There was an obituary in The Times the other day celebrating the life of Major General John Badcock. He’d been a Master of Signals in the Second World War and no doubt led a full and fulfilling life. But imagine spending your time on earth as Badcock! Tutt is a name that invites a certain amount of micky-taking, but not like the good General’s. What about Pratt, or Clapp, or Crapp. Blessed with such an endearing surname, would you be tempted to change it?

It is a question of immense inconsequentiality compared with the major topic of today. Estate Agents are now being encouraged to refrain from calling the main bedroom in houses the “Master Suite”, because it could conjure up images of slavery. Has the world gone completely stark staring bonkers? As a child I was taught by masters. Generally State Schools had teachers and Public Schools, masters. No doubt it was some kind of snobbery but no more than that. As a young lad I was Master Tutt. I presume that’s still the correct appellation for youngsters of today. Every April (except this one), the World’s top golfers congregate in Augusta, Georgia, in America’s Deep South, for The Masters’ Tournament. Will they have to find a new name for that? (The Totally Unimpeachable Tournament?) The Army has a Master Gunner, the man in charge of The Royal Artillery and a Master at Arms and like poor old General Badders, a Master of Signals. The list goes on and on. Viv Richards was a master batsman, Roger Federer has been the archetypal master of his craft. We have master butchers and master bakers and probably master candlestick makers for all I know. I can honestly say that in my sixty nine years on this crazy earth I have NEVER wandered into a master bedroom and thought “where do the slaves sleep?”.

This is Political Correctness gone so completely mad that it’s becoming dangerous. The urge to sanctify the BLM movement is in very real danger of sparking a Far Right backlash from the idiots on that wing that could create something very ugly. I might be quite wrong but my feeling is that the vast majority of right-thinking people in this country harbour no racist views at all and mix happily with races of all creeds and colours without batting an eyelid. America is different and it’s just plain daft that we should have jumped on their bandwagon. Could sensible people everywhere please stand up and be counted and say “enough!”.

In tomorrow’s 1st Test Match between England and the West Indies, both sides will be wearing the BLM logo on their shirts. For many decades now, we have marvelled at the supreme skill and combativeness of West Indies teams. They have produced so many of the World’s greatest cricketers and their colour merely indicated that they were blessed with wonderfully lithe and athletic physiques that generally made them too good for us. Those lucky enough to see Sir Garfield Sobers in his pomp will never forget the silky smooth, loose-limbed run-up of a man who could bowl in three totally different styles with equal effect. It’s so sad that anyone feels the need to stir up emotions that for the most part were buried long ago. The Football Association has agreed that those players that so wish, can “take the knee” during the National Anthem prior to the FA Cup Final. For generations, all Britons across the globe have found that standing smartly to attention is the best way to honour our Queen and Country. For heavens sake, going down on one knee is typically an act of subservience. Is that what they want to indicate?

The scary part is, those that don’t want to be involved in knee-taking, for perfectly honourable and legitimate reasons, are being vilified for anti-social or racist behaviour. The whole thing is so outrageous it almost beggars belief. Except that it’s happening. Our forebears, including the noble Badcock, must be turning in their graves.

 

Sky television presenters are now required to wear two badges on their chests, one that says “Black Lives Matter”, the other “NHS”. I am not knocking either, but what state have we reached when a major TV company becomes so political and pathetically ‘politically correct’? I know for certain that a number, maybe quite a large number would not wear those badges out of choice. What is it that has persuaded the Sky bosses to so openly proclaim their support? Did they do it when CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, lest you’ve forgotten) was a major movement? Or Greenpeace, or Save the Rhino, or Gun Control, or Climate Change, or Women’s Rights, or LGBTQXYZ, or ERFWMCMH, (Equal Rights for White Middle Class Male Heterosexuals), or Stop Mrs Tutt Nagging, or Ban Teenagers? Did they heck. Had I been working for Sky now would I have done it? I guess if you want to keep your job you probably have no choice. I recall when working for BBC Radio Sport as a junior reporter that the NUJ called everyone out on strike. Having only fairly recently left the Army, that was a totally alien concept for me. As a freelancer, I wasn’t a member of the Union so I didn’t join the strike, but it caused a lot of heartache. I felt compelled to write a letter to the Director General telling him that I supported the strikers’ cause, as I was likely to benefit from any improvement in pay and conditions. My boss told me afterwards that my letter had gone down very badly with senior management! Oh well.

