strong for uncountable millions of us to have been ravaged by a never ending series of wars, but now it seems that more and more of us will simply not take sides. I remember in the sixties a friend saying that if there was a fight he would be the first to run (just like the hedgehogs). At the time, this was not a common point of view, and I don’t think it is now, but it is certainly more widespread. This does not directly equate with 'pacifist’ or CND sentiment. It is less political and more personal and I can see how this might in time become part of our nature. We would of course fight if our backs were against a wall, but it would need more than aspersions concerning our birth, manhood, faith or nationality to trigger such an event.

Also, we might become more perceptive. I think that we are starting to realize that language can only take us so far along the road of personal understanding, and a more intuitive nature would be a great help, not only in relating to ourselves but to all other living things.

Some well known spiritual figures might well posses or have possessed these qualities, but my vision is not so visionary. A little less temper and a little more feeling would be quite enough to take us down the line.

This is the title of a newly published book by Mark Leonard. Mr Leonard discusses the thoughts and aims of Chinese intellectuals and the policy-making elite. Occasionally, he drifts towards the popular attitude to these various propositions, but these are infrequent diversions, perhaps because there is not much point in discussing the general public’s attitude to concepts over which they have no influence. This is not to suggest that the Chinese people do not consider these things. I suspect that they do and that political (one could almost say 'philosophical’) thought is very much part of the Chinese make-up. Indeed political philosophy plays a major role in this book. We have parables of horses painted to look like zebras, until the people become used to the stripes at which point true zebras can replace the horses. But this is not a concoction of poetic anecdotes. I don’t doubt that it truly represents political thinking in China. Mr Leonard, with his think-tank background is the ideal person to tackle this picturesque intellectualism and his enthusiasm for it is contagious.

What is unexpected is the clarity that he brings to the subject, and there is the comforting knowledge that behind the all-encompassing Chinese one party system, there inevitably are two main factions. These are presently The New Left and The New Right. Alongside such intellectual dissertation comes fascinating real time experimentation exampled by 'inner-party democracy’. It seems however, that China is only dabbling with democracy, and in fact has moved away from it’s wider application, having realized that it has little or no influence on economic development, (why they ever thought it might, I can’t imagine) and more pertinently that it could lead to the break-up of what is actually an Empire of many disparate parts, much the same as Russia was, pre-Gorbachev. Mark Leonard relates that in many of their eyes, Democracy = Chaos and my own reflection is that what they in China term 'incremental democracy’ is in fact what we in the West are the result of, and are still evolving from.

The clarity of Leonard’s book points to a fundamental naiveté which might derive from the intelligentsia of a country that up until now has had little interaction with the rest of the world, but is that truly the case? Is this in fact the naiveté of all political intellectuals, and as a consequence of Mr Leonard himself?

He does observe however, that behind all this political speculation the Chinese leaders show adeptness at realpolitik. They are world-wise enough to see that in the international arena 'swagger’ as he puts it, gains a country less than a more conciliatory stance. He goes on to say that China is using the United Nations as a powerful amplifier and is not only changing the balance of power in many parts of the world, but also ensuring the importance of national sovereignty.

On this latter point, I must take issue with Mr Leonard. To my mind, China’s adherence to what Mr Leonard calls 'an older idea of sovereignty’, only goes as far as it suits them. The rules of not invading other countries, not trying to overthrow regimes, and above all not interfering in the internal affairs of other states, did not apply to Tibet and would not apply to Taiwan. It is a stick with which to goad those nations that see it as their duty to call a halt to genocide, nuclear proliferation, or possibly a regime that is imploding on itself. By purporting to have this 'older idea’, China conveniently relieves itself of these duties, and actively criticises those who are prepared to get their hands dirty. It is nothing more than an excuse, and a poor one, at that.

Returning to the book; it is short and yet so full of information that I have only been able to skim the surface here. It has put me on the road to a basic understanding of contemporary Chinese thinking, which turns out to be unexpectedly refreshing, not to say charming in some ways, while obstinately stuck in a 'Walled World’ in others. China has always been a paradox to westerners, but it is less so after reading this. Mark Leonard’s clear sighted energy exudes from every page and helps make this understanding a joy.

Our method of arriving at any given conclusion is to consider the alternatives. It is something that our success and our survival depend on. This has led to what are generally called 'arguments’. It occurs to me that this adversarial process is now ceasing to serve us as well as it has and that we are now living in an age where to hold a specific point of view is both simplistic and dangerous.

Of course we must make decisions, but I have to question the structures that have evolved from this necessity. We are divided into camps, and whatever the question at hand, it always seems to be a matter of opting for one camp or another.

This seems to be the best that can be done in an imperfect world, but is it? Take the field of medicine. Would not a more open minded approach to 'alternative’ and 'oriental’ medicine have kept millions out of our hospitals, and have avoided millions of operations? I suspect so.

It is interesting that in times of war, political parties cooperate, but as soon as the conflict is over, it is back to the old 'right and wrong’ scenario. Why do things suddenly become so black and white? Well, of course they do not. It is a construct which leads to the best manipulator of the supposed facts being the likely victor. The reality is that as soon as the structure has to work efficiently in the face of a powerful, opposing element, say in a team sport or on a ship, the concept of dispute disappears.

I recently spent a number of weeks commenting on the daily news articles posted by a left-wing, American blog. What impressed me was, to put it kindly, the 'wishful thinking’ behind so many of the pieces. How can it be constructive to overstate the case? I have recently received two emails from people who I would normally consider to be clear thinkers. One concerned the supposed fact that the holocaust is not taught in UK schools the other concerned Ronald Reagan’s purported diary comment on George Bush’s son, 'GW’. Both were spurious, but neither party would make a retraction or so much as apologise. They portrayed their broadcasts as 'fun’ but they were simply lies, which is where all this 'wishful thinking’ ends.

Satire is something else again. It is the antidote to this contentious system of ours, but that does not make the system safe and true. Satire simply makes fun out of the fact that it is not. Even if the administrators are safe and true (as I believe they usually are) the combative nature of the terrain is bound to reduce all but the most straight-backed to a compromised shadow of their former selves. There is an amusing movie where Jack Lemon and James Garner play two former US Presidents. Their own essential corruption gives the plot a much needed touch of reality, but why should this be so?

Looking at the world from another perspective, I have recently read and reviewed Mark Leonard’s book, 'What Does China Think’. It struck me how in China much political thought is peculiarly cooperative and even experimental to western eyes. For all of China’s dictatorial pomposity, ideas can be considered objectively and rather than being espoused or rejected, there can even be a 'test-run’.

'It works for me,’ is all anyone can say about anything, anymore. There is no point in arguing, but every point in considering the options. We must learn how to do this without limiting our freedom.

I once knew a middle aged, family man who kept a massive collection of Playboy magazines in his cellar. He made no secret of it, even when he came to sell his house. Whether he was a collector of what might just as well have been Marvel Comics or whether this was an expression of his appreciation of female beauty or whether this was a means of stimulating his sex life, I have no idea.

Even in the heady days when it was something to see a pair of naked breasts in a magazine, Playboy had a cosy, well scrubbed look which denied its essential function; to stimulate lust. Playboy has always shied away from the description, 'pornographic’ but lets face it, those girls pose in a way that is outside the scope of Venus de Milo. It is not art that they are selling (even though it might be) it is sex.

Hefner has always tried to convince us otherwise by means of hiring the great literary figures of the day to write a few pages which are wedged between pictures of the girls. What was wedged between the girls themselves was inferred, but otherwise left to the imagination. Lifestyle articles were also prevalent, but when you came right down to it, it was all about porn. The impression that the girls were glad to 'put out’ at parties and such, added to the mix, but it brought the Bunnies perilously close to being labelled whores. Were they sex slaves in a gilded cage, at the mercy of the male libido? Hefner’s response was brilliant. He installed his daughter as the magazines editor. She became the Princess of porn and the girls her acolytes.

Today, in an equally well scrubbed way, a new Princess is born, and her name is Alison Angel. The magazine has morphed into a website featuring both still shots and video, and Alison is both its editor and its content. She is a drop-dead gorgeous blonde (at least most of the time) and goes further than the bunnies go, but probably not so far at parties. She plays with herself and with other girls as innocently as you please, but not with men. She is now nineteen although most of the content was shot when she was eighteen and says, “I will not shoot photo or video of…….general disrespect of Myself (and never will!).” Her website is as cosy as you could wish for, and the word 'porn’ is never mentioned. It is a career choice. “I always wanted to be a nude model,” she unassumingly confides. And so she should be. The cool, certain way she stares out at you sets her apart from her peers. The natural pride and enjoyment she derives from running it and being it, turns the whole concept of shame and scandal on it’s err, head or tail; you choose. Go to http://www.alisonangel.com/contact.html and watch the three minute 'Welcome’ video. The girl will go far. A Star Is Porn!

How do we restore the Olympics tarnished image? That is the question being asked after the demonstrations staged on the route of the Olympic flame-carriers.

A UK breakfast TV show asked their viewers how they felt about these demonstrations and were immediately flooded with emails saying how proud the senders were of the people carrying out those demonstrations and how proud they were to live in a country free enough for those demonstrations to have taken place.

And what exactly was the previous image of the Olympics, given the history of the Nazi inspired pre-war 1936 Berlin Event or the 'Black September’ terrorists who killed nine Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972? Also, you may remember the 1996 bombing at the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta which killed two and injured 111 others.

There is of course the possibility (which I do not back) of national boycotts. These we are told would further sully the Games harmonious reputation. Harmonious reputation? As if! We need to be reminded that The Soviet Union did not participate in the Olympics at all until the 1952 Helsinki Games, but organized alternative events for the Communist Block called 'Spartakiads’.

The 1956 Melbourne Olympics was boycotted by the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, because of the repression of the Hungarian Uprising by the Soviet Union; additionally, Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon, boycotted these same games due to the Suez Crisis.

Again, in 1972 and 1976, a large number of African countries threatened the IOC with a boycott, to force them to ban South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand. The IOC conceded in the first 2 cases, but refused in 1976 because the boycott was prompted by a New Zealand rugby union tour to South Africa, and rugby was not an Olympic sport. The countries withdrew their teams after the games had started; some African athletes had already competed. A lot of sympathy was felt for the athletes forced by their governments to leave the Olympic Village. Twenty-two countries (Guyana was the only non-African nation) boycotted the Montreal Olympics because New Zealand was not banned.

Particularly relevant to the present situation is the fact that in 1976, due to pressure from the People's Republic of China (PRC), Canada told the team from the Republic of China (Taiwan) that it could not compete at the Montreal Summer Olympics under the name "Republic of China". Taiwan did not participate again until 1984, when it returned under the name "Chinese Taipei" using a special flag.

In 1980 and 1984, the Cold War opponents boycotted each other's games. Sixty-five nations refused to compete at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but 16 nations from Western Europe did compete at the Moscow Olympics. The boycott reduced the number of nations participating to only 81, the lowest number of nations to compete since 1956. The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners (except Romania) countered by skipping the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, arguing the safety of their athletes could not be guaranteed there and "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States". The 1984 boycotters staged their own Friendship Games in July-August.

Returning to the present, the government of Iran specifically orders its athletes not to compete in any Olympic heat, semi-final, or final that includes athletes from Israel. As a result, at the 2004 Olympics, an Iranian judoka who had otherwise earned his place did not compete in a heat against an Israeli judoka.

Further compromising the image of the Olympics is the issue of drugs. Looking back in time again, the winner of the marathon at the 1904 Games, Thomas J. Hicks, was given strychnine and brandy by his coach, even during the race. The first and so far only Olympic death caused by drugs occurred in 1960. At the cycling road race in Rome the Danish Knud Enemark Jensen fell from his bicycle and later died. A coroner's inquiry found that he was under the influence of amphetamines.

The first Olympic athlete to test positive for drug use was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish pent athlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics, who lost his bronze medal for alcohol use. Seventy-three athletes followed him over the next 38 years, several medal winners among them. The most publicized doping-related disqualification was that of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who won the 100m at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but tested positive for stanozolol.

Despite the testing, many athletes continued to use doping without getting caught. In 1990, documents were revealed that showed many East German female athletes had been unknowingly administered anabolic steroids and other drugs by their coaches and trainers as a government policy.

The recent 2000 Summer Olympics and 2002 Winter Olympics have shown that this battle is not nearly over, as several medalists in weightlifting and cross-country skiing were disqualified due to doping offences. One innocent victim of the anti-doping movement at the Olympics was the Romanian gymnast Andreea Răducan who was stripped of her gold medal-winning performance in the All-Around Competition of the 2000 Sydney games. Test results indicated the presence of the banned-stimulant pseudoephedrine which had been prescribed to her by an Olympic doctor. Raducan had been unaware of the presence of the illegal substance in the medicine that had been prescribed to her for a cold she had during the games.

During the 2006 Winter Olympics, only one athlete failed a drug test and had a medal revoked. The only other case involved 12 members with high levels of hemoglobin and their punishment was a five day suspension for health reasons.

In October 2007, American sprinter Marion Jones admitted to having taken steroids before the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. As a result of these admissions, Jones accepted a two-year suspension and forfeiture of all medals, results, points and prizes earned after September 1, 2000. Marion Jones now faces a six-month stay in prison.

Drugs have become so sophisticated that there is every reason to believe that there will be athletes competing in Beijing this summer who have taken drugs, but remain undetected.

An interesting aside is the fact that 203 countries currently participate in the Olympics. This is a noticeably higher number than the number of countries belonging to the United Nations, which is only 193. Why, I ask myself would a country not belong to the United Nations? All the answers that I come up with do nothing to enhance the Olympics image.

My suggestion is that we ignore this bunk about the Olympics reputation and ignore the games themselves. It is unfair to ask the athletes not to compete. That is after all, what they do. It is just as unfair to expect us to watch them, hosted as they are by repressive, bullies who refuse to let their own people know what is happening in the world around them. We, not our countries must make the difference. If that comes to pass, then the Olympics will have gained something of a reputation, after all.

In the field of sporting competition, anything can happen. Sport is a form of disinterested truth, based not on right or wrong nor on who is best, but as the ancient Greeks would have it, who the Gods favour on the day. Who would foresee The New York Giants going to a sub-zero Green Bay and beating 'The Pack’ and then going on to beat the unbeaten Patriots in The Super Bowl? Who would foresee the lowly Barnsley soccer team beating two of the top four teams in the UK in consecutive FA Cup matches? The unfathomable nature of sport is at its very heart, but of course, we are human and like to tweak things, so artifice and gamesmanship creep in.

The rule makers often are to blame. For instance in two thousand and three, they made a new rule for sprinters so that the second person who false-starts goes out of the race. It's OK to false-start the first time. So, why not do it if you think you have great control over your starts and that one of the top runners might easily false-start second time out, then you who false-started in the first place and set this situation up, will end up in their place at the end of the race? Besides, it is in the very deepest sense 'unsporting' to say to someone, "Oh, you were the second false-starter. Yes, you qualified, but unlike the guy who false-started first, you can't run."

Just run the race and decide what to do about false starters, after it is over, why don’t you? An empty lane, what is that? It is a symptom of the empty headed, empty hearted bureaucrats, who control the Olympics, World Athletics and World Soccer. They should be junked and replaced by committed sports people, likely swifter in the body and more open in the mind.

Drugs are another way of tipping the scales in a particular direction, and they say that with some of the new performance enhancing drugs, at the forthcoming Olympics they will be unable to spot the users. I will not be watching that doomed, smog-ridden event, but it does seem that other than smog, this is a cloud, that will darken sporting skies for some time to come.

