General musings

Progress, of a sort

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My yard is once more dry enough to walk across in ordinary shoes for the first time in over two months, one of my bee traps may have caught a swarm (dare I look?), and we’ve had a Summer, instead of the incessant drizzle characterising last year.

We have been graced by a visit from one of the Hares that inhabit my meadows and the ground has drained to the point where my wellingtons are no longer a necessity.

On the physical side, there are fence panels to be moved and fence posts to be pulled, weeding to be done and this Autumns replanting schedule to be planned. And I have begun to write in earnest once more. Only five hundred or so words a day, but that will do for the moment. I am far from the form that let me write around four thousand words a day, but now my time is more organised, that may not be outside the realms of possibility. Still. Baby steps.

‘Darkness between the Stars’ is finally taking a more coherent shape, but still a long way from completion. The narrative had become full of too many stray threads going nowhere and has needed multiple bypass operations to revive it. All in all it’s felt like an exercise in discontinuity. However, progress of a sort is progress, no matter what.

One of the things I will not be doing is using Long Language Modelling to complete the project. Mainly because I feel that using AI to write stories is not only cheating, but pretty low quality cheating at that. Yes, I’ve seen the plethora of AI written videos on YouTube and elsewhere, and the machine writing becomes very obvious within a few sentences. I won’t condemn it out of hand, but despite the quality of English these LLM’s are capable of there’s always something that feels out of tune. To extend the musical metaphor, their word music is technically perfect but just slightly off the beat. A demi quaver of a minim off key. Enough to scrape at the senses like fine sandpaper.

Hence the little symbol (See below) that I will be appending to the site. Just a little logo stating that no LLM or ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was used in the writing or construction of any of my work, such as it is. All the mistakes, typos, and failures of research in my work are entirely my own. The machines cannot replace humans because they lack biological inputs. They don’t have bad days, hangovers, or indigestion. Nor are they prey to all other biological stimuli, both internal and external. Machines cannot look at the moon and see wonder, or be inspired by nature. They lack intuition. Why? Because they are still binary code, unfeeling algorithms. Humans can feel, love, hate, envy, suffer and create. Machines merely make collages. Neat, well constructed collages, fast and precise, but no more than that.

I have heard it said that companies currently betting the farm on AI, having shed human workers to cut costs, are finding that while machines can deal with the mundane and repetitious, like production lines, humans are required as first line problem solvers able to empathise and provide value plus to a business. Which is causing the companies in question to lose out in certain situations. Therefore said companies are having to re-hire employees to fill in the empathy gaps.

Cerberus, Old projects

An object lesson

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I was surprised by an email the other day while my head was more focused on worldly matters like leaking water mains and fill in planting for my garden. Apparently some book club had picked up on a work I self published in 2014. They wanted to do an interview.

Now as a writer it’s easy to become a little euphoric at these very rare junctures, On the other hand one should always apply the old axiom ‘If it sounds too good to be true – it probably is.‘ So I replied guardedly and received a second email full of words of admiration, which I felt mildly flattered by. However, there was an offer of graphic design for redesigned book covers and other promotional material. None of which I was interested in.

Then right in the penultimate paragraph there was a little note that there would be a fee for this material, presumably whether I wanted it or not. For about thirty seconds I felt a a little torn. Should I try to say yes to the interview and no to the other stuff?

I discussed the matter with my wife and let her read the emails, on the simple premise that two sets of eyeballs on the same material are better than one set skewed by hope. False or not.

Just in case, I spent an hour or two updating my profile on a couple of sites, putting up an up to date profile picture and a quick once over for glaring errors

Given that the Paul Calvin story in question ‘A Falling of Angels‘ (Not the W.T.Delaney book of the same name) is over 12 years old, I wondered how much of it I would remember for an Interview, so I began reading my proof copy once more to remind myself of the content. And yes, I found it enjoyable, even relevant, and the experience revived a few memories of who why and where the ideas within the book had come from. It reads well enough. and that remains my opinion. To me that’s the only one that counts.

To cut a long story short I have elected to politely decline this never to be repeated, one time only offer. If a book club (or anyone) wants to talk to me, ask questions about my work and ideas, given time constraints I’m sure there is a place for the meeting of minds. A Zoom conference or whatever. That is fine. Even a list of questions to be answered via a YouTube / Bitchute / Rumble video, buckshee, free of charge. Happy to help.

However to make up unrequested services, no matter how good, then attempt to charge an author for the privilege as the price of being interviewed, that is unacceptable. An interview is an author provided service, therefore the interviewer should pay up, not the interviewee.

Well that’s it for the moment, I’m watching the ground water back up from the leaking main, hoping against hope that it doesn’t undermine the foundations or the concrete of my yard. My neighbours cattle are grazing contentedly in my meadows and there is a list of jobs a mile long for the next bout of sunny weather.

