Blog U

My friend disagrees with me; he's been struck by shingles recently, but for me, it's a kind universe. All sorts of people have all sorts of attitudes to life, and in my humble opinion, you just need to be clear about what you WANT out of this life, and you'll get what you need, and if you're lucky, a little bit more. Many is the time I've listened to someone listing all the stuff they don't want.... and it took me a good few years and a lot of introspection to get onto the right track. Now, I'm nowhere near perfect, and I don't know anyone who is, but I'll trust this one; be absolutely positive about what you want, down to the last detail, and be surprised but grateful, when the exact package arrives. I recall putting my son through this process; he wanted a big yacht to cruise the Pacific in, from New Zealand to West Coast North America. I insisted he be absolutely sure of what sort of yacht he wanted to be on, and we strolled the marinas of Westhaven, Auckland, rejecting most of the vessels, but we saw some pretty flash big ones, mega millions, and he seemed pretty keen on those. We went and put notices, on bright blue paper, on all the Club noticeboards, and left it at that. Three days later he telephoned me, suggested I come down to the marina and scope his ride out. Wow! He was sailing next day, him and the skipper, 70 feet of luxury; pearwood interior, leather upholstery, engraved crystal glassware, the galley stocked with the owner's choice of good New York restaurant's meals, all prepacked and frozen, widsurfers lashed up for'ard, inflatable speedboat on the stern davits, scuba gear in the lockers..... I turned to my lad, moaned that we'd forgotten to specify colour; it was bright flame red! Still, it was a pretty nice voyage I hear, he learnt a lot, and now he skippers big yachts whenever he wants. It all came from the kind universe, and that is the easy bit. The hard bit is being sure what you want. When we learn what ego is, we maybe get a handle on reality. Some people I know of never realise their real self; they live a life of someone/everyone else's ideals, always striving for another level, never attaining, it seems, that peaceful plateau of satisfaction. Others like me, always have the dream of another sunrise on another scene of wonder, and while this earth is big enough, I haven't seen all of it, and I plan to see a few more amazing places, and if I'm lucky, I'll have someone at my side, like now, but first I have to remind myself to get this blasted renovation closed in, by winter, so I can get some decent progress on the inside without freezing to death; I renovated in France right up till the 31st December and it was cold, so cold, and I'm hoping/asking for a loooong indian summer. The roof insulation arrives tomorrow; not some bullshit fibreglass nonsense but some dense polyurethane foam sheets 4.1 metres long; I'm trusting my concept of a new technique in fitting insulation will get the top half of the house pretty straight first, and it is getting what I need through the language barrier which is my biggest test. But at the end of each day I remind myself, as my partner passes me a very tasty Munich black beer, and says 'dinner in ten', it's a Kind Universe. Nuff said.

Blog T

This weekend; Friday 5th to Sunday 7th October, welcome to the twilight zone. It is a funny thing how several institutions can be rattled to their foundations at the same time; what association you have to synchronicity/serendipity/happenstance is almost irrelevant, but, just out of whimsy, what sort of weekend was it for the supernatural/crop circles/weird weather afficionados? I saw the looming typhoon over the Shanghai race track, and expected the worst. The remarkable rookie, Lewis Hamilton got the dark forces in his tyres and failed miserably; a little further east, the tennis in Tokyo was being turned on its head; Stuttgart saw a nineteen year old brightly coloured youngster shake tennis's number two in the WTA, and she is, as I type, shaking the world's number one. Rugby saw the dullest team of the World Cup take an easy game off the Australians, and the famous All Blacks, more suitably now called 'the All Greys', went down in a match with the French controlled by a partially blind referee; I hold no prejudice against handicapped people; they have risen to great heights in my world; it's the ones who only see one side of the competition I loathe, and dark forces indeed put these people in the wrong place at the right time. However, in the face of dark forces, it pays to have a good loud laugh; they can't stand that; so ho ho ho to all you winners who lost; it was real amusing, especially the bloke who wagered $5,000,000 the NZers would win the Rugby World Cup; perhaps the dark forces came from the bookies? I have a scientist friend who is the greatest disbeliever in such nonsense; however, he was strolling in the Oxfordshire countryside early one morning and came upon a crop circle; he was the first on the scene, and was able to inspect its form and doubtless authenticity/inexplicability, which bemuses him enormously to this day.... whether he's changed how he approaches his science is dubious, however, but he is my source of the information regarding the dark forces at work in the agricultural world.... I just have to frame my questions in terms a scientist understands and can easily respond to.... Yeah right; have you ever noticed (I might have asked this before) how all the scientists in your class at school were the most dysfunctional members of the school; never good at sport, not good mixers, probably shy/ugly/geeky/obsessed? I don't know where they are now, mostly, but those I do know of did some strange research which includes mashing the brains of lab frogs, (cannulating, I think it is called) and observing the results. So I've always been a little dubious of most science; the stuff MIT publishes is pretty good, consumer orientated of focussed at the drug companies; say yes/no to drugs; dark forces indeed, and I have no need of side effects personally, as those are dark forces I can control by avoidance..... a bit like TV.... surprised myself to get emotionally involved in an eccentric episode of an always weird medical drama last night; it's fiction, after all, and is just some director playing with my attention span; so I surfed the channels and got a replay of the All Grey's defeat by France, and they showed NZ's Prime Minister lurking in the shadows of the grandstand; I'd hate for those dark forces to be at my big game. Nuff said.