.........

The little label seems to work ... though my hand still heads in the direction of the wrong key now and then ... but I spot the bit of paper and head off for t'other key.

sn ... ooooooooo ... ze

I'm using a new keyboard ... which means that typing should take about half the time it used to as I'm not having to go back and fill in a lot of spaces and re-do the capital letters where the caps lock didn't work!!!!! Trouble is ... with this one ... is that sleep is where delete used to be on the other one ... so the pooter and I are Zzzzzzzzzzing all over the place at the moment!!!! lol!!!!

wrdft ......... sn ... ooooooooo ... ze.

Just got a bit of sticky paper and stuck in on the sleep button so should be OK now.

And ... just going to put dinner on.

With no snoozing!!!!! lol!!!!

It's alright

The results are back ............................................... and he's ok. Well, better than that ... he's back in remission and the damage done while all this was going on ... fatty cells on the liver. He'll have to have a change of medication as I mentioned before and I guess he'jj have more frequent appointments at the hospital again now ... but, that's it!!!!!

The doctor let the secretary sign the letter in place of him so that it could be sent off earlier than it would if she'd had to wait!!!!

Just how great is that. My other friend's doc the friend who got a cancer ok a few days ago, had her doc waiting by her bedside to tell her as soon as she came round. Guess he was told that she was coming round and he was free so he went there. I'm so glad for both of them.

There we go.

Wednesday

Not a bad day .. trip to Teso and Sainsbury ... didn't go out in the afternoon though cause I was too tired and guess it's best not to risk overdoing things. Watched Hank Williams instead .. enjoyed the clip of him singing I Saw The Light from The Grand Ole Opry .. looks like someone has the whole show .. wonder if it's on dvd or if it's something they've had since way back. My uncle used to enjoy that song.

Hank Williams passed over when he was 29 .. he had a very painful back from having a curved spine and used to take morphine along with other pain relief ... he used to drink a lot with it too and the lot together was too much for him. I don't know if he drank because of the pain or just because he was addicted ... but you really shouldn't touch alcohol with some pain relief.

Have to say I'm a little bit of a country purist .. usually am pretty easy going as far as music goes but I really don't see some of the acts that appear there today as country .. makes me sigh when I think they had a hard time accepting The Byrds and Gram Parsons and didn't want to know Bob Dylan.

Anyway, I'm going to get some soup, read a bit, then turn in.

...............

Just off to bed after a day at the hospital. No visit to the GP today though ... different time ... different place. One friend's been given the ok fter thinking she had cancer .. my friend who I mention a lot on here at the moment is still waiting to find out his results .. he hasn't got cancer but it's an illness along those lines and will need some pretty heavy treatment. We're waiting to see how the illness is affecting him right now at the moment. Hopefully we should find out tomorrow - and another friend is having some surgery that's going to be rather painful very soon ... which she's been dreading .. she worked in the medical profession and knows that it's going to be very painful for a while.

Makes you think. And ofcourse all happening with the knowledge of Jade's cancer in the background. I feel more at ease .. if those are the right words .. with the thought of life after life though my queries are on a practical level as well as my acceptance. Ihven't contacted my old friend yet ... but I will.

For the people who've said I've helped them fous more on spirit ... ur welcome. It's bit likr global warming now though ... not much left to say. It's years since I first mentioned it on the blogs so those that've been reading all that time should be well on there way one way or another if they're interested. If you've not had any experiences ... or pushed them away one way or another .. then just going by general statistics someone you know and trust should've had. I know statistics can be wrong ... but I rather suspect that statistics about this tend to err on the lower than the higher side .. less rather than more people saying they've had experiences of this kind cause people can become rather tongue tied or push them to the back of their minds cause they can be difficult to take in and other people will find ways of disagreeing regardless just because you can't reach out and touch them or measure them etc!!!!

Anyway .. it really should be personal experience or from people you trust and then it's easier to relate to other people's stories. It also means ur serious and not like some people just trying to dig out personl information or something like that. Wonder how she's getting on .. did think of joining up where she is now to find out ... but I don't think I'll bother. She did appear to believe in something ... but I don't know if it involved this being a learning curve of spiritual development etc ... or whatever the case maybe ... but she certainly seemed to believe that u could harness the forces of the universe for your own needs .... ho hum .. she just wanted to know how ... like the constant search to make gold through magick ... not very ... or, even AT ALL sucessful!!!!

I'm getting some rest now.

Monday

bought watch that someone brought in yesterday evening and have worn it today. It's really good for me as it has a dial that's easy to read and has a strap that just grips together rather than a buckle. Someone else brought in a box of those magazines that you buy every week to make into books ... can't remember what they were called but they were about healing and natural things like that. Me watch was £1.

Managed to get there this morning too ... at 10.30!!!! Really enjoyed myself .. didn't feel like getting up on the rostrum to speak though because I was feeling tired so I just watched other people. We had to talk under a heading of philosophy earlier on .... sitting down .. picked a topic from a bowl of bits of paper ... My topic was ... spirit ... lol!!!! Other topics were things like peace, self awareness, being true to yourself, personal responsibility and freedom. Some people weren't there but they hadn't been there on Siunday either and I know they hve ill friends and family so possibly are spending time with them .. or, couldn't get the time off this morning .. or have had to go to something similar somewhere else. I know the guy I mentioned lsat night had an appointment he couldn't miss and was sad about not being there this morning. Maybe some have dropped out ... there were a couple of people that I didn't recognise and they weren't there today.

I've said that I'll make a booklet for them .. which will be nice ... and I must do it rather than leaving it as I have been doing. Though, I guess, I was too ill to really be doing things like that for quite a lot of the time. I think, though other people might prefer a sort of free flow bunh of memories ... that it's really good to write down spiritul experiences. s I've mentioned I've forgotten some of mine and I hdn't told people about some that I've forgotten ... so they've just gone now.

Still watching The NGDB. I was thinking how good it would've been to have been brought up somewhere where lots of people play banjo, mandoline and guitar and just to sit round picking right from when you're a kid with the whole family joining in at times.

I just love the way they put the music together, both as a band and when they have guests. I loved country music from an early age ... first got interested through an uncle when I was about eight. He was really into music ... liked Billie Holiday too .. liked the blues and jazz ... and later got really into Patti LaBelle.


Hank Williams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkztDzpTHKA


I'd never seen anything from the early days of The Grand Ole Opry til quite recently ... though I'd heard people who played the Grand Ole Opry from various times on disc. The Carter Family sure don't sound so hoe down on record ... at least not the ones that I listened to. I did watch The Beverley Hillibillies though ... but had no idea that the way people spoke on the programme was so real life. June Carter was a bit of a comediene too.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlkvc_june-c-hank-williams_music


This is just so atmospheric and great ... Billie Holiday sings the blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXRYdcQ6bbM


Patti LaBelle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqtNgKGJKOo

............................