There is another side to the Olympics which has been worrying me for some time and that is all this guff about 'competing for your country’. It makes some sense in team sports, not a lot, but some, but when you have a black man from Cardiff in Wales who now lives in Australia and trains half the year in The States, it makes nonsense.

Our chests are meant to swell as we are told of the haul of medals that our Nations have collected. Some countries actually pay athletes to change nationality, while other athletes chose which Country they compete for by how likely they are to get a place on the plane. What a lot of drum-beating stupidity it all is!

But the reason I will not be watching the Olympics, has nothing to do with the drugs or the smog or the drum-beating. It is TIBET. Tibet has not been given a chance, sporting or otherwise, and this is an opportunity to make the point in the only way that seems to have any clout in the modern world. That is, by not buying into it. ’Buying’ is the operative word. NBC will lose a billion dollars if we don’t watch it, and China will lose its pants. The whole thing depends on mass audience participation, which means us. Hit them where it hurts most. Don’t just sign a petition and think that you have done your bit. Boycott this farce. Tell them to get lost.

Of course words have different inferences in different cultures and to the Chinese to give someone a 'sporting chance’ has nothing to do with an even break. It oh, so well reflects what this Olympics is about. It means to take a gamble.

An orange must have been called an orange because of its colour, but then why wasn’t a lemon called a yellow? Orange is the only one of the seven main colours to have a fruit named after it. There are of course lesser examples such as aubergine, but orange has cut its swathe across our lives to become part of our history and part of almost every day.

We talk of red heads or possibly ginger, but not of orange heads even though orange is more accurate than red, and with today’s hair colouring often more so than anything else. Britain associates the hair colour with a trio of its most famed women leaders; Boudicca, Queen Elizabeth the First, and Margaret Thatcher. These were three ladies who you didn’t want to mess with, and today it is difficult to imagine a brunette or blonde ever obtaining that status. Somehow, the words themselves seem to rule that out. Brunettes and blondes just sound too soft and attractive. Possibly a little orange hair dye is all Hillary needs to join the immortal ranks of those mentioned above.

William of Orange came to Britain to save us from Catholicism, and he in turn not only spawned the Orange Men who march across Northern Ireland and down the Eastern seaboard of America, but he also caused the carrot to be orange. It was brown before, but just like Coca Cola turned Santa Clause from green to red, William kept cloning the more orange carrots until the browns became history. William came from Holland and to this day, orange is the colour of their soccer team and probably much more that I don’t know about.

And what is breakfast without orange juice? As much as common sense tells us that grapefruit juice, (what has 'grapefruit’ to do with grapes?) or any one of a number of other juices would do equally well, the fact is that while some may stray, the vast majority of us confirm that the day must start with the juice of an orange.

First there was the 'bitter’ orange, which came from Persia and grew all over Southern Europe, then in the fifteenth century the sweet orange arrived from India and quickly replaced it. When these fruit reached the hands and mouths of Northern Europeans, Orangery’s soon followed. In fact a nobleman of that era might just as easily have said, 'come and see my oranges’ as 'come and see my etchings’. But why Orangery’s and not Lemonary’s, or even Fruitary’s? The colour and taste of the orange must combine to provide the answer. The colour is as warm as the evening sun and its round shape further reminds us of it. The taste is sweet and yet citric, but that is only part of the story. There seems to be some kind of spice in there. It is exotic without being saccharine and quite unmistakable. It not only reminds us of the Sun, but is the Sun in a galaxy of citrus fruits around which they all revolve.

I had a small, convertible car in Los Angeles for maybe ten years. Its colour was orange. I now have a slightly larger yellow cabriolet. But the car is no lemon. It must have an orange soul.

I caught sight of a chimney sweep and took him for a slave. It was an easy mistake. His face was black and he looked distressed. I suddenly saw that he was as much a slave as the Africans before him. We have had many slaves since slavery was banned.

Slavery is older than prostitution, but few have made it a profession. Africans were enslaving Europeans long before Europeans were enslaving them. The Corsairs sailed from North African Ports and pillaged their way up the Atlantic Coast as far as Scandinavia. Their victims were corralled onto their ships and sailed back to the waiting African slave markets, from where (apart from the prettiest boys and girls, and the strongest young men) they were marched off to their fate, somewhere in the interior.

The British Navy finally blasted the Corsairs out of existence, but in the main, the North Africans were excused the slavery they had inflicted on others. They were just left slave less. For them, Central Africa, not Europe, had always been the major source of slaves, and under the new European regime, these slaves were simply diverted from their various North African destinations to the West Indies and America. In other words, the Europeans took over an existing operation, and enlarged it. I am afraid that there is no patent on man’s inhumanity to man. We are all capable of the most sickening sins against each other, no matter our colour or creed.

Slavery is as prevalent as it ever was; child workers in India, prostitutes from Eastern Europe, foreign domestics, children abused by those in authority, women used as chattel, the list is almost endless.

Slavery is deeply imbedded in our psyche. So much so, that we often equate it with love. It is an expression of power and control and has many hidden implications. It is hard to say where all this begins and ends. 'Duty’ and 'vocation’ are subtle forms of slavery, and the prospect of wealth can easily enslave. At the end of the day, we are slaves to ourselves. We are slaves to our ambitions.

But don’t try to smack me on the bum or strap a spiked collar around my neck. I don’t want to be your slave and have no intention of enslaving you. Slavery is like bird flu. It recognises no boundaries, is highly infectious, and can thrive under our very noses. The very birth of Democracy took place in a slave zone called Ancient Greece, and most if not all of the early civilizations were founded on bedrocks of slavery. You could say that civilization and slavery went hand in hand.

No animals that I know of have a similar arrangement, and yet we are the ones who are meant to be civilised. I can’t help feeling that an extraterrestrial would like animals a lot more than he, she or it would like us. In fact, it seems that slavery, wars, and the desecration of the planet have been our hallmark. As far as the earth is concerned, the sooner we either blow ourselves up, or bugger off into space, the better. Yes, we are slaves to ourselves and we are the pandemic.

My Aunt always used to say, 'when in doubt smile’. I have relied upon that advice and although nothing can make you feel more like The Village Idiot than smiling at someone for no apparent reason, it does work.

It has been put to me that animals cannot smile. I am told that we just think that they are smiling. I am not sure if this is meant to mean that animals physically cannot smile, because they don’t have the requisite facial muscles, or because they don’t have the emotion that goes with smiling. If it is the second hypothesis, then it would be necessary to identify all the various emotions that can be expressed by smiling. A moment’s thought is enough to realize that you can smile about most things. Someone smiling through their tears, pulls at the heart strings as almost nothing else can, which playwrights and movie makers are well aware of.

Now, I personally think that dogs and elephants are particularly good at smiling, and I have no doubt that they are also smiling on the inside. Physically, their smiles are not quite like our smiles, but they all seem to involve a change in the shape and openness of the mouth and I am completely convinced that they are in fact smiling because they are generally pleased with what is going on, or because they find it funny. My guess is that elephants are particularly big on humour.

On the other hand, a chimpanzee who is closest to us genetically, often gives the biggest grin, but I don’t think that has anything to do with smiling at all. It is a grimace, not really a grin and certainly not a smile. A porpoise is something else again. It is always smiling. That is just the way its jaw is set, and this combined with its naturally inquisitive and playful nature makes us wonder what happy drug it’s on. And there is a grain of truth in it. Overall the porpoise is a friendly, happy-go-lucky creature, but I am told that there are times when it is downright vicious and no doubt it keeps smiling all the time.

The smile painted on a clown’s face is also fixed and can hide a myriad of emotions. One of Marvel Comics greatest creations, The Joker is constantly smiling, but what dark, twisted thoughts lie behind it! Then there is of course the famous crocodile smile, and the imagined smile of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Both mask dark intent, but they don’t mask it too well or children would not be scared of them

But in a world of smiling salesmen and women, promoting everything from alcohol to holy water, in the smiling world of stage and screen and news casting, the falsest of all smiles belongs elsewhere. You have probably guessed it; the mother of all smiles belongs to the politician. They smile when they come into office and they smile when they leave. They smile when they are at peace and they smile when they are at war. They are always smiling at you. They have steely smiles, and commanding smiles, they have needy smiles and demanding smiles. They have just about every damn kind of smile you can think of. If we are not careful, they will smile us right off the planet.

I will conclude my list with the most enigmatic of smiles; the Giaconda Smile. Why have I saved this till last? Well, because it is the one that hides its secret best and is likely the last smile to ever cross our lips.

Since the end of the First World War, the world has swung between left and right wing philosophies, until I suppose inevitably, the line between the two has blurred. This is perhaps hardest to accept in a country like the United States, which calls itself 'free and democratic’ while running a two party system.

It is generally supposed that the Republicans are right wing and the Democrats are left wing, and seen in its best light the Republicans front the 'laisez-fair’ approach, while the Democrats are more for social justice. Tellingly, they would not argue with the quality that I have attributed to their philosophy, but would say that they also encompass the quality I have attributed to the other party.

The fact of the matter is that we now have a situation where it makes no odds whether it is the Christian Democrats or the Social Democrats in Germany, New Labour or the Conservatives in the UK, the Republicans or Democrats in America, or any of the main political parties in the other Western, democratic countries. Their political philosophies are inextricably intermeshed and they have one common goal; to control us. It is for your own good, don’t you know.

Europe has been designated as one control centre, North America (Canada, The US and Mexico) as another. Whoever you vote for won’t stop it happening. You will be subject to the directives of countless committees of bureaucrats who will know what is best for you, without knowing you at all.

This goes way beyond politics. Even these articles are monitored, not by an editor, which a writer has to accept, but by a search engine’s ranking system. Anything considered 'adult material’ would be likely to lose this site a point or two. 'General audience material’ is what makes this particular world go round, and that means it is governed by something very similar to the classification system placed on movies, only in this case if you get an 'adult’ rating, you just don’t show. And this rating system comes from a search engine thru which you can easily access not only written, but the most graphic 'adult’ material legally available.

No, we are being boxed and packaged like never before. We are being subjected to double standards and double talk and are ultimately being led down the road to conformity; not conformity to any one particular standard, but to conform to conformity itself. Never have things seemed as Orwellian as they do today.

The question must be, are we here to do what we are told and take what we can get, or to live a free life, and accept the consequences? Our lives are on the line, and no matter which way we vote and who gets into power, they are not going to be free ones.

Boy, did we have it good some forty years back! Maybe this is the price that has to be paid for it, but I doubt that. We just overcooked things a little, but were on the right track. We need to get back to the garden, as Joni said and learn how to play again.

In all the countries that I know anything about, the proportion of local news far outweighs news from elsewhere. When we are given 'world news’ it is mainly stuff about dolphins being rescued, or a rare species being found and when it is of substance, such as the demonstrations in Burma some months ago, there is hardly ever the will to follow the story beyond it’s initial impact. Who knows what happened to those who were arrested, and whether the lady, Aung San Suu Kyi who represents the democratic opposition is still under house arrest? As I recall, the UN’s special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari was having meetings both with her and with the leaders of the military regime, and then, then nothing.

There is no doubt about the general feeling in the rest of the world concerning the plight of this country, but at the same time there is no coherent expression of it, outside of various diplomatic missions. This is the same in the Sudan, in Zimbabwe, in Kenya….I could go on and on.

Now it appears that the athletes who are selected to compete in the Beijing Olympics will have to sign a document which precludes them from making any expression of their feelings as regards the human rights situation in China. This has been reported on the UK news. I am assuming that it would be pointless to have UK athletes make such a pledge if other countries were not taking similar action. If I am right in this assumption, it is a huge story, but it is reported as if it were a local matter.

We hear a lot of things about globalisation, most of them negative, but surely, like it or not we are all citizens of an ever shrinking world and this segmentation of information deprives us of ever knowing what the full story is and therefore in having any say in it’s outcome.

This all hinges on the sovereignty of a Nation, even when that Nation has been hijacked and its people are being held to ransom. But what is a nation, anyway? It is no more than a concept that is constantly changing in size, shape, culture, influence, and political make-up. What was Russia yesterday is not Russia today, and what was Yugoslavia is not at all anymore. The majority party in Scotland wants independence from the United Kingdom. Iraq might well to end up as three separate nations. Nations are man made concepts, an attempt to separate what is local from what is not and whereas we must have the right to know and act on local issues, it is increasing apparent that we need some sort of a global voice.

In due course, this is bound to evolve through the internet and the telephone. A sort of global opinion pole which we all have access to. There are many problems, such as validating each person’s identity, but I don’t doubt that it will come about, and along with it far more focus on events in other parts of the world.

And politics of this type can be extremely entertaining. There is today possibly one issue that a substantial proportion of the world’s population could and would all like vote on. Not a vote that counted, just an opinion, based on a working knowledge of those involved. It is a subject that has captured the world’s imagination to a far greater extent than I think the local participants realize. Everyone has an opinion on it, even if they are on the other side of the planet and it has nothing directly to do with them. Can you guess what it is? Well, it’s the Hillary and Barack Show, of course. If only I had a vote!

Note. The author has spent fifteen years in America but is British by birth.

Homo sapiens is still very much a 'work in progress’. Apparently they can look at the model of any species and ascertain whether it has reached its optimum form and functionality, and our species is nowhere near being the finished article. We have only been around for one hundred and fifty thousand years, so we can hardly expect to be the end product.

In spite of games such as chess, one of the major deficiencies in our make-up seems to be our inability to react to changing circumstances until after they have changed. How many times have our ancestors just sat there when the writing was on the wall? From the fall of Rome to the Second World War, the list is almost endless, and on a personal level I have been oblivious to the obvious so many times and so many times have I kicked myself for it.

It would be nice to think that as we drift downstream, that we are at least able to guide ourselves between the rocks in front of us, but particularly when things seem fairly settled we loose our eye and it seems our nerve.

Never mind, when a disaster occurs, we can always construct a conspiracy theory to take the blame from ourselves. But there is a very real conspiracy, and that is over our energy needs.

Behind the 'inconvenient truth’ that oil and gas may have a hand in Global Warming lies the even more inconvenient truth that we are running out of them. This is actually why oil is now £100 a barrel. All the other stuff they tell you is an attempt to hide that essential fact.

'What will gas cost this time next year?’ I asked the guy at the gas station.

'I never thought of that,’ he said, laughing like a drain.

It is true that there is a lot of coal and oil shale lying around, but to make them a viable alternative energy source would take a good decade and would surely be a step backwards.

There are quite a number of other alternatives, but decisions relating to their pursuance should have been taken at least ten if not twenty years ago if they were to come on stream in time. It is simply too late now.

I was watching a re-run of 'The Big Bulge’, a Second World War Movie and near the end Robert Shaw who plays the Nazi Panzer Commander, says to his adjutant 'But chu don’t understant, Heinz. It ist not about vinning ze var. It ist about ze var goink on FOR EVER!

'But vat about my sons?’ Says Heinz.

'Zey vill be soldiers, und you vill be proud of zem.’ Comes the reply.

The conspiracy is to weaken society so that Big Brother can govern the subjugated population and in this present case it is simply achieved by letting the oil and gas run out without allowing enough time to gear up for the alternatives. The pressure is already on the public from every quarter, when it should be on the politicians. They should have been working on the alternatives for the last twenty years, and the reason they haven’t is that they don’t want us getting above ourselves as we did in the sixties. They want control, and if goods, housing and transport are cheap, they loose it.

