Life after not dating

From as long as I can remember as a teenager I always hoped and in some ways even took it for granted that I wanted to go out on dates with girls that I liked or was falling in love with that were falling for me too. I was a cute kid even if I do say so myself and so that part of the battle as a teenager was ok. But there is more to having just cute looks as a teenager to having strong and long lasting relationships with people that you want to fall in love with.

The photo is of me in my 20’s on a date on New Year’s Eve in Spreyton with a lovely girl called Robyn. She is the girl in the middle of this photo. It was all going so well until I tried to explain I was a bit mad in a bit of a mad way. She was lovely and I was upset that we broke up but there was a lot going on at that time so I could not focus all my emotions on our break up we were only together for a very short time like 3 dates over about a month anyway.

At 46 I know feel my lifecycle time to have a normal family life and life partner has now well and truly past and to be honest I feel more sorry for my parents than I do myself concerning the idea that their family line will not continue with me and I will not go on to reproduce. They do have one grandchild from my brother but we lost contact with him through Covid-19 and through his silence he has made it very clear that he chooses to have no contact with our family, and like with any relationship it has to be two way in order to work and evolve organically that just is not going to happen.

Back to my relationship statues and I have been happily single for what could be about 15 years now, I enjoy being independent of others and feel very much safe in my own skin and hopefully have a secure roof over my head, good friends and a life I enjoy living. I cannot say I have always had that in life and have found life tremendously hard at times when in relationships or when I thought I loved someone and that love was unrequited. I am sure I have emotionally matured in the last 10 years which could have happened had I been in a relationship or not and so don’t know if the comfort and ease that I have with myself and positive mental attitude has happened because I am single or because I am just older and have different outlook on life.

I have not even come close in the last 15 years to a date, relationship or anything further. I don’t ask and so I don’t get and that really does suit me fine for now (I am not saying I want to be like this forever but have no intention of changing or forcing myself to change for now).

I have been asked twice in the last few years to go on a blind date with a friend of a friend and even though the thought is very flattering when asked by women that I like and respect who likes and respects me enough to see about setting me up with one of their friends it really is lovely. Some other friends have also been trying to encourage me to go speed dating which I have done once in the past and it was a lot of fun. But there are a few reasons why I just don’t want to do the dating thing right now and I don’t think I will be able to resolve or square the circle any time soon.

I might be wrong but it feels like my life is a delicate ecosystem of a combination of things that work in union with each other that makes me content, happy and productive. I fear if I adjust or take one of those things away I could mess it all up. I don’t feel that I have to be in a relationship. I live in a sociable city with people that also have their own challenges and amongst the vast majority of my friends in this city being single is not uncommon or something to be feared, that really does suit me but it does not suit everyone.

I have had times in the past where just one thing going wrong has sent everything to mess up and that is particularly painful when risking losing, job, home, friends, freedom and hurting my health and so I feel in life and relationships I try not to throw caution to the wind and risk it all for what might just be an unobtainable fantasy or dream. Though all hope is not lost just writing this down does make me a little bit sadder about the truth of this situation and feel it’s my responsibility to try and change the situation if I want the situation to change.

I feel my generation of friends do not really feel comfortable operating in the network that is dating sites although many people just a few years or decades younger than me enjoy them and find it a great way to meet people. Alas I used to like to try and get to know a person before dating or telling them what they are getting themselves into which seems very old fashioned now.

When people like and respect get into relationships I am very happy for them and I think that is a positive outlook and I always hope they do well. You can’t really predict who will stay together for how long or how they do it. Though I am sure a great deal of patients, co-operation and understanding is required by both sides.

Imagine Dragons – Demons

Spreyton a village of Devon

I watched the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring again recently and it just reminded me of what an absolutely wonderful film that it is.

I have not watched it in what must be nearly 10 years and there are so many little magical moments etched on my memory such as the scene below where they arrive at Bree.

There’s talk of strange folk abroad

The whole Hobbiton in the shire storyline really does make me think of what my own County of Devon and Village of Spreyton where I grew up might have been like had we in an imaginary alternative reality grown up in middle earth.