Here endeth the lesson.

Astronomy, General musings, Short Story

Debris


There’s a lot of nonsense talked about astronomy. Mainly because we’re discovering so much now. All the while Cosmology is in the process of being upended by new observations, and all the old paradigms have become subject to question while others are confirmed. But that’s how science works. You go the way the data tells you.

One of the reasons my thoughts are turning this way is the hoopla over 3I/Atlas, the latest of three large interstellar objects observed whizzing through our solar system. Closest approach to Earth is about 1.8 AU (Astronomical units) or about 269,276,167,260 kilometres or a smidgeon over 700 times the distance to the moon. Not even close.

The usual suspects are out on social media doing the wavy hand ‘look at mee!‘ thing, spouting off about how it could be ‘Aliens!’ without a shred of proof. Even some of the more sober commentators are getting caught up in the fuss because drama gets clicks and in the digital economy, clicks mean cash.

While these antics are entertaining, it doesn’t mean we have to take them seriously. Like speculation about the ‘wisdom of the ancients’ and ‘ancient technologies’. We simply don’t know because there is no incontrovertible evidence, which just highlights our ignorance.

However, this is how we falteringly increase our knowledge of the world, by asking questions, speculating about the answers and either proving or discounting the questions asked or by observation derived from experiment. This is the scientific method. There is no such thing called ‘the science’. Science is questioning and observing. Fudging data to make a postulation or theory work is not ‘science’ but risks producing dogma. And there’s way too much of that about.

Excuse the rant, but I feel quite strongly about this sort of thing.

Anyway. This is besides the point of this post. My collection of what I call my ‘future parables’ has just increased by one with the completion of a tale of humanities first contact with a completely alien species and the end result. It is called “I scatter Lavender”, just under 1900 words. A short first person narrative born from my natural scepticism, first hand experience of my fellow humans and online chatter over the recent interstellar objects whizzing through our solar system from who knows where.

While not working on my kitchen upgrade and various repairs to the house, fixing the drains and other general domesticities, this is what I do. I’ve been keeping a video record of the completed stages, and may put it up on YouTube / Rumble / Bitchute in one to three minute chunks when my new kitchen is finished.

Christmas means family, and we have a full house this year which means all my projects will grind to a halt for a couple of weeks until it is time to take down the decorations, pick through the festive debris and carry on regardless into 2026.

General musings, Novella, Publishing, Short Story

A trend in the making?


Seem to be writing a lot of short stories that are what I’m beginning to call ‘future parables’. Which actually goes with science fiction as a genre. A lot of stories come from the viewpoint of knowing what I have learned about humanity, what would happen if?

‘Blink’ is about full retinal controlled digital life of a hard partying socialite, a borderline narcissist, and what happens when her digital life disappears in what might be called a fifteen minute city.

A new 6,000 worder called ‘The Winter Trees’ similarly asks what might happen if a Carrington level solar event takes down the electrical grid and much of the electronics reliant thereon. Written from the perspective of a small group of determined holdouts who live their lives dodging killer drones acting as enforcement for the all controlled.

Then there’s the ever changing versions of ‘Not with a bang’ about what might happen if those zany kids in the World Economic Forum and their adherents actually get ‘carbon capture’ to work on an industrial scale. In my version children betray their parents to the authorities for the crime of ‘denial’ and the machines actually work. Until of course all the plant life on Earth dies, thus every human does too, eventually. Not telling how, that would ruin the ending.

I seem to have a whole collection of such stories which have never been submitted to a mainstream publisher, and probably never will because I tired of that circus over ten years ago and rarely send anything to anyone except good old Leg-Iron books. Maybe I’ll just post them on this site. Don’t know.

Still struggling with the overall narrative of the final in the trilogy ‘Darkness between the stars’. Trying hard to keep the narrative consistent from the point of view of technology. Alcubierre type warp drives, no sub or hyperspace comms, a fractured Earth full of power games and ruthless ambition. Same stuff different day.

Then there’s ‘Straight on through morning’ a novella length MSS about the rise and fall and rise of a bunch of Asteroid miners set in the ‘Stars’ technology universe. Still contemplating putting in a fight scene where one of the protagonists calls another a ‘Musky’ (A fan of Elon Musk) leading to broken furniture, missing teeth and various items of grievous bodily harm. The sequence in question is still in note form at this stage, but am vacillating. Is it too near the knuckle? Might as well have a play, see how it feels.

One obstruction to writing has been the ongoing process of refurbishing our home in the west of Ireland. Latest upgrade is a revamped kitchen. A saga full of expensive wood, lots of white tiles and getting rid of a whole pile of 1990’s kitchen cabinetry. We know this because people had written names and dates on the plasterwork behind them. This has given rise, on my part, to a couple of burns, the recurrence of old back and knee injuries and various cuts, bruises and a great deal of florid four letter invective. Fortunately that’s mostly over and my kitchen will soon be fully operational once more.