This conspiracy is not orchestrated by any particular group or party, it is an across the board unspoken conspiracy, carried out by simply not taking any significant action. The Politicos all want us to wear nappies and have our arses wiped, and live our lives as if we were under wartime conditions, and under orders. 'I’m gonna be taken care of until I die,’ says a prisoner with a life sentence, as if he had done something clever. And that is the way they want us all to think.

It would in turn, be nice to think that we, the public who have a certain amount of control over who governs us, would see this coming and elect someone to smash this plot against our liberty, but my bet is that rationing of essential commodities will be with us within the next ten years, and they won’t need a war to make it stick.

Yes, it is a conspiracy, based on the fact that although the facts are staring us in the face, we won’t do a thing about it.

We were about to sit down to dinner, when I realised that the fruit salad wasn’t on the table. I went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and, and….couldn’t remember why I was there. Back in the dining room, some moments later, all was made clear. Perhaps this is God’s way of making you feel like a turnip, or perhaps it’s a sign of genius.

They say, it gets worse with old age, but I am not so sure. More recently it’s been known as short term memory loss, but absentmindedness could be another word for it, and that’s something I have always suffered from. Absentmindedness is really one thought replacing another without your consent. The new thought is just so attractive that you give up on what was previously going on and make love to the new beauty in your brain.

Of course, this type of mental process can take place on a far larger stage. Only this morning, I wrote about how we in the Western World have spent the last 50 years learning to live together, somehow forgetting about Ireland and Yugoslavia and the many other examples of bloody intolerance which have marked this period. It doesn’t alter my perception of the road to greater toleration that we have been on. Our acceptance of the different and unfamiliar today, compared to the nineteen fifties is self evident, but in all honesty these European conflicts just did not come to mind. Could this have had something to do with the fact that they didn’t suit my argument? That is a distinct and extremely unpalatable possibility.

We are fickle creatures. If a more attractive thought comes along we ditch the old one. If there is something which would upset our beautiful surmise it is not brought to mind. We all like to think of ourselves as open-minded, but without considerable self-monitoring of our mental processes, there is absolutely no chance of this being so.

'Genius’ must be an extreme form of this fickleness, and probably why it is so associated with absentmindedness, and why such people can discern one great truth while ignoring so many others. It is all about focus in the end. You focus in, and you miss the larger view, you focus out and you miss the detail. Even if you have a very large lens, which geniuses must have, for an overall perspective you must recall what you saw when it was on the other setting. This is quite a trick to pull and requires a kind of genius in itself.

I feel as if I am a clear sighted, reasonable individual, who has an excellent capacity for assimilation and judgement. Most of us must feel like that. Most of us are in fact more sporadic in our assimilation and more selective in our judgement than we would ever care to credit or admit. People sometimes talk to me and I just don’t take in a word of what they say. It would be nice to describe this as a symptom of genius, but I am afraid that this is simply a human symptom. It is an affliction which we all suffer from, notably including but not exclusive to genius.

We all know what Porridge is, don’t we? Porridge is the sticky stuff the Three Bears like so much, but which we hardly ever eat ourselves.

Porridge was UK 80’s slang for 'Jail’. You were in 'porridge’. You were eating your 'porridge’. You were having some, doing some 'porridge’.

Now there’s a man who at the age of ninety bet on himself reaching one hundred, and on collecting his winnings attributed his long life to his morning dish of ……..you guessed it, 'porridge’.

It is said that if you are arthritic, for an instant cure you should immerse the affected area in a bowl of oatmeal 'porridge’.

They also say that you can have sex to the point of excess, dosed by 'porridge’.

On the eave of the New Year, I heard someone say 'Oh if you do that, you never know what you might turn into.’ And I thought, 'Well, you never do know, but you are always turning into something, like it or not.’

As I speak, I am the kind of person who believes in personal change, but tomorrow of course that might cease to be true. We inevitably change, and indeed there are occasions where this takes the form of an epiphany. More normally, we slowly change as we go through life.

I am reminded of the expression, 'a leopard doesn’t change his spots’, and there does seem to be a core to our personality that always remains, but to talk about a person as a rock, solid entity seems to be a sure way of getting them wrong. Ironically, it is often those who are closest, who are guilty of this. They have a detailed picture of who it is that they know and love, and sometimes the image is there for life. Often the object of their affection ends up playing the part handed to them, although they are no longer anything like that.

Such are the misunderstandings that playwrights feast on. Their stories can end up with the revelation of a new world, but are just as likely to find a person unable to grasp what is now around them.

As we journey into 2008, perhaps the greatest thing we could wish for is to see ourselves as others see us and for them to see how in fact we are. It would take the gift of telepathy to make such a thing come true, and we would have to hope that if such a wish was granted, it would be selective as there are many things about us which are simply not fit for the consumption of others; well not as we presently are at any rate.

But 'never say never’. I am sure that our tolerance of each other can grow if we can at least think of ourselves as people who over the course of time are inclined to change. The mobility of our character and beliefs is what has kept us moving forward on this great adventure. Without it, we have no chance.

This last spring, I watched a pair of swans nesting. Yesterday, the cygnet, now some nine months old landed on that same pond by itself. Even two months ago the parents wouldn’t let it out of their sight, now they are who knows where. Nature knows how to move on and we must to.

Here’s to 'Them Changes’. Let’s make the most of them and not think that we know anyone so well that there is not more to be discovered.

First there was the family, then the tribe, then the nation and now there is the world. This century should become known as the time when it was realised that there is no percentage in thinking about 'them and us’ anymore, unless you mean ET.

The chances are that you are not who you think you are, anyway. The Irish think of themselves as Celts but turn out to be Norsemen. I think of myself as an Anglo-Saxon, but I am a Jew in the sense that my great-grandmother was a Jew and I am directly descended from her maternal line. As Jonathan Miller once put it, I am a Jew, but not Jewish.

Now, the Chinese for all their various languages and their huge number are very strong on national identity, so strong that they argue that The Western World has been producing carbon emissions for a century and they therefore have the right to 'catch up’. This is the kind of argument, which comes straight from the 'them and us’ school, and ignores the world itself.

They have since put forward a far more interesting proposition. At the Kyoto conferences, each country is looked at on the basis of how much carbon it emits or how much carbon it is no longer absorbing - by cutting down rain forest and establishing grazing land, for example. A table is then made up which establishes the US as the prime offender, with China in second place. The UK emits far less carbon than China and is some way down the table. 'No’, say China. 'This is all wrong. The table should be structured by looking at a nations population and should work on a carbon emission per person basis.’ This changes everything and makes the UK for instance, a far greater offender than China.

On the one hand, the giant polluters must be curbed, but on the other is it not reasonable that there be a common emissions standard for every person on the planet? In spite of the obvious threat to my personal lifestyle inherent in this approach, I have to admit that in theory at any rate, it is reasonable. Not only is it reasonable, but if tackled reasonably, it could not only be a breakthrough for Kyoto, but a breakthrough for world politics. What I would hope for would be a 'you keep your emissions where they are while we bring ours down to your level’ style of approach. This in turn would have to recognise the underlying problem we are up against, and that problem is of course the number of people on the planet and the number who are in no position to emit much of anything at all.

Yes, it leads us full circle to realise that nothing can be done about one thing without doing something about the other. There is no point in looking at these issues in isolation. Sometime or other we must grasp the nettle and get serious about making this a great place for everything and everyone to live. There are so many things that must be done even get to first base, and there is no chance of us ever getting there unless we all have the same goal in mind.

Seasons Greetings and a Very Happy (Chinese or otherwise) New Year!

If you went back to the Stone Age there would be a guy sitting around the campfire, saying that unless we all did what he said, there would be hell to pay, maybe in a literal sense and maybe not. On occasion, there would be two guys around the campfire with different ideas and then there certainly would be hell to pay. The one thing I always wonder is how these guys got to be so sure of themselves in the first place.

There are those who are sure that the world was created in a week, those who are sure that there is no God, those who are sure that terrorism is the only option, those who are sure about almost anything you can mention, and I am not even sure that I exist at all. I am taking it on trust, trust that my senses aren’t telling me major porkies. I know that they are telling me minor ones, pretty much all the time, so why shouldn’t the whole thing be a dream?

My view is that all you can really do is look for clues, remembering that what you see can look very different when viewed from another angle. The clues are mainly to be found in certain emotional events in your life, or in nature. The emotion can be love or hate or any other genuinely moving trigger. In my experience, once you have succumbed to that emotion, then strange things can happen. Praying could well prove to be something much along the same lines in that they say the more emotion that goes into the prayer, the more likely it is to have effect.

Dreams and emotions are essentially illogical, mental occurrences, things that are deep-seated and stem from our subconscious, and this perhaps gives us a clue as to the nature of reality. Outwardly, things seem to follow a logical progression but from time to time, we are confronted by events, which seem to overcome these parameters. These moments of heightened experience can be put down to many things but they undeniably lead to a super reality, which steps out of the familiar pattern of things. To acknowledge that this state of mind exists at all, calls all our sureties into question, but at the same time indicates perhaps that there is indeed something out there.

Nature is the other indicator that I mentioned. I cannot look at what is all around us and truly believe that evolution in the scientific sense is solely responsible for the enormous detail featured in say, a butterfly’s wing. We all know how grudging nature can be in giving us anything that it doesn’t need to. Butterfly’s need wings to fly; give them wings, they need a bright colour to distinguish one sex from another and perhaps by extension sex them up a bit; give them a bright colour, but give them the sublimely complex patterns that they have, why? You can’t seriously tell me that there is a need for it, and that in scientific, evolutionary terms is what nature is all about - need. But nature has gone far beyond need. It would be impossible for any one of us to dream up the wonderful designs to be found in every aspect of nature, but perhaps not impossible for all of us, and this brings me to a speculation.

What if there is a group mind of which we are all part. What if although we cannot read each other’s minds, they are in fact all part of a greater whole? It would be an explanation. Well, you might well say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

To clamp down on freedom is a natural inclination of authority, which always tends towards the notion that it knows what is best, because after all that is why it is there. Also, authority feels that if it gives us an inch, we’ll take a mile. Authority is not altogether wrong on either of those assumptions. It is not altogether right either.

My generation blew the chance of greater freedom by not being able to handle it. The sixties ended in Altmont, Manson, Kent State, and the deaths of Janice, Jimi and Jim, and instead of leading to a more enlightened, freer society, it led to the indulgence and nihilism of the seventies and eighties. This in turn has caused the regimentation of the Western World, where misinformation or selective information is used to present things in such a way that it will give more control to authority and less to us. We have simply shown ourselves ill equipped to deal with things as independent, contributive members of society. We have also shown ourselves hopeless at penetrating the smoke screens that those in authority and their 'qualified experts’ place before us

The situation has been worsened by the outbreak of terrorist insurgency, but things were going that way, anyway. Let us ask ourselves some questions about some of the countries that are or have been infected by terrorism. For example, can our sympathy with the Palestinians be maintained in the face of their two main political parties indulging in gun battles with each other? Is this the sign of a country that is ready for self-government? Or, why is it fine for Ghadafi to exercise a benign dictatorship over Libya, but not for Musharraf in a nuclear armed and terrorist infested Pakistan?

Michael Butler in his comment on the Chalmers Johnson book 'Nemesis’ - The Last Days of the American Republic wrote, 'Still it is so important that you discover what is happening to the world under the aegis of American drive for world hegemony’. America is the only nation capable of making such a drive and I cannot help feel that there is a real necessity for it, but ironically when 'Democracy’ is attached to the need for worldwide co-operation, it can simply open the door to those who seek less of it.

The time has long gone for us to expect anything other than a propagandist view, whether it is on speed cameras or global warming. If I said, as Heather Mills has, that eating less meat would do more to reduce your carbon footprint than taking less plane flights, I would be going in the face of what everyone wants to hear and therefore what represents the popular platform on that issue. If I were to say, 'Speed cameras should work on a cars average speed over a distance of at least half a mile, not on its speed at a single point’, in spite of the obvious fact that the single point system is far more dangerous with cars slowing down for the camera and then inevitably speeding up again, the authorities would not be happy with an average speed system because they would not catch so many of us out, and that is what they truly love. It is not so much the money as to have us in their grasp.

In America, there is a great perception of this loss of liberty, but the mainstream sees it as a States Side phenomenon. But look for instance at the UK. It is being politically welded to Europe when it is patently obvious that the great majority of its citizens want only a trading relationship with that Continent. It doesn’t matter what they want. It is happening anyway. Wherever you look in the world the progression is towards less freedom, not more. We are conjuring up a world where kids have to be in school until eighteen and then have to work for forty plus years to ensure that they will have enough money to round off this glorious adventure. It is all a horrendous mistake.

Freedom is not just about our rights it is about our lives. All those years ago, I guess I was one of those who tuned in, turned on and dropped out. It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but it added great richness to my life, and without that experience I don’t see how I could possibly be writing this today. Freedom is not just about what they say you can or cannot do, it is about what you do.

At the end of the day, doing good works, being politically aware or being socially responsible is not enough. Freedom is something that you must indulge in. Being free is subjective, and it can only be had if you reach out and take it. Let’s all work at being as free as we can, whether they say it’s OK or not. The rest will follow.

It is time that I said something about these pages. At the start of each article, I feel like an airman, strapping on his helmet for another mission. With something as fast and furious as this, I could be in a dogfight, maybe ending with a kill, but more likely with a shot up fuselage.

Of course, it is all highly subjective, and I try not to get too close to the action. There are occasions when the result seems pretty good, others when there are doubts, and other rare moments when there is that thrilling feeling that there might be something a bit special, something that has not been before, from me at any rate.

I remember once being told that there was a time when it was thought that you could know everything there was to know, and there came a day when it was generally agreed that this was no longer possible. This has led me to believe that any discovery which is not learnt but arrived at, be it commonly known or not, is still as much a discovery as it was the first time it was ever thought of.

Given the title of this column I have the luxury of ignoring conventional considerations, and flying by the seat of my pants as 'Loose Talk’ is all it is. I would certainly hope not to be 'samey’ in anything but my writing style. I have in the past adopted many different styles for their dramatic effect, but that was fiction and I could not honestly have written those stories in another way. This current work is as journalistic as I am ever likely to get, and if it has brought to mind anyone, it has been Alistair Cook, not that I would remotely compare the end result to his unsurpassed reflections.

I am, if you like a 'cheap-shot, merchant’, compared to Mr Cook. But that doesn’t mean that my aim is not true. A lot of the time you wouldn’t know whether Alistair (if I may be so bold as to call him that) was taking a shot at all. He was, if you like giving a very elegant flying display, whereas I am going up to do battle. But, I do admire his intellect and productive genius, and we do both 'fly a kite’, as the saying goes. Towards the end of my first book, one of the characters said, 'These words are my wings!’ And so they have turned out to be. I like my stuff and I hope you do too. It was recently put to me, that I am thirsting after recognition. I replied that I was in it strictly for the money. But that is also far wide of the mark. I love being up there, out on the wing. That’s the truth of it.

As I go on, I am less concerned about literary considerations than I am about the overall feel of the thing; a sort of literary impressionist, wanting to make hay with splashes of colour and great gobs of paint. This column has certainly given me the freedom to move in that direction, but it has also made me aware of the inherent limitations that exist if I don’t want to come down in flames.