Spreyton has its own folk songs and stories such as that of Uncle Tom Cobley and all! A folk song about a resident of Spreyton who set off with a number of people from Spreyton to Widecome on the other side of Dartmoor to get to Widencombe Fair.

There is a print of the song and story below and my Dad has one of these prints hanging in his home

Next is a photo of a what is known as Devon long house, this one is called Stockhay Cottage and was where I live for some of my time when in Spreyton.

Stockhay was given a Grade II listing in 1988. The Historic England description is as follows:

Grade II. House, formerly small farmhouse and linhay. Mid-late 17th century farmhouse, mid 19th century linhay, modernised circa 1970. Plastered cob and stone rubble; stone rubble stack topped with 20th century brick; thatch roof.

The thatched roof once nealy caught alight when my father put some logs in the fire that got to hot and set the chimney, the fire brigadge were called and came out and prevented the fire from setting fire to the thatched roof.

The property was also one in which had plenty of wildlife around it. We would have hornets that would nest in the thatch and also bats that would be living up in the roof space too.

I also have a photo of Spreyton from the air, as you can quickly see it is surrounded by fields, wildlife, farms and greenery.

The first mention of Spreyton is in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it is called Espreitona or Spreitone. The name is Anglo-Saxon and means “settlement in the brushwood” (from spraeg (brushwood) and tun (settlement or farm). Spraeg has also given us the modern word “spray”, as in a spray of flowers. The Anglo-Saxons settled Devon in around 700 AD. Spreyton may well have been chosen by one of those early settlers as the site for establishing a farm – although it is not inconceivable that it was a Celtic settlement before then.

The settlement would probably have started as a single farm. Dependants and labourers would have settled nearby and other families would have joined them, leading eventually to the typical Devon village with a central settlement surrounding a church and a series of scattered hamlets and farms.

Ode to my Family – The Cranberries

New Tory Govt crash and burn the price of the £

The beautiful political landscape of a democratic nation in a state of flux right now!

The new UK Conservative Government announced a load of tax cutting and borrowing policies this week that resulted in a crash of the pound against the dollar to an all time low as even the stock markets reacted to the UK government as if to say ‘what the hell are you playing at, doing that with your economy’.

When a governments or political parties boast about tax cuts to benefit your wallets, what there really saying in this day and age is their actually trying to reduce the amount of goods, services and support that they are trying to provide to you and others.

You might feel good to have a few pence or pound in your wallet each month but what there really trying to tell you is all those ongoing government problems that they have not solved concerning how to hire more doctors and nurses and reduce waiting times for health services for the one in five over-50s who have dropped out of UK workforce who are on National Health Service waiting list for treatment are not going to have an improved system of care anytime soon to help get them back into work and be healthy contributing members of society anytime soon.

Over the first 46 years of my life I have had the support of my government at times its shelter and protection and healing as well as an opportunity to again be given the chance to stand on my own two feet and live, work and be free to make my own way in life once again.

I don’t expect something for nothing or to live off handouts. I work full time, pay for my own food, shelter and life expenses. But there have been times in my life where I have needed the help from the UK government to enable me to again be in a position where I can look after myself once again and be independent.

I don’t know where or how well or even if I would still be alive today, had my life not occasionally been injected with some government support in order to help my become well again, once sick or fed and sheltered again when at risk of being homeless or unemployed and impoverished.

Benefits, health services and provisions of homes for the homeless are in no way god given rights in any country to any citizen and due to an inherent mental health condition that I was most likely born with, I will always be at risk of losing everything due to an illness that can trigger potentially at any time and under the right circumstance.

I do my best to look out for myself, do all I can to keep my mental health stable and well but ultimately I am potentially blind to when or how I might become unwell again and whether or not my life will be structured with enough safeguards in order to come out of my illness on the other side at an as yet undetermined time in the future. Having a national health service really has kept me alive and mentally well. Had I been born in a different country or at a different time I just don’t know what support and assistance I would be able to have in order to maintain a good quality of life for myself.