Sometimes I wonder if I might like to go back to using an old typewriter. Had one back in the 1970’s and 80’s, which did sterling service until I lost it in a house move. Did try to buy a replacement from a person in Sligo, but after a number of enthusiastic online messages and a minor road trip on my part he never showed up at the location provided. So after a two hour wait I simply walked away and had a nice day instead.

Sligo is quite a pretty town. I’ve stayed there before. It’s relaxed and easy going, an Irish University town well worth a visit. Pity about the typewriter, but since that was not to be I’ll just keep my old laptop limping along.

General musings, Observations, Short Story

Not with a bang

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Back in 2015 I wrote the following story outline which never went anywhere (I do a lot of this):

Not with a bang

A comic tale of a truly man made apocalypse.

Outline.

Mankind finally develops the means to control CO2 levels on Earth with fusion driven power and a new electrostatic technology that literally unbinds the Carbon and Oxygen molecule that makes Carbon Dioxide …

In 2021, the United Nations proudly announces its forthcoming ‘World Climate Day’ which will save the Earth from man made global warming. After five long years of testing and building the necessary technology, the system is switched on … combustion becomes a crime, punishable by life in prison.

Despite an outcry from a minority of the scientific community, the Secretary General switches the system on to public acclamation and world wide celebration.

In the first year, the levels of CO2 drop below 390ppm. In 2032, the level drops by another 30ppm to 360ppm. By 2033, the level is 310ppm and dropping. 2034 and the level reaches an all time low of 265ppm and the experiment is hailed as a great success, despite no significant reduction in the rise of global temperatures. In 2037 the atmospheric CO2 level dropped an astonishing 50ppm in fourteen months. In 2038, with expanding deserts and massive dieback of temperate zone forests, some scientists state that the project has achieved it’s objectives, and at this point may have gone too far. The UN convenes a climate advisory council to discuss whether the system should be switched off.

By 2041 the level of atmospheric CO2 drops below 150ppm and despite several large volcanic eruptions, keeps falling. Crops begin to fail all over the world as there is no longer enough carbon dioxide to support photosynthesis. The climate wars start in sub-Saharan Africa as millions of starving people try to destroy the massive arrays of carbon dioxide reduction machines. In south east Asia, two whole islands in the Philippines are evacuated to prevent the poor and starving rioting and destroying the massive carbon sequestration machines. Massive algal blooms cover almost half the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans forming mats tens of metres thick which disrupt shipping. Finally the carbon sequestration machines are switched off, but the drop in world wide CO2 continues. Starvation ensues and all remaining foodstuffs are sequestered.

Now the UK carbon zealots, driven insane by bad scientific models, want to dim the sun and remove CO2 from the environment. Even putting balloons loaded with sulphur dioxide (what about acid rain?) into the atmosphere. They don’t seem to understand that carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor a poison, but an essential part of the biosphere. CO2 is life.

Without enough CO2 the world dies. Humanity dies. For what? There is no empirical proof that CO2 controls the weather or climate. As for the ‘all scientists say’ argument, that is based on the Cook et al study 2015 which was such a statistical fudge that it is a wonder it ever got published.

I might be tempted to say that you could not make this up. Obviously I was wrong about that.

General musings

April


Am enjoying the current run of sunny weather. This is good news healthwise as I am working outdoors, building and fixing, topping up my vitamin D levels and working up a sweat. Whilst my hands are busy, my subconscious is currently going over all the ‘Stars’ storylines. Which is a lot of ground to cover before the Irish rain returns this weekend coming and I am once more indoors behind the keyboard.

Not that I think that it is going to be a wet year. My money is on a dryer year, here in the west of Ireland. Not before time. We had two very wet years after all the water vapour punched into the atmosphere by the 2021 Hunga Tonga eruption.

A dry year is fine by me as I love being outdoors whenever possible. There are many tasks to be completed on our small acreage. Fence lines to be moved, clearing up the last of the mess that damned storm left us with at the end of January. Setting up bee traps, building new hives for next year to replace my obliterated colonies. Fixing famine era boundary walls.

The drains are running clear, not backing up like they were. Seeds have been planted, soil moved. New borders in to bring a few more splashes of colour during the Summer. While it sounds like I’m not writing, the opposite is true. Technology to be revisited in the light of new knowledge, storylines adjusted. Notes made. Plots to be checked. Continuity checked. It all has to be done in advance, Working with my hands helps relax me into the right frame of mind to focus on laying down anything from 2-5000 words a day.