Went over this evening .. first time for around three weeks .. always seemed so tired. Was pleased to be there. There was different mixture of people .. well, there's quite variety of people coming and going all the time .. people often turn up in times of distress .. but, also, ofcourse, a core of people who are there most of the time. Got a hug from a guy who does a bit of alternative healing. I guess healing is what you make it, like placebo meds .. but, when he touched my back there was this warm, gentle feeling. I've had bit of new pain in my chest and down an arm .. again from muscle movement so I don't know what's going to happen there.

Anyway, nice to pop in again.

Came back ... did dinner .. and listened to some country music. Is Vince Gill not very well. He seemed a bit short of breath in one interview I saw. I was listening to his songs cause there's a video on the tube of him singing with the NGDB. He seems to do a lot of bluegrass these days from what I saw listed for him on Youtube.

A friend of mine has just been given the ok after some worrying tests ... not the guy I've mentioned before. Another friend ... she hadn't wanted to worry me so she didn't say anything. I wondeed what on earth was going on cause she seemed suddenly distant ... and then disappeared for a couple of days. I wouldn't usually worry about someone being off line for a couple of days .. if I did .. I'd just phone anyway. There had been a lot of things going on though one way and another and I wondered if the friendship was ending ... she knows the other two women I mentioned a little while ago.

But ... no, she turns up and tells me she's had a serious health scare. I know this kind of thing is in the news so much at the moment cause of Jane Goody but it really is a good idea to check moles for signs of irregularity etc and go for tests if you are called and go to the docs if something happens that you find worrying ... pain you can't account for or bleeding when you shouldn't or a lump where one shouldn't be.

Anyway, I'm getting my soup.

Just got to wait for it to cool now.

Then off to bed.

Saturday

Just off to get my night time soup .... lol!!!! Actually better go and put the kettle on ... have done!!!!!!!!


Been listening to ... and watching The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I'm like the guy who ommented tht he's not religious but likes this type of music. I think Jesus was probably an ok guy. You've really only got what othe people have written to go on ... but .. my opinion is that he was nice and was treated with cruelty beyond belief. I think he's probably doing ok over the other place .. being me .. I still KEEP ON questioning it ... and I still seem to be getting answers. And those answers still say the same. Which is nice.

But, I keep on asking.

I wonder if he does. I'm vey tempted to write and ask. But, that's his private life and his spirituality so maybe I should forget it. We all have our own path to follow that we map out for ourselves ... whatever we believe. Whatever religion we follow. I don't follow any ... just decide what to do when various things happen as my life goes on. If we have souls that we're developing for another plane we must be responsible for them ourselves .. well, that's my path anyway. I was mainly attracted to Buddhism beause of my veganism and meditation. i should start meditating again ... I've let it lapse and it's good for me both mentally and physically. I respond to it well .. though, as I've let it lapse again, I might find myself going through a short period of slight tension release before it settles down again.

I don't know why the Catholic church issued the statement it did .... I suppose people were having experiences of their own .. but I think it's a good thing. And, as someone said to me on the subject of here and over there .. if you can't speak to people who've passed over ... how can you speak to Jesus ... cause he has.

I am becoming more and more convinced that life follows life ... it's becoming more of a ertainty in my conscious mind .. though i really think about every little question that comes up ...still am not searching the web as I meant to .. though I have discovered an old friend of mine has the same interests. I found her after someone got in touch with me, Have now got to get in touch with her ... only found out this morning. At the moment ... i think I will .. she has her own site on the web dedicated to things like this so I'll potter along I think. Be a nice change from the other site I mentioned ... well, that was just a board on the old ezboard network.

I still haven't written down all my experiences ... or, the ones i can remember .. some of the smaller earlier ones thatI didn't tell anyone about have been forgotten ... but it doesn't matter. i'm going to write and illustrate a little booklet for my sick friend about some of them. And a few that people have told me about. Sort of like the NDC one that woman wrote that I thought was so good .. but, much, much, much thinner. Still waiting for the results of his scan. He's going to have to go through some treatment at some point. It's going to be quite rough too .. with no certainty that it'll cure him. i found out about some herbal/plant treatments that are said to have a beneficial effect on the damage this illness does and he's using one. he's lost the piece of paper he wrote the name of the other one down on so i'll have to ask again. i put the on he's using now in his package with the bookmarks and fridge calender. It doesn't have a massive effect but it does make a bit of a difference it appears.

I like Jimmy Ibbotson's dream. It's been said by people that have had NDEs that they sometimes happen within the religion you belonged to on this plane or use symbolism that the person would recognise ... if you're not religious it's adapted to that as well.

I suppose I'll resist my temptation to contact him to ask about it. After all I have my old friend's site to go along to, and, even if that's not buzzing with lots of people, her to talk to.

I would like to know if there ws anything else behind that smile.

I have to say though tht i'm not so fond of veryone on that stge. It seems some of them are rathr hypocritial ... but, there you go ... I'm not talking about the NGDB or any of the musicians I mentioned.

No .. it was connected to Martin Luther King though wasn't about racism. Nor was it out in the open when the video was made. Nothing to do with the NGDB not anyone playing an instrument there or any of the solo singers.

Anyway ... I'm off to bed now.

Might watch one of thos two videos before going.

I did ... very nice. And I agree with the prson that the group appears to believe what they're singing.

Interesting!!!!

If what I believe is right I wonder if Jesus does any meeting and greeting on the other plane. Obviously I don't have any idea how things work .. probably less than some NDE'ers.

Pentangle and Fairport Convention

I love Pentangle too ... Jacquie McShee's voice is just so relaxing to listen to ... though overall I listened to Fairport Convention more cause I prefered their songs.

I think I'd've liked it if she and Sandy Denny had sung for both bands.

Pentangle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LDoczBnGeI


Fairport Convention


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2xODjbfYw8


Now, it's time for that mug of soup and bed.

And

I've read an article about Jimmy Ibbotson which might have explained the reason for that smile or at least part of it.

I was going to get in touch and ask him .. instead here is the article.

http://www.westword.com/2003-02-13/music/full-circle/1

edit

I've edited the link to Amzon as I'd linked to vol 2 rather than vol 1.

Friday

Had a reasonably good night's sleep lst night egrdless of the sneeze. Woke thinking of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band ... well, ith the members they had when those videos were made. Himmy Ibbotson has left. Shme .. I think the group was at it's best as it was then ... but people come and go ... and come back ... so maybe he will too. He's left for a while and come back again before. Just though it worked really well as things were then.