I’ve just heard that a lot of people I used to work with on the golf scene have been given their cards, with the minimal permissible pay-offs. It will come as a huge blow to “lifers” who were rightly expecting at least a silver handshake. By all accounts The European Tour is about to announce some swingeing cuts too. Keith Pelley, the immensely energetic Canadian Chief Executive who has apparently made a huge difference to the success of the Tour, has been responsible for dramatically increasing the payroll; it seems that might have been unwise? It was beneath his dignity to talk to me, despite my having worked with the Tour for thirty years, so I can’t really comment on his thinking. I’m sure he’ll be ok though, with his multi-million earnings.

Meanwhile, the new breed of managers have been using their Lockdown time well. All staff are now being introduced to the essential buzzwords that have been dreamt up at great expense and which will undoubtedly make golf tournaments much more successful, even without spectators. The new management-speak includes “quarterbacking” (which I think means “I’ve got your back”), “steak holders” (which has nothing to do with barbecuing), “granular” (not the quality of sand in bunkers), “move the needle” (that’s got me in stitches), “quick win” (can’t refer to a four day golf tournament, but maybe it’s the T20 equivalent?) and “touchpoint” (your guess is as good as mine? Where the club hits the ground perhaps?)

All this reminds me a little of John Burt’s stint as Director General of the BBC. A period that with the benefit of hindsight wasn’t a purple patch in the BBC’s stellar history. Actually those of us who were there at the time didn’t need hindsight.

I have a new word that describes all this; “bollocks”.

 

 

From a sky more blue than a manic depressive, oven hot rays of golden yellow illuminate the famous red brick façade of Eastbourne College, an outstanding place of learning that has lain silent since March; a travesty of justice. To its front, College Field sports a fresh look, having been closely shaven in perfect light and dark green broad stripes by the recently unfurloughed groundstaff, who tend their turf with Erosian love in the fond hope that the empty cloisters may yet echo to the once familiar sound of leather on willow; a sound rendered depressingly absent by WuFlu.

Meanwhile, barely three hundred yards distant, the tills are rattling at Fusciardi’s seafront ice cream emporium, with hungry, scantily clad visitors queuing round the block. The miles of shingle seashore lie camouflaged by thousands of scarlet bodies, pressed shoulder to shoulder in flagrant disregard of social distancing and threatening the progress made by months of Lockdown. How crazy. Where will it all end? The sadness of the whole situation was highlighted this afternoon as the departing Year 13 girls of Watt House socially distanced around our lawn in a final appearance before scattering to the four corners of academe, their final term having drowned in a sea of coronavirus seclusion.

BoJo is now threatening to close beaches if people don’t play by the rules. “Houston we have a problem”. The whole Lockdown easing is dependant on the great British public using their “common sense”. It’s rapidly becoming apparent that such a quality is in short supply. An expert on Radio 4 yesterday explained the differences between intellect, intelligence and common sense. Clearly they are different, but the idiots who are travelling long distances to come and pollute out beautiful beaches are patently lacking in everything! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Welcome to Donald Trump’s world. With a mighty show of arrogant, conceited narcissism, we can repel this unseen menace. The scientists scream that we must have effective test, track and tracing. How on earth is that going to work when you’ve just shared a beach with thousands of people who will scatter to the multitudinous  winds with no hope of identifying and tracing them?

We have been fortunate in Eastbourne that COVID hasn’t so far had too much impact, but that could all change very rapidly with the alien invaders behaving like……well, alien invaders. And where are all our children quite naturally gravitating to? Schools will re-open just in time to close again. If all these stupid people really want to go in the sea they should get there via Beachy Head……and enjoy the jump!!

 

It’s officially summer. It’s Father’s Day too although no one in my household seems to have noticed! It’s also Sunday, which is the day that I traditionally cook a roast supper. Surely I should get a respite today……? No such luck. I have a Wine Society brochure beside me with a front page headline that says “the Perfect Bottle for Drinking Now”. Please show me a bottle that isn’t! Ok, ok, I know that great wines often need to be lain down and forgotten about, but they’re the expensive exception. I fancy a bottle might get cracked sooner rather than later today.