I have personal lived experience of when a society decides to invest in its people rather than just its banking system, the huge gains and returns on that investment and I am very grateful for the assistance that I have received. At the very least I wish to vote, fight and advocate for others as well as myself to have a reasonable quality of life and social support in order to help them when they are down and not just help them to help themselves when they are rich and assume those that are not wealthy must just fend for themselves and hope for the best health, endure the worst poverty or die trying.

The Killers – Human

Britain’s changing times

You might be surprised to hear that Britain does not actually have a written constitution, and you might even think well if the rules are not all written down in one place then how do they all know what to do and how their country is run and why it is run that way. Well in many ways it’s complicated although when it comes to which institution holds the most power it is actually quite simple and in some ways advantageous and in others ways potentially dangerous.

But in plucky British stiff upper lippedness ,it is seen to have worked for Britain up until now and so if is not broken nobody sees any need to fix it. Although with the present ongoing attempt to leave the European Union there is a slight constitutional problem and alas as yet unfixed and this does matter to both Britain and European Union. Because although Britain might not have written constitution but EU does and Northern Ireland is one hot spot where the rules and regulations of one power block clash with those of another power block in that of European Union vs. Britain. As Britain is the least powerful partner in the divorce between the two and as it is Britain that is choosing to walk away from the European Union and where potentially the European Union negotiates with Britain regarding what powers it can have and what trading it can do with European Union and what it can’t when it has left the EU, this puts Europe in a powerful position and Britain in a potentially weak position.

So even after all that Britain still has no written constitution, so why is this the case and what does that mean for British power, laws and how does it get things done. Well ultimately our Parliament in little old Britain is sovereign, Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK, which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change.

That is our strength and weakness pretty much tied up there the ability of parliament to create or end any law and to also pass laws that any future parliament can then go on to change. For a little old Blighty it means it has both the potential to adapt to matters of the day to enact laws and you would hope guide a country forward to do what is the right thing to do at the right time to do it. But on the other hand as power corrupts and people can given power, contracts, knighthoods and money so as to empower those whom support and prop up the institutions of government as they exist , then it also has potential for corruption and exploitation by those that benefit from and propping up the status quo.

This is how I feel

Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated in a debate in congress once that ‘Religion and faith are not about exclusion’. This is also my faith and my comprehension of God that I understand and believe in, hope for and have faith in, that can answer prayers or force us collectivly to work to answer our own prayers within this life for this world and for those who come into this life in the future. A force for goodness and justice that will enable us to answer our own prayers and give what we can and should to others so that they may be clothed, sheltered, fed and loved.

I just thought I would go onto Twitter and have a look at what other people views and expressions were at this moment in time and came across a lovely clip of democrat congresswoman from New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez relating to faith, humanity, god and taxes!

AOC Flips the Religious Freedom Argument on Its Head

I found the clip above emotionally and spiritually empowering and refreshing to know there are people that believe so passionately in views that I can respect and agree with concerning faith and conviction of what others are entitled to or should be protected from. I don’t buy into a Church that sells it’s belief in the good are Godley and are deserving of their wealth, good health and power status. I feel if Jesus were alive, preaching and teaching today there are many aspects of my society, its systems and institutions and mechanics of wealth and poverty creation and sustaining of that wealth and poverty which would deeply concern and anger him on how humanity treats its fellow humans. Christ would discuss matters of economics, politics, scoail justice and equlity were he around today.

If you’re not born in the right country with the right type of passport and amount of money at the right time you risk a whole lot of pain and suffering due to global inequalities and dependent upon the degrees of latitude and longitude that you were born on the globe.

These inequalities look to become far greater this century than they have been for many a year and those that look to escape the poverty, starvation and move to a place where they may have a chance of a better life will have walls built to stop them, boats sailing to catch them and be imprisoned in migrant camps, once they arrive on a foreign shore and be blamed for wanting a better life.