I've been talking about the videos with my friends for the last couple of weeks. Guess The NGDB have played and sung their way into being my latest musical favouites though I've liked the band for a long time. I have the cd set Will The Circle Be Unbroken which they recorded with other country musicians. First heard it when I borrowed it from the library as a 3 LP package and just loved it and although the sound quality wasn't the best on some of it it still managed to sound good. They've just remastered it .. it comes as a 2 cd set now.

http://countrymusic.about.com/library/blngdbrev.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Will-Circle-Be-Unbroken-30th-Anniversary/dp/B000063686

It's very, very country and early country at that.

I'm still fascinated by that smile. I have to say though that people have said similar about me and my beliefs occasionally.

......................

Making a mug of soup and then off to bed. Sneezed this morning and, though still out of hospital, have felt it a bit at times today cause I have swollen up a bit ... though it's obviously not affecting me at all like it used to.

Though the time before this was worse than it usually is now.

Right, better go and put the kettle on.

Soup made.

I'm tired .. but will be off to bed straight after the soup.

Got me New Scientist today though still haven't rad the over story ob last week's. Talking about that .. have you een the smile on Jimmy Ibbotson's face is this video at 0.56. I wondered if anything had happened to mak him smile like that. It's quite a smile. You don't see many smiles that glow .... but ......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8k4rPgrG8g

I haven't started my searh round the net yet but I will. For me, I'm pretty sure now ... through my interpretation of what's happened. I would like to hear more of other peoples stories too though .. they're fascinating ... so I suppose I better get looking. Guess it'll take people a while to trust me though and know I'm on the level and the other way round too.

The first board I went on to discuss things like this was ghastly. It veered towards the secret type thing and was more orientated towards a ... um ... "spirituality" of being able to get what you want and things like that. Though, strangely, there was one guy there who did seem to be spiritual rather than materially orientated .. he wrote some really nice meditation pieces but they weren't really taken up by the rest of the board. I just thought that a spiritual board should be spiritual rather than material in its goals ... but there you are. It appeared to be veering towards trying to be able to manipulate spirit rather than working yourself.

The leader of the board was very pleasant to start off with but proved to be a total control freak one she'd got to know you. She appeared to want to know private things about you so she could use them to bully and manipulate. There was a strange contradictory mixture of trying to get what she could out of you by nice or unpleasant means interspersed with saying you must be mistaken or weren't telling the truth .. was how the she run that side of the board. We were told that we had to post in the experiences forum to stay on the board rather than chatting away in General or The Arts or Relationships etc. She'd then complain that most new people just read a bit of the board and left without saying anything much. I didn't stay around long.

I have seen some interesting boards though but I'll still just chat in a general way until I get to know people a bit. There's lots to discuss and question without laying out your personal life I guess.

Anyway ... I'm off to bed now.

.......................

Well, I suppose that helped with the homework/project a bit!!! lol!! And I know it'll be shared. Leaves time to go and search out other things. It's not the easiest thing to explain over the phone and difficult to pick up upon when it's not in the media much I guess. Still no one can miss the melting ice. But that's about it, isn't it for now. I did what's being done about it then New Scientist wrote a small article The greenhouse gas effect is covered pretty much everywhere. Think I covered more local climate change around the Gulf Stream a couple of times. Finding out what to do to help is pretty easy. I was leafing through one of the science books in Oxfam today and the author said he felt that most scientific articles tend to leave out most of the science. I have another book to read.

As I mentioned years ago in my early blogs there are still a lot of unknowns ... computer models don't always get it right and I suppose there will still be more surprizes .. the early blogs were mainly about climate change and sending hugs to me friends. Vary things a bit more now .... hug ... whoops!!!!!

Looking back to the early blogs I think I have to agree with James Lovelock about people doing nothing on the whole .. it's like the ecological charities have melted down themselves. Have they just given up.

................

Sitting here with my mug of soup waiting for it to cool. I'd said I'd write about the natural causes of climate change rather than the green house gasses variety as they're not usually really gone into much except to point out that there are natural occurences that can cause climate change.

Unlikely to the extent where the Arctic ice could soon melt away if it continues at the speed it's doing now.

Not much more to say on that subject really. Well, I suppose there's masses ... but I mean in general. So, unless something gets me attention I'll probably leave it alone now. There's only so much you can write about eco systems and greenhouse gasses. Things had moved on since I blogged a lot about it uptil the time I became really ill but I think I've covered that in general now

Right off to bed

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It was a lovely atmospheric evening t'other night

Another atmospheric evening . I've no idea why some evenings and nights feel this way and others don't. there ws nothing to suggest that it should fel that way this evening. It felt very mild but it also appred to be trying to rain now and then and I wanted to get back to the flat befow it did if it was going to so I wasn't walking along in any kind of dream state More a let's get back quickly kind of mood just incase the very, very few drops of rain developed into anything more . But I could still feel a kind of quiet dreamy atmosphere.

Still had last week's New Scientist on the sofa and re read an article about a very, very cold winter back in 1709 .. this is interesting sientist at the moment beause they are trying to map european climate history and they an't find any explanation why this happened. What series of events changed things so dramatially. They do know that the winds changed direction suddenly but just why this happened isn't known.

The European Millenium Project links


http://www.geogr.muni.cz/millennium


Ha! the article's up on the net


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126942.100-1709-the-year-that-europe-froze.html


Reading that people might wonder why there is any conern about the climate today ... after all it's not that severe and the climate recovered from that disaster.

The person who wrote it mentioned that conditions now as far as climate change goes are different than they were then. One difference is that this happend very suddenly rather than it being a gradual change ... though gradual is relative here ... within 100 years ( In connection with the present problem) rather than, say, within 10 or so. Most slow factors in climate change happen very, very slowly.

Natural slow factors in climate change were noted by a guy called Milutin Milankovitch. He named them 1) Eccentricity ... when the earth's orbit round the sun changes from an oval to a cirular shape and back again. The change from one to the other takes round 100,000 years. This means that with an oval (elliptical) orbit the weather will be more variable in this respect because of the difference in the amount of solar radiation (heat) that reaches the earth cause of the way the shape of the orbit takes the earth nearer and further way from the sun. With a circular shape the earth is orbiting roughly the same distance away from the sun.

Modern day studies of coral reefs have shown that Milankovitch was right in this theory though it doesn't explain everything. At the moment there is very little difference in the shape of the earth's orbit round the sun. His theory has shown that this eccentricity is responsible for some very long term changes in the earth's limate ... but.not all .. there is something else affecting the pattern of ice ages which has yet to be discovered. His original work has been like a base for other scientists to work from .. the circular and oval orbits round the sun have been shown to alter the climate but variations on his original theory have also come up.