In view of “Black Lives Matter”, I wonder how long it will be before the Government enacts suitable legislation to banish COVID 19? After all is has become apparent that it is clearly racist, with twenty percent more BAMES dying as a result of infection than white people. Lest you know not, BAME is yet another new acronym that means roughly “Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity”…..I think. Why they should be more vulnerable I don’t believe anyone really knows as yet, although countless theories abound. Anyway, it’s disgusting that COVID should be allowed to pick on them.

Alison (my wife) has been conducting a Zoom Induction today. If that sounds a little painful, I should explain that normally the incoming Year 9 students would have attended The College in person today to meet each other and the people who will be looking after them next term. It’s a very civilised procedure that’s an innovation since the barbaric days when I attended boarding school. Then, Mother said “goodbye” on Liverpool Street Station at the start of term and “hello” when I got back home three months later. It did of course make us quite resilient and the words ‘mental health’ hadn’t been invented. A stiff upper lip then was a metaphor for the ability to get on with things regardless, not an overdose of Botox. No doubt some suffered terrible pain and torture, but most of us seemed to survive and flourish. Despite all the modern day nurturing and cosseting I get the impression there are more ‘issues’ now than there were then.

Thanks to COVID (that nasty racist bug), attendance in person is still not possible, hence the need for ZOOM. If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s quite a clever way of seeing and talking to lots of people at the same time. However, I was reading this week that it’s massively insecure and those nasty people in the Chinese Communist Party are monitoring it all. We’re having to use it, because those nasty people in the Chinese Communist Party inflicted a pandemic on us with a racist bug that has got everyone in a major paddy and brought education to a grinding halt. Conspiracy theorists could have a field day with this. ……..Oh, they are!

Meanwhile, we’ve had the longest day, it’s all downhill from here and there are only six months left before we totally Brexit. Kerpoof. Done. All in all not a huge amount to be cheerful about. Except for that delicious garlic and rosemary infused leg of lamb that I can, even now, smell reaching an edible state, the bottle of pinot noir that I opened earlier and a wonderful hug from my love and inspiration.

Right, Stonehenge here I come……..

 

 

You might think, as a seasoned broadcaster with over thirty years experience, that giving a presentation about my life and times to my daughter’s Year 8 group would be a piece of cake. Wrong! I had prepared my thirty minute dissertation, largely in my head, and before committing it to note form I ran through my ideas with Alison, my extremely able and well-thought-of teacher/wife. Very rapidly she quashed most of my ideas, or at least my delivery of them. The trouble is, when you talk about “The Irish Troubles”, or “going to Cranwell”, or “Trooping the Colour” to an adult audience these things need no explanation. To a group of thirteen year olds most of it would fly straight over their heads and I would have lost them within five minutes. Alison was brilliant at showing me how to precis, amend and edit so that my life experiences would be interesting and understandable to my young audience. Of course the whole thing was made more stressful by the fact that I couldn’t just stand up in front of them in a classroom and interact, I had to do it on Teams, which I’ve never used before and is dependant on good wifi and certain technical skills; in my case, sadly lacking. Also, should I use a Powerpoint presentation? I’ve never done that either, but maybe it would add to the interest? In the end I remembered the old acronym from my Radio Journalism Diploma course, KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. So I did and hopefully the end result was reasonably entertaining. The advantage of Teams is that I couldn’t see the children falling asleep or hear any snoring.

Normally for after-dinner speeches I charge about £750, but this one was done out of the kindness of my heart. Would a brief “thank you” note from the master in charge not have been appropriate? Three days later I am still waiting. That’s probably the best life lesson the children could take from the whole thing. You can never go wrong if you write a card or letter to thank someone who’s done something for you, whatever if may be, preferably a hand-written one, but email is better than nothing. A frequent response from my children when I encourage them in the art of good manners and other life skills is “we don’t do it like that now” or “none of my friends do that”. If only I could persuade them that if you want to get on in life it’s better to go the extra mile, stand out from the crowd, be exceptional and people that matter will notice you. I always remember an early tip from my father. If you’re not sure what to wear, err on the side of formality. You can always dress down, take a jacket or tie off, but it’s very hard to dress up. The bread and butter thank you letter takes a few seconds to write, but can mean so much to the recipient. Its absence can have the opposite effect!