This is the end of the tour, but not the end of the War and I will be back, hopefully with bigger guns and a steel plate under my bum, but whatever they give me I don’t care, just as long as I’m up there!

Some people feel that each hour they sleep is an hour of their life that they have lost. Well, I like my sleep. I look forward to putting my head on a pillow and am slow to get up in the morning. For me, it is a case of feeling good when I am up, and it is a minimum of eight hours (and I do mean minimum) that gets me feeling that way.

There are those times when you need to get up at a certain hour and you can only have a three or four hour nap. I can handle that on a one-off basis, and it doesn’t necessarily ruin my day, but I hate, just hate to regularly wake up to an alarm. Within a week or so, it brings a grim edge to my waking day, and when I finally get a break it takes a couple of ten-hour sessions in the sack to restore my humanity.

Either lack of sleep or a lot of it can put you in touch with the dialogue going on in your dream world, in touch with what I guess is your subconscious. Sometimes in my dreams, I walk into rooms with orchestras playing and sometimes I wake up and remember myself singing or listening to someone else sing a song, and for a magic minute or two I can actually remember the words and the tune. It is my subconscious that creates the orchestral suite, or writes the song, something that I am completely incapable of doing in my waking life. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Freddy Mercury woke up in the middle of the night with 'Bohemian Rhapsody’ running around in his brain.

I had a surgical operation, just over a year ago, and found it difficult to sleep in the six to ten days after. Often I found myself lying there in a semi-conscious state, half aware of where I was but at the same time experiencing what I suppose you could call a mild hallucination. The drugs I was on at the beginning, could have accounted for it, but these visions persisted long after I had been taken off anything other than anti-infection medication. My explanation is that my mind craved sleep so much that it began dreaming in a semi-wakened state.

I don’t doubt that the most creative of us are nearer to our subconscious, which is also quite dangerous if you confuse the two. Various disciplines, such as yoga and meditation can also lead you in that direction, opening up your chakras, as they say. The thing is that you must always come down safely. A long time ago I was practising a yoga technique involving mild hyperventilation. I was sitting, cross-legged in the sun and after a while felt myself rise into the air. I continued to levitate for sometime, gradually rising higher and higher, until a large oval opening appeared above me. There were the silhouettes of some figures leaning over the edge, eagerly stretching out their arms, gesturing me to come within reach. It was only possible to see the outlines of their head and shoulders, but there was something a little too eager in their manner and I floated back down, without making contact. To this day, I feel that something very wrong might have happened if I had come within their reach. On returning to my body, I found myself bathed in sweat and had to lie down for an hour or so. I am sure that the heat of the Sun had much to do with it, but I am also sure that there was some real mental danger there.

From time to time, I have glimpsed how dreams can link from one night to the next. The last two nights, I have been driving around in an orange Karman Ghia that I had in the seventies, with some of my present friends, not those I had back then. I couldn’t tell you much about the story other than I am driving around a lot, but I do know that one night is not simply a repetition of the night before. It may be that the dreams overlap, or that that they are entirely different stories. I just don’t know.

Even when the dreams are not too pleasant, they provide a sort of release. They contain all the unbridled creativity that is locked inside us, and although they seem to vanish, I suspect that they leave a scent on our waking day.

'Due to Mr Benedict's geographical remoteness from the United States, the film has reached him a good two months after it's release and much of what he predicts has already happened. Nevertheless, it is worth publishing because he identifies what is truly significant about the film and is not sidetracked into a critique of it's content. The mere fact that it has now reached him also confirms his assumption that the film will span the globe in a way that a conventionally released film could not.'

There is only one thing on this site, and I suppose that it is best called a 'movie’. It combines history and statistics by use of illustrations, quotes, old news and movie footage to present a global point of view, which is expounded in progressive stages. It may well turn out to be one of the most influential movies ever made, not just because of it’s controversial subject matter, but because it is there to be seen for free, not in a movie theatre, but on the Internet.

The same day it was sent to me, I emailed it on to my entire address book and sat down to write this piece. What I said to my friends was: ' This movie should be part of the education curriculum. It is two hours long but very well done and pulls a lot of things together. It is a viewpoint that EVERYONE should be aware of.’

As is the case with any 'whodunit’, I would not be doing the movie a favour by outlining it’s content. I also have reservations about much of what they lead up to, but I still have no doubt of the significance of their achievement. It is thought provoking and completely convincing on one issue, and that is that we are constantly being fed a heap of horse pucky. As with the mass audience in the film 'Network’ from which they use a clip, we should scream, 'We are not going to take it anymore.’ Of course we’ll continue to take it and I don’t have to spell out where we’ll take it, but perhaps this is a steppingstone on the road to standing up straight again.

I have from time to time expressed my disappointment with the use to which we put the Internet. In a recent article I said, 'In a sense, it is a matter of culture; a change of habit and of what we expect of ourselves, and I suppose that I may simply be expecting too much too soon. The point is that up until now the door has been open. All we have needed to do is walk through.’Well, someone just walked through that door and 'Zeitgeist’ just became part of the common nomenculture.

Having made the case the film makes no real attempt to suggest a solution, perhaps wisely. Perhaps the way forward is one of both resistance and compromise, but such tactics are useless without a clear understanding of who we are in the first place. It is in this area that the film is run-away winner. This will be the most watched movie of the year, with the smallest gross. You must see it.

The Arts are a Community Service. Sweeping the streets, talking to underprivileged kids, giving meals to old age pensioners are Community Services too, but don’t let us ever forget that however self-aggrandising stardom and celebrity may seem, at the end of the day they are also simply a Community Service.

To suggest that 'The Sex Pistols’ were offering anything other than a Community Service is not to see them clearly. If they were so bent on oblivion, why did they present their argument on stage, rather than go for bloody insurgency? Because, my friends it was an argument, not a pistol to the head.

The Arts are an argument. If it does not confront you, however softly and subtly, it is not art. Art is confrontation of the senses and the intellect.

What is 'Art’? It is simply the result of people dedicated to providing a Community Service. Yes, all artists would love to be recognised and feted for what they do, but the very great majority go without those accolades in the knowledge that they have played their part in serving the cause of free expression, and perhaps in making you reassess your situation in the scheme of things.

There are of course, 'grey areas’ in art. Graffiti is one of them. It is easy to say 'good graffiti is art, bad graffiti is not’, but it is a lot more difficult to say what is good and what is bad. There was a face sprayed onto an electrical transformer casing, who’s sardonic expression I admired for a couple of years before it was painted over with regulation beige. Then there was a slogan, which read 'Robert Goldring Lives!’ On it’s own, it was nothing, but as you went around town, it popped up time after time and in the end you had to say, 'OK, Robert Goldring really does live!’ He had made his mark on what must have been thousands of people. It is as meaningful and as meaningless as so many other pieces of conceptual art. All you can say is that both these graffitists promoted a reaction beyond that of an unsympathetic listlessness, and therefore I would judge them as artists, though I appreciate many would not.

I recently came across www.fanfiction.net . This site is about a lot of young people writing stories, which are extensions of their favourite comic stories and then commenting on each other’s efforts. The 'Dad’ who told me about this site said, 'its not Shakespeare, but quite amusing, apart from some self-indulgent ramblings - and the reviews are quite interesting.’ But is it art? Well, I hope that what I am doing merits the same description - and I get a lot fewer reviews than those kids do. We must surely appreciate all that is out there and make as much of anything as there is to be made. Art is the service and we are The Community.

It also goes without saying that artists, more often than not, are the most self-centred, two-faced, community serving bastards that you will ever meet in your life. Which is just about all of us.

As David Beckham pockets many millions for playing for the LA Galaxy, the NFL loads up it’s coffers by staging on October 28th, the first American Football Game that actually counts for points in the NFL championship at the newly constructed Wembley Stadium, London, England. Both moves are aimed at promoting what are essentially competing sports, but the differences of approach are significant.

The LA Galaxy is a team of course, while the NFL is the American governing body, but can anyone imagine the National Football Association in England (never, ever familiarly known as the NFA) having the wit to hire The Giants Stadium in New York, and stage a points counting match between say Manchester United and Arsenal there? You cannot be serious! Those greasy palmed (palm greased?) clodhoppers couldn’t to use an American sporting expression, get to first base.

The NFL first punts a package of tickets plus flights and hotel accommodation to the States-side fans, who credit card willing are more than up for such a junket. These deals are snapped up in a flash. This of course means that the NFL is picking up change, not just for ticket sales, but for the whole excursion. It also means that there will be a real football atmosphere with real fans. They sell the remaining tickets in batches over the net at between $110.00-$180.00 a seat! These are also gobbled up.

I believe that Wembley Stadium has in excess of 80,000 seats and the great majority of these are in the $180.00 category. One can only guess at the gross receipts, but I think it safe to say that this is a very cost effective way of promoting American Football.

David Beckham’s move to LA, makes it hard for him to play for his country, and the guys running the English show are left out in the cold, not having turned a coin. Then, to put the icing on the cake, the NFL say, 'Please note that any tickets from this sale that are found to be on eBay or similar ticket touting websites will have their sale cancelled, and made available to genuine fans in a final general admission sale that will take place in late September’. Ticket touting is rife in soccer and all The NFA can do is to click their tongues a little.

The NFL is a business and the NFA is jobs for the boys. I’m not saying that all is sweetness and light in the NFL, but despite the many problems that beset the States, Americans know how to run things, know how to show things. Good ole’ American know-how! I bet they are picking up another billfold from live TV coverage in the UK as well.

Before I go on a trip, I naturally try to tie up any loose ends. There are always things that you want to close out but have to leave, and the sobering thought is that is very much the nature of life itself.

I like to think that my life will end up as a fully rounded whole, which of course in one sense it may do, but just like any other trip, the departure can never be as neat as all that. There are bound to be outstanding issues of one kind or another.

There are always those things you forget, not that you can take things with you when you die, but things like locking the back door or leaving a note to stop the newspapers being delivered. Perhaps that is what ghosts are all about: people who should have done something, but didn’t. Whether they forgot or were pig headed, or simply lacked the courage could also be a factor. Indeed it could be even more complex than that. I can think of things that I should really do, but I don’t, not because I am not equal to the task, but because it might disturb another’s peace of mind. 'Things best left unsaid,’ as the saying goes.

Of course, from our present standpoint we also have to deal with things that we think should have taken place with those who have now gone. We didn’t forget, or perhaps we did, but whatever the reason, we never got to it in time and now never will.

These untidy strands exist on both sides of the fence and infiltrate so much of our existence that it could be what keeps the whole cycle rolling on. It is rather like the discovery that what was first taken to be the emptiness of Space is full of stuff that actually drives the Universe. At first I was a little embarrassed at calling it 'stuff’ like a kid in High School might do, but on second thoughts it is not such a sloppy word. After all, we talk about 'the stuff of life’, and as far as 'life’ is concerned, this could just be our Loose Ends.

Perhaps on the other hand, the truth behind the mystery is that the things that you wanted to say but didn’t were known already and the things that you wanted to do, but didn’t, would not have worked out in the way you thought.

Now, this notion seems to have some elemental truth to it. Our lives can be many things, but looking back, I am in the most part surprised, surprised that while we blindly bash our heads against this or that wall, or drag ourselves over seemingly insurmountable obstacles, like a great painting, while the detail can be ragged, there is an overall balance to the whole thing.

We are told that when we drink coffee, tea or alcohol we dehydrate our bodies. My dictionary tells me that 'to dehydrate’ means, 'to cause to lose water’.

Now, if you were lost in a desert or adrift on an ocean and had only a flask of filter coffee to drink should you drink it? I suspect that the answer is that you should. I suspect that if you had a can of lager, you would be better off drinking it, and that only spirit alcohol, along perhaps with espresso coffee are not worth drinking in such a situation.

In other words, a mug of coffee or a can of beer actually do not dehydrate you, they simply do not hydrate you as much as water, they have an ingredient which dehydrates but it is mixed with water, so dependant on the proportion of the ingredient to the proportion of water you may well be receiving a limited hydration benefit.

I have not referred to any scientific source to reach this conclusion. It simply follows from the course of action I would take if I were in those circumstances. I would welcome some informed opinion on the subject, but whereas the issue may be more complex than my simplistic assumption, if essentially I am right then we are at best being told a half-truth. More likely we are being fed a well-meaning falsehood, somewhat disingenuously at that, or to put it plainly, told a lie.

Those that use and promote this simple speak would either argue that it is for simple people, or that we know what they mean. Either way, it frees them up to dehydrate our brains if not our bodies.

As more and more information becomes available, there is more and more temptation to wrap things up in simple bite-sized packages. 'Sound-bites’ are exactly that. I am a great believer in simplicity, but not in simple ness and there’s the rub, my friends, simple ness is what we are getting; gobs and gobs of what is simply good for you, for your friends and for the Planet as a whole.

Put another way, bicycling can be bloody dangerous, running the marathon can be horribly harmful to you in later years, and most of our sports heroes are permanently injuring themselves by doing what they do. We know this, but it’s not said. We have comfort talk just like we have comfort food. Well, I find it uncomfortable in the extreme. It makes me see red, and yellow at the same time. I am pissed off by all this double talk, but I am also scared of the consequences of living in a foolish world.

Goody Two Shoes can turn you into a prune as surely as The Merciless Ming. Welcome to the Dehydration Nation!

I am truly sorry to be like this. We’ll have a laugh next time.

My wife died more than a quarter of a century ago, but I have found her again in the DVD of this cult film from 1970, 'Rainbow Bridge’. In addition to the photos, I now have this incredible movie, shot a few years before our relationship, but not before we had met. I knew quite a few of the other guys in the film and also met some of those who produced it. I also knew the star of the film, Jimi Hendrix from times both in the States and in the UK. Not that he ever knew me.

What is extraordinary, as it would be for anyone of my generation, is to see some professionally shot film with excellent sound, featuring someone you knew and loved back then. In this film she has been slightly prepared for the cameras but is not 'made up’ and is as beautiful as memory serves. I call her my wife because we were married. We lived together on occasion, but ours was not a marriage in the accepted sense, and many would say not in any sense.

'Rainbow Bridge’ takes a look at the culture that could nurture such an unconventional take on institutional values, more so perhaps than even 'Woodstock’ or the musical 'Hair’. Many of the rank and file in 'Rainbow Bridge’ (including said wife) came from 'The Source’, a health food restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. They lived in a drug-free commune, dressed in white robes, were spiritual in their outlook and had sex with other members of the group on a rotational basis.

I, and those I hung with were not as radical as that crowd, but understood and empathised with them and were radical in other ways. 'Rainbow Bridge’ rejected western, industrialised society. We on the other hand sought to turn it to our liking. It all seems to have been pretty ineffectual, but things aren’t always what they seem and there is a legacy. How big or small is hard to say except when it comes to music, and music is this films great strength.

The extraordinary sight of those giant Marshall Amps mounted on a makeshift stage in the middle of a field without any of the commercial hoopla normally associated with such an event would provide any trio (the toughest of all rock disciplines) with a performance problem, but being brought down to this basic level only served to demonstrate Jimi’s towering musical genius. Of the many, many hours we have, which show this great man performing (I have watched most of what there is, and also saw him live) this most clearly shows the essence of his greatness. He seems as if he might be carried away on the wind at any moment, as would any other angel producing such magical sounds.

Yes, for all the cartloads of nonsense, there is magic in this film. In the intervening years these pioneers have been ridiculed, but there is much to suggest that their medicine was strong. It permeates our world today, and yet may save it.