We don’t look to a future of greater food resources or medical resources for the people on this planet but instead one in which there are depleting resources for people and planet on a more hostile environment.

Though knowing there are advocates in positions of authority and power such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does spring forward hope and optimism for the future.

Placebo – Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) (Cover) Official Music Video

I just don’t feel how you feel

A momentous time in British history is presently unfolding with the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the closing of the Elizabethan age and the dawning of the age of Charles III. There has been a huge sway of emotions from people including friends and family as they mourn the loss of their Queen and perhaps contemplate their own mortality at the same time.

When it comes to my own emotions concerning the events unfolding in my country and how I feel and how I am supposed to feel I am still unsure of what to feel or what I should feel. As a human being I respect the person that was Queen Elizabeth and feel sympathy and empathy for those that knew her and especially her family for the loss of the most senior member of their family.

Though it does not make me feel especially British that she has passed, I know the pain of loss and that’s not the feeling that I am feeling. Watching the news at the moment you would think that every citizen of Britain is a loved up royalist morning the loss of the Queen and welcoming in the era of Charles III with great reverence and pride.

Although there are many doing this across the country and there will be huge crowds flocking to pay their respects for the passing of Queen Elizabeth and also the inauguration of King Charles. But there are also huge swathes of people just going about their day to day business catching the train for a day trip, heading to the shops to get bread and milk, just going about their daily lives.

I love living in Britain but I don’t feel patriotic towards its institutions and the mechanics with which we use to devour global resources and ultimately bring about our own potential destruction.

Charles is a passionate environmentalist but he has now taken on a job that is essential that he is non political in his words and actions and seen and described as above politics and so any attempt to advocate one policy over another or to criticise or support a policy he will be potentially be criticised and blamed for now so in some ways the environment has lost one of its great advocates to the crown.

A part of me wants to batten down the hatches and wait until the storm that is the whipping up of British patriotism across the UK media outlets and across these shores but another part of me feels that so long as I am respectful and explain where I am coming from I still have the right to speak and feel how I feel.

Levellers – One Way

Is Trump above the law or is the noose tigtening around his neck?

There is an unprecedented legal case taking place in the USA at present against former President Trump. What the consequences are for him and for the political system of the USA is really yet to play out but it does feel that something huge is potentially about to happen and the politcal phrase if you give someone enough rope they will ultimately hang themselves appears to be relating to Trump at present.

Documents siezed from Donald Trumps home

President Trumps legal team are yet again trying to reinvent the rule book of what they can or can’t do by admitting that he did have secret documents and that this is perfectly normal. Well what is normal for trump is not normal for anyone else.

The Republican Party claims to be the party of laws and order so what happens when Trump the poster boy breaks the law of land in the land he aspires to be president again this has consequences. Being popular amongst the people of the states is no defence in the eyes of the law. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham threatens that there will be riots on the street if they try to prosecute Trump for mishandling classified information. So that implies that the rule of law does not apply to Trump.

It is a sad state of affairs in the USA that many people treat their political parties like Europeans treat their football teams, they are deeply faithful to them and believe they must compete to win and nothing but their own team matters and you would never consider supporting the opposition they are the enemy. Though when you put political values into such a context of only supporting one side and considering the opposition to be a traitor to your camp and values this is a toxic way to vote.

It would be more ethical and moral to be voting on who will help the people (or choosing to vote for who will not). It would be more inspiring to be voting for who will help the future of the planet (or who must turn a blind eye to that). But instead people want to aspire to vote for team trump and his lies, misinformation and trash talk while he tries to make himself above your laws.

I had a dream a dark dream

I hope to come across in my blog as an optimist or even looking on the bright side of the dark kind of guy, but when it comes to your subconscious and dreaming what you dream, it’s very difficult not to escape nightmares sometimes which dwell in the depths of your psyche.

I normally don’t have nightmares and for many years up to my early twenties I could not even remember having nightmares and assumed that I just did not get them. But alas I do sometimes get them and I do find them unsettling and have had one of the worst I have experienced in my life recently which I found quite disturbing and wondered where the hell in my imagination did that just come from and why the hell am I trying to scare myself with such thoughts.