We’ve just had Alison’s Year 11 girls in for a picnic lunch in the garden. It’s the first time they’ve all been together since Lockdown. They started sitting down nearly two metres apart, but by the time they left they were in each other’s pockets. Any thought that schools can re-start with pupils maintaining social distancing is pie in the sky. Nonetheless, let’s do it. People keep talking about “it’s not safe”. It’s not safe to cross the road or ride a bike or canoe in wild water or ski off-piste or jump out of aeroplanes or play rugby or just get up in the morning; but we do it. The multitude of mental, physical, financial, business and social issues that we are accumulating far, far away the threat from Covid, in my humble opinion. Bojo and DomCu are starting to look Boo Boo and Cock-up. The number of U turns they’re making would’ve given Mrs T apoplexy.

I mentioned her in my talk to the Year 8’s. I wonder how many of them had a clue who I was talking about?

 

So the greatest wartime leader this country has known, now has to live in a wooden box because a handful of idiots say he was a racist. Of course, Winnie was a racist, he hated Nazis. Since when was that a sin? Robert The Bruce has now been daubed by like-minded buffoons because he was a racist king. Henry VIII cut his wife’s head off, twice. Imagine that! What about all those dreadful profiteers who made fortunes in the cotton mills or the mines. Should we be apologising to the whites who were so taken advantage of? As a priority the Government should be building a new gaol where these pathetic creatures can be permanently incarcerated with the keys deposited in The Thames. For heavens sake people, life used to be very tough; often hideously so. But that was then and largely because of that history we now have the most pampered, cared for, molly-coddled society it’s possible to imagine. It’s not perfect and of course things could always be better, but……

I always used to think woke was something I had done earlier. Typically it occurred somewhere between 3 and 8.30 am, the later the better for the most part. It’s a long time since I did English ‘A’ Level, but from memory it was the past tense of the verb ‘to wake’. Not being a member of the Social Media Society, it’s only fairly recently come onto my radar as being something different. I’ve largely managed to ignore it until now but with the current surge in ‘Offended.com’ activity, I had to check out exactly what it means. Apparently it’s being Politically Correct with bells on. I’m not yet clear whether it’s a noun or an adjective or both? Perhaps once I’ve had the operation, abused a few coloured people and taken the Mickey out of the LGBTQXYZ community I’ll have a better idea. Of course, I will do none of those things, merely hoping that I’m incarcerated in my own box before the world succumbs totally to all this madness.

Before I am, I will be able to enjoy something rather special. My own parents died when I was relatively young and I became part of a neighbouring family with whom I had grown up. When “mother” died she left me a painting that I had always loved and admired. It’s a beautiful old oil painting of Rydale in the Lake District. I had it cleaned but was a bit disappointed with the result and the frame did nothing for it, so after a few years I gave it to a recent acquaintance to clean it properly and reframe it. I had high hopes that it would come back looking quite different, but those expectations have been dramatically exceeded. Nigel Greaves is a very talented and experienced artist with his own gallery in Eastbourne and is well known in the region. I’ve got to know him over the last few months through visiting his gallery and joining the Rotary Club of which he is a longstanding member. The result of his efforts is stunning. An old painting (he thinks it was painted around 1750) has come dramatically back to life. It once again looks the way it must have done over 250 years ago. What a thrill! You could say it’s come alive…or woke.

I spent a significant proportion of yesterday watching something I’ve never seen before. Much to my chagrin our recently made-over garden has been colonised by a troupe of magpies. We only noticed one or two initially but there are at least four now, despite one chick failing to negotiate its debut flight. They are nesting quite high up in a tall conifer, which sadly means they are out of range of Callie, or Nimrod as we should have called her. They do venture down onto the lawns and flowerbeds quite regularly but so far have been too quick for our very nimble four-legged friend. However, yesterday they were subjected to a new threat and I’ve no idea why. Whilst quietly minding my own business I heard this tremendous squawking and sounds of an avian dogfight. A squadron of rooks and there must have been a dozen at least, had decided to attack the newly built magpie nest. Why? I have no idea and it really isn’t obvious. The aerial scrapping went on throughout the day on and off, before the defenders apparently emerged triumphant, the attacking rooks flying off with their tails between their wings. I would be intrigued to know what it was all about, if any naturalists out there can enlighten me please?