Now and then, we all have to reflect on why human beings can’t even agree on something as simple as which side of the road to drive on. If there was a choice, other than left or right there would be plenty of subscribers, and I for one would say 'vive la difference’ except, and this is a big 'except’, except for those things where the difference makes no difference at all.

Take for instance the 'website’ you are looking at. The French are too late on the scene to call it something completely different, but will they leave it at that? No, they won’t. They call it a 'site web’, which in turn leads me to ask, why do we call it a website at all? Well, let’s begin at the beginning. What came first, the Internet or the website? Well, naturally, the Internet. In that case why wasn’t a 'website’ called a 'netsite’?

'Internet’ is a glorious word, which fully expresses both the simplicity, and the infinitely complex nature of this extraordinary medium. It is the combination of two words we regularly use, 'inter’, the Latin for between, and 'net’, the thing that amongst others, fishermen use.

Now, spiders use a 'web’ for the same purpose as a net and yes, I would go as far as to say that they are one and the same thing. It would seem to me more appropriate to talk about a 'spiders net’ than a 'spiders web’. You can even talk about 'the web of a net’ although why would you? There is no law against it, but no reason for it that I can see.

Of course, there are 'webbed feet’, which probably gives us the clue as to where the idea behind the word 'web’, came from. ie: something that spans out, like the spokes of a wheel. Unfortunately, spiders work in squares as well as circles, just as there are nets, which span out as well as nets that are cubed.

At the end of the day why confuse a ducks foot, with a spiders net? Just to be different, ehh? Well, we are that alright.

There are times in life when you feel that you are on a roll. The feeling is something like being on a roller coaster ride, although the term itself comes from gambling, which is disappointing.

If I had my way, Vegas would be a one-horse town, lotteries wouldn’t exist, horse racing would not be big enough to be televised, and card games would be played on rainy nights for matches.

A friend of mine was driving back to town on one such rainy night, and stopped to pick up someone hitching. The poor guy was drenched and very grateful for the transport and shelter.

“How come you were out there?” My friend asked.

“Well,” the guy replied. “I was playing cards and put everything I had on what seemed like a sure thing. Only it wasn’t.”

My friend pulled over to the side of the road. “Get out.” He said.

“Why?” The guy was bemused.

“You were fool enough to go for broke. Your head should be under a tap.”

I applaud the sentiment. Gambling is the biggest waste of time known to man and win or loose, you loose on a personal basis. We are warned about everything from drink and drugs to carbon footprints, but bad as these things may or may not be, at least you get something for your money. With gambling you get something if you win, but looking at it objectively it is just shuffling money around. Nothing else is going on there. And the amount of time and energy spent in this futile pastime is phenomenal.

People say that the stock market is just another form of gambling, and you can see the point, but there are many millions of people who invest for the income, which is essentially sharing in the company’s profit and growth. It is far from an ideal structure and I am sure that many of the city’s 'high- flyers’ are just well informed gamblers, but there is an undeniable purpose behind it all, and this purpose has been instrumental in creating our prosperity. Pure gambling might help create a string of racehorses or tax revenue, but these are incidental to the process itself.

It is not hard to figure out the lure of gambling; the easy money, get rich quick come-on. People talk about the hope it gives to those without any. If you have money to gamble with, you have cause to hope by not. The other attitude is “I can afford it. It amuses me.” You really can’t find anything better to amuse you? I don’t mean 'better’ in a moral sense. I mean 'better’ as in more amusing, more gratifying, edifying, fulfilling, satisfying. If you think that you can manipulate outcomes, try playing chess - or is that too much for the old noggin. If you are a thrill seeker, run the rapids, climb a mountain, sail around the world, or maybe go bowling.

No, if you want to gamble, gamble on yourself. Someone is bound to say, “That’s what I am doing.” But that of course is not what I mean. I mean put your money into something, which you are going to create and be involved with; a dish of food, a party, a business, a garden, a lover, a brick wall, a painting, an article for netlistings, even. Bet on yourself being better. Back yourself in the achievement and fulfilment stakes. Make more of yourself, not of some notional outcome.

Well, it’s great to have that off my chest. I was on a bit of a roll there myself.

I spelt it 'lozzange’ then, 'lozange’, tried it without an 'e’, which just looked wrong, then went to 'spell check’. I admit it. I can’t spell, but what is spelling but the shadow of mindless authority?

It’s not just English. Any lingo makes you memorise the spelling of each word, rather than get to it logically. I mean, why 'i before e except after c.’? Why? Because it’s such a nice rhyme for people to learn, maybe. And why are there letters, which are silent? If they are silent then they won’t shout about not being there. Why two 't’s’ in letter and why two 'l’s’ in spell? And why one 'z’ in lozenge, which sounds like a definite 'two zeder’ to me. Or is that 'two-zeder’, or 'two-zedder’?

Latin may possibly be logical enough to be called 'the exception’, but I bet that it divides objects into male and female categories. Now, if I don’t know the sex of a word from one of the so-called 'romantic’ languages, I always go for female. Even a pen is female. Just look at a pen. Does it look female? You worry me if you think so.

Text-spell is a reaction to all this crap. We had it coming. Not so much a lozenge as an enema, I’d say. But the fact is that if you want to seriously streamline text, you would use shorthand. Why aren’t we taught shorthand, rather than the words we use, and what are those stenograph machines transcribers use in a courtroom? Is there something that we are missing here?

My gut tells that as much as I love our language, in its written form we are being sold, not a pup, but a knackered old carthorse. The fact is that they want to teach us for longer and longer to learn what they want us to learn, no matter the sense of it. And the spelling of our beautiful language makes no sense at all.

By the end of this century, no normal person will be able to understand this writing. It will be more remote to them than Chaucer is to us. In the meantime, it would help if they dumped all the garbage that over the centuries has piled up around our written word, as would any good Roman.

Note: I am now told that there is a campaign to simplify the spelling of English. British children apparently spend three times as long learning to spell than their European counterparts. Double letters in words are one of the main bugbears. Although there will always be differences in the spelling of English from one country to another, my hope is that all English Speaking countries will cooperate in a general overhaul of their spelling, avoiding the complete fragmentation of our written word.

Things are always changing. People talk about 'Climate Change’, but they couldn’t point to a year when the climate was 'normal’. Not only is everything constantly changing around you, but you are also 'in a state of flux’ which makes it virtually impossible to monitor change without the assumption of a constant point. Hence, you can come up with contradictory statistics on any subject that you care to name. This less than restful fact underlies our state of being and may also account for our quest, you could almost say yearning for a spiritual constant.

Motion is one of the most discernable symptoms of change and one, which produces a theory I’m fond of, mainly because it’s my own. Imagine two cars driving in opposite directions on parallel tracks. They are both travelling at say sixty miles an hour, which means that in relationship to one another, they are travelling at one hundred and twenty miles an hour, a fact that would be dramatically confirmed should they be travelling on the same track. In other words, speed can only be determined by one objects relationship to another. Now, imagine two objects travelling at the speed of light in opposite directions. They are travelling at twice the speed of light in relationship to one another, but it is supposedly impossible for anything to go faster than the speed of light! As with the spiritual supposition of a constant, the statement relies on a theoretical constant, which overrides the two objects relationship to one another, but nevertheless, should the two objects collide, their impact would confirm them to be travelling at twice the speed of light, because in collision each object had de facto become the constant of the other. In other words, it is not possible to travel at more than the speed of light, but it is possible to crash at twice that speed, or move towards or away from another object at twice that speed.

So it seems that science cannot do without a constant, cannot do without God, if you like. We could therefore go on to say that 'God is change’ or alternatively 'God is rest’, which are contradictory statements but would make some sense of 'being laid’ or 'being laid to rest’ though not much. I will content myself by saying that 'change is good’ and 'rest is good’ but not always and not all of the time. In spite of this I would still like to think that God is good all of the time, even though that let’s the Devil in. It is all Ying and Yang in the end, a feast of opposites.

Life is as paradoxical as the statement we started out with. We should relish having such a magical existence where everything seems as real and solid as you like, but nothing has permanence and anything can be demonstrated to be something other than it seems to be, in an infinite number of ways.

Well, we have travelled down this road together and I am certainly not the same as I was when we started. How can I know? Well, you can always tell by whether you need a rest or feel like you’ve just had one.

Every morning, I shuffle out of bed to sit behind my computer and see what’s going on in the World. When I am convinced that things are pretty much OK, I click on Beyonce’s video 'Green Light’. That sets me up for the day, better than coffee ever could.

The track is musically and thematically brilliant. Visually, it is full of tasty ladies in skyscraper heels plus a strip of PVC. It expresses an emotion, which used to be exclusively a male province. If it was generally understood what was being said, the song would be banned, but Beyonce expertly camouflages the underlying meaning with a combination of rap and a diva's soaring vocal, orchestrated by a blisteringly hot horn section. The song sets a benchmark in the way a sophisticated woman might not just ask for, but require sex. It reminds me of that Demi Moore/Mike Douglas Film, 'Disclosure’, where Demi has Mike on his back. That was thirteen years ago and things have moved on. In 'Disclosure’, Demi was the villain and she had a fixation about Mike, whereas the lady who Beyonce plays the part of makes it clear that if her man is not there for her, then she will get someone else.

I love the way Beyonce’s 'o’s’ sound. They are uniquely hers and probably come from the way her family talk, but she purposely uses this sound to get more out of the lyrics. She borders on being a showgirl, but lacks the vacancy of Kylie or Gwen, though I must confess to also being a massive fan of 'Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ and 'The Sweet Escape’.

But Beyonce’s 'Green Light’ and one suspects Beyonce herself has a lot more to give. Her rendition is breathtaking. Vocally she can put those other ladies in her pocket. And the theme is provoking, particularly coming from a girl who lives so much of a family life. It has always struck me how sexually overt her videos are. With Christina Aquilera you expect something steamy but Beyonce could (couldn’t she?) be the girl next door. In interview she comes across as level headed, almost as demure, but I’d guess she is also as smart as a whip, and hugely ambitious as an artist.

The site that offers me my morning dose of 'Green Light’ also has a review facility. Apart from my own critique, they are less than ecstatic. In fact the word 'crap’ comes up more than once. Now, it gives me great comfort to know that they, who think that Beyonce has 'sunk so low’, that 'the song means nothing’, and that 'she is screaming’, are also likely to think that I am 'crap’ too.

I cook a meal most days and like to cook for friends, so the kitchen is not a complete mystery to me. What is a mystery is what 'taste’ is about. I used to drink coffee with sugar. Then I gave sugar up. Now, I sometimes have a lump of sugar in a bitter espresso, but with ordinary instant or filter coffee, I can’t stand the stuff. Sugar hasn’t changed, so somehow my taste has. Smoking is the same; you hate to give it up but when you have, you hate the smell of cigarettes.

Taste in food, like taste in fashion is constantly changing. There is no universal standard that you can rely on. In the Middle-Ages the taste was for much sourer dishes, for instance. There is also this strange thing called 'acquired taste’, something that you don’t like when you first taste it, but you get to like it, despite yourself as it were. Your taste also changes, as you get older. Stranger and stranger, as Lewis Carroll would say. And, to think that in England, the land of roast beef, the most popular dish is a curry!

The curry thing is probably a reaction to the legion of restaurants across the UK, particularly in holiday resorts and on motorways, which serve up over-fried, over- boiled, over-baked, when not micro waved ingredients of highly suspect quality. The British philosophy is 'if it’s a captive audience, any slop will do’. That doesn’t mean that there arn’t good gastro-pubs, hostelries and restaurants in well-healed areas, it just means that in time honoured tradition, if they can serve up shit, they will.

But the customer can also be incredibly blinkered, not to say darn right parochial about the taste of food. In America, the cheese is jack, jack and more jack and it is the most boring, badly textured cheese on the Planet. Also, the common brands of American beer suck. They have so little bite and flavour you wonder if you are really drinking beer at all. And their bread is the most pappy, tasteless excuse for bread that you wouldn’t think could be made, even if you tried.

Possibly, that’s because many Americans don’t care about those foods. What they want is a big, juicy steak, fries and maybe a salad with one of a myriad of dressings. They are oh so big on dressings, but all oh so creamy, nothing as sharp and simple as a vinaigrette.

France on the other hand, does care - or says it does - and they are also big, big sinners in the taste department. Their main sin is arrogance. Zee food Francais is zee best food in zee World. Eet is zee best and zat ees zat. Now, you could be driving down a country road in the middle of France somewhere. You might stop at an auberge and have the most ravishingly delicious lunch that you could ever have dreamt of. Their markets also have the most wonderful fresh produce that you could wish for. But, I am afraid to say that they have not the slightest idea what a good potato is, although the best in the World are grown a few miles off their mainland, and when it comes to apples, their apples have to be cooked. They are just not fit to eat as they come.Apples and potatoes are both called 'pommes’ in French. An apple is a 'pomme’ and a potato is a 'pomme de terre’ or an 'apple of the earth’. The notion that there is some similarity between an apple and a potato pretty much confirms that they havn’t a clue about either of them.

Jersey Royal potatoes are grown on the Isle of Jersey and also in Cornwall, which must mean that they could also be grown in Brittany, but to the best of my knowledge they are not or if they are it is a closely guarded, shameful secret. Once you have eaten a Jersey Royal, you will know why they are called 'Royal’. Their flavour and texture ensure their enthronement. Apples, on the other hand are in a sorry state the World over. They are nothing to what they were a generation ago, but for some reason in France they are not 'fruit’ at all. They are leathery, pithy, without juice or sharpness. They look like apples, but simply are not.

The French are food snobs. It took a world revolution in wine to wake them up in that department and when it comes to cheeses, they just can’t get their heads around anything that isn’t French. They ignore the Spanish manchego and the English Cheshire, both of which can stand alongside anything they have to offer. The French are bigoted, food philistines when you come down to it.

I personally like those taste touches that define a country. Cranberry sauce, say in America, wasabi, I think it is called (the hot green horseradish paste) in Japan, herbs de Provence in France, tomato sauce in Italy and mustard in England. I see great similarities between Japan and England. Both are small countries off the coast of big ones with incredibly deep-rooted cultures that have successfully somersaulted into the modern world. And they both have these eye-watering condiments that are only matched in strength perhaps by the ubiquitous chilli pepper. I personally serve a lightly grilled tuna steak with English mustard and it is phenomenal!

But those who buy English mustard in a bottle or a tube and don’t mix the powder with water themselves simply have no idea what the taste of English mustard truly is, and why with roast beef (or grilled tuna) it is so essential. I suppose that all mustards come from mustard seed, but only one that I know of is truly worthy of the name 'mustard’ and that is English mustard, which has to be made just before serving from English mustard powder. All the rest should have a different name, 'Musty’ perhaps: Full Grain Musty, Dijon Musty, American Musty. 'You want some musty on your hot Dog?’ 'No, I’ll have some mustard, thanks.’

I am in mind of the reaction of the Iraqi people to their countrywomen winning the Middle-East TV talent show, which surely must have been reported in the US. Suddenly, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are all jumping about, hugging each other.

Now if that’s what it takes to bring peace, forget Macdonalds and lets get Simon Cowell et al over there and start a raft of TV talent shows! That’s one thing the US still knows how to do, to the point of infinitely boring distraction, which quite obviously the Iraqis (along with their neighbours) are up for.

How can the insurgents continue to operate in the face of an Arabic 'X Factor’? The battle is to win hearts and minds, and if this does the trick, however spurious it may seem, so be it.