I remember in this dream (nightmare) that there had been an alien invasion and this had resulted in wars and great suffering for people and me and my family along with others were seeking refuge and heading to a camp that we hoped would provide food, water and shelter for us.

Once we arrived at the camp which we believed to be offering shelter and refuge which was controlled by the alien invaders we all accidently got separated and I lost sight of the people I had arrived with. The next thing I knew was we were in some industrial looking place with lots of people coming and going to lots of different places although no signs up to tell us where we should be going.

The area was quite steam punk like industrial units in which I ended heading upstairs to where some food was being moved along a conveyer belt which was either in the process of being cooked or about to be cooked. It looked like raw beef mince meat, moving along on conveyer belts all around these kind of kitchens, the thing that then made it deeply disturbing was that along these conveyer belts of mince meet there were also a lot of jewels and jewellery scattered in amongst the mince. I suddenly had this hugely horrible fear and realisation that the reason for there being peoples jewellery in the mince was because this mince was not made up of beef but of human meat and people were standing along the conveyor belts helping to cook this meat.

It was a horrible realisation in the dream (nightmare) and I suddenly thought I have to get the hell out of here and somehow warn people. So I started to walk down the industrial unit and yes there were lots of people coming and going and I thought I dare not scream out about what I just had found because I did not know who would believe me or want to run out as well too and I did not know what anyone would do to me if I suddenly started to freak out and shout out.

So I managed to make it out of this place with lots of people coming and going I got the impression that some of the people there already knew what was going on and chose to eat the meat and were in some way complicit with this horror where as others were innocently walking in for refuge.

So I then woke up still thinking how do I get help, how do I get help and thought I would email as many people in high up positions of power as I could to raise an alarm but alas it was too late as I was already awake and back in the real world from my nightmare in the dream world.

After finally writing this down for my blog I finally started to do some research on what dream interpretations meant and the one I found most relevant was dream interpretations from of all things cosmopolitan magazine it went on to ask the question :-

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF YOU DREAM ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD?

This dream is NOT a message that the world is about to end, okay? So, come up from your bunker and breathe. End-of-the-world dreams have a few key underlying drivers:

a major life shift
feeling out of control or unprepared for something on the horizon
an emotional turmoil
a spiritual awakening

Something is shifting in your world. Even if it all seems business as usual on the surface, deep down, you’ve probably been going through something emotional, spiritual, or transformative to your identity and sense of self.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF YOU DREAM ABOUT THE WORLD ENDING IN AN ALIEN INVASION?

This dream is a prompt that you’re nearing the end of the phase or ambition, and you need a new goal or project. Or it could be a nudge that spiritually, you’re seeking new inspiration and ideas. Maybe external influences are trying to get you on board with their way of seeing or doing things, but you feel resistant. You don’t feel secure in your own skin about what you know, do, and want. You are considering new schools of thought, maybe even some that are pretty ~out-there~.

BACK TO MY THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECT!

Though there might be some feeling of what if this happened or could this really happen in the dream that I was having, one of the most relieving things in hindsight is that I have never predicted the future in a dream that I have had and I was not about to start predicting the future from this one dream or nightmare now.

It does though just kind of feel like there have been loads of horrible things going on over the last few years and it feels like nothing could surprise me these days for just how bad things could get and how quickly that can go bad. I honestly still think I am in fact an optimist, I just so happen to have a dam vivid imagination that really goes to town so it seems when I sleep!

The dream really make me think a lot to about the film Schindler’s List, which I first saw at the cinema on a school trip and where as rather than having fascists from the Third Reich trying to kill people that it was instead an alien invasion trying to do it instead. Any form of race hate and wiping out of people on the grounds of who they are or the racial superiority prejudices I really find to be abhorrent and so the nightmare really was pulling at all my heart strings to try and get a reaction out of me. Well writing down what happened in my dream and trying to express it is my reaction.