In between watching the aggressive aerobatic manoeuvres I retired to my favourite musing post, our somewhat dilapidated swing seat at the end of the garden. It’s secluded and peaceful and allows mental meanderings to proceed uninterrupted for the most part. Whilst gazing heavenwards I noticed that the prolific fig tree that has its roots in our neighbours garden but has extended considerably into our patch, not only has an impressive crop of maturing figs (which I love; I guess if it could speak the tree would be saying “a fig for your thoughts”?), but some elegant white blossom as well. Without deviating too far from my wandering contemplations, I took a photo of said blossom and sent it to fig tree owning friends for their opinion, because I couldn’t remember ever seeing a blossoming figus carica before and wondered if this might be another quirk of nature? They replied rapidly with the intelligence that the fruit is the tree’s “blossom” and had I considered the possibility that the flowering I was witnessing was in fact the product of another intertwined tree? Oops, how silly of me, of course it is! There seem to be increasing occasions nowadays where I think and do really stupid things. Is this an inevitable consequence of ageing?

Did you know there are hundreds of variants of fig tree with males producing three crops a year, whist the females only ripen in early summer and again in the autumn. 3-2 to the men! I’m not entirely clear though, how you “sex” a fig tree. Do the males produce bigger figs? Or perhaps the ladies bear more fruit? Could the bark of one be more wrinkled than the other? (Treading a cautious line there!) So many unanswered questions today concerning the natural world. Help!

I don’t know about you, but I love the South Of France; for its space, its scenery, its climate and of course its wine! Basking under a mediterranean sun in our beautiful garden though, the hassle of getting there no longer seems worth it. That aside, I’ve never envied the French for much, except their long lunches and unmatched bread. However, it occurs to me they do have one other enviable asset, namely their Patron Saint. It was the 589th anniversary of her death yesterday, the occasion when Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for being a witch, amongst many other alleged transgressions, at the tender age of nineteen. By any standards she must have been a truly remarkable young woman and through the centuries has been revered in France for taking on and beating the English. Mind you, it took until 1909 before she was beatified by Pope Pius X in Notre Dame Cathedral and it was another nine years before she was canonised by Pope Benedict XV. They say (I’m not sure who they are or indeed if they’ve ever tried it) that victims of stake burning would’ve suffocated from the smoke and lack of oxygen before the flames caused unconscionable pain. It’s an experiment I might save for a later life. (I did burn the steak on the bbq last night, but it was already dead)

It’s taken a Millennium since Willie the Conk colonised Hastings before we have been able to fully enjoy the French way of life, but under lockdown East Sussex has so much in common with the Dordogne it’s eerie. The Sussex cheeses (from ewes and cattle) are as good as anything down there. The local wines are now of a very high standard, the artisan bread in Barley Sugar (our exceptional local deli) is beyond compare and the Downs provide scenery and open spaces that have assumed magical status under the relentless May sun.

There is another similarity between locked down Sussex and 15th Century France. With personal social interaction verboten, the need for personal cleanliness and the regular application of deodorant has become rather less crucial. I’m only guessing, but I imagine The Maid of Orleans and her merry knights weren’t too acquainted with Messrs Dior, Givenchy and Chanel. I am fearful that amongst all the other tragic casualties of this weird age, the purveyors of bodily perfumes in all their forms might be taking a terrible hit. It was hard enough to buy a stick of Eau Sauvage, non alcohol, aluminium free, underarm deodorant before this Covid catastrophe. Will another French legacy have succumbed? I do hope not.

I confess that all this Cummings and goings has become more than a little tedious. It reminds me of an often hilarious novel that I studied for ‘A’ Level, “The Diary of a Nobody”, the memoirs of Charles Pooter, that featured his friends Mr Cumming and Mr Gowing and their largely frivolous interactions. I haven’t actually delved into its entertaining pages since closing the volume post-exams, so fifty years on I am struggling to remember much about it, but the whole sorry saga of Dom’s Durham Debacle might persuade me to revisit the Diary.

This isn’t a political blog, but I can’t resist having my own two penny worth on the current ludicrous shenanigans blighting this once great country. It seems clear that Boris’s sidekick Dom, did indeed break the lockdown rules of which he was a mastermind, or at least a co-conspirator. He was a silly boy knowing that he is not an “ordinary citizen”, but a man who has apparently lived by the sword and created a fair few enemies in the process. Worse, he has Boris’s total trust, indeed it seems the PM is incapable of wiping his nose without first asking for Dom’s advice as to whether to blow or wipe and if the former, how hard. Had Mr Cummings, once his transgression came to light, immediately held up his hands, mea culpa, conceded his lack of wisdom and offered to make a healthy contribution to an NHS charity he might, just might have survived. He might yet anyway, but the ensuing brouhaha would appear to be doing Boris and Co a huge amount of damage. By trying to weasel his way out of it with lame and pathetic excuses he is making himself and a lot of senior ministers who are trying to justify his survival, look shady and unworthy. As I have tried to tell son Oliver for years, everyone makes mistakes and does bad things. Much worse though is to deny one’s involvement. Be a man, (oh dear, I’m probably not allowed to say that now? Be a “person”?….doesn’t have quite the same ring!) hold up your hands and take whatever’s coming to you, it’ll be a lot better in the long run and people will respect you for it.

