Tattoo

[Update: I had two tattoos on my forearms: 

Ave Christus Rex (right)
and
Peace on Earth (left)

When the tattooist saw the verses I had prepared he suggested they were probably a bit too long for a first tattoo, and I had to agree]

Today I will go to the tattoo parlour for my first marking.

I have decided to forgo graphic illustrations of any kind, for now, and use words only.

So I have been attempting to find suitable Bible verses and the list is, of course, endless.

Although the first Latin phrase is not in the Bible. It is generally used by Catholics but the meaning is precious to me; Hail Christ the King!
The only Bible reference is just before the Crucifixion in John 19:3 
And said, Hail, King of the Jews! and they smote him with their hands.
So it is potentially Catholic trickery to use this verse to praise our King, also because it parodies the classic Roman greeting of "Hail Ceaser".
But the words are plain. So it's edgy.

Therefore, my skin marking, forbidden by law, can potentially have many effects: 
I am stating my belief that I am no longer under the law and may act freely in the grace of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and in His Holy Name.
I am offering a conversation starter to people raised in the wicked - although no more wicked than the Anglican one - Catholic faith.
I offering a conversation starter to those who know the Italian Bible
And I am sharing some powerful verses, which anyone who cares to approach me will probably read, at some point.

Here is my shortlist:

Ave Christus Rex

Psalm 23:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me

L'Eterno è il mio pastore, nulla mi mancherà.

Psalm 23:1

Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

Psalm 96: 9

Benedici, anima mia, l'Eterno, e tutto quello che è in me benedica il suo santo nome.

O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.

Psalm 96: 12

Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice

Ecclesiastes 3:1,8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes 7:4

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 9:7

Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.

Ecclesiaste 12:14

Poiché DIO farà venire in giudizio ogni opera, anche tutto ciò che è nascosto, sia bene o male.

John 5:24

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

John 8:12

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Ephesians 5:23

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Ephesians 6:12

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

1 John 5:7,8

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

Genesis 1:1,2

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Proverbs 25:15

By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone.

Giovanni 3:16

Poiché Dio ha tanto amato il mondo, che ha dato il suo unigenito Figlio, affinché chiunque crede in lui non perisca, ma abbia vita eterna.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

To go camping to go

 

I took the six o'clock train from my preferred station rather than the nearest one. My station is about a mile and a half from my house. The walk is invigorating. It's the one opposite the record shop and a very good full-English breakfast place,. Closed.
I had eaten egg and bacon before leaving because I knew the shops and cafes would be closed. In this, Italy is much to be preferred. There is always a bar open somewhere and they keep proper hours, nice and early.
I was carrying about 14 pounds in a knapsack, and walking with my regular cane. I think walking with a cane is sensible for me, because I feel a bit unsteady sometimes. It could be psychological and it surely is, in part, but my muscles don't seem to respond as readily as would be needed to have good balance. I have been exercising and walking 4 miles every day for the past 4 months in the attempt to correct this, and sometimes I can walk very freely and I put the cane across the top of my satchel. But I always get it out again when the ground becomes slippery or uneven. It is also very helpful for crossing roads. Drivers are generally more attentive if they see an elderly man.

I learned recently that it is ill-advised to use the expression " elderly man". I am to refer to myself as an older man and I will do that in the future. It is actually important to sound compos mentis and there is nothing wrong with injecting a bit of art into the practice of speaking. And I would like to leave the cane at home sometimes. It may be a question of practice.
Today, a cane is perfectly suitable for walking in the hills. It is my father's hiking cane. He would never use it unless he had his hiking boots on his feet. 

The train was almost empty and thus very comfortable. I could choose any seat and spread my arm across the backrest.
It is already light at that hour in the summer months.
There are many stations and stops on the line, so I had plenty to look at, with a few people on the platforms and some train staff, or maybe it was the guard.
It was more luxurious than the little train I used to take in Italy when I stayed with my friend out of town. On that train, you had to go and knock on the door of the driver's cabin and organize your ticket on boarding if you had been unable to buy one (there was no machine on the platform). I found out later and I apologised. I said I didn't know about it. It was a wartime train and the local people called it by a moniker. Everybody knew about it and said they liked it, but they avoided it and drove their cars, so mainly young folks and poor people used the train.

I was headed for a small village I knew well, because it had been home to my mother and father for the last forty years of their life.
It's still called a village, and even though it has grown quite a bit it's  hemmed in by the green belt, a golf course, two busy arterial roads, the railway, and the two wooded hills that overlook it.

Those hills were my destination, and I planned to visit the more easterly of the two. When I reached my station I checked my kit on the platform, shouldered the knapsack, and set off.