Incidentally, I understand from a recent news broadcast that the Iranians are not Arabs. I wonder how many of you out there were also not aware of this crucial information. We are somehow expected to know these things, but are left to pick the most basic facts out of the mire of politically slanted mumbo-jumbo that we are bombarded with each day.

Now, it seems the Iraqis are gagging for a massive dose of mumbo-jumbo, and who is by far the best qualified to give it to them? Who has the Professorship in mumbo-jumbo but yours truly?

Many truths are spoken in jest. It’s best that we don’t forget it.

As I write I am listening to 'The Who’ play 'Who Are You?’ on 'Live Earth’ which song apparently was a predictor of the Internet, or so they say. Well, I am a big fan of The Who, (they are now playing 'Teenage Wasteland’ in the pouring rain) but I bet they didn’t also predict Internet becoming the 'Internot.’

I am living in foreign parts and my laptop broke down about six weeks ago, so I have been using the local Internet Café for essential communications and the hundred or so people who normally hear from me every couple of weeks, have not.

One of those hundred actually emailed 'are you alright?’ and about five others knew of my problem and but the other ninety or so don’t appear to have noticed. Not that I have been without messages. Over a hundred items of detected spam have been received and just under a hundred other messages, fifty from companies I can’t get to stop mailing me, thirty from individuals or organisations who circulate articles, (not their own) or images, or links to sites of interest and under twenty messages actually intended specifically for me.

My provider has complicated matters by suddenly taking a hate on certain email addresses, which it won’t deliver to and it also has taken to censoring the emails I send and receive. I have therefore had to set up another email address with another provider, which so far isn’t such a control freak.

All of this gives a little insight into what the Internet has become, and it is far less than I had hoped. People send me messages that they think will amuse, excite, or somehow be of service to me, but from one month to the next I might not get personal news or opinion from anyone. What the Internet has become is a reference service and a way to book plane flights and buy things, and this is ok as far as it goes, but it is hardly living up to it’s potential and that is down to us.

The Internet should provide a sharing of our high’s and low’s, particularly with those in far off places, and it should be a vehicle for real local and global democracy; real democracy, not the joke that we are presently stuck with. Every now and then, politicians talk about the decentralisation of power, of a handing over to local government. What they should be talking about is a handing over to us.

The Internet should provide a forum in which information is provided about matters of local and national government, on which our opinion is then sought. This would not be voting as such, but the resulting information would be highly influential. It would also not be what you get from pollster’s carefully slanted questions. It would be a specific indication of opinion on specific subjects. What if a website had asked Americans after the confusion ending the last presidential election, 'Do you think that the election should be re-run?’ What if?

Once or twice, sites have been organised to register objection or assent to this or that, when a government or organisation is obviously going against the public’s wishes, and the ones I know about have been most effective. This goes to show that what I am talking about is entirely possible, but like any kind of freedom, you only get it by fighting for it, and when it comes to democracy, we think that we already have it. It is a matter of degree. We have a sort of democracy, but we could have much more.

In a sense, it is a matter of culture; a change of habit and of what we expect of ourselves, and I suppose that I may simply be expecting too much too soon. The point is that up until now the door has been open. All we have needed to do is walk through. Doors, which are open, can close and as the years go by we can see the Internet succumbing to more and more control. No, you can’t send words like that, pictures like that, thoughts like that, and you can’t receive them either. Controls are needed, but now they are in place they are being abused, and it is because we have not made the effort to take control ourselves. Did we think that somehow we would not have to take responsibility for this gift? That the Internet was somehow different in that respect to every other technological enhancement that we have ever been afforded? Use it or lose it. Lose the freedom you could have had. The Internot is what we’ve got, and we righteously deserve it.

Two brothers with a house not far from Monte Carlo were lucky enough to know someone with an apartment, which overlooked the route of the Grand Prix, and along with other friends of his they were afforded a grandstand view of the race. Sadly, after some years the apartment was sold and come the day of the Grand Prix, they had nowhere to go. They took themselves into town and tried to find a spot where they could see the action, but the best they could come up with was a café with a television set, so close to the race that they could actually hear the screaming F1 engines, but only see the cars on TV.

That is something like going to a baseball or football game with a hand sized TV so that you can watch the replays, or maybe check out the other games being played.

Some people think that in fact it is better to see such events on a TV, rather than in the flesh. Their argument is that you can actually see more than you do by being there. Digital viewing and satellite dishes have strengthened this argument, but against it is the sensation you get by being part of the action.

Now, I am British but not in Britain so I have this dish, which offers me the godlike proposition of being there but not. This spring, I have seen The Boat Race, The Grand National, The Derby, Ascot Week, The Chelsea Flower Show, Crufts, The FA Cup, Trouping The Colour, Glastonbury Festival, The Royal Academy Exhibition and now Wimbledon, and after that The Proms. Now if it’s not your patch you might not know what some of these events are, but just lets say that they are all more than just 'events’ they are part of the National fabric. Glastonbury is the new kid on the block. While there are many other major music festivals, Glastonbury’s five days have turned into a British Institution.

I must admit to a feeling of national pride when I contemplate these celebrations, but it is mixed with the sneaking suspicion that I personally would rather not be there, would rather not be getting to and from, in any kind of weather, in the pushing and shoving, lack of leg room, bad view, strawberries and cream down my shirt, up to my ankles in mud kind of environment.

I am up on Olympus looking down on the mere mortals below, and it’s not just Britain, the World is my oyster. But there’s no time for any of that now. There’s a warm sea and a sandy beach. There’s the local wine, which blends so flawlessly with the smell of the pines and the sound of the doves which nest in them. Being there but not will have to wait for a while.

I heard of someone who used to walk down Oxford Street in London, propositioning any and every women he fancied. His logic was that sooner or later, he would get lucky. It was reported to me that on average he made one out of a hundred. My hunch is that was wildly optimistic propaganda and if he wasn’t too picky, one out of a thousand would be nearer the mark, and even then he would probably be asked to pay for the favour.

On the other hand, someone that I actually do know went to a club in that same street where he picked up a girl, brought her on to a party and in due course got so lucky that he ended up marrying her, and as far as I recall there were no 'extenuating circumstances’.

Prior to that meeting my friend had something of a colourful career with his lady friends, having his way with them on the top floor of a double-decker buses and one summers night, on the cool slab of a tomb stone. He was tall and slim, and had a jaunty way about him, but wasn’t what you would call 'good looking. It was his confidence that pulled it off.

I have known many guys without the looks who get laid like champs, which makes it all the more gutting to see an Adonis brushing off girls like so many flies. They swarm around him, even if he’s a duffer, even if he’s homosexual! It seems to be the face that does the trick with girls. Their man can be big or small, fat or skinny, have pork pie hands, bowed legs, knobbly knees, a little willy, but it’s the face (most girls say 'the eyes’, which I don’t believe) that counts. Of course, it’s not the same with men. With them the bod is just as important. Thank heaven men all have different tastes in that department.

The voice is also an important aspect in pulling. Sometimes it’s the tone and sometimes it’s what’s said. With some girls all you have to do is keep talking for long enough, any stuff will do, and they are putty in your hands. Most times though, it is the funny guy that gets a high scorecard. Make 'em laugh and you’ll make 'em. On the other hand, whispering 'sweet nuthin’s’ can work. Sexy talk is more risky, but if you have a voice like Richard Burton or Barry White, it can be a lot quicker.

But one things for sure and that’s nothings for sure. What works for one girlie, won’t work for another. Some women like to be bossed, others like to mother, some like serious types, others like jokers. When it comes down to it, you might just as well be yourself and take what comes.

At the end of the day, the most talented Casanova can spend day and night plying his troth and get nowhere, and Jo Shmo can be minding his own business when the little miss decides she wants some and presto, it’s happening. Women like to think that they are being seduced, and are greatly helped by the fact that men like to think so too. In truth it takes two for a 'voulez vous?’

We have four-colour vision. Baboons and chimps have three-colour vision, and other smaller monkeys generally have two-colour vision. But birds have five- colour vision. Birds see ultraviolet. What would our paintings, what would our buildings look like if we also saw ultra violet?

What you see depends on how strong the light that lights it is and the direction that light is coming from. I know an artist, a brush and pallet man who paints under neon light but likes to show his finished work, light by a slowly varying rheostat, to add dynamism and life to the work. Outside objects and structures are extra dynamic, because of the constantly changing light and its changing direction. I have always thought that when architects make models of their proposed buildings, their lighting should take account of the varying positions of the sun in relation to their structures and it’s altering intensity as the day wears on.

It is because of these factors to say nothing of moonlight, rain and even snow that makes sculpture so much more rewarding when it is outside. Objects can take on other appearances in a certain light and lights themselves can become something that they are not. Yesterday evening, I was convinced that a sea buoy was a swimmers head, and at night I have often been fooled by the light behind a round window or a by a single street lamp, which I have momentarily taken to be the moon.

There is one such round window in the building opposite where I live, and what is mystifying is that for a split second, it still continues to fool me. Something inside me says, ' It’s The Moon!’ and even as I look up the voice of reason is already saying, 'Of course it’s not, dick brain, it’s the window of the house next door!’ There are other windows in that building, but not near that one, and they are all rectangular. A rectangular window, similarly light from behind has never caused me to think that it is anything but what it is. I am a city boy. I don’t spend spent much time looking at the night sky and when I go out at night I am surrounded by lights, both static and moving which also produce no such illusions. Perhaps this Moon illusion is a throwback to a time when a single round light above you at night could be only one thing. I can think of no other explanation.

Back then, once inside the flickering fires would give life to the things around you and outside was a constant metamorphosis. Today, our homes and offices, shops and restaurants have bleached out all that mystery. So we go to darkened halls to see movies and to strobe light clubs, instead. But one way or another the need is deep inside us, even if it is just a trick of the light.

Much too close for comfort, I was in serious danger of growing old, growing old before I needed to. It was a tough fight, and though the war goes on, a small battle has been won, but it was a close run thing.

About nine months ago, I had an operation to remove a cancerous tumour on my colon. This was followed by six months of chemotherapy, which left me so that I needed to lie down after any activity such as say, going to the supermarket and with a numb, tingling sensation in my fingertips and toes. This tingling still persists although I think it has diminished slightly.

During this chemo treatment, I made an effort to go to the gym, but it proved too much over the last month or so. Although there is a slight feeling of nausea, I had to keep eating to combat the poison that they were pumping into my body. Because of the eating and the operation, which slashed open my stomach, bunching up my stomach muscles like two halves of a sliced elastic strap, my waist expanded by a good three or four inches.

I suddenly had to catch my breath when I walked upstairs, couldn’t easily pick something off the floor or tie my shoelaces, couldn’t run across the road for fear of tripping or spraining an ankle. I looked in the mirror and saw the puffy face of a jowly old codger. If I was on a bus or a train, a young girl might get up and give me her seat!

I got an all clear from the Docs after scans and mini cams up my innards. They had more tests that they wanted to run, but I took off for warmer climes at the speed of light, to a beach I could run on and a sea I could swim in. Every day I went out to heave my carcass across the sand, groaning and wheezing with the effort. Every day I splashed up and down the shoreline, pulling and kicking myself along, and every day came the push-ups, sit-ups, crouches, stretches, until a month had past. My joints and muscles ached and I was still as fat and past my sell-buy date as ever. It was no good, I was an old cucker and that was that.

Something still made me get out on the beach every morning. I told myself that I’d just walk about a bit, but when I was there, I had to see if I could run as far as I’d ran the day before. Sometimes I could and sometimes I couldn’t and sometimes I even ran just that little bit further.

Well, you’ve guessed it. In another month the mirror started to look a little more like the old 'me’, and the aches and pains were not so severe. I’m not as svelte as I should be, but I can get into some of my old trousers again, and the young girls have a slightly more guarded look in their eye.

I see these dear old folk, creaking their way up the promenade or sitting on the seaside benches and think to myself, 'Yes I was in a whisker of being there with you. But I’m not. Not yet awhile.

We live in an era when what you see or hear on the news is almost always incomplete, often to the point of it being wrong. It has become necessary to tune in to a number of different news outlets if you want to know what anything is about.

This is sometimes due to 'the agenda' of the broadcasters, but as often as not it is simply badly researched and sloppily put together. The reporting of the Afghan and Iraqi wars is a case where I believe the public are being deliberately mislead by being constantly told of the casualties from road and car bombs, without being advised of the progress that the allied forces are making in their fight against the Taliban and the insurgents. The broadcasters agenda is to see us withdraw from these theatres of war asap and consequently they are almost reporting these wars as if they were on the other side. After all, it would be unthinkable if GWB's 'surge' was to have some success, wouldn't it?

A case of downright sloppiness was evidenced by a recent story of the finding of a planet in another solar system which may contain life. One TV news source reported that this planet is too far away for us to see what it looks like, but scientists believe that it may contain water and that it is far closer to it's sun than we are to ours, but then it's sun is not so strong. The planet is also a lot larger (about five times the size) than ours and so any life that there is would likely be physically far flatter than life is on our planet.

CNN, on the other hand, while reporting that a planet with the potential for life had been found mentioned none, and I do mean none of these facts but did say that it is called C528, or something similar, and perhaps we are called C528 by the life forms on that planet, while perhaps they call their own planet 'earth' as we do. They also showed a picture of this far away globe, without explaining as the other TV station had done, that the planet cannot actually be seen, and that this was just a 'visualisation'. Anyone watching CNN would therefore have assumed that this was what the planet looked like.

Neither channel said what galaxy this planet is in or how many light years away it is, but then CNN having so far provided virtually nothing but misinformation, came out with the very salient fact that it's surface temperature seems to range from 0 degrees centigrade aprox, to about 40 degrees centigrade aprox, making it pretty much ideal for life as we know it, with a high potential for water. This reasoning was something that the other broadcaster had completely failed to mention

By now we have seen how both stations had failed to properly report the story, and CNN in one instance, had misreported it.

We are what we know, and in truth, we know nothing.

What do we mean when we say that someone is 'smart’? My idea is someone with a high IQ, or who is dexterous with words, like a lawyer, a politician or perhaps a talented estate agent.

When I was at school there were two boys in my class who were light years ahead of the rest of us in our grades. One of them was the type you would expect to be 'smart’. He was intensely keen to learn and whatever the attraction was (mystifying to the rest of us) he applied his energies wholeheartedly to that cause. What must have been truly upsetting to him was that his smart compatriot looked outwardly more like the village idiot; a big, slow spoken, shambolic boy in ill-fitting clothes, with bulging jacket pockets so full of stuff that he could never find what he was looking for. He had no more interest in learning than the rest of us, but one glance at the pages of a textbook and he would know its contents, not having memorised it as say a speed-reader, but actually having understood the ideas it contained. On the other hand, he was one of the least well-equipped people to deal with everyday life that I have ever met.

Today, people talk of a person’s qualifications and of their capacity to deal with a given workload. The terrible thing is that all too often these well qualified, high work-load people are placed in a position of authority, when in reality the very quality that makes them such strong performers stops them from seeing beyond the detail.

I recently reviewed a book written by an autistic lady who has become an authority on the handling of livestock. She is regarded as an authority, simply because her techniques have worked, her message being that the key to good administration is simplicity, which is why half the meatpacking plants in North America use her ten-point welfare audit, rather than a one hundred point paper audit system. She tellingly says, 'They also do better on the smaller details because the smaller details are part of the big ones.’

