My system

You think I don't care?
Look, I can see I  have a grapefruit on the floor under the table, I know that. But there are other factors to consider here.

Well, I thought you might have been sufficiently sensitive not to mention that particular factor, but since you have brought it up, I will admit that picking things up off the floor is not quite as delightful an experience as it used to be when I was a younger man, but that's hardly the point.

The point?

Well, just look around. If you can tear your eyes away from the grapefruit you will notice there is an open jar of honey on the drainer, surrounded by an assortment of unclean dishes. there are four pans stacked on the stove, all greasy, there are jars of condiments and spices open and spilled, positioned randomly on every available surface, jostling for space with religious pamphlets, guitar picks and capos, wine bottles in various stages of consumption, articles of clothing, discarded packaging, packets of soup, loose potatoes, onions and sprouts, cutlery of every type, none of it distinguished by its condition of hygiene. Letters from the bank, Christmas cards, light bulbs and batteries, some of which functional, and a host of other jetsam and flotsam betraying the reality of a disordered existence, a man with insufficient time and no inclination, and a man who has all but given up.

The grapefruit is nothing more than the marker buoy of a sunken wreck (me).

Why?

Well I was playing the guitar because it seemed more important to me to see if I could get my stiff fingers around the neck and play F major the way I used to, than to be bothered with such minor matters.

And anyway, you should know by now that I only tidy up on alternate Saturdays.
It's my system.

The destruction of Rome

People might see the pitiful state of the metropolitan city of Rome as proof that that city cannot be the capstone of the pyramid, as is sometimes claimed in my flat, where no one can hear me, or on more prominent platforms around the nation and indeed in the world.

"All roads lead to Rome", I explain, to my walls, and they seem to almost nod in mute agreement. I might go on to mention Vatican City and its population and I never receive a single word of dissent.
Online, of course, things are different. As they are in other physical venues populated by speaking persons and sounding trumpets.

So that's why the argument was recently countered by someone who proceeded to send me a photo showing a very sorry "official" paper note sellotaped to a filthy wall in a Rome metro station, on which various words and arrows had been scribbled, apparently with a red wax crayon, advising travellers of the directions to follow to reach different destinations in the city including, conspicuously, San Pietro. The accompanying message stated that the scene was degraded, for a city "that rules thw world" (it did say "thw", though I am not blaming the person in any way, also because I write far odder things on a regular basis)

I supposed the message to be "therefore, how can Rome possibly be the capstone, as you have so glibly claimed, like the conspiracy minded nutcase that you have become?" 

Of course I may have misinterpreted, since I practise mainly with my walls, but my job is to translate what other people say and write, so I have some modest reliance on my interpretative powers since most of the jobs I do seem to meet with a sufficient measure of approval to keep me out of prison.

Be that as it may, the matter has been rolling round in my mind ever since and I will write a couple of words on the subject of Rome and its degradation.

The Bible tells us that our fight is against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places. I think there are good arguments to be made that a major principality can indeed be identified in Vatican City, and there are others around the world, notably the City of London and District of Columbia, but to assemble them in order of importance is a matter of greater conjecture and ultimately of no consequence.

What non-believers completely miss however, and what I now understand only by virtue of the Word of God, is that it is Satan's very plan to destroy God's creation, using the agency of the powers, principalities and wickedness mentioned in the book of Ephesians. Since Satan opposes God's omnipotence and authority, his ultimate goal is to pervert and destroy the children of the most High, the recipients of His greatest love. To make us rebel against our Father and turn away our hearts from his love and bounty. 

Of course he offers beautiful surroundings in this world to his most loyal servants, but even they must be destroyed and degraded: to follow Satan may raise us up in the temporal realm, but its ultimate goal is destruction... it is in the depths of depravity that he offers his main enticements. 

The passages of the Bible that describe the effects of abandonment by the Creator, allowing the forces of darkness to flourish, are the most haunting and sobering words I have read. Without even considering the sorry state to which that wicked angel reduced one man in the land of Uz, we have Isaiah's stern reminder:

But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.
They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.
And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.
There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.