I suppose the Milankovitch theory was really the start of lot of scientific work being done .. it was like a base to start off the work from ... but the basis of his work appears to be correct.

Gonna turn in now cause it's getting late ... mug of soup then off to bed.



2 ... Precession .. which I used to call precision by mistake .. this is often referred to as axis wobble and takes about 23,000 years to complete .. um ... not quite precision ... huh!!!!

If you imagine the earth As a spining top the axis spins in a kind of a circular motion ... not in a pin prick one staying in the same spot all the time it spreads out ... you can imagine this as a cone with the pin prick being where the imaginary line of the axis pokes through the earth's crust and is virtually still ... it then spreads out in a cone shape where it draws a circle while rotating.

Now if it just rotated there for ever with no forces having an effect on it there would be no wobbling. But just as the Earth rotates round the sun so the moon rotates round the Earth and it pulls at the earth with it's gravitational force making the axis wobble a bit. If you gave the earth a little prod instead if the Moon's gravity pulling it it would just draw out small circles but if you gave it a bigger push it would draw out bigger circles like pushing a toy top. There are also other gravitational pulls from other objects in space on the Earth but I have used the moon as an example.

If you think of the axis drawing the circle you will see that it is changing the direction it is tilted in ... this will change the seasons so that summer will become winter half way through the cycle and then slowly return to winter again. So, now in December it's cold ... eventually December will be summer here and then go back to being cold again. This takes around 23,000 years to complete.


3 ... Obliquity ... this is a change in the degree of tilt in the Earth's axis of rotation. This takes about 41,000 years and the tilt of the axis changes from 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees and then goes back again to 22 degrees. a small tilt ... 22 degrees .. means mider winters because more solar energy would reach the planet and cooler summers because less solar energy would reach the planet. A larger tilt increases the differences between the seasons.



The earth's axis is an imaginary line that stretches from the north pole to the south pole ... it is then tilted to show the changes of the seasons as the earth revolves round the sun. Without using the conept of an axis this wouldn't be so easy to show.

It is thought, given these three concepts that we should be heading for another ice age ... though not for many thousands of years ..it's not known how many ... but it's thought that it may be in about 30,000 years but some scientists say that this will be delayed further by human influenced climate change.

The movement of the plates that form the earth's crust also give rise to climate change but as this takes millions of years I think we can count that out for now!!!!

Those are slow factors influencing climate change.

Faster influences on climate change include volanic eruptions, changes in the tides and sun spots.

Sun spots have been said to be the cause of the changes in the climate in recent years. Sun spots cool the sun down and there has been less activity recently after a period of high activity. It has been said that this is what has caused the planet to warm up.

BUT ... it has also been said that sunspots are surrounded by glowing higher levels of solar output (heat output) which means that if there are lots of sunspots which, by themselves, could be seen as cooling the sun and therefore the planet down ... with this glowing boarder it could actually be a time of more rather than less heat being released from the sun. In the middle of the mini ice age (1645 - 1715) there was relatively little sun spot activity which just taking sunspot data by itself would have meant the planet should be heating up ... but it cooled down .... see article in New Scientist about 1709!!!!!

It has also been suggested, however, that sunspot activity has relatively little change on the planet.

It was thought that the Gulf Stream was changing direction because of the melting ice influencing it ... but this is a result of climate change not something that started it all off.

Neither is the ice melting 'cause of volanic activity.

The changes in wind activity have been put down to human influences climate change.

Well, they are the major natural causes of climate change.

In general it's said that they either point towards an ice age ... though far in the future or aren't significant enough, as far as anyone knows, to cause the climate change we are experiencing right now as an overall trend which is very apparent through the melting Arctic.

(I suppose, if just by a very, very, minor chance that climate change somehow isn't caused by greenhouse gasses we could still collect and contain carbon emissions and then if by some chance it's found that it wasn't necessary ... just release them again if anyone wants to)

Well, off to get a mug of soup.

Saturday

Well, he's happy at the moment. I've given him a couple of those bookmarks I was given at the hospital and he's just over the moon ... he'd been bookmarkless since The Works had stopped selling them ... and this just made his day. I knew he'd wanted a bookmark a while back but just assumed he'd found or made one. They have a plastic covering so should last a long time so he'll be ok for them now!!!! lol!!!

And by default I'm pleased too .. it was nice to hear the lift in his voice because of them. He's very tired at the moment. Little things can mean an awful lot.

He's had the ultra sound test but it's going to be week or two before the results come through. Anyway, the bookmarks are helping things along the way. He also had a free fridge magnet calender from our group which he's happy with too. He's like me ... easily pleased I guess. I'm happy that they've made a difference to how he's feeling.

Two free bookmarks and a fridge calender have changed his world!!!! I know they'll be talked about a bit with his friends and will just make him happy .. he reads everyday and the little postcard calender will be there if he needs it .. he was really pleased with that too. At least you're not going to lose it if it's stuck on the fridge.

The lift in his voice has had me laughing quite a lot this evening cause I know that they've changed how he's feeling for the better.

Surfing the net this afternoon and found a review that startled me. I read in the papers that alcohol fuelled crime had got much worse last year but the same was felt in 2004 it seems. It wa an interesting read ... though not a long one. Lovely site though with lots of reviews and pictures from all round the world. I found it by googling for opening times for the post office for Saturdays. The Post Office site didn't come up on the first page probably because of all the discussion about Post Office closures here and I'd put closing time into google.

I found the Post Office site by googling somewhere else with the same added information. I had found out what I wanted to know .. there was a local page that had the info on it ... but then googled to see if another Post Office had been shut down ... it hadn't I'm pleased to say. It's just made me wonder if the one in Clapham's shut then. Yeah ... it is. I was told a local one was going to be and when I typed Clapham into the Post Office finder site ... no results came up for Clapham, London. Gosh, the little one in Abbeyville Road's gone too!!!! I suppose if they hadn't been closed then they'd be going now wouldn't they. I can't believe the Clapham High Street branch has gone though. It was a main Post Office.

Amazingly the Post Office is open til 4 on a Saturday here!!! 12 at t'other Post Office.

Friday

Going to hve mug of soup and then go to bed. Think I'll sleep. Been sitting here wondering about one of the two women I broke contact with on the web. Obviously with one of them .. she's blocked and that's the way she's going to stay. I've been puzzling about the other one .. the one I thought might have dyspaxia like SMK.


There was something going on ... but what has been puzzling me is if how she was behaving was deliberate or not.


She did seem to have a bit of a temper over strange things though. She's vegetarian. When I told her that I'd been a vegan for years and had only changed cause I couldn't chew the beans in the hospital meals once I became ill I got a mouthful from her telling me in no uncertain terms that there was absolutely, ABSOLUTELY no need to be a vegan on any grounds and that she and a friend of hers had chosen not to go a march once cause they had thought it too extreme. A bit later on I was told that vegetarians were more intelligent and lived longer than anyone else.



Extreme????!!!! Who, I wonder?



I'd known her a fair while I suppose, much longer than the other on .. and she had let me into her life a bit once when she wanted some legal info off me .. other than that most of her messages were just saying that she hoped that I had a nice day. Though ocasionally I'd get told to drink herbal tea to help if i had a cold which I though might show some interest and caring ... but generally, regardless of what I said, her messages would be about the weather and saying that she hoped i had a nice day and how much she enjoyed getting my messages ... over and over and over and over ......... again. Like a record on repeat. She didn't tell me she had a husband for months so I wondered if she was a widow as I knew she had a daughter so didn't ask incase i upset her. I found out because he had a birthday party. He's ill but I have no idea what's wrong with him. When I mentioned my friend being ill she just ignored it.

When she ignored what i was saying the last time, after starting the conversation, once she'd found out what she wanted to know from me and followed that up by replying I'm busy when I asked in a chatty way, mentioning something I did know about her ... why she wasn't around much anymore .... I decided that that was enough. She obviously decided that she wasn't so busy after just a couple of days of silence from me as she headed for my best friend on that site!!! Guess she was aware I'd reacted so she knew what she was doing. Well, she couldn't've not known.

We're roughly the same age so there should be plenty to talk about .. reminiscing as well as talking about life now.

I think I'm going to have to leave it. But I am wondering if she has some sort of recognisable illness rather than it just being the way she treats other people because she wants to piss them off and/or slightly control them.

The over story in New Scientist this week is something about being able to tell things about people from their facial expressions. I've only looked at the front cover so far but that's the impression I got. Maybe I should read that then only talk to people with webcams ....lol!!!!

I've met some very nice people on the net ... some have stayed friends ... some haven't. With some people there's not enough time especially if they're young mums. sometimes you never quite make the connection that would keep you in touch ... but there's no hard feeling there. Very different from what I was talking about before. I'm very happily in touch with some folk I've met on the net.

Waves.

And I expect I'll meet more along the way.

I think it's best to let the other person go ... but I do have a slight feeling of uncertainty about it all.

Maybe I should go on The Bag with my version of Stop me Texting!!!!

Anyway ... off to bed now and I'll sleep on it. It's just wondering and worryig that I'm being unfair ... though, if I am, it's for a reason I don't know about use she hasn't told me. If it was the latter I'd be quite happy to find a way for us to take time to communicate better.

Anyway ... must go to bed now, Maybe I'll work it out in my dreams and wake knowing the answer even if I don't remember the dream.

Thursday

My friend is going for his ultra sound though it'll be a while before he gets the results. He was saying last night that he's just grateful that he'd stayed symptomless for so long. Well, he still feels well except for feeling very tired if he doesn't get a good night's sleep. Anyway, we'll soon know just what's going on and when he's going to start the chemo. He has a friend who's just had the treatment and it's been successful though it took a couple of goes .. so fingers crossed.

I'm tired this morning ... not sleeping very well at the moment. I really must try and alter my sleep patterns. I know that I can't do much about it if I'm feeling ill but other times I should go to bed earlier.

I could just nod off now.

Wednesday

Didn't go again this afternoon as I was late coming back from shopping. Well, late going as there had been traffic problems .. could've rushed round but would probably forgot something. Woke up early this morning too and've been feeling tired all day so was probably best that I didn't rush out.

I got up this morning and pottered over to see the Martin Luther King clip that had turned up rather unexpectedly yesterday. It's a really nice Martin Luther King day one



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHxHTMlyaqQ

I also wanted to make sure that it was there on my history and that I hadn't imagined it as the last time I played it we were back to the usual clips. I've no idea what else was being shown with it at the end of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's clip but I'm supposing that it was more from the related videos on that page.

Tuesday

Well, I thought I might be going to lose my best friend on that site over that woman ... but all is good. I knew that they'd been friends once even though she seemed to lose patience with her a lot. I logged on with baited breath this evening ... but there she was as usual and friendlier, if anything, than before. I explained with a bit more detail what had happened and I think she was just pleased that she didn't fit into anything that I was complaining about.



Woo Hoo!!!!





You tube seems to be having problems with lots of the videos at the moment. Either they won't play or they stop and start a lot. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band one usually plays fine if you just start it a bit further on from the beginning and then'll be ok on further plays .. though that doesn't work for all of the vids that are having problems though ... just some of them.

Will The Cirle be Unbroken also gave me different related videos suggestions when it finished the first time I played it this time instead of the ususal Arlo Guthrie/Willie Nelson etc you usually get I got a selection of anti racist videos .. one was Martin Luther King .. don't know what the others were cause I played Will the Circle be Unbroken again and we were back to Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson again!!!!!

I had my last experience around this song. I expeted people to say that I'd flipped .. though I knew for sure that this had happened. I was just told that I'd had what I thought confirmed. Well, it sure looks that way.

One person behaved strangely but then that didn't come as any great surprize as she is rather a control freak. She told me that her kettle had suddenly appeared in her hall after she'd left it in the kitchen and she asked me if anything like that had ever happened to me ... I had to say no. Her daughter had a friend round to tea that day and that made me a bit suspicious ...lol!!!! When I tried to get the subject back on to her rather than me a bit later on she just changed the topic of conversation. I wanted to ask, after thinking about it, if the friend had been near the kettle after they'd brought the cups of tea into the front room. She'd said earlier that the friend had ran out of the house and hadn't come back after the kettle had appeared in the hall. Maybe she'd put it there as joke. But she wouldn't talk about it later. She says things are always turning up all over the house where she is at the moment but didn't at the house they were in before. Items changed to protect her privacy but you get the picture.

I've had a few incidents like this with her just ignoring me after she's got to know what she wants to ... so I'm leaving her in limbo this time.

And .. guess what? Two days later she's over with my best friend thre after telling me that she's too busy to be there!!! Hum!!!! I'd asked her a few days before if it was for a reason she'd already mentioned ... not saying here .. or anything else ... and I just got the answer ... I'm too busy ... back!!!

I had wondered earlier because of the way she phrases things if she has dyspraxia like SMK .. my pal from years ago who looked like that sci fi drawing on the front of the computer arts mag that I mentioned years ago in an early blog. But I don't think it's anything like that now ... just a personality trait. SMK would never have pulled the turning up on me best friend's page and contacting her out of the blue when she knew she'd annoyed me stunt or anything like it.

I was surprized to see her there I must say..

Anyway, all that appears to be finally sorted out as far as I'm concerned. There's more to it obviously but that's how it all finishd. I hadn't exchanged private info with these two people for obvious reasons. I wonder if they treat people like that off the net too.

As far as my experience goes I'm going to start searching the web to try and find people with similar ones. I had asked to be "shown again" probably really because of my friend's illness. It was very soon after he'd told me and I'd asked before getting up that morning. I really did expect people to think I'd flipped when i told them ... but no. It must take a lot of trust in a person to believe that.

Wow!!! Thanks.

Right .... cup of soup and getting the meds ready for tomorrow time.

snow

It's snowing.

I've been watching Will The Circle Be Unbroken by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band quite a bit. Didn't recognise all the country musicians on the video though and wanted to find out who they are.

The guy in black is Marty Stuart. He's married to the woman with grey hair Connie Smith.


When the guy from The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band calls on Ronnie to come and play he's calling Ronnie Mccoury who is the son of the grey haired guitar player with the yellow shirt at the front, Del Mccoury. They play in the same band.


Now I'm off for a mug of tomato soup and bed.

and ...

... and, as I've been reminded. veering towards philisophical buddhism .. sort of-ish!!! Think that as one of the first things I wrote about on my blogs ... after being out on a walk.

Don't feel so bad today as I did yesterday. Weather's a bit nicer too .. if a bit damper. Still a bit of unmelted snow around though .. and it seems we're in for more. Didn't go out this morning though .. woke up too late to get there on time. If I can't sleep I should really go to bed to rest anyway I guess. I'll try to get to there earlier tonight.

Go and put dinner on now.

Monday

I re-read the N.S article this morning. It's a fun article - it has to be ause obviously it has to be mainly supposition. There's no time machine back to the early days of humankind so we really hve to just guess at what happened.


I still think that the connection between people making things and then trying to work out how the earth/stars etc came into being created a vast amount of religious thinking by people thinking that what they knew of the universe was made too and therefore someone had to make it!!!! Some religions go back to try and explain the reaction of the gods/goddesses too and think that they were reated by forces of nature .. which leaves the eternal question why is there anything here at all for there to be forces of nature in!!!! lol!!! Neither religion or science can answer that .. it's the eternal mind boggling question.

Why is there anywhere!!! If you go back to the ying and yang forces in Buddhism you still have to ask why was there anywhere for them to form in to start with.

But really .. religion is just people trying to explain why there is a world and the universe they know. I don't know all that many creation stories .. i know the Buddhist, a bit about the Dreamtime of the Aborginies, Shinto, Jewish, Christian, Ancient Egyptian, Hindu and Muslim. It's possible that I have others in the back on my mind somewhere cause I had a creation story book out from the library as a kid .. I can remember loving the illustrations.

I still think that it's quite likely that the earliest religious beliefs ould have come from people connecting making things themselves to someone making the world and stars. And that the more complicated stories came later as new religions formed. We have no idea just how many religions have formed over the years. Speech would have been a marker in people being able to understamd their feelings and tell other people who could pass the stories down and writing would leave recorded stories.

I'm assuming that OBEs and ADC go back a long, long way. They certainly go back a very long way in writing and are reported from all over the world. I'm assuming that they go back way, way before religion was recorded in writing. To have these sort of experiences would certainly add to the idea that there is life after life. Not just because some very young children might try to give a working reason for inanimate objects to exist .. eg .. a rock exists for an animal to scratch it's back on. It's quite possible that they answer like this at that age because they are learning that things around them can be used to do things. They've also learnt about religion and to give the answer that God made something probably seems a good bet at that age if they've been told that god made everything.

I believe in life after life but I'm not religious. I suppose I'm a kind of humanist with a belief in life after life .. a sort of humanist. I have to idea what life after life is like .. though think, going on people's stories, that it's based on love. I think that the connection between them and us is to give us proof that life continues. That is my belief.

Sunday

Not a good day. Didn't have much sleep last night and then woke up feeling rotten. Sneezed a bit later on and it was a bad sneeze which left me in a lot of pain and feeling sick .. though i wasn't sick. Didn't have to go into hospital though I would've done if it'd got much worse. Didn't get worse though and started easing off after about quarter of an hour .. though I've obviously got a swollen stomach.

Read the article in New Scientist about people and religion. Didn't take that much of it in really cause I was so tired and my body was gearing up for this morning's trouble.

I've always thought that a lot of diffrent things have gone into creating religious thought I don't think it's a huge step in thinking to look at the world around you and then at your own life and see yourself and other people creating things to looking at the world and imagining someone creating that. And once you have a creator of the world then you have someone who could have power over it. Dreams and events like OBEs and ADC would bring about a belief in life after life because there appears to be consiousness outside the physical.

I read an article years ago that said that it was thought that people who lived around and before the times of the Ancient Greeks had a different relationship with the world through their minds and that this could be seen through their religious stories ... this included the ancient Egyptians too and their complicated religion. It was thought they lived in a kind of "dreamtime" that made it easier to personalize a god/dess and feel yourself loser to a possible world where they exist.

Wish I could remember more about it .... but it was just a newspaper or magazine article that I skimmed through and I think I can only remember the article now because I was so surprized. I thought them much too modern to have such a different way of seeing things because their brains were thought to be still evolving. Because of this and the obvious fact that our brains have evolved over time I wasn't so happy about the thought of using modern pre schoolers to test how people might have thought all that time ago. We don't know when religious thought and awe became part of the human psyche nor do we know for sure how close their thinking was to ours. I used the idea of people creating things then looking for a creator of the world because it is such an easy step to make in thinking all that time ago.

I think lots of people thought something like that. There were various theories and I should imagine that every one or, at least, most of them probably reflect something that influenced people along the way whether it was right at the start or not.

Anyway, off to bed .. hope I get some sleep.

Saturday

Off to bed in a minute .. not feeling that well but I'll go to sleep now. Been talking to my ill friend .. "Which one?" you might ask!!! The guy I mentioned the other week. He ould be ok .. there's just no way of knowing how things are going until the results of a biopsy come through. He's waiting to have it done. We know he's ill .. it's just waiting to find out how ill. And then seeing how he responds to treatment.


He appears to be expecting things to be very serious .. though he's not showing many of the classic symptoms at the moment so, hopefully, things should be ok. He's being extremely brave. He was a bit down last week ... spent one day in bed .. but, this week, is up and about again and is back getting on with his interests.


He's had couple of OBEs in his twenties and I wondered if that could be why he was able to cope so quickly with the news. We have talked about things like that ... but not much or that deeply. Can't remember if I'd mentioned the ADC book to him or not ... probably just in passing. I did give a Gordon Smith book to him when they were going for little more than a couple of quid in The Works which he read. He always believed what I told him but we didn't talk about it all that much.

Anyway, it's going to be a little while longer before we know how things are. I guess it is the OBEs though that have given him this peace because he certainly has it. He doesn't read my blogs .. but I think he knows quite a bit about the subject of life after life. He's always had friends who've been interested in spiritual things. We haven't talked about it that much but I doubt if there's anything that I could mention that he doesn't have some knowledge about. We did mention Mr Smith this evening and I told him that the thing I'd read in the magazine that I wasn't sure about ... could you put it down to a trick of the light .. I now thought that there was a 100% chance that it could happen without it being a trick of the light.

I guess it is my friend's OBEs that are giving him this peace. He was just back to himself again this evening.

.......................

I'm still quite tired .. just taken my last lot of meds .. don't know if they'll wake me up through cutting out some of the pain or just add to the tiredness. Will try and get to bed earlier tonight whatever I feel like .. can always read my book if I can't sleep.

Been watching videos of some of the UK singles chart groups of the 60 and early 70s and I still find it quite hard to get into the music that much. I seem to have times when I like it and then that just fades out again whereas I always like Country Joe, Quicksilver etc.

Been watching The Small Faces, Amen Corner, The Rolling Stones and The Zombies. Sometimes I really like the music and other times it just doesn't cut it for me. Really don't know why. Though maybe me cold's not helping at the moment.

Am listening to songs from The Jeff Beck Group's Truth which is one of my favourite albums of the time at the moment though.

Morning Dew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se8OmYL5br0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIJYt-qMhf4

Let Me Love You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U85Eeh1_hcc

And, yes, that's Rod Stewart singing.. preferred this to his later solo songs but that's just a matter of personal taste.

+a few others from the album.


and this one from Donovan and Jeff Beck


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo9QsspWsaY

Long, long time since I've heard that.

Friday

I haven't been back to see what she's up to .. but I do know someone who knows his girlfriend (on site) and she says she might have a quiet word .. just see how it goes. Trouble is .. my ex "friend" could just be waiting for something like that to happen to stir up more trouble!!!

Ah well .. I've just been over to find out what's happening and he's just ignoring it ... older post now and I think that's the best thing to do .. he could delete it if he feels like it but I guess that would have her over there demanding to know why.

He hasn't been over to her page or contacted her and is just leaving it all be. Best thing.

I hope he comes out of hospital much better and that he and his partner can soon be together. Hopefully won't be long now.

..................

Sitting here with my soup. Will soon be off to bed. Have felt a bit better today I guess .. it usually takes about four days after the worse sneeze before things start feeling better. Was usually about a week before I left hospital though the last time I was out faster.

It's been a strange few days really. Haven't been able to do much cause of the old ... not the weather .. just me bug. Habe ended up with some new friends beause of that woman. I started a new profile to keep tabs on her with. Well, so I could go and look at her two profiles .. the two I know about anyway .. don't know if there are anymore around the place. Might be .. might not be!!!! It was through going to her profiles that I found out for sure just what she was doing. I've stopped going over to hers completely now though.

But, while I was travelling the site I made some new friends who came to visit my profile and contacted me!!!!

I guess that's ok. I've just said that I won't be there very often. On the profile I'd just said that I wasn't very well etc ... nothing about her. Well, that's all in the past. i also said that I thought that I wouldn't be there hardly at all after people contacted me cause I was doing too much on the net and couldn't cope with it .. most everybody wrote back still wanting to stay in touch!!!!

Hmmmmmm ... I'll do me best.

Might be easier if I use a new keyboard .. this one has so many problems and is so slow to use.

New Scientist day today and I did slop out to get a copy of that and had a drink of hot chocolate on the way back. The cover article is about god and the mind. I wonder if it's what I've read before or if it's something new. I've had a leaf through the magazine and it looks full of good things .. will start reading it tomorrow and go bk to my book too .. my cold has made me not feel muh like reading.

Anyway .. drunk my soup and off to bed.

....................

I found my blocked ex "friend" while profile hopping last night. Snort. She'd gone onto someone's profile that I know vaguely ... not that well. I was there beause I'd been reading profiles of a friends friends and their friends etc and I opened up something he'd written so that I could read it all and the comments people had left .. and I quickly zeroed in on her name ... lol!!!



Why do so many of these people behave the same ...!!!! lol!!! She'd left a comment saying what a lovely woman the person whose profile she was reading was. Now there was just one thing wrong with this!!! Oh dear ... lol!!! Which she'd've known if she'd've bothered to read more than the first couple of sentences of what was written there. I mean you just couldn't've made this mistake if you'd read more than a couple of lines .. and the people commenting made it very obvious too.



Her "woman" is bloke .. she'd somehow got the gender muddled up because, I guess, she'd hardly read anything.



The one before her was just the same ... used to make comments on a message board where she was apparently so interested in the politics of the place which made it so obvious that she hadn't read the thread at all though she would pretend a lot of interest. She was another one who was nice openly but nasty behind the scenes so to speak. She also used to pretend to build a friendship up so she could drop u rather dramatially. The one I'd found lying on the other board from the one I first knew her at.



They often try to get quite a bit about ur (very) personal life from u one way or another too ... not always though ... but it's very common.



I guess me ex "friend" was just taking her first step though. Really quite weird though. Wonder what she'd read that made her want to get to know this guy ... or woman as she thought. He is ill and she would've found that out in the first few lines .. he was saying that he'd be in hospital for a little while ... that was obviously enuff and it fits in with what I know about her.



She also appears to be trying to get back into my life .. she apparently has "a lot of respect for me" I think this can probably be translated as she thinks I know something that she's interested in" She must be joking!!!!!!!!

The bloke she's after at the moment will be fine ... he's got a sassy girlfriend on the site and between the pair of them they've got a host of relatives. lol!!!! I think she's misread the situation in more ways than one!!!!!

I'm not going back to read his answer to her mistake!!! I mean there is just no way someone could've made that mistake there if they'd read more than a couple or so lines ... I think the words ill, hospital etc are like a magnet to her. Suppose I could leave him a message under hers ... "Get well soon ****" **** obviously HIS name.

I'm leaving it all though. We don't know each other well. I know someone who's a friend of his and his girlfriend. There's her and A LOT of family on the site.

I hardly think of her now .. though seeing her on ****'s page jogged me memory a bit. Someone mentioned her to me a couple of days ago and in and out of my mind at the speed of light figuratively speaking.

I'm off to bed now ... had me soup though left me crumpets on too long so they were bit difficult to eat .... but never mind. Will practice again tomorrow!!!!

wednesday

Got taken out shopping today ... Warwick's Tesco and up to Sainsburys to get a selection of ready meals and other odds and ends .. and for a natter and look around I guess too. We had a nice time out.

Didn't go out this afternoon cause I hadn't been very well last night and I thought, after the morning out, it was better to just rest later on. Had felt sick yesterday evening .. just suddenly came on .. lasted for about two hours .. then I sneezed and it cleared up. Used to be the other way round .. would sneeze .. be sick .. then rushed into hospital in great pain because of the spasms getting stuck because I'd swollen up ... vomiting and sometimes sweating so much that they were changing me and the sheets, once I was in bed on the ward, every fifteen minutes or so for a while.

Can't remember if that was the 24hr or 48hr ward .. anyway the one next to Nicholas Ward .. they were great .. really looked after me when I was incapable of doing anything for myself. And, often very worried for me too .. but they always saw me through.

I wondered if I was heading for hospital last night again .. but I was ok. Didn't feel too good when I woke up this morning ... stomach was painful and I wondered what would happen .. basically ... hospital or Sainsburys .. but I was ok .. was rather breathless when I climbed the stairs here and wondered again about going out .. but things were ok.

Stomach still rather tender and I'm obviously a bit puffy inside but it's not causing the trouble it used to .. so no ambulance dashes into Warwick.

Spoke to the guy who's ill that I mentioned a little while ago this evening. He's depressed about things but that's not surprizing .. we hadn't really expected the change around in his health. But, still, he could be fine .. he'll need to go through some pretty rough treatment .. but not for too long .. but hopefully it'll turn out alright. There's nothing I can do this time .. different sort of cirumstances cept be there to talk to. Fingers crossed for him, huh.

Monday

I'm just sitting here with my cuppa soup waiting to go back to bed. Looking at the little bit of snow out there and vaguely thinking of climate change ... not surprizingly after all that talk about cane toads yesterday .. it does go to show you how careful you need to be .. and cane toads are a less of a problem globally than getting some forms of geoengineering wrong would be as far as climate change goes.


But, all the same ... approx 100 of them to 100 to 200 million and spreading ... choose your guesstimate ... is quite eyebrow raising.


That is why scientists have been cautious and need to stay cautious .. they might solve Australia's cane toad problem if they were way wrong but, on the other hand, the planet might become uninhabital for everyone.


The only ways are to develop technology that can lessen the impact on the planet by trying to lessen the amount of gasses going into the air and trying to deal with what's there already if possible.


It's very hard to predict exatly what's going to happen .. even now new weather system changes are being discovered where it's not known quite how the ecosystem changed to pave the way for what happend. Though it's probably down to wind changes affecting the ocean currents around as was thought was happening not so long ago.

It's very difficult to predict exactly what's going to happen around the globe as different systems are affected by new changes .. each affects others.

Hopefully by combining different approaches to the problems there might be a chance of solving them.

James Lovelock might be right as far as his other predition goes!!! Where are the (peaceful) enviromental pressure groups. they don't even have to be very active ... just there for the right causes to try to save the planet.

I have no idea how the problems will affect me cause I'm getting old and I'm ill .. but there will be problems before things get to a really bad crisis point ..I have no idea what the time span is for any of it .. but one thing I do know is that it's vital that things move along now. And that it's best for the future not to be a replay of the Kyoto protocol in term of effectiveness. I'm sure James Lovelock would love to be proven wrong on his views about why there is little hope of things getting moving in time.

Sunday

Was too tired to head off out this evening .. just couldn't sleep last night. Anyway did get out to get some food in ... just missed the snow ... not that there was much of it ... but it was quite cold. Don't usually feel the cold much ... I'm told that's because of the oramorph .. but there was a bit of a cold breeze and that blew through me a bit.

The weather!!!! I was thinking that tackling climate change is really a threeway thing isn't it.

First there's carbon burying for the power plants so that it doesn't get out into the atmosphere and add to the carbon that's already there.

Secondly there's changing the way energy is used so that it doesn't emit chemials that mess up the eco systems.

And, thirdly, there's a need to do something about the chemicals that are already here and causing problems. That could be difficult in some ways because you have to be careful that you don't do anything that could cause more problem in the future like when something has been introduced into somewhere to stop a problem that's already there and has then overrun the area itself. The cane toad in Australia is an example .. about 100 were introduced for pest control ... there's now a very conservative estimation of 100 million around.

You'd have to make sure that anything that's attempted couldn't cause more problems than it's solving.

Geoengineering is the term used for the techniques that would be used but it's always been dismissed as useless by a lot of people because of the risks involved .. that it has the potential to cause more harm than good.

One method would be to add iron or nitrogen to the world's oceans to produce algae that would absorb more carbon.

One of the problem with this is that there could be areas of ocean lacking in oxygen and another that a lot of nitrous oxide would be produced along with other gases that could affect the relative eco systems. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas more dangerous than carbon dioxide.

Geoengineering

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/30/climatehange-carbonemissions



It's said that carbon emissions are increasing at around 1% a year and that the plant masses aren't as effiicent at removing it as they were. Maybe there could be a safe way of increasing this maybe combined with carbon storage if need be. Destroying the rain forests etc certainly isn't it .... more like a step in the other direction. Maybe it really won't be seen as being effective enough whether at land or at sea.

Surely though everything should be looked at and taken seriously .. if it's not investigated then the chance of finding anything that could help and the having the time to put it into operation gets more and more remote.

How much time is very debateable ranging from people saying that there's a chance that the Arctic could be free of ice decades earlier than scientific models predicted ... there is a could there because of the chance that things won't continue as they are now ... to conidering the fact that life has survived this before which could give us longer than has been anticipated. The thing is research into one thing can provide information that could start another more effective line of research and it seems a shame that while it's been obvious that the Kyoto agreement was not going to be effective enough ... it must have had an effect in slowing down emissions and keeping a focus on climate change that wouldn't otherwise be there to some extent ... though that isn't saying much.

I said in the early blog days that there wasn't much hope if everything was going to happen in 60 years or so .. that policies had to be much more on the ball than that because there were going to be a lot of surprizes and that it looked as if the mechanics of global eco systems breakdown had began.

Unfortunately we've gone into what looks like a deep economic recession now which I suppose is going to make it less likely that people are going to want to put their hands too deeply into their pockets to fund some research.

Anyway ... I'm off to bed.