We have often seen 'smart’ lawyers become politicians. They are good with words and understand how laws are structured, so it is easy to see why this works. But once they are in office they get to spend our money, and you have to ask what business experience does such a person have? To me, this does not seem to be 'smart’ at all.

We confuse 'smart’ with someone who has a handle on reality, who clearly sees the dynamics of the situation, which just does not follow. This has been rubber stamped by the educational system and by smart people themselves. I suppose that it is simply the way of the world, but it is a pity when there are those we never hear from who actually do have a handle on this or that, but aren’t what you would call 'smart’ at all.

I recently recommended 'Another Bloody Love Letter’ by Anthony Loyd and thought that I might as well list and comment on some other books that I have read recently.

I served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

This book matures like some extraordinary wine. The story, which is ostensibly a rags to riches to rags story about a boy who becomes a waiter in Prague between the two world wars starts out being interesting with lashings of picturesque sex and ends up being remarkable.
There are two other things about it. There are paragraphs, which go on for seven or eight pages and Mr Hrabal makes you forget it is a novel, convincing you that this is truly the story of his life.

Reflections on a Marine Venus by Lawrence Durrell

You might know Mr Durrell from his famous fictional work, The Alexandria Quartet. I bought this much shorter, non-fictional piece in a used bookshop. I think it was published in 1960, but can’t be sure because they have put the date in roman numerals and I don’t know my l’s from my c’s. At just under two hundred pages, this is an ideal book to take on holiday. It is the story Mr Durrell’s time on the island of Rhodes and the neighbouring islands during the short interlude of British occupation in the Second World War. The chapters contain some interesting and pertinent excerpts of Rhodian history, descriptions of the islands, their towns, villages and their people at that odd moment, and of events, which he can take pages (with not a word wasted) to describe what took place in a few seconds. It is a fine piece of English prose, which can boarder on poetry, and at the same time makes you privy to reflections of depth and sensitivity. Here are couple of examples:

'For it is always the child in man which is forced to live through these repeated tragedies of European conscience. The child is the forfeit we pay for the whole sum of our worldly errors. Only through him shall we ever salvage these lost cultures of passion and belief.’

'- for surely history’s evaluations are wrong in speaking of civilized and barbaric ages succeeding or preceding one another, surely they have always co-existed - for one is the measure of the other? Everywhere the dualism of the human personality has created side by side profanity and piety, truth and falsehood, hate and love. Time is always aspiring to a dance-measure which will entangle the two in a dance, a dialogue, a duet: dissolve their opposition.’

H E Bates An Autobiography

H E Bates is probably best known today as the author of 'The Darling Buds of May’. He also wrote one of my all-time favourite books, 'Fair Stood The Wind For France’. He died in 1974, just two years after finishing his autobiography, which is divided into three sections, 'The Vanished World’, 'The Blossoming World’, and 'The World In Ripeness’.

Three things stand out about this five hundred-page tome: the clarity of his recollection, the diverse nature of the fiction that he wrote and the transitions in our culture that he witnessed over the course of his life.

I was fascinated by the mental processes behind the creation of his fiction, and by his view that good fiction must be more real than life itself, also by his sometimes less than complementary opinion of the work of some other well-known writers.

This is I suppose for those who know something of his work. If you don’t, then perhaps even he would prefer you to read 'Fair Stood The Wind For France’ or 'The Jacaranda Tree’ instead.

Notes on The Lanquedoc by Rupert Wright

Rupert Wright is a journalist who has settled with his family in the North section of my part of France, which is generally known as The Lanquedoc. I see some of what he sees, but it is a two to three hour journey to get from where I am to the region he mostly describes and as he readily admits he has hardly ventured into my part. I have to make the same admission about his neck of the woods, which is why I’m keeping his book as a reference guide. His main omission is not to mention that most importantly the South (my part) of Lanquedoc is Catalan, as is Barcelona in Spain; two and a half hours drive from me in the other direction.

Another great holiday book, not at all taxing and filled with enough descriptions of Mediterranean scenery, food, wine, sailing boats, bike rides and amusing bits of local incident and history to keep you very happy. He also tells of the fierce winds, scorching heat and flash thunderstorms that we have here, but if on the strength of it you come to this part of the world, keep to his section if you want to see 'the undiscovered Provence’ as ninety-nine percent of the French discovered my bit a long time ago ago.

1599 A Year In Shakespeare’s Life by James Shapiro

Mr Shapiro has picked on a year of great incident in both Shakespeare’s life and the life of the British Nation. It starts in London on a snowy December 28th 1598 with a gang of armed thespians, including Sir Will dismantling the timbers of 'The Theatre’, with which to build the famous 'Globe’ in the spring of the following year. They accomplished this removal, in the absence of the owner of the land on which 'The Theatre’ stood.

1599 was the year in which Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote As You Like It and Julius Caesar and drafted Hamlet. The scholarship employed to tie this into what was happening on the contemporary artistic and political scene is impressive, enlightening and highly readable, however Mr Shapiro cannot resist taking an oblique jab at what must be Peter Ackroyd’s 'Shakespeare’, which in his eyes 'presumes too much’. I read Peter Ackroyd’s book last year and in it he constantly points out that the only way to write a biography about someone who so little is known is to make some educated guesses. As he lets you know when he is guessing and gives the reason for his assumptions, I think Mr Shapiro might himself 'presume too much’ in his complaint.

I, in turn would guess that the main cause for the friction is Mr Ackroyd’s hunch of Shakespeare’s Catholic connections in a post-reformation England. Shakespeare’s father was severely fined for not attending Protestant communion, and there was a history of covert Catholicism in the Stratford area, not to say amongst those well known to the Shakespeare’s. Although on one occasion Mr Shapiro mentions this financial issue, he refrains from giving the reason for it and he generally avoids the topic of surreptitious Catholic practise in those volatile times. Both authors seem agreed that Sir Will himself was very unlikely to have been a Catholic in either belief or practice. It is Mr Ackroyd’s theory of this network of connections, which seems to separate them and this should not bother us.

From either book, you may come away not remembering what was written when, but you will be left with a vivid impression of the outrageous 'stuff’ that went on at that time. They were a bunch of colourful chancers and out of the stew that was their lives came something unsurpassed.

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

James Ellroy wrote LA Confidential, which as you probably know was made into a particularly elegant movie and he takes the title of this book from another story of the genre that was made into a movie, back in the thirties. It is interesting to think that not only can a writer successfully set a story in another time, but that he can convincingly write in the style of that era. He is not a Raymond Chandler or a Dashiel Hammet, but is his own man and I have never read a more compelling description of a boxing match, even be it by Mailer or Hemmingway.

The story itself is a great read, if a little convoluted. It is based on an LA cop’s fascination with a particularly ugly piece of human butchery, carried out on a young lady who as they say was, 'no better than she should be’. There is a platonic ménage a trois and a heap of cheap sex to keep the pot boiling between scenes of brutal action and our hero travels to Mexico as well as to the East Coast before the pieces of the jig-saw start to fit.

The book was lent to me by a friend, who has since read a further trilogy of stories by Mr Ellroy entitled LA Noir, and he says that the first one of these, called Blood On The Moon knocks the socks off The Black Dahlia, but not having read it, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd

I have long admired Mr Boyd’s African sagas, notably An Ice Cream War and A Good Man In Africa. On this occasion, Brazzaville Beach is the place in Africa that Hope Clearwater ends up in and she tells the story that has led to this semi-retirement at an early age with great skill, juggling between three time zones in the process. It has its moments, and there are some intriguing asides into matters of higher mathematics, but I found her character too aimless and with no particular humour. I have a much clearer picture of some of the chimpanzees in the story than I have of her.

Read one of the two other books I have mentioned, rather than this one. I suppose it can at least be said that Mr Boyd can spin a yarn so well that almost any yarn will do.

Paris by Andrew Hussey

Four hundred and thirty-three pages of small print (in the paperback edition) make this book something of a slog, but while I am grateful to have finally reached the end, I am also glad to have read it.

I have always thought of European cities as having much in common. They might look different, but they have all been through the same basic process. I therefore expected to come across many historical convergences with say Peter Ackroyd’s rather less precise but far more splendid book, London. In fact, although these two cities must be only two hundred or so miles apart, they might as well have been on different planets. Mr Hussey is impressively detailed while still being readable, but he lacks the narrator’s flair for something a little tongue-in-cheek now and then.

The theme of Paris must be greatness through adversity. Blood, sex, filthy stench and the most outrageous philosophical presumptions are there in bucket-loads. You have to laugh not to cry, but Mr Hussey doesn’t do either. However, if you want to know what went on, it’s all there.

King’s Road by Max Decharne

The cover of this book shows a long legged blonde in a mini skirt getting into a taxi, providing some much welcome exposure and like it or not, it is the swinging sixties that fully exposed this street.

Mr Ducharne gives us both the build-up and the follow-on to this, but whereas he at least sketches in the historical past of the road, back to when it was the King’s private thoroughfare, he does not find anything to say about it since it’s Punk and Glam-Rock days. Having walked it at night a few years back, I can sympathise with this to a degree, but then again The Royal Court Theatre (one of his pivotal establishments) has just been spectacularly refurbished and whereas he imagines property prices have priced out anything worth talking about, I would be inclined to think that this has simply changed the game somewhat and hidden it from view.

Although the reportage is impressive and there is an interesting mix of music hall, theatre, films, fashion and music with jaunts into restaurants and clubbing, Mr Decharne seems stronger on the fifties and seventies than he is on the sixties. I got a lot out of it, but then I was there in the sixties and it filled in a lot of gaps before and after.

I can’t help believe that there aren’t one or two people still around with some tales to tell, that could have livened things up a bit.

Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson

I have not finished this book but it must be mentioned. Temple Grandin is autistic, and because of this it seems that she sees things more from an animals perspective that a 'normal’ human being. She is an associate professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a eminent expert on livestock management as well as an authority on many other animals and has contributed much towards their mental and physical comfort.

By understanding something about the way animals see things, we can learn a lot about ourselves. The book should be required reading for every administrator on the planet, the message being that the key to good administration is simplicity, which is why half the meatpacking plants in North America use Ms Grandin’s ten-point welfare audit, rather than a one hundred point paper audit system. She tellingly says, 'They also do better on the smaller details because the smaller details are part of the big ones.’

There are a few lines, which give a clue as to how hard a road it has been for Ms Grandin to travel, but many more on horses, dogs, cats, geese, cranes, squirrels, chimps, gorillas, pigs, giraffes rats, mice, poultry, wolves, crows, parrots, starlings, dolphins prairie dogs, reptiles, elephants and whales, to name just some. One of the most extraordinary passages - and there are many extraordinary discoveries here - comes in respect of the sophistication of animal language: prairie dogs using nouns, verbs and adjectives, for instance, and then there’s the animal language of music.

The brains of animals and autistics 'specialise’ more than 'normal’ human beings, but the brains of domestic animals and humans seem to have become mutually specialised since they began their relationship together. This is particularly true in the case of our partnership with wolves and then dogs. We have actually evolved to compliment one another’s activity. I can hear you saying, 'oh, you mean that dogs have evolved to compliment ours.’ No, I mean that both our brains seem to have evolved to compliment each other’s. Read the book, that’s all I can say.

It is a fascinating but hard read being something of a textbook, but so worthwhile. I came across it in the process of researching an idea for a story and I am so glad I did. Not only has it confirmed a lot of what I was edging towards, but it has illuminated my understanding of these people we call animals.

If there are any of these books that you should read, then this is the one.

My friend’s daughter is sixteen and lives an ocean away from him with her mom. Out of the blue, her mom has died and he discovers via school reports that his daughter has not been to school for the last two years.

It is variously stated that she has a twenty-nine year old boyfriend, that she may be pregnant, that she has a lady friend who is a prostitute and that when she is short of a bus fair or a cell phone, the girl might well turn a trick herself.

Her father tells her that this is clearly not her best option and without going into all the 'why’s and wherefores’, we can have great sympathy with the overall scenario.

However, on thinking about it, I can’t be sure what the best option is. I can’t come to any real conclusion because I don’t know the girl. Let’s face it Tom Sawyer bunked off school all the time, but he was a street-wise kid.

Young Tom knew how to make something out of nothing, but this girl seems ready to turn a trick for a bus ride, which doesn’t sound so sharp to me. She may be a 'pro’, but she’s certainly not All-Pro. It is the World’s oldest profession and however much you are paid for your services, if you are paid, you are definitely not an amateur.

Sir Winston Churchill was once at dinner, sat next to Lady so-and-so. He alluded to the fabulous riches (entirely out of his reach) that should command so beautiful a lady’s favour. Lady so-and- so batted her lashes at him and said that well of course for such a sum, who was she to refuse? Sir Winston then confessed that all he had was a bob or two.

“Sir Winston!” she laughed. “What kind of a girl do you think I am?”

I am not making light of my friend’s situation, but when it comes to sexual favours we are inclined to loose our perspective a little. Some practising ladies have been good friends of mine, (friends, just friends. I was not their client, I swear) and they didn’t appear to be washed up or washed out, and I think that it may be true to say that if the suit fits, you can wear it. There is one lady who has built up a small property portfolio and bought her mother a house on the strength of her evening entertainments and a very pretty hotel receptionist who is happy to supplement her savings with a quick trip upstairs. Good luck to both of them!

But this un-schooled teenager is on nowhere near the going rate. This action is not for you, dear. It will end badly if you are not hip enough to get more than a bus ride or a phone call from it.

You have to be of a certain shape, size and posture to wear clothes well or at least clothes, which are termed 'smart’.

I have a friend who is a businessman, but just can’t wear a suit. The arse comes out of the trousers along with the shirt. The tie is a noose and the jacket more of a half closed theatre curtain. He looks smarter in sports wear and trainers, and that’s what he wears when he can.

It has a lot to do with 'the cut’, and I must say that only the Italians and the British (and maybe certain tailors in Hong Kong) have any idea of what a man’s suit should look like. No matter the high or low lapel, single or double breasted, single or double vent, trouser cuffs or not, tapered or straight, if it comes from anywhere else, it looks like cardboard or a sack of potatoes. But with linen suits, even if they are custom made in London’s Saville Row they will be as crumpled as a pair of tarts knickers in less than half an hour. They say that’s the look.

But who cares what a suit looks like, why wear it anyway? The only reason that I can think of is pockets. If not for pockets, then maybe we would all be walking around looking like Captain Kirk. You have to have pen and paper, and a handkerchief, and a mobile phone. Money, we’ve had to carry these metal lozenges around since BC, as well as the ubiquitous credit card and in certain parts of the world your ID or drivers licence. Ahh keys, I have forgotten keys and business cards of course.

I love it when the fashion for casual clothes calls for jacket pockets. My trousers only carry what is already there and I don’t care if I’m in fashion or out, but if it’s not in fashion, then you can’t buy it. Their idea is that, 'this is the fashion. You want to wear it, you are going to wear it, and presto, just as we said it is 'the fashion.’’ I laughed like a drain when about a year ago, they said that grey was the thing and it turned out that no one would wear it. Serves the Nazis right I say and good on you, John Public for hanging them out to dry. Pity you don’t junk anything with a designer name on it too.

Women’s fashion I will leave alone, except to say that what you see on the catwalk is not what you see in the shops. Fashion shows have gone the way of conceptual art. You just think of something ridiculous and max it. It’s fun with hats and can be with shoes, but unfortunately where limbs are involved a certain practicality is required. 'If limbs are a problem,’ I hear them say. 'Cut them off.’ And on mannequins, a lot of the time they do.