Sound track of film Schindler’s List

The war on climate change – just your typical father and son small talk!

I went out for a meal with my father last week, a sort of pre-birthday pub meal for him and as so often happens we got talking about the world, democracy and climate change, you know just your typical type of small talk you might say!

The way that it came up in the conversation it really is very much like the areas of conversation were all connected. My father is an educated man, more intelligent than me by far, has a better grasp of the English language, loves to read books and also listens a lot to BBC radio 4 which is our UK radio station for informing people and educating people.

So he is well armed to have a discussion about almost any subject matter and express his views on it eloquently and to the point.

Whereas for me on the other hand I am a news junkie mostly about what is going on in the local area as well as globally the good and bad. From watching the news on the TV, reading articles on the web and also keeping an eye on social media and blogs. I am also dyslexic and struggle to read books and struggle to remember what I have read so I don’t tend to gain information from long articles or books, my memory has evolved in a different way, where I have an emotional memory that remembers things in relation to my emotional connection to them or from a pictorial or visual stimulus too rather than from remembering words from a page I would rather look at pictures that as they say is worth a thousand words.

There are many things that me and my Dad agree on but also it seems the longer you talk to anyone about any subject the more you find to disagree about rather than agree. We are both fearful for the future of the planet and humanity, we both in our own way try to do our own bit whether that is simply recycling consuming ethically, donating to charities and also advocating change for others when appropriate. But when it comes to our world views he is very much a pessimist and thinks we are all doomed and hopes he is wrong where as I am very much more of an optimist and hope we are not all doomed and hope I am not proven wrong.

With the recent heat waves, fires and lack of rain that have struck Europe over the last few weeks it always makes me think that although we might have it bad here its far worse in the area of the globe that have had famine, food shortages and lack of water for decades such places in Africa that are far hotter it than us for far longer too make me feel like there can never be time for a poor me attitude for how bad I might think I have ever had it in relation to how bad others have and will have it in the future.

We had a brief respite from the heat today when a storm came over Exeter, it was only a little one but the air and coolness in that storm and rain was sweet.

Ocean Colour Scene – The Riverboat Song

Don’t Look Up

When I was a child I went to a school assembly that taught a valuable lesson in a slightly violent and destructive way. That assembly stayed with me as a metaphor of what we have and how easy it is too loose what he have to this very day. It was a non
religious speech given by our very religious Religious Education teacher.

Basically she brought into the hall a few props one of which was a beautiful vase and a bag with something else in. she then talked about how to make vases all the effort that goes into making them what they are made of, how much they are appreciated and then she put the vase in a the bag and unusually brought a hammer out of the bag too and then placed the bag with the vase in on a table and smashed up the vase into many broken pieces that it was simply irreparable and showed us the broken pieces too.

The way that I still see this lesson that she taught us that day still today is that life is like that vase which is fragile and precious and we can and should appreciate it, show it respect and take care of it. But in a blink of an eye with the lifting of just one hammer and bang on the vase then that fragile thing shatttered into a hundred peices and just like life can be gone forever without any undoing or rewinding being able to bring it back.

This leads me also on to the film Don’t Look Up which I finally got to watch on the weekend a really great film, excellently written and with a fantastic cast. I had not wanted to see this film for a while as I was worried that there would be to many gags and an inappropropriate ending or horrifying ending. Well the film got me hooked and I don’t want to spoil it for you but I do recommend a watch.

It has a lot of paralels with how our leaders are engaging with climate change and how to many politicans, climate change adaptation is still appears to be a numbers game concerning what do opinion polls say I should say about climate change or what do opinion polls say I should do about climate change rather than seeing any politicans being elected yet with any actual conviction on how and why we need to adapt to a changing climate and the real fear that we could be headign for extinction if we do not change our ways and learn to live as a guardian of wild places and living orangisms and the planet rather than economic growth machines.

The Fire by Rosie Eade

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The beautiful political landscape of a democratic nation in a state of flux right now!

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