I sit beside the fire and think – Tolkein

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

Time Flies.

I took my watch on an Aeroplane…

I can’t believe it is over a month since I bothered with Fairy Hanny and her delightful adventures. Coming back to Kazakhstan, new idiots to deal with, old girlfriends coming back, new girls acting just like the old ones, a minor flood in my apartment, extra work as one teacher didn’t turn up, extra work because new jobsworths did turn up…

So Hanny and her adventures have been neglected.

Never mind – Pistachio nuts cost a lot in Almaty so I am savouring them by eating the shells too!

(Not really – that is what could be called a joke)

I am also dealing with some Orwellian Double Speak and Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

  1. Orwell – we are expanding one aspect by reducing the time available…
  2. Kafka – we are having meetings to design the forms that we will use in future meetings as we plan forms to examine every aspect of life in school.

What a wonderful world.

Meanwhile some colleagues have just 2 hours to teach per week…

Adult Shop

Bizarre!

Driving down the A1 from Liverpool to Ipswich. I know it isn’t the most direct route but it avoids that great big car park called the M6.

So there at the side of the A1 is ‘The A1 Adult Store’ – I kid you not.

My curiosity got the better of me so I went in.

I bought an adult.

Happy feckin birthday to me

If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being “asocial” or “irrational” in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to “explain,” which usually implies that the explanation be “understood,” i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.

– -Erich Fromm, from The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

Book Number three from Uranus

No working title but the plan has been written.

Soon to publish book number 2 in the series -“Trans Uranic Elements; The Dark Side of Uranüs” – following on from the first outing of Fairy Hanny in “Strange Things From Uranüs”.

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I have the plan for the third book based on an old Celtic Myth. Fairy Hanny will travel to the Land of Faery in the time before time, before tales were written, to Erin Isle in the time of the Danaans.

More bad jokes and references to old songs.

I can’t wait!

But I have the three Inspector Flaange boks to finish and the ‘Going To California’ trilogy too.

And as for St. Nedds, those Sloths will just have to wait too.

Planets

Starry night in Istanbul.

Somewhere in the sky are two bright lights, planets I am told.

Spectacular. One is Venüs.

The other may as well be Uranüs  as they mean feck all to me!

And the Moon is a slippery banana.

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