The other side of this though is the horrible media tirade, the bulk of whom seem to be intent on maiming our elected Prime Minister, when it’s clear that everyone involved needs to get on with running the Country during an incredibly difficult time. Constantly quoting “Outraged from Tunbridge Wells” and “Scandalised from Newport Pagnell” achieves nothing. If people now feel it’s ok to break the rules because Dom did, then they are the sort of idiots who would have broken the rules anyway. Sadly, it looks as though there are a lot of those, watching the way people are behaving now.

Callie the whippet is an extremely intelligent dog, as dogs go. I think I might have a chat with her later and see what she thinks. As I write this on a very sunny patio, she is currently involved in an ultimately fruitless, but impressively athletic chase around the garden, hoping to exterminate the squirrel that constantly taunts her as it flies from branch to branch. It reminds me a little of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and his attempts to become fully aerobatic. Callie already has an impressive leap, scaling a six foot wall with relative ease, but she needs much greater cat-like qualities before Stevie the Squirrel will become dogfood. Perhaps she’ll give me a moment or two of her time when we wander along the seafront later, although chasing seagulls consumes much of her time there; another exercise in frustration. If the truth be told, Lockdown has been heavenly for her. To have the whole family around 24/7 is doggy bliss.

Whilst drifting in and out of slumber this morning I caught a snippet of “Thought for the Day” on the Today programme. It was being delivered by a dog-collared (ok I couldn’t see her, but as she was a vicar it was a reasonable assumption) lady who was explaining that this is Ascension Day, the moment, forty days after Christ’s Resurrection, when God made Man decided it was time to abandon this miserable planet and return to his throne in Heaven.

Coincidentally, only yesterday I was reading about space exploration and how there are hundreds of billions of stars and planets in our galaxy, which is only one of hundreds, or thousands or possibly billions more. What chance then that we are the only intelligent life? Zero, nil, zilch, none. All this made me curious as to where God lives. Obviously he went up, or they wouldn’t have called it Ascension Day. But with a constantly rotating earth, up would be forever changing. So to track and trace his route to Heaven, we need to know the exact moment he took off and where Jerusalem was pointing at that moment. Assuming we could decipher that second in time, we could presumably plot a track into the stratosphere that would eventually lead to Heaven. It’s a pretty big patch though and it’s interesting to ponder who was in charge of the whole kaboosh while he was ministering to the Jews? It’s fair to assume that he must have a large general staff (of angels?) who are authorised to take care of day to day matters; or could it all be complete baloney?

I have gained great physical and mental benefit from a mystical lady in Bath who draws on the power of the Universe to weave her magic. It’s called Network Spinal Analysis and is beyond my ability to explain how it works but suffice to say that it does. Like so many others, her business has been floundering under the imprisonment of lockdown, but she has found a way to keep going while more than maintaining her social distance. She describes herself as a “Vortex Healer” and with your permission, at a given time she will “treat” you as if you were in her clinic. I tried it for the first time a couple of days ago and it was extraordinary. I just lay on my bed, doing the required deep breathing and at the allotted time she opened the vortex and my body started reacting in the way it normally does with her. In essence it’s all designed to get the body to heal itself, using self-manipulation. It sounds crazy but it really does work.

In my mind there is no doubt there is a “power” out there in the Universe and it’s something you can definitely tap into with the right help and guidance. Should we call it God, in the Christian sense? I am very doubtful, personally. I’m beginning to think that perhaps all religions in their different ways, are merely manifestations of this greater power. Despite all our Google/Amazonian power there is still SO much we don’t know or understand.

So, time to continue the search for Heaven. I think I’ve got the track plotted, now it’s just a question of knowing how far I have to travel into the final frontier; to boldly go where no one has gone before…..