So I think it can be argued that degradation would confirm rather than refute the claim that this place or another is a principality of darkness. There will be marble palaces aplenty, but the common folks will always be downtrodden, reviled and punished. 

And how fitting that here we see such decadence in the very catacombs of that fair city.

Now I know what you're going to say, apart from recommending I adjust my meds. You're going to say "But that's not Sellotape mate".
I do have to agree on this point, and I might change it to "parcel tape" if the anomaly becomes unbearable.

Books about the Book

So have you actually read the Bible from cover to cover?


No.

And this despite having been a follower of the Lord for about twenty years. So really, all those books he is reading about the Bible, far from being helpful, as he claims, are actually getting in the way. What they should say, on page one, is "Please close this book immediately and instead read the Word of God".
But they don't say anything of the sort.

I didn't know anything about the world of Christian Literature until I started to attend a church. My first experience was down at that big Pentecostal place in town. There, they had a bookshop, or rather a book corner, with a counter that was manned (or, more accurately, womanned) at the busiest times of the day. I had a look at the offering and from what I could see the main author recommended was CS Lewis, and most of his books seemed to be on sale, together with another volume entitled the New International Version in various editions. There were, however, no Bibles.

I know you're going to say "of course there were Bibles on sale - you just said as much", but I should inform you that I do not consider "The Chronicles of Narnia" to be equivalent in any way to the Bible, which book, in the English language, should always have the words "King James Version" inscribed on the cover, spine, and/or frontispiece.

Then I attended a small Plymouth Brethren assembly, before we got at crossed purposes. Here, I remember sitting next to a young Indian gentleman who was clutching a book that might have been a Bible, but pride of place had been awarded to a brand new novella that promised to reveal insights on the gentleness of Jesus' teaching methods. I asked him what it might contain, and when he explained I asked him if it were not true that the same information could be found in that other book that he and I both had on our laps, and he allowed, with a sheepish grin, that this was very likely to be the case.

Finally, I ended up in an evangelical church where the preacher was a true bookworm, to the point that he had his own bookshop in the basement of the building, a matter that I was unhappy about at the time: I thought it was the wrong place for such a business, however religiously motivated. This fellow used to read Christian authors from times past and he often referred to them as great saints and urged his congregation to read more widely. He used to quote these men from the platform, including, as I recall, a long dead Bishop of Norwich, who may have been a worthy fellow indeed but, being a Bishop, he must have been schooled in the art of funny handshakes. 

Coincidentally, I am somewhat familiar with "Norch", having made a bivouac in a churchyard in the centre of town when I was hardly twenty-years of age and having slept there overnight for some reason that I cannot currently recall. I have never since done anything so bold or odd as sleeping in a churchyard in a city centre.

With regard to book-learning, I was not overly popular with the preacher because despite being a wordy sort of fellow by profession and by character, I refused to read anything at all that he recommended. One reason for this is that I only enjoy books with proper plots, characters and action so I cannot abide "serious" tomes, but the main reason is that I am such a new Christian that I needed to spend every minute of available reading time catching up on my knowledge of the Bible, which is packed with action, plots and characters so it ticks all the boxes.

The trouble with all this reading and intellectual activity, apart from its distraction, is that it sometimes inflates the ego, letting men focus on either their own understanding or the insights of other mortals, rather than the sheer majesty of the Word of God.

Then there's the matter of poisoning the well. Like in most other areas of human knowledge, in Christian literature in particular the addition of a little poison to an otherwise healthy exegesis is easily done and very hard to detect until it's too late. But all those authors of times gone-by were just men, and what's more they were men with access to the publishing industry, a matter that should be enough to alert the scrutiny of any experienced truth seeker.

Remember, for example, that even that old faithful Matthew Henry, one of the most well-known and beloved Bible commentators of the 17th Century, is celebrated with an obelisk on his grave, a sure sign that our good friends the Freemasons have been at work.

Mary Street

A two-worded cry rang out, but I was absorbed in my thoughts this morning as I trudged down Mary Street on my way into town. 

It almost seemed as though someone was hailing me, but I don't know anyone anywhere, never mind in Mary Street, so I presumed there was someone out of view to my left or just behind me, and I continued to plod along. Then the cry was repeated, and this time, after a pause, I swivelled my torso slowly to look in the direction from which the voice seemed to arrive. Sure enough, there was a young man or, more properly, a boy, standing at the top of some steps on the other side of the street, and he seemed to be looking directly at me. However, since I felt sure I didn't know him and could discern no reason why he should call out to me, of all people, I returned to my long downhill walk without word or gesture.

It wasn't until I was just past the Eagle bar, which used to be called "Snackers" and is a very small pub indeed, that that double monosyllabic utterance condensed, in my dull mind, into a single intelligible idea, and I simultaneously realised that the words were indeed addressed to me and I been nothing short of churlish in my failure to respond. 

I suppose I could argue that the young fellow was being cheeky, but I actually felt quite flattered and I would have gladly stuck out a thumb if my mental processing powers had been up to the task in the time alotted. 

Doh.

"Nice hat"!

Page 27

... with respect to a man standing upright in Mumbai, at an angle of approximately 90 degrees, given that the distance between the two places is about five and a half thousand miles, which would be nearly one quarter of the circumference of the supposed sphere upon which both men live.

I expect most people are perfectly happy to be standing at right angles to folks in Mumbai, but the thought doesn't sit well with me at all. However, if we pursue this inevitable consequence of Baal Earth madness to its logical conclusion, we must accept that no two men or women standing anywhere on the surface of the ball will share precisely the same upright axis. Of course the difference would be negligible in close proximity, and even between, say, Tipton and Netherton, here in the Black Country, but nonetheless the concept of "uprightness" (with all of its associated moral implications) becomes relative, because on the claimed "ball" verticality is defined by an axis radiating out from the centre of mass and no two axes drawn on the rim of a circle or the outside of a ball can be perfectly parallel.

This is a very worrisome matter to Prod and also to a growing number of other folks, many of whom are starting to accept that our beloved King James Bible is unsympathetic to the idea of life on the Ball Earth, spinning or otherwise.

A poem translated

La Canzone della granata I Riccordi quand’eri saggina Coi penduli grani che il vento scoteva, come una manina di bimbo il sonaglio d’argento? Cadeva la brina; la pioggia cadeva: passavano ucelli gemendo: tu gracile e roggia tinnivi coi cento ramelli. E oggi non più come ieri tu senti la pioggia e la brina ma sgrigioli come quand’eri saggina II Restavi negletta nei solchi  quand'ogni pannocchia fu colta: te, colsero quindi i bifolchi  v'atrarono ancora una volta. Un vecchio ti prese, recise, legò;  ti privò della bella semenza tua rossa; e ti mise nell'angolo, ad essere ancella. E in casa tu resti, in un canto, negletta qui come laggiù; ma niuno è di casa pur quanto sei tu III Se t'odia colui che la trama distende negli alti solai, l'arguta gallina pur t'ama, cui porti la preda che fai. E t'ama anche senza, che ai costi ti sbalza, e i grani t'invola, residui del tempo che fosti saggina, nei campi già sola. Ma più, gracilando t'aspetta  con ciò che in tua vasta rapina  le strascichi dalla già netta cucina IV Tu lasci che t'odino, lasci che t'amino: muta, il tuo giorno, nel angolo, resti coi fasci di stecchi che attendono il forno. Nell'angolo il giorni tu resti, pensosa del canto del gallo; se al bimbo tu già non ti presti,  che viene, e ti vuole cavallo. Riporti, con lui che ti frena, le paglie ch'hai tolte, e ben più; e gioia or n'ha esso;  ma pena poi tu. V Sei l'umile ancella; me reggi la casa: tu sgridi a buon'ora, mentre impaziente passeggi,  gli ignavi, che dormono ancora. E quanto tu muovi dal canto, la rondine è ancora nel nido; e quando comincia il suo canto, già ode per casa il tuo strido. E l'alba il suo cielo rischiara, ma prima lo spruzza e imperlina,  così come tu la tua cara casina. VI Se l'umile ancella, ma regni  su l'umile casa pulita. Minacci, rimproveri; insegni ch'è bella, se pura, la vita. Insegni, con l'acre tua cura rodendo lal pietra e la creta,  che per sempre, per essere pura,  si logora l'anima lieta. Insegni, tu sacra ad un rogo  non tardo, non bello, che più  di ciò che tu mondi,  ti logori tu! Giovanni Pascoli circa 1900

Ode to the house broom I Do you recall when you were broomcorn, with your drooping spikes that the wind would shake, like the hand of an infant shaking the silver rattle? How the frost formed, the rain poured, birds flew by calling; and you, slender and ruddy rattled with a hundred canes. And today you no longer feel the rain and the frost, but you still rustle as you did when you were but broomcorn. II You were left untouched in the furrow when the last maize cobs were gathered: you, they took, when the farm workers ploughed the stalks back into the earth. An old man took you, cut you, and tied you; removing your handsome red head of seed; and stowed you in a corner, to be a servant. And in the home you remain, hidden away, overlooked, here as out in the field; but none is so house-proud as you. III If you are despised by she whose web is strung across the high ceiling, the crafty hen surely loves you, as you flush out tasty morsels. And she loves you even without such prey, as she huddles close to your sweeping, so she can peck up the grains that fly from you, remaining from a time when you were but broomcorn, once alone in the fields. But far more, keening she awaits you with all that your vast sweeping ushers out from the now spotless kitchen. IV You can let them hate you, let them love you: in silence, your day, in the corner you tarry, with the bundles of sticks that await their turn at the oven. In the corner throughout the day you linger, mindful of the rooster’s crowing; if you have not already been snatched up by the child, who comes and makes you his hobby horse. You bring back, with the child who returns you, the straws you have swept up in the yard, and far more besides; the child is now joyous, but you have work to do. V You are the humble servant; but the house is held on your shoulders: you scold at the crack of dawn, while you strut impatiently to and fro, the idle dwellers who linger abed. And since you have stirred from your corner, the swallow remains in her nest; and when she starts to sing, already your swishing can be heard throughout the house. And the dawn lightens her skies, but first she washes and polishes them, just as you brighten your precious home. VI You are the humble servant, but you rule over the humble clean house. You threaten and scold; you teach that life is wonderful if it is pure. You teach, with your chaffing care  eroding stone and clay, that forever, to be pure, the glad soul is worn down. You teach, when consigned to a pyre not late in the day and without splendour, that more than that which you clean, he who is worn out is you!

The Earth is the Lord's, and it's Flatte

People don't seem to understand how much trouble I get into because I know the Earth is flat.
I have to sit in the room quietly most of the time, because if anyone else is present and the subject comes up, they generally get very cross and snippy and it's incredibly hard to talk any sense into them on this subject.
How do I know the Earth is flat?
More reasons that I can possibly remember, but here are a few:
It is plain and ordinary silliness to believe we live on the outside of a ball, especially a ball that is spinning at one thousand mph while spiralling around the sun at 66 thousand mph and charging through the galaxy at 483 thousand mph and simultaneously moving away from the purported big-bang event at 68 km/second. But that's what you believe if you accept the current science dogma.
Why is it silly? 
Well, while you could probably live on the top of a large ball without falling off too frequently, you clearly can't live on the side of one, much less the bottom.
Ah but gravity!
I'm sorry to have to mention this, but gravity refers to heaviness and, by extension, the solemn and dignified behaviour that is mostly lacking here in Birmingham. That other type of gravity, the one in the Sandra Bullock movie, is a made-up concept to allow the boffins to make their mad model of the so-called universe. 
I know Mr Newton noticed it when an apple fell on his head, but I would point out that apples have fallen from trees since the beginning of time without requiring any better reason than the fact that they are heavier than air.
Then there's the matter of water, which is always flat and, given that most of the Earth's surface is covered by the stuff, it follows that the Earth is flat. You simply cannot find a curved body of water anywhere (and many folks have tried).
On the subject of levelness, you might be surprised to learn that aircraft reach their cruising altitude and there they remain for many hours at a time, following a perfectly level course defined by the gyroscopes in their autopilot systems, never having to dip their nose to follow the curvature of that ball you were mentioning.
Then there is navigation, which was traditionally done using plain trigonometry, taking readings with a sextant that could not possibly work on a curved surface.
Let's think also about stars. If we exclude the wandering stars momentarily (aka "planets") the stars all rotate around a central axis above the North Pole and marked by Polaris or the Pole star. Their circular motion about this axis is perfect and unchanging, night by night and year by year, a matter that is clearly quite at odds with the notion of the multiple degrees of spiral motion at breakneck speeds that scientists claim for the Earth.
How far can we see? 
Well, if we lived on a ball having a circumference of approximately 25 thousand miles, as claimed, the scientists mention that the horizon is just under 3 miles away. They then wax lyrical about all kinds of refraction and stuff. The reason for this lyricism is that, despite the limitations of vision that would necessarily accompany life on the skin of a ball, we can actually see distances far in excess of 3 miles in various conditions, with extremes of up to 150 miles in certain parts of the world in very clear conditions over a calm sea. Simply put, this is impossible on a ball. We must consider the rate of drop, which is equivalent to 8 inches per mile squared, so, for example, a point 10 miles away from the observer on the ball shaped Earth would be just over 66 feet below the horizon, at 50 miles it would be 1600 feet below the horizon, while a point 100 miles away would be hidden by significantly more than one mile of curvature so we couldn't possible see any such distant place or object. But practical experience shows that landmarks observed over great distances are indeed visible, and, when observed across water, they are visible right down to the waterline, thus proving the wrong-headedness of the ball idea.
Another important indicator of our existence on a substantially flat Earth is that the horizon always rises to meet the eye level when we ascend, whether by climbing a mountain or taking a flight.  This would not occur on a ball of course, since rising from the surface would result in the horizon dropping away the higher we ascend. Check it out on some pics or the next time you take a flight. Of course we can see further as we ascend, but that distant horizon doesn't drop away from us.
Then there's the matter of plumb lines and levels: builders and architects must work in compliance with a level plane and the corresponding plummet. Although the land may rise and dip in accordance with local geographical features, surveying must always be based on a zero datum line, so a city such as London, which measures up to 80 miles east to west and more than 50 north to south is essentially constructed considering the same dead level. However, on the ball earth people are always harping on about, we must imagine that spirit levels placed end to end over a distance of, say, 50 miles, would either be extending into the air at one end, leaving a 1600 foot drop, or at both ends leaving 800 feet on each side, or the bubble would have to be slightly off centre on each one to allow them to follow the curvature. This is of course nonsense. Spirit levels can be placed end to end on flat surfaces, such as railway tracks, salt flats, Kansas or Norfolk, and discounting the difficulties of negotiating fences and stiles, hedges and furrows, they would remain perfectly true, mile after mile.
As for the plummet, well, on your ball you must accept that a man standing upright in Ipwsich is ... 

(continued on page 27) 

The Good Evening Path

I went for a walk again, with my scruffy black bag containing a bottle of water, a large text King James Bible (which I carry just in case), and some small stuff.

It's a nice walk and I generally do the same one, out of habit and obsession.

After a while, the road peters out in a shady lane with a few splendid houses as I approach the park. Greetings can start here, because anyone I meet is probably just walking for the sake of it. If I do catch someone's eye in this lead-in section, I say "Alright" or just smile and nod, with my lips tightly closed in a sort of conspiratorial grimace. I suppose. 

Then, I get into a proper path through the woods, and this is the Good Evening Path, because anyone I encounter along here is likely to qualify for "Good Evening" or, if they are younger, just "Evening", because ellipsis is fashionable.

I don't greet indiscriminately. Only walkers. Two weeks ago I met a couple of shifty looking men with scabbed faces and smokes. They looked as though they had some business to attend to, so I just nodded and even looked back a couple of times just in case. I didn't care to chat, also because they were two and I was alone, as always. Anyway, there weren't the "good evening" type of person - I could tell.

Caveman Prod and Christ Jesus

I chose my blogger name not because I believe in cavemen: I don't. Of course I understand that a man can live in a cave out of choice (and why not?), but I don't think there were ever any primitive communities of Neanderthals huddled together in the dark with stone tools and animal skins, other than in the imaginings of that silly and pernicious rascal: the creative writer.

So why did you choose it?

I looked across the room at Staunton, who had not lifted up his eyes from his cards as he spoke.

I just shrugged in reply. There was never any point trading words with Staunton, unless there was a fishing trip to organise or some sausages to cook, or at least plan for.

I turned back to the window.

I chose it, said I, because I used to live in Cave street. In a squat that we called "The Cave". I was a young man and they were happy times. Until it all spiralled out of control one dismal rainy morning.

Prod, you know, is what people used to call me when my name was Prodigal Son, which it was for a couple of years. I mean they didn't actually call me that or anything much at all, but I imagined that they might, in a moment of friendly benevolence, if we were ever in the business of tramping around a lake together and planning to cook some sausages and brew a cuppa.

Did you remember to bring the sugar?

"Ask Prod", would be the reply, because I was known to be thorough in such matters.

Also, back in those days, I would always have some tobacco, skins, herb, roach card, and a well primed Zippo. Because I was a regular smoker.

After a while I discovered I didn't need that stuff at all. It was Jesus Christ who told me: you don't need that stuff lad, saith He, you've got me now. He was right - of course.

A small church

So it turns out that after a lot of ferreting around, from unrestrained Hedonism to a destructive online cult with hangouts and journalling, the Humanists with their tea and biscuits, the Skeptics with their real ale, the Conspiracy people with their spliffs, and the New Agers with their potions, I have ended up attending a small actual church with an even smaller congregation. 

It's quite good, now that I have become a Christian (which I have... I was going to mention it sooner or later), to be able to go to a proper church without worrying about having to hold my hands in the air or attempt to sing along with Christian rock songs, following the lyrics scrolling on a big screen hanging over the stage like at a rock concert, because here, we sing the old favourites and keep our hands down at all times.

The hardest thing to understand, at first, was the quiet time, when we just sit in mainly silence, or so it seemed, for up to an hour. I used to practice my handwriting by copying out bible verses or read the bible silently. I thought it was odd, and I imagined that anyone chancing to come into the meeting from the street would feel quite uncomfortable, which of course they would.

But things aren't as bad as they first seemed, because it turns out that in the quiet time we men can pray aloud and speak the things that are on our mind if we so choose - I mean Biblical things of course, not fretting about whether or not to get a bloke in to fix the immersion heater and suchlike. So once I had plucked up the courage to say a few things it's been a bit hard to get me to shut up at all, because I like to ventilate my dentition and I often seem to  have something on my mind that requires utterance.

I have to be careful however, because of what James said in the third chapter of his book - and he's quite right of course: a wagging tongue is a dangerous member indeed. As my beloved mother-in-law used to say when someone had spoken out of turn (usually my father-in-law, who scarcely opened his mouth but to speak out of turn): e un bel tacer non fu mai detto, which is a sort of nonsense, meaning, loosely "never did the yearned for withholding of speech find utterance". So I'll take her cue and shut my pie hole.

Prod