You would have thought that sport, where form must follow function, would be above all this but you have guys wearing peaked caps backwards, and women running in super tight bikini bottoms. Then again, pro golfers must wear slacks or plus fours and only women can wear shorts. Back in the sixties, men’s soccer or tennis shorts were so tight that they put the family jewels at risk, now they can be so lose and long that they might trip you up.

Paris Hilton, not for the first time is arrested for drunk driving. She gets the best part of a month in jail. George Michael, not for the first time is pulled from a car in drugged state, slumped unconscious over the wheel. He gets a couple of hundred hours community service.

The comments that come out concerning Paris run something like 'Well, she should do her time like anyone else’. Sure, if that is what drunk drivers normally get in that jurisdiction, which I doubt.

There is an assumption that once a sentence is handed down, it is right and just. Now, if it can be shown that most other (or even all other) individuals who have received sentences for a particular offence have been dealt with more leniently than in the subject case, then maybe the judge should serve whatever the difference is between the two. That would focus Their Honours minds somewhat.

My hunch is that the hullabaloo of the trial, combined with Paris’s late arrival in court irritated the judge to the extent that she was unfairly dealt with. But, what does it matter? She is just a cheap slut who has made a pile of money on top of the pile that she had already. Then the word 'cheap’ is surely misplaced, and what point are such classifications anyway?

I am not really writing about Paris Hilton (though I would for a kiss). I am writing about how justice can simply disappear in a snowstorm of self-righteous assumption.

In itself, it is of little consequence. Life will go on and it’s easy to say that there’s nothing fair about it anyway. But we should be. We are the ones who set the whole thing up in the first place. We did everything but drive the car.

Digital disks have replaced videotape in less than fifteen years and disks are now being superseded by downloadable data. Would you have bought all those tapes and CD’s if you’d known?

Before buying in to new technology, we must know how long it will take for any of these new wonders to become fact, and that’s not easy. Last night on the TV, I happened to catch Buz Aldrin saying, back in 1969, that he was certain that there would be a base on the Moon in his lifetime - fat chance, Buz - or am I wrong about that? I also remember a radio programme on the BBC World Service professing that hard drive computer technology had a definable capacity and within ten years that capacity would be at full stretch and the existing technology would then be replaced by a method of transferring information through crystals by means of light waves. That was ten years ago. They are probably milking hard drive technology for all it’s worth, before moving onto these crystals. Present computers are probably very much the equivalent of Model T Fords when it comes to their evolutionary place in the scheme of things.

It seems that as with the first landing on the Moon, things can happen pretty fast when they need to, but when things are comfortable enough, further advances can take forever. 'Old fashions please us best,’ as the saying goes, and vested interests very much like to keep it that way.

Going back to 1969 again, it seems we are only just beginning to realize the significance of the 'moon rocks’ that they brought back. They are chock full of Helium C. The Sun spews out Helium C in enormous quantity, but because of our atmosphere, we on Earth are screened from it. The Moon’s surface, on the other hand has readily absorbed it. Helium C is apparently what we need to create Nuclear Fusion in a container that doesn’t degrade after producing a few million kilowatts of power. Nuclear fusion, as opposed to nuclear fission would produce all the energy we need with none of the noxious by-products associated with our present nuclear reactors. It seems to be this factor, is key to the revival of interest in establishing bases on the Moon. This may seem far-fetched, but if that’s far fetched consider the formation in 1599 of the East India Company. A huge amount of money was successfully gambled on sending ships around the Cape of Good Hope into waters, far less well charted than is the passage to the Moon, in the hope of them bringing back pepper, cloves and other luxury goods. The outbound voyage alone, would take their ships over a year. As far as I recall, The Moon is a matter of weeks away, so what’s the big deal? Well, we all know what the 'big deal’ is, but you get my point. Maybe Buz will get to see his Moon base, after all.

Probably Richard Branson has latched onto the right idea as to how to get out there on a regular basis, with the 'spiral lift-off’ technology that he is promoting. You slowly spiral outwards from the earth in a big winged, low energy consumption vehicle, until you break free of its gravitational pull. Mind you, if there is a gyroscopic anti-gravity solution, then that would be a lot swifter, but things seem to have gone quiet on that front.

Now, turning our attention back to this wonderful world we presently live on, there does seem to be yet another frontier for us to exploit, hopefully with a little more loving care than the frontiers that we have so far broached. This treasure trove is the deep ocean, which, contrary to perceived scientific wisdom as little as thirty years ago, is full of life, and it’s floor, no doubt, full of minerals. Consider that the oceans offer 99 percent of the space where life can develop on Earth and the deep sea offers 85 percent of this space. What do we know about it? Practically nothing. To put things in perspective, there are approximately 1.4 million known species on land, sea, and air. Current estimates of undiscovered species vary from 10 to 30 million. If I can quote from 'The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures Of The Abyss’ by Claire Norton, a book which according to those who are supposed to know, is likely to become a modern classic of natural history. 'The deep sea no longer has anything to prove; it is without doubt the Earth’s largest reservoir of life.’

Finally, I am in a very literal sense going to take a 'flyer’. Remember the sketches of how in the early 1900’s they saw the future in their wildest, and probably most humorous imaginings? There were people flying around with propellers on their back, balloons with carriages under them, and DaVinci inspired helicopters. As with the fax machine, which was invented around that time, and only came into use in the late seventies, I think that we may see the Victorians flying fantasy become much more of a reality, than either they or we ever bargained for.

My reasoning is based firstly on the mind-numbing cost of building and maintaining the billions of miles of roads we drive on, and the ever-increasing scarcity of aggregate, concrete and tarmac needed for that purpose. Secondly, it is based on my own flights in a two-seat microlyte. There you are, in the matter of minutes, flying at 60/80mph, in a straight line, powered by a two, or at most a four stroke engine, and all you need is a small field to take off and land on. Added to that, if you are airborne and make some kind of a mistake, the rig automatically rights itself and continues at the same altitude. If your engine fails, you have plenty of time to pick out a landing site and gently spiral down. There is no falling out of the sky with this technology, and I would say that it is easier to learn how to fly one of these machines than it is to learn to drive a car. It won’t get us in, out or around our cities, but it will get us, very fuel efficiently, and with a massive ecological/ infrastructure saving, between them.

This could all be part of the next fifty years, should we survive ourselves. After that, it is pointless to speculate, because 'we’ won’t be us anymore. Genetic engineering will see to that. And that’s another story.

Some seem to be blest with an innate understanding of life and it’s vicissitudes, but most spend their days picking up scraps about it and sometimes hopefully about themselves.

On a scale of one to ten, I think that my innate grasp of worldly wisdom merits a three, or four at best and perhaps my saving grace lies in the sneaking suspicion that I should do everything in my power to make it otherwise.

Looking back, I can see that at various times certain key perceptions have come from this pursuit and can only wonder if these are common currency or more uniquely held.

The first thing I was to discover is that my nearest and dearest, know me well but not at all. Those closest to you generally sketch you in the light which is kindest to their eyes, which is natural enough, but not too useful.

Then there was the realization that however pleasant a suggestion may be, the answer should not always be 'yes’. It can be used against you and even when it is not consciously so, a thoughtless acceptance can lead to misunderstandings and worse.

On the other hand, with someone new, we are always told not to 'judge a book by it’s cover’ or 'take things at face value’, but life has taught me otherwise, and it is better, for me at least, to follow my instincts.

Then came the realization, that while I am not in control of my destiny, I can at least steer the boat along the stream and to some extent things can be planned and worked towards. When life gets tough, the tough get going, they say, and very slowly and deliberately I do. It took me a long time to appreciate that speed is not of the essence, but sure and steady motion is.

I also saw that people mainly judge other people’s likely actions and motives by what they do and think themselves, and some understanding of another’s true dynamic can be invaluable.

If this all sounds like common sense, as for instance it would be to say that you should keep cool in a crisis and learn from the past, but not live in it, well then what has always been clear to you has had to have been very painfully drubbed into me, and I can only hope that you have not been the idle recipient of this privileged information, but have used it to your great advantage. If not, then I am afraid that you must have overlooked the cornerstone to it all, which is to act on what you know to be true.

Many of the leading lights of stage, and screen were at the 1961 CND rally in Trafalgar Square, London, and quite a few were arrested. Bertrand Russell, a scion of the leftist intelligentsia at the time, told a television news crew, 'Well the case is quite simple. We think the policy which is being pursued by the Western Powers is one which is bound to end in the extermination of the human race and some of us think that might be rather a pity.” Well, Bertrand the Western Powers did pursue that policy and the human race, some forty-six years later is still here, pity or no.

To a celeb, 'Ban The Bomb!’ is a no-brainer. It instantly certifies you as a 'deeply loving and caring person’, who you are anyway, of course. But what would have been the scenario if those 'highly gifted and deeply committed’ people who influence so many had had their way? Let me present the formula in Einsteinian fashion: CND = TWD (Totalitarian World Domination). I vividly remember as a teenager the pacifists marching down Oxford Street, London’s main shopping thoroughfare at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis. Their hysteria was palpable, and lets face it, no one felt exactly comfortable with the situation, but whatever the true story may have been, the situation was there, and it was there to be met.

I am not negating the principles behind many of these heartfelt, and generally 'left-wing’ (although many times, I would quarrel with that appropriation) celebrity supported causes. But why, oh why must these good intentions so often be taken to the point of such incredible naiveté? I would certainly back John and Yoko’s 'Give Peace a Chance’. Certainly, give it a chance, but don’t bet the house on it.

One of the more recent celebrity initiatives was to sell wristbands 'to end world starvation’, something that it was patently never going to do, no matter how many they sold. When I bought one, I voiced this thought. The reaction was incredulous: But everyone knows it will! Who’s 'everyone’? Well, Sir Bob Geldorf, Bono, George Michael, John Bon Jovi, Chrissie Hynde, everyone!

The list of such celebrity causes has long included Aids and now there is Global Warming. The sophisticated money from such as Bill Gates has gone to help the far more pervasive, but less glamorous infection of malaria, and the only thing I can say about the global warming argument, is that it coincides with the undeniably urgent need to break away from non-renewable energy sources, particularly those that pollute both the Earth and ourselves. Funnily enough, the same item could win the day for both causes, that item being a condom.

Wear a condom, and you won’t get aids, and you won’t have children, children being of course the biggest carbon footprint of all. It doesn’t sound so 'loving’ when you put it that way does it? Do you think celebs would support a concert for fewer kids? Don’t bet the house on that either. It reminds me of Jo Omera, the ex-S Club 7 chanteuse, who was given a 'racist’ tag by some TV 'reality’ show. She’ll never be seen again and she’s no more racist than Oprah. There will be no invite for her to sing on the next Aids single. Nice girl, good voice, but not the right 'image’ I’m afraid.

Another Bloody Love Letter

By Anthony Loyd

Headline Review £16.99

Fighting is not for me, but conflict takes on many forms, and I've yet to meet the person who can truthfully say that they have always legged it.

It is therefore best to know the nature of the beast, to know the taste of its saliva, without mercifully having a taste for it.

The practical pacifist needs a guide of rare insight and honesty to have any chance of mapping these delinquent areas. In a nutshell, someone who somehow can find the words to say what war is.

Such a person is Anthony Loyd and such a book is 'Another Bloody Love Letter'.

When we talk about Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq, what are we talking about? What do we really know? Mr Loyd also talks about a war with drugs, something that some of us might be more familiar with.

War stories, fictional or otherwise - and this is very much 'otherwise’ - tend to make you think of the terse, tight-lipped dialogue of Andy Macknab, or the action-packed 'Blackhawk Down’.

'Another Bloody Love Letter’, has it’s moments of toughness and explosive action, but it’s strength lies in it’s portrayal of the participants, (willing or not) and thereby it’s portrait of the author, an all too human figure, scared of heights, and after almost twenty years in and out of a multitude of war zones, still sane enough to duck when there is an explosion.

It is Anthony Loyd’s own vulnerability, his overwhelming sense of grief (and sometimes lack of it) that makes this book so special. It is his unreal transition from the western world to the world of modern warfare that wipes his drug slate clean and makes him more a person than a hero.

Should you read this book you will clearly see the beast, which is a definite advantage.

A guy I know supports a sports team (I won’t say which sport or what team) that has slumped to the bottom of their league after the usual string of 'bad luck’ losses. I ran into him in the street and started to commiserate only to be cut short by a wave of his arm. “Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Its’ my religion.” His smile made it a half-truth, but not a joke, and I found myself thinking 'Why not your religion?’ All teams, like all religions have a code and their congregation is engaged in the worship of something ephemeral.

What’s ephemeral about a sports team? Well, as soon as you look at it over a few seasons, you’ll see that the coach and the players all change, and sometimes even the town they play for, and all that is left is 'tradition’. You can’t get more ephemeral than that.

But surely, that is where the similarity between a religion and a sports team ends. Religion is not competitive. No, of course going to hell if you’re not a Catholic or being an Infidel if you’re not a Moslem, or being one of 'The Chosen People’ if you’re a Jew has no hint of 'top dog’ about it. Such people know these truths in all humility and of course, they are right, even if this must mean that the rest are wrong!

When it comes to religion, my personal suspicion is that, like electricity, there is something out there, and that may be what makes all these 'faiths’ so believable. The best lie is the one, which is closest to the truth. But I certainly wouldn’t swear that there is something out there, because I honestly don’t know.

So, we come to the nub of things concerning 'faith’. No matter how strong your personal feelings may be about your faith, and whatever occurrences have brought you to that conclusion, how can you be sure? I don’t believe that you can be, and that’s all that I believe. How can the Clergy, the Buddhist Monks, the Ayatollahs, the Rabbis, and yes the Agnostics all be so sure that they are right? I believe that if they were all truly honest, they would have to say that there is always a chance that………after all, they are only human.

Those most holy can make a difference far beyond their present contribution, by simply recognising their own fallibility. They are presently holding back true faith, which unlike love, should not be blind at all.

There is a real possibility of Scotland gaining political independence from the rest of the UK. Scotland already has its own Parliament, and should the Scottish Nationalist Party gain a majority at the next election (a very real possibility), then they will secede from the Union.

Up until now, the term 'British' has simply meant everyone in the UK. However, should the Scots opt for complete independence, will they no longer be British, or perhaps some redefinition of the word 'British' is required?

It could easily be said that the Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians are as 'British' as the Scots, Welsh and Irish ever were. I would personally support such a notion.

At the risk of seeming racist, I would not necessarily call the other cricket playing countries 'British', although Jamaica comes close, and extraordinarily I think that these non-British countries, after a period of distancing themselves from the UK are now drawing closer as our interaction becomes greater and more on a level footing.

Being British should be more encompassing than it has been. The days of Empire are long gone, not just for Britain, but for any other Nation. What remains are cultural groupings and the broader mind would prefer to be British along with a more local classification.

It is quite possible that my new British candidates would not accept the nomination and consequently lay waste to my proposition. But I don't see how they couldn't admit to being just a bitish British.

Note. In the recent Scottish elections, the Scottish Nationalist Party for the first time became the Party with the biggest number of seats in Scotland. They achieved this by one vote and are still some way from having an overall majority. Their only way to govern is in alliance with one of the other Parties and their only way to achieve independence from the UK is to hold a referendum. As no other Party that in combination with the SNP would give them an overall majority is in favour of holding a referendum on this issue, the SNP can possibly govern but they cannot at present, take the final step towards independence.