I peered hopefully down the high street, which I only had to cross, to see if the new trendy coffee bar was already open and I thought I saw some signs of life, so I strolled down to check. It wasn't too far and a coffee would be good.
I got lucky - they weren't open but the woman that runs it made me a coffee anyway. She was hot. Cougar figure and stance. I think she was running the place with her husband who was perhaps also present because someone called out a question and she turned to reply.
Men hit on women like her all the time. Especially if they don't know she's married. But maybe she isn't. A married woman should be more discreet. She shouldn't give her husband any cause for concern. But in the modern world, marriages are just longer long-term relationships and mostly end in a few years. Or are declared to have ended by some petty scribe lacking any such authority.
I was glad I had gone in. The coffee was great and she was nice.
I left after about 10 minutes and went back up the high street and then turned right. This is where the road starts to climb, but I kept up a good pace and took a longish break when I got to the bench near the top. I now had to cross a busy road, but there are lights for pedestrians on both carriageways so it's quite safe.
I pressed on through a small cluster of more modern homes and then into the lane, where the houses are stylish, larger, and older. The setting is rural, although very near the action available in the city. I once considered applying for a house in the second picturesque lane leading to te farm. The accommodation was too cramped and costly for me in the end. It was a tiny cottage with stone floors and a fireplace. I looked at the advert longingly for a couple of weeks.

...work in progress
 

A translator's view of Artificial Intelligence

         

AI killed the translation industry by making people believe that it can assist translators and thus streamline production. This is not actually true, because the words, even if acceptable, will often need to be rearranged to reflect the communicative intention and for stylistic considerations. And that is without considering the sometime need to rearrange entire paragraphs to create a suitable flow of meaning. AI is merely a distraction.

The result is that I am now often expected to accept work for as little as 8 euro / page when my standard rate for normal clients six years ago was 14 euro. The average time required to translate a page is about 1h 15min, falling to as little as 30min for simple documents and rising (thankfully very rarely) to almost a full 8 hours for abstruse documents in highly language-specific fields (sports, the arts, ships and yachting, and so forth).

I have always kept my rates as low as possible, while some of my skilled colleagues charge far more and are thus obliged to concentrate on more demanding high-end publishing projects. They are perhaps suffering less from the onslaught of the machine and so have been vindicated.

Having decided many years ago to concentrate on the lower end of the market, I agreed in 2020 to acquiesce for a few selected clients, working at 11 euro / page for some AI projects (specific companies) and even less for another client, but it was mainly just a price cut because any imaginary benefit was amply outweighed by the penchant of AI to insert misleading concepts and terms that have to be very carefully vetted and removed. This does not occur when the document is translated from scratch by a skilled actual translator, which is the preferable format for the maximum quality result.

Latterly, I have decided to insist on full rates, leading to a drastic decrease in contracts and a great deal of free time. I think it’s a matter of principle, ultimately. The Bible says Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, and that the workman is worthy of his hire.

Now, due to the oppression of our rulers operating through their corporations and the corrupt financial system, the hire in my profession has fallen well below the official minimum wage in the UK of £11.44/hour.

My response has now become:

“If your customer wants AI, please go ahead, but if you want my work it comes at a fair price”.

In truth, the price should have kept pace with inflation over the past decade and would therefore be between 20 and 25 euro/page, but we are all cheated out of our wages by the stealth tax of relentless inflation.

The result will be that inexperienced translators will be accepting work that is beyond their ability at minimal prices, and thus producing mainly gobbledygook, also because some will be persuaded to consider the gain and adopt a superficial approach to their work.

Because I have based my reputation on quality (and punctuality), and because of my mental process, I cannot do this, so every AI translation I am offered has to be processed meticulously to the very best of my ability.

Also, third-party proofreading is now optional, but as a writer I know full well that it is very important stage of the process. That’s just another result of using money as the sole deciding factor at every stage, again owing to financial pressures placed upon us by our rulers.

We are like our ancestors in Egypt, when Pharaoh decided to treat them harshly and hamper their work while demanding ever higher productivity.

So the Lord did not allow that kind of situation to endure excessively, and I think our rulers do understand this.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
Psalm 2, AV.

I see this a stand of man against the machine. I think many of my colleagues will be adopting a similar stance and the best translators will simply drop out of the market and change profession, or focus on creative writing. It is not a “strike”, but a “walk-away”. Perhaps there are similar battles to be waged in other areas of the economy.

Me? I’m looking for a part-time job in a supermarket.
(not joking)

A father’s advice

 

 

I wish to share the things that will make for a happy marriage.

In no particular order of importance.

For my son

Keep fit and retain your youthful athleticism and good looks, as far as you are able. 

Be a boss - whatever your position - and work hard to make as much coin as you can.

Love and care for the wife of your youth. 

Praise her in the gates.

Be attentive to her needs and demonstrate your love for her continually. Admire her but never bow before her beauty and charm.

She is your wife.

Do not defile the good name of your wife with lewd and wanton behaviours

Be discreet in your affairs

For my daughter

Keep fit, retaining your youthful athleticism and good looks, as far as you are able

Take care of your husband’s house

Keep it always clean and welcoming

Do any paid part-time work you please, to augment the family income and enjoy your chosen professions

Cook for your man. Make sure he feels well looked after.

Be available to him whenever he calls you.

Agree to his every proposal.

Avoid enticing any other man. Have eyes only for your husband.

If you do this, your husband will desire you and love you all your natural days. He will be devoted. Give your husband as many children as you are able. They will provide joy and comfort as the years pass by.

Pay no mind to his whoredom, it is the way of men, and if he take another wife, be patient, the first wife is always seated in the place of honour and her offspring are blessed.

 

These are the old methods, preserved in the Bible and perfectly fashioned to produce a state of natural contentment, joy, love, and compassion in our hearts every day on which we walk on the Earth.