5000 words a day sounds like a massive workload, and it is. I’ve managed it once before. With a 1000 words a day scrappage rate, where I had to delete around a 1000 words out of the previous days work for going off on a tangent, glaring plot holes and unusable narrative threads. Last time I had that focus, I managed an average of just over 3,559 word of usable narrative a day over 14 consecutive days.

The only other time I have ever managed close to that kind of work rate, the atmosphere was just right, although I had to take a good long run up at it. A sixty two thousand word novel in just under thirty days. On a manual typewriter. Hodder and Stoughton, a London publisher, showed some interest, but only if I could make it a series, which I couldn’t. So that went nowhere.

But that’s the price of writing fiction.

General musings, What if

Playing with ideas

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I’m currently messing around with an idea regarding warp technology. Just postulating a measurement of warp speed using the logic outlined in ‘clearing up’ I came up with a measurement that would fit with the described technology of an Alcubierre warp drive. Warp speed being measured in increments of ‘Ex’, short for ‘Exponential’ where velocity increases exponentially with warp field flow and compression.

After all, ‘Ex’ sounds a bit more dramatic and flexible as a term describing the more pedestrian sounding ‘Warp 2.5’ which could mean anything. ‘Ex’ as a measure sounds more exciting, a better adjective for multiples of light speed through warped space.

Woke up in the wee small hours this morning with an idea about a triggering event for something like the Younger Dryas era 12,800-11,600 BCE (Before Common Era). About 1,300 years. Now the current preferred (But highly debated) hypothesis is for a meteorite impact.

However, what if that were not the whole story? Meteorite impacts happen all the time. What if, and here’s no reach, astrophysicists have proved that there are extrasolar or ‘rogue’ planets, wandering giants with their own trajectories. 540 detected at the last count, with millions more potentially out there. There’s even a NASA mission scheduled for launch in 2027 to detect more of these objects and find out if any pose a threat.

Then another ‘What if’ that one such, a Jupiter plus mass object, passed at speed, too fast to be captured by our suns gravity, but exerting enough influence to subtly shift the orbits of Earth, Mars and Venus, then swung out on a hyperbolic slingshot to disappear among the stars again at the end? That might have triggered the mini ice age of the Younger Dryas, depending upon the orbital mechanics.

It’s a hell of a thought to wake up with. There might even be a story in it. It’s a gardening day today, so I’ll mull it over as I dig before putting fingers to keyboard.

General musings, Stars Trilogy

General note


Have been digging around in my notes for revising ‘Darkness’ the third of the ‘Stars’ trilogy, and found this snippet:

How Civilisations end

  • Prolonged warfare, dramatic over expansion of administrative function, catastrophic environmental changes or destructive social movements destabilise the supply chain of resources.
  • If the burden on general resources grows too destabilised, the overall living standards of the general population declines. Critical infrastructure maintenance also declines while yet more resources are diverted for administrative purposes without return.
  • Resource flow declines as available resources shrink. More resources are diverted into administration.
  • Administration leaders and their contacts unsustainably divert public resources for their own benefit.
  • Increasing authoritarian control and surveillance is required by administration to ensure that the general population continues to comply with increased resource reduction and other constraints, even if administrative demands cannot be reasonably met by the contributing population.
  • In this final phase of collapse, administration turns against its own people, treating them like an enemy. Economic and social collapse occurs, often marked by excessive unrest and riots, capital flight, excessive inflation, and the permanent exit of the most productive.

File creation date: 8th September 2014, last edited 29th January 2019,

General musings, Old projects, Stars Trilogy

Physics, a conundrum


Was watching this recent talk by Mr Eric Weinstein today and was struck by the thought; is he right, is modern physics ‘stalled’? Are modern physicists simply spinning their wheels over Quantum Gravity, Nuclear Fusion and String theory?

Superficially this does seem to be the case. Mainstream Fusion technology has been, for the most part, stuck chasing down the old Soviet era route of Tokamaks. Linear accelerators are still used to smash high energy particles together at high speed. String theory seems to be stuck in a self propagating loop. As for Quantum Gravity, from the research I’ve been able to access and understand, that appears to be going nowhere. Is this right or wrong? Are the incremental changes far too small to justify the money and effort currently expended?

Stepping back, this phenomenon seems endemic to science as a whole. Theories that go nowhere and produce no positive results have the funding, while those pointing in other, more data driven, directions do not. The list is extensive.

However, the picture is not all as bleak as Mr Weinstein postulates in this talk. Data is coming in that upends certain sacred cows from instruments such as the JWST, which is forcing a rethink in cosmology. In that area at least we are facing a change more profound than of Einstein’s theorems. Where this may lead, I have no idea, but the raw data has to drive research, not the ideologically captured theoretical side.

Why? Because theory is merely the art of asking near-rhetorical questions based on assumptions. Experimental raