A Busy Sort of Day…

Normally my days are quiet and very routine. Up at 7.30, junk about 100 spams; porridge and coffee; up the hill to wake Dad and get him breakfast and pills; back home and start work on The Book. At lunchtime a bowl of soup and a couple of last year's scrawny apples, then up the hill to get Dad his lunch and pills; back to the computer; tea time, up the hill again; eat; evenings crashed out: rarely anything on the telly, so it's reading or music.
Anne's day is similar except she's looking after her Mum.

But yesterday was different…

Some months ago we passed on our lovely old grey Fergie tractor to a friend who is going to renovate it and use it. Excellent. It was just slowly rotting in the open shed and there was no way I was ever going to do anything about it.
Doug turned up with his two neighbours, Orfyl and Arwel and kicked a few tyres as per normal. 'No way we'll get a trailer down here. My wellies are past the ankles already. Look… We'd be stuck. Sure to.'
So Ken next door came to the rescue with his big Zetor. I sat on the Fergie and steered while Ken hauled and slithered Fergie out into the yard. Even the Zetor got jammed in the mud once, but with a bit of intelligence (lengthening the towing chain by a couple of feet; think about it…) we got moving again. The tyres were virtually flat but Ken inflated them from the Zetor's built-in pump. Amazingly, they stayed up.

Doug and co turned up again a week later with a big posh flat-bed trailer with its own little winch and Fergie went off to her new home. I almost wiped a manly tear away. People get very fond of Fergies.

Doug sent snaps of the restoration process. It was just a little like watching an operation on your child. Pipes and tubes; things exposed that should never be; surfaces and areas that were clearly not healthy; tales of needing ever bigger hammers to free up the pistons; rumours even of welding pneumatic valves on, to force pistons free, a little like an air bomb (mercifully that idea was scrapped, as would Fergie undoubtedly have been if they'd gone ahead with it).

One or two bits of giblet in the gearbox looked over-tired, so Doug called me back to see if they could come over and collect the other Fergie we had bought in for spares some twenty years ago. It had always been called Scrapper, and had laid in the same spot, facing Fergie in her shed, festooned in huge swags and swathes of brambles for a fifth of a century.

Again, Ken came round with the Zetor to haul Scrapper through the mud. This time it wasn't so easy, as both rear wheels were locked and one tyre was a tattered rag. Still on, but cracked and utterly flat. This was to be a problem later. And, of course, to add to the fun, Scrapper was facing the wrong way and would need to be hauled backwards.

Ken hooked his chain up and heaved. Nothing happened, apart from the Zetor moving slowly an inch or two sideways through the morass. This was partly because Scrapper was on a bit of a slope. Ken re-manoeuvred his dinosaur and hooked up again. This time Scrapper moved a couple of inches, but those wheels would not turn. I was perched on the back, standing on very flimsy rusty footplates, hanging desperately onto the steering wheel. I should point out that Scrapper lacked a seat, so I felt a little like Charlton Heston in Ben Hur, except that I didn't dare take one hand off the wheel to grab the whip. Grunging noises; 'tunk' noises as the tow chain strained; gulping noises as I tried not to think of what might happen if the chain broke; … and inch by inch Scrapper moved. It took a quarter of an hour to haul it twenty yards to the point near the end of the track, where we were to leave it for Orfyl to back up to it with the big trailer. En route, Scrapper had collected behind its back 'wheels' a thick wodge of brambles, prunings, reeds, mud, and a small willow tree which had foolishly taken root in the boggy bits.

Two weeks later (ie, yesterday) Doug and co returned, along with Raymond, Doug's brother. A very smart move, as it turned out.
We'd fixed the date a week previously. Would you believe it, the day before Doug and co were due to come, we got a phone call from Heinz (yes, he's from Lancashire) and Vincenza his wife (Staffordshire, I think) to ask if they could come round in the morning to finish felling and logging a couple of trees they'd made a start on six days ago.
Well.. should they come or not? Our lane is narrow, twisting, and difficult. We wouldn't want anyone to be faced with the prospect of having to reverse up it, particularly with a trailer. On the other hand, Heinz might not be able to come on any other day for a month and the sap was beginning to rise already. It's hard work sawing a sappy tree, and, once felled, it's wringing wet and takes four times longer to dry out. 'OK Heinz… we'd love to see you.'

The woodfolk arrived at about ten, and set to work. We'd warned them not to touch the three 8" sycamores in the drive until the tractor gang had arrived and left again. That still left plenty to do for four of us. Heinz knocked 'em down, the women hauled the brash to a bonfire site, and I hand-sawed the pole-sized pieces that are a pain for the chainsaw.

At 11 the tractor team arrived. There were four of them which seemed like overkill. One to turn the dinky little winch and three to stand by and applaud, surely?
Not a bit of it. It took four of us, pushing against various points of the carcase to move Scrapper a single millimetre, and that was after Doug had hacked away all the trash from behind the wheels. The hand winch just wasn't up to hauling a dead weight through mud. And things weren't helped by that flat tyre that acted like a skid mat, absorbing whatever forward energy was generated and using it instead to slew the tractor gently sideways. 'Levers, boys! Chas? What've you got?'
Orfyl followed me to the woodshed and we hauled out a couple of handy baulks, about four inches square and six feet long (ex-floor joists, rescued from a demolition site twenty-odd years ago. I knew they'd come in handy one day, according to Rule One of the Smallholder's Handbook: 'Never throw anything away. Never… ')
Yes.. they helped. We moved Scrapper all of an inch and a half, but it was still slewing off beam. 'More levers!'
We found an old iron pipe, 2" by about 7', part of an old milking parlour. Arwel stuck it under the back axle. 'Good, boys.'
We fixed Doug up with an old railway sleeper (farms are treasure troves of social history…) and we tried again. 'Heave!'

Yes! Another inch gained. 'Heave!' four men straining moved the brute a further magnificent inch. 'OK. Rest…'
It took the best part of an hour to move Scrapper the necessary couple of feet onto the trailer. After every inch gained, Raymond twizzled the little winch to take up the pathetic amount of slack. More than once he had to flick the release thingy so Orfyl could adjust the level of the flatbed. It was only when you heard the safety lever snap off that you realised what a risky job Raymond had. A titchy little cable, under great stress…. We joshed him boyishly about whose job it would be to pick his head out of the shrubbery should the wire snap. Oh, what fun…

Yes, eventually Scrapper was hauled safely aboard. I would never have believed it could have taken so long. But we'd enjoyed it. We'd faced a silly problem and had beaten it through intelligence, strength, and perseverance. And we'd worked well as a scratch team. No bullying; no bossiness; no back-sliding. Great stuff. Everyone was listened to. Every idea tried. Perfect.

I left them to the final job of tying Scrapper to the deck for his journey to Doug's shed.
The woodworkers were in the kitchen, clearly glad they weren't part of the tractor circus and only had the mundane jobs of climbing trees with a chainsaw to deal with.
A quick cup of tea, and I'm off up the drive to get Dad's lunch. Orfyl was ever so gradually hauling the Land Rover and trailer round the 90 degree angle from the track and onto the drive. He had about three inches total clearance to juggle with. 'Whoa!! Back! You're going in the ditch!' Try again…' Whoa! Stop!! The trailer's climbing the bank… the Scrapper's going to slide….'
I left them to it.

Ten yards up the lane I met a new Vauxhall coming down with a beautifully coiffed young woman in it. 'Hello?' 'Oh.. am I in the right place? I've come to do Mrs Harrison's hair…'
Oh yes, Anne had told me about her Mum's hair appointment.
'Yes. Right place, but er….' And I pointed behind me to the Land Rover rig which had finally got itself straightened out and was slowly hauling towards us. 'Oh…' said the lady.
'Well, one of you is going to have to reverse,' I thought. 'And it ain't going to be Orfyl and his whopping great trailer.'
The hairdresser tried valiantly, but almost went into both ditches within twenty seconds. The next time she stalled. Clearly, she was about to panic. I did my best and calmly waved her back, but we both knew…
'OK, I'll have a bash.' Mucky wellies onto pristine car mat. Can't be helped. Easy to start… now where's reverse? Ah.. it's written on the gear knob.. right…. Blimey.. what a flippin gearbox. I'm used to my Kangoo box which is light and very positive; this thing was like a jam jar full of knuckles…. Push…pull… what gear's that? No idea. Lift and pull back for reverse.. Wow! Got it! And after only one embarrassing diversion, I wound the ten yards back up the pitted windy drive to Dad's entrance where I could pull out of the way.
The convoy passed, waving and tooting, as convoys do. Orfyl couldn't resist pointing out to the hairdresser that older drivers were better. He meant 'men'. She knew.

There we are then. All we need now is for me to reverse onto the track and let the hairdresser continue down into our yard on her mission of mercy. But could I find that blasted reverse gear again? I tried six times. Lift, pull back; pull back, lift. Lift harder and pull back…. Not a chance.
In the end the lady got back in, fluttering about whether she'd broken her nice new car (I don't think reverse had ever been used before, frankly). And lo… in first time and away…..

Today has been very quiet.

Chapter 12 and serious drive troubles

Hello again, if there's anybody there!

I've been meaning to write something else for ages, but simply haven't had the time. We've

had health and family problems (we are now caring for two 89 year old parents) and

maintenance problems around the farm.

We had a freak storm a month ago that completely washed out £60 worth of tarmac that

we'd just spent a whole morning tamping into the worst of the pits and potholes on our

drive. The force of water was so great that a mass of stones, up to 4" across, was swept

right down to the bottom of the yard, and left there in shoals. It looked like Brighton

beach in places. All this scouring meant that the holes in the drive were now even more

cavernous than they had been before. How could we fix them? There was no point in

spending hundreds of pounds on more tarmac, as another storm would just wash it all

away again. It needed more profound attention.

The problem is that the drive is in the wrong place and can not now be moved somewhere

else. Back in the Good Old Days, someone decided that it would be a good idea to divert

a natural drainage runnel into a concrete pipe or two, and turn the age-old water-cut

groove in the landscape into a useful tarmacked track. Perhaps it used to work back in the

Good Old Days, but since we've been here (some 27 years) we're spent more time on the

drive than on any other part of the establishment. Mainly, putting in bigger pipes to carry

the run-off from the field on the right (which is not our field) under the drive and into a

big ditch; and in filling and patching potholes further up the drive, also caused by runoff

from the field on the right... but also, occasionally when the drain at the top of the drive,

at the junction with the council lane, gets blocked, and, well... you can guess where all

the storm water off a hundred yards of road goes, can't you?

Our efforts have all helped the problem, but it'll never go away. My fear is that one day

we'll have another super-storm which will wash the drive out so badly that we won't be

able to get the car out or a van in. It could happen. And even quick fixes will not be

quick, and will cost a lot of money, and will by no means be permanent, and might need

expensively repeating a fortnight later. A 'permanent' solution would need a hydraulic

engineer (I'm not kidding...) and would cost a fortune. It's a bind....

But Kevin-up-the-road has been a terrific help. He borrowed a JCB and spent an entire

morning hacking out the reeds and shrubs (trunks up to 4" thick) from out of the ditch by

the wet field on the right. That should allow the most urgent runoff to reach the Big Pipe

inder the drive, and let it rush away to the river, about 200 yards away, steeply downhill.
Another small step forward... we're hoping....
And Kevin wouldn't accept a penny for his labours, skill, time, or diesel. Ain't living in the

country wonderful!

***

The other reason I've not been a-blogging recently is that I've become engrossed in writing

The Book.
I think I was just starting Chapter 3 when I last blogged. Now I'm up to Chapter 12. It's

hard work in many ways, but also enjoyable, seeing the ideas slowly trot out onto the

screen, and checking them over for cohesion and reason.

So far, no snags. I still can't find anything that calls my main thesis into question. If

anything, more and more things are tumbling into place, which always seems to me to be

an indication of being on the right track ('Only connect'.... as EM Forster said).

Chapter 12 is proving to be a bit of a challenge in that so far I've needed to read the

Koran, the Torah, and the Four Gospels. What extraordinary documents they are. If

you've never read them, I do recommend trying them. The first five books of the Old

Testament are sometimes called 'the Pentateuch', and are the basic Jewish holy book: the

Torah. The four gospels are the original writings of the New Testament.

My special interest at the moment is in the paranormal elements contained in these three

whoppers. Here's a couple of samples:

•The Koran mentions various angels, including personal guardians for every soul; djinn

(spirits created from 'subtle fire'); the creation of humanity from clay, 'moist germs', and

breastbones; 'those who conduct the universe'; possession; Houris (ever-virginal

non-carnal maidens); the fact that God is the Lord of Sirius; the notion of multiple Satans;

a competition between magicians;

• The Old Testament is packed full of paranormalities. Here are just a few, pretty

much at random, from the Torah: God planted a garden and walked round it, talking;

there were giants in those days; the Sons of God bred with humans; Jacob wrestles with

someone he thinks is God; a rod turning into a serpent and back again; a hand that turned

'leprous as snow' and back again; magicians producing hordes of frogs;

• The New Testament: just a few examples from the four gospels, again, pretty

much at random: baptism with fire; disease cured at a touch or at a word; remote healing;

possession (quite a lot of possession and dispossession); becalming a sea storm with

words; 'devils' trying to bargain with Jesus; multiple possession discharged into pigs;

raising the definitely dead, amidst laughter from the crowd;

That's enough to be going on with. There are many more. What I find incredible is that

nobody seems to have picked up on these phenomena as a launchpad for further

investigation into the paranormal at large.
Perhaps it's simply that our current intellectual masters, the Materialist scientists say 'It's

all rubbish' and that shuts everybody else up.
I do wonder why the various Churches don't investigate though. After all, even the staid

old Church of England has a couple of exorcists in every diocese. They don't do that for a

purpose that doesn't exist.

Next on the list is the Hindu 'Bhagavad Gita'; then something substantial from the

Buddhist canon. Don't know what yet.

When I've done all that, the fun will begin of finding the common threads between these

five great religous doctrines (and there are far more than most people think, it seems to

me) and in seeing if I'm any nearer to understanding what ghosts etc are.

Incidentally, I wonder why the Lord Yahweh forbade his chosen people the relish of a

mole or lapwing sandwich? Or a nice owl stew? And why was he so insistent on

specifying every tiny detail for the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and the

tabernacle that surrounded it, even down to the shape of the handles and the colour of the

curtains?

It's a wonderful world!

Have a wonderful day Chas

Big Bang goes OUT … Little Protons go IN (Homer Simpson would understand)

Please sir! Sir! Sir!
Yes, Triffid, what is it now?

Please sir! I've had this spiffing idea sir!
Oh no. Not another perpetual motion machine is it?

Please sir, no sir…
Go on then… what is it?

Well sir… this Big Bang thingy…
Yes, what of it?

Well sir.. why don't we try and simulate it by banging protons together sir?
Say that again…

Copy the Big Bang by bashing tiny little things into each other. Like this… POW!!! POW!!!
Yes. Please. That's enough. Look, Triffid... Have I got you right? Do you understand what the Big Bang is?

Yes Sir. Of course sir. It's the theory that the universe and everything in it.. all the stars and everything… all suddenly came from out of nowhere in a huge big BANG! POW!! Whoosh!!!
There are how many estimated stars in our galaxy, Triffid?

Oh.. about a hundred thousand million sir. Everyone knows that.
And how many other galaxies are there estimated to be?

Another hundred thousand million sir! My cat knows that sir!
Making a total of about, say, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars?

And loads of gas and stuff…
Weighing about what?

Well… a whole universe full, I suppose.
Right. Now then Triffid… tell me what you know about protons…

Gosh! Tiny tiny tiny!
Billions would fit on a pin head would you say?

Never counted them sir!
So.. on the one hand a whole universe, and on the other hand something vanishingly tiny. And you're suggesting that whacking a few tiny tinies together is in some way relevant to how a whole universe suddenly appeared?

Well, yes sir. How else could we do it?
Now think.. a Big Bang is a colossal explosion, yes?

POW! BANNNG!!!
And.. please don't do that. And an explosion is matter travelling outwards from a single point at high speed?

POWWWW!!
Whereas colliding particles together is a matter of matter travelling inwards at high speed, yes?

POW!! WHOOSH!!!
Big Bang equals colossal matter moving outwards, whereas proton collision equals miniscule matter moving inwards? Can you explain how the latter might bear any relationship whatsoever to the former?

Erm.. well…. It would be a jolly big feather in the school cap, sir? I mean… St Darren's down the road have only got a wind tunnel sir. A new cyclotron would look terrific on the new school prospectus, sir..
Triffid… you are a moderately bright student as you are well aware. So I am surprised and a little alarmed to hear that you think that stuff moving inwards is somehow comparable to stuff moving outwards. This is the stuff of fantasy, Triffid.

But sir…
.. and I am not going to recommend the £5bn bursary you are asking for, plus God knows how much a year to run your ridiculous scheme, from the School Fund.

But sir..
No 'buts', Triffid. I do understand your youthful enthusiasm and your insatiable curiosity. Most commendable. But I strongly urge you to think out your experiments more clearly in future. When you grow up and go out into the big wide world, you will find that things are very different there.

Yes sir. Sorry sir.
No. Don't apologise. Just trot off and come back after tea with a list of ideas for, oh.. how about 'Ten Ways of Spending Five Billion Pounds Usefully'?

On science, sir?
If you like. Off you go…

Whee! Whizz!!!
Children, children…

Broadband and Richard Dawkins

Hello again... if there's anybody out there…

Gosh it's been along time since I wrote anything for this blog. This is mainly because my broadband still hasn't arrived, after seven months of promises. It seems BT needs to dig up most of Wales before I can get even a very slow link. But 228Kbps would be ten times faster than my dial-up link, and I can live with that. I only need to access text, on the whole, rather than five thousand pixellated phone clips of drunken teenagers splattering each other with food in a like totally awesome kind of way.
Actually, the timing of the broadband is almost spot-perfect, in a like totally surprising sort of way. Here's why…

For about 15 years now I've been working on plans for my Great Work, which will, if I get it right, show how Religion and Science can be re-united once more. Nobody I've mentioned this scheme to believes a word of it, it must be said. Even people who know I'm not actually barking seem to suddenly remember a dental appointment or a funeral that they are expected at, so they can swig back their glass of Chardonnay and zoom away up the drive, waving furiously, and no doubt hoping that the ambulance will arrive for me soon.

But I'm quite serious. I really can show how this age-old split can be healed, and, what's more, I think I can show how the split arose in the first place.
Mainly it's just a question of simple logic; that's the essence of it, anyway. (Anyone who has read Scenes from a Smallholding will perhaps remember the last chapter, called 'The Tale of the Kale', in which I outline this logic. [A few first editions are still available from www.thirdleafbooks.co.uk])

Anyway… over the past couple of months I have amazed myself by actually making a start on writing this Oeuvre, instead of just worrying at it and letting it keep me awake at night. The breakthrough came when it occurred to me to write the text on the RH pages, while writing notes, extended arguments, a glossary, cartoons etc onto the LH pages. This would mean that the reader can pick and choose how to read the book. I will personally recommend that the reader reads just the RH pages for the first time through. If they've had enough by then, one way or the other, well that's OK. But if they find they want to know a bit more about say, the Aristotle/Copernicus split, or about papal infallibility, or about the link between Isaac Newton and the doctrine of Karma, or how the Enlightenment relates to science… well, they can re-read the book, picking stuff off the LH pages as they go. It's a sort of 'personally tailored' approach I'm after, the aim being to make the book as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

I sent the first chapter to my agent. To my astonishment, he liked what I'd written and wanted to read more. (Usually he doesn't like what I've written, usually because he doesn't think anyone will want to publish it. And usually, I suppose, he's right.)
That was the good news. The bad news was… that he didn't like the LH/RH thing.

Bah! I'm sticking with it. We can argue later. Meanwhile it helps me get a sense of proportion into the topics I'm dealing with. That's what has been bugging and delaying me for so long…. How much weight to give to each point I want to make; and also, maybe even more importantly, what order to put the myriad points into. What I'm nervous of is that I'll start at point A, which might interest a scientist, say… but which might be completely hopeless for a religious person, and put them off altogether. The LH pages can help me out here, as I can add reassuring little messages where I think someone might be losing interest or becoming confused.

Now I've written the first two introductory chapters, and am about to get into areas that need more close attention. This attention will involve quite a bit of research on the internet. And guess what… broadband should be arriving almost bang on the button. Great!

But first I'm tackling a tricky subject in Chapter Three: Richard Dawkins. This is a man of huge enthusiasm and learning, and indeed of intellect, but who has one blind spot, which is the cause of a lot of confusion among people I've talked to. This same blind spot has also been the cause of untold misery for millions of people, when viewed over the last hundred years or so.
What is this blind spot? Any offers?

It is this: neo-Darwinists, of whom RD is the most zealous, make three essential claims:
1. The bodies of living things have evolved and changed by very small increments over time, and were not created once off, perfect.
2 The mechanism by which Evolution operates is the grim and glacially slow process of Natural Selection, which is a process part random (genetic mutation) and part rational (the slow and feeble don't survive to pass on their feeble genes).
3 Life arose via some unknown incremental process of random self-assemblage of molecules.

Which is the odd one out? Please.. take a minute to look at all three points carefully before reading on….

Tum ti tummm ti tum tum ti.. tummm………











*********************


Yes. It's number 3.
While 1 and 2 have a lot of evidence to support them, and a logical framework too, number 3 is just a dogmatic assertion, based on no more than the triumphalism of having more or less proved The Church to be wrong about Creationism.
There is no evidence at all for Life having originated in this casual 'incremental' manner, and if you look at the statistical unlikeliness of even a few of the necessary conjoinings having occurred at random.. well, numbers like 10 to the power of 30, 40 and 50 turn up pretty soon. And even if all these grotesquely unlikely conjoinings and associations actually did occur by chance.. there is still no logical mechanism by which abiotic (un-alive) chemicals could have spontaneously transformed themselves into something recognisably biotic (alive).

Here's the essential point: in the tradition of science, any theory which has A) no rational basis, and B) no evidence to support it, should be discarded as fantasy. But neo-Darwinists continue to trumpet spontaneous creation as Fact and Truth…. Not out of malice, but because it has become a blind spot…
The blind spot has become so powerful that Mr Dawkins seems to have completely forgotten that his hero, Charles Darwin, mentions 'the Creator' several times in each of the editions of 'The Origin of Species', and then RD makes things worse by saying that the need for 'a Creator' is 'transparently feeble'. That's one in the eye for his hero, then. But again, RD doesn't seem to notice. Blind spots can take you over if you don't keep your wits about you.

This why anyone who watched RD's first tv programme on Darwin the other week would have noticed that some of the teenagers he was gently haranguing didn't seem to immediately fall into line with what he was expecting of them.
RD thinks: 'Natural Selection and Evolution are Truth. Why on earth don't people just accept it?'
The kids think: 'Hmm.. interesting. Lots of evidence.. fossils and so on… but I dunno.. something funny somewhere….'
Most people think the same way as those kids, to the total bafflement and exasperation of Mr Dawkins.

The 'something funny' that the kids aren't knowledgeable enough to pick up on, is that they don't see how Life Mind and Consciousness could have spontaneously generated out of mud, rock and lightning, never mind how many trillions of years these 'components' had in which to spontaneously assemble themselves.
The kids, and people in general, intuit that there's something fishy going on here, and they instinctively then transfer this suspicion to everything else RD tells them, fossil evidence or not.
This is normal sensible human behaviour: if you find (or intuit) one flaw in what you're being told, you quite rightly suspect everything else. Estate agents are slowly learning this.
RD can't see this problem however, and thinks that people who don't fall into line with his own (in his view) perfectly sensible explanations must be irretrievably stupid or wilful. Hence his edginess and niggly tone.

Presumably, neo-Darwinists think that this selfsame intuition that their critics feel, also spontaneously generated itself out of chemicals. What does your own intuition suggest to you about that?

Right.. back to Chapter Three…
If you, dear reader, would find it interesting to read about how the book is coming on, drop me a line and I'll post an occasional progress report on the blog.

All best wishes to all, including Mr Dawkins, of course

Chas

PS: RD also says that Darwin's explanation for all the improbable creatures we see in the world around us is that they came into being "by gradual, step-by-step transformation from simple beginnings, from primordial entities sufficiently simple to have come into being by chance".
This, I'm afraid is simply not true.
Not only did Darwin require 'a Creator' in all editions of Origins, but he also states quite unequivocally '…I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself.'
Check it for yourself: 1st paragraph, Chapter 7, 1st edition; or 1st paragraph, Chapter 8, 6th edition.
Blind spots can lead you into error; sometimes into serious error.
The Materialism that underpins conventional neo-Darwinism has led us all into serious error. More on this some other time.

Why All Writers are Millionaires: (apart from a few who aren't): part 8

My wife Anne, ('She who Understands Things'), has just done our annual accounts, and tells me that my earnings from writing for the last financial year were 'almost £1,300'.
This would buy a decent lunch for two in Chelsea, I believe, but it doesn't seem a lot for the hundreds of hours spent hacking away at the keyboard over the past twelve months. How did it come to be this way?

Firstly, my sort-of novel, called 'Your Dog as Philosopher' put my agent into a tailspin.
What I was trying to do was to write a funny story about a man left on his own for a week with his feisty toddler daughter and his flolloping dog, and to blend it with an easy-reading introduction to Yogic philosophy (a subject that I think every thoughtful person deserves to have access to).

Stan read it and said 'Sorry…'
I said 'Oh surely not..? I thought it was quite funny. Don't you agree?'
'Yes', said Stan, 'the book is funny; and yes, it is interesting and informative and stimulating, too.' But the problem was that no publisher was going to touch it, because you can't have a book about philosophy that is funny.
'Who says so?' I asked. 'That's not the point', said Stan.
'Did I succeed in what I was trying to do?' I asked.
'Yes, you did,' said Stan.
'Well then?'
'Why don't you listen: NOBODY WILL TOUCH IT.'
This exchange went on for some time. Stan was quite right, of course, once I thought it over a bit. Publishers and editors everywhere endlessly claim that they are looking for 'fresh' or 'original' material… but don't let them fool you. They are not. What they want is something very very similar to the last thing that fluked them a lot of money. Original is RISKY; and there's nothing a modern publisher hates more than the 'r' word.
Stan's solution was that I should remove all of the story element from the book and try again with it.
This depressed me rather, but I had a go. Stan played his part, and took the time to supply a bare outline for me to start from, and Anne had a go as well, but after a week of trying, I shelved it. I was just too close to the original to untangle the two strands of story and content. And I kept becoming unsure of what was 'story' and what wasn't. I ended up in a fuddle. The file is on my C drive, awaiting further attention one day.
A couple of people have read the text, meanwhile, and have reported favourable things back to me, but Stan is still adamant that no publisher will give it house room. I'm sure he's right, still.

So.. no success there, then.
My next effort was a self-help book called 'Guide Yourself to Happiness', a subject close to my heart, as I am endlessly happy and have long been puzzled why so many other people seem not to be. I sent Stan the first chunk, and he came back positive, so I went ahead and wrote the book.
Stan read it and was still positive. He sent it off to half a dozen publishers, including Piatkus, who we thought would definitely like the look of it.
Responses came back, slowly, which is never a good sign. One house said no thanks because only published a certain number of UK titles per year and they'd already filled their quota. I can only assume that this was a polite brush-off; otherwise it suggests that timing is more important to them than quality.
Two other houses said it was a good book (in fact nobody had a bad word to say about it, except one editor thought it might be a bit 'stronger', by which I think she meant 'more sensational'.. the very opposite of what the essence of the book is about) but they couldn't take it on as 'the author doesn't have his own radio or tv show' to launch it from.
Sleb culture rules OK?
We never heard back from Piatkus at all, despite several approaches.

So no joy there, either.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd try my hand at drama again, for a couple of Amateur Dramatic friends, and wrote a three-acter called 'Upper Nattem's Little Piglet: or Hamlet, the Panto'. I thought it worked ok, and sent off to a few friends to read. Reports back were positive so I sent it to my 'clients'. They didn't like it.

Three down. One to go.

That left something I'd been pottering along with over the year: a series of short stories, or vignettes, each based around a day in the life of twenty different dogs. The stories were loosely connected, and intertwined here and there. I asked an artist if she'd like to draw for it, and she came up with a couple of preliminary drawings that looked good.

'OK, Stan? What do you think of 'Dog Days'?
'Er… sorry, Chas… but no.'
'Well why not? I realise some of the stories are a bit 'dark', but they are realistic, I think. Don't you agree?'
'Well yes, I'm sure you're right.'
'So do you want a couple of more cuddly stories instead?'
'Er… I'll come back to you.'
In the end, Stan just didn't feel right about it. Again, he didn't think a publisher would want it.
In my heart of hearts I wasn't surprised. The stories weren't cuddly enough for conventional requirements. To publish them would be….risky.

So.. four up, and four knocked down! I guess that's why not all writers are millionaires! The message, for any wannabe writers reading this is.. if you want to sell a lot of books, study the market, and write something almost, but not quite, exactly like something that has already sold a million. It will probably be rejected on the grounds that it is too like the book you copied, but if you show any promise as a writer the agent will work with you and encourage you along suitable lines for your next effort.
If on the other hand, you want to do something original.. be warned. Unless you name is Wayne Rooney or Paris Hilton, don't even consider writing a funny philosophy book!

On Materialism and Idealism...

Hello Omnist...

Good to hear from you. And thanks for all the information, too.

It comes as a shock to learn that Darwin used 'the Creator' even in the first edition of 'Origins'. I have clearly been misinformed by other sources, but upon checking in a couple of recent reprints (Penguin 85; Wordsworth 98) I see you are indeed correct. Thankyou for this.
However, I'm still left with the puzzle of why anyone should want to re-publish the first edition of a Great Work rather than the definitive last edition. I still smell a wish to mislead, I'm afraid.
The essence of the matter is that Darwin seems to have been a clear and honest thinker, and thus made a distinction between the logical need for an Ultimate Cause of some sort (his 'Creator') and the subsequent bafflingly irrational and apparently unfeelingly cruel 'God' of The Church.
It's my impression that modern neo-Darwinists have not taken this into account when they decided to abandon all non-Materialist elements from their dogma, and are thus embarrassed that their figurehead should mention 'the Creator' multiple times in the final edition of 'Origins', even in his famous last sentence: 'There is grandeur in this view of life, with it several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one…'.
By re-issuing the first and not the last edition they have reduced the damage to their dogma as much as possible, short of actually editing the embarrassing 'Creator' out completely. As it is, I've read (and heard) many a review of the great man and his book which quotes the last sentence as 'There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one..'. These reviewers have clearly read the reprinted first editions and have thus been subtly misled. By whom? The publishers? Or the scientists who write the introductions, and who presumably choose which edition should be published?

Of course, by showing a belief in 'the Creator', Darwin would not be eligible for membership of the neo-Darwinist movement, which ought to be a great embarrassment to Materialists, but never seems to be such. Certainty is not embarrassable, as history endlessly teaches us, from the Inquisition to Hitler and beyond!

You suggest that Materialism and Idealism are not opposites. I disagree. Of course, you are right in saying that under the terms of normal discussion A being wrong does not automatically make B correct; for example BigEndians being wrong does not make LittleEndians correct; and because 'Communism' is wrong, that does not make 'Capitalism' right; etc etc. No argument here.
But in such cases we are speaking of the relationship, or more accurately, 'non-relationship', between two separate propositions. My case is that Materialism and Idealism are not separate propositions, but are intimately linked and that thus A being wrong does (must) make B correct, by a process of logic. Why do I think this?

As ever, it depends upon our starting definitions.
Can we agree that the fundamental puzzle is 'How does Mind relate to Matter (by which I mean 'Matter/Energy' in the normal physical understanding)?'

Materialists claim that Matter came first and that Mind derived, by accident, from Matter. (I'm using 'Mind' here to include 'Life' and 'Consciousness' as well. Ridiculous, I know, but time-saving, and the distinctions are not necessary for the argument to hold.) There's the link I'm referring to: Materialists claim that Mind 'derived (or arose) from' Matter.
Conversely, Idealists claim that Mind came first and somehow created Matter. Again, the link between the two elements is stated.
Either way, the one, it is claimed, gave rise to the other. Linked.

Can we agree on these definitions, which might be summarised neatly as: either Matter → Mind or Mind → Matter? It seems to me that we must, as these equations state the barebone essentials of the question, and any attempt at modification of them is really only a fudging of the issue.
If we can agree that the above equations do state the barebones of the issue, then we are thus faced with a rare but genuine 'either/or' for us to choose between, according to the requirements of logic.
Thus, according to normal historical ways of thinking, we may choose via logic, whether Matter came first or Mind came first (I'll return to an alternative theory and way of thinking in a minute).

It is the link that matters in all of this. It is there, whether we like it or not. Either Materialism is right in its claim that Matter alone gave rise (spontaneously) to Life Mind and Consciousness from within itself alone, or it is wrong. If it is wrong, then there must, by definition, be an element involved which is extra to 'Matter alone'. That non-Matter element is the element Idealism is concerned with. Thus, if Materialism is wrong, Idealism must be right. What comes after this necessary recognition is another matter, of course.

To expose the falsity of the Materialist case again: if Matter came first, then Mind must have arisen spontaneously and purposelessly from within such Matter, because, and here's the point, there is absolutely nowhere else for it to have come from, is there?
Whichever way you try to twist it and think around it, you must invariable come back to this: that in a universe of 'only Matter', then Mind must have somehow arisen from only Matter.
The problem is that 'only Matter' is by definition, not alive, or mindful, or conscious. Thus, a Materialist is asking us to believe that our own fundamental qualities of Life, Mind, and Consciousness, arose spontaneously from Matter.. the same Matter which does not contain them.
This is clearly irrational nonsense, and requires at the very least that the universe be based on magic: ie a locus in which something may arise without cause, from nothing: the very thing Science itself is dedicated to scourging from our thinking, and quite right too.

Thus.. if Mind did not arise spontaneously from Matter.. where else could it possibly have come from? The only logical answer to this is 'not-Matter'… which is precisely what the Idealists claim.

However… given that what I've written above is just a matter of simple logic, and not a question of 'philosophy' or opinion of any sort…. Where does that leave us?

People are apt to leap to irrational conclusions, are they not? And many thus assume that because Idealism might be easily shown to be rational while Materialism is not.. they leap to all sorts of horrific assumptions, the main one being that if Science is wrong then The Church must be right. Not so. For a start, 'Science' is not wrong; only 'Materialism' is wrong; and The Church is not the only opponent of Materialism by a long shot. As you say so rightly above: A being wrong does not make B right.. in this case, Materialism being wrong does not make The Church right. There are many alternatives to be explored.

To most people, however, including just about all scientists I've met, 'The Church' is the sole perceived opponent of Materialism. Many people thus think that abandoning Materialism would mean having to adopt the wild flummeries of The Church. This is because they know of no alternative to 'The Church' as an opponent of Materialism.

For its part, The Church seems in general to have not distinguished clearly enough between Science ('Good'!) and Materialism ('Bad'!).
People in general are confused, and find no help in any of this, governed as they are by their own psychological tendencies to see the world in terms of black and white, right and wrong. Is Science right? Is Religion? Neither of these august institutions seems able to put a persuasive case to a genuinely rational thinker.

This mess puzzled me for a long time. Then I started to read around, and discovered that there is a way of thinking that is alien to most of us in the West, but bread and butter to Indian schools of philosophy (and various others). These understandings might be best labelled as the Esoteric view.
In a nutshell, the Esoteric view is that all Matter/Energy is alive in some sense, from the lowliest atom (and, I presume the quark and quantum) right up to Man and beyond. The creative force in the universe is Mind (coupled with Will). It is, of course, a profoundly Idealist (and therefore 'rational', as proposed above) view, but with a most interesting addition, as it provides a non-paradoxical hint of the nature of the connection between Mind and Matter.
What's more, the need for Will as a vital component in the creative process should be of considerable interest to a quantum physicist.
The Esoteric view also proposes multiple habitable dimensions other than our own local three dimensions, and thus dismisses the now-traditional notion of Time being a fourth dimension in itself.
I have also found that the Esoteric view makes sense of the whole issue of whether 'Science' or the 'The Church' is 'right'…. And much more besides.
You suggest that 'a compelling case can be made for a reality in which, like quantum particle-wave dual-unity, there is no actual difference between materialism and idealism, except in our limited and misinterpretive understanding of reality. It seems to me that the Esoteric view might support you in this.

From your letter, it seems you have not come across the Esoteric view of things. Might I commend you to it? I'll be happy so suggest a few references that I have found useful.
Incidentally, the Esoteric view is fully supportive of the 'freewill and reason' that you suggest that theologians of The Church have no time for. Anything that favours reason over dogma is worth looking into, in my book!

Thanks again for taking the trouble to write. Much appreciated… not least for correcting me on 'the Creator' in the 1st edition.

All best wishes Chas.

Gosh! A production!

Hi again, Linz…

Wow! Somebody actually wants to stage 'How Come I'm Feeling Fishnet Tights and Rotten Cardboard Boxes?'! Great stuff!

What sort of production do you have in mind? Is it part of a drama school project? ('Director's log' sounds as though it might be.) Where are you based?

Yes, of course. If I can help in some way, please do ask.

Have you been to my website ( www.thirdleafbooks.co.uk ) ? The books are autobiographical, if that's any help.

Anyway.. I look forward to hearing from you and to hear about your production. Do you think it might be better to communicate via email (see website) rather than on the blog? Or do you think other readers might be interested in the ins and outs of putting on a stage production?

All best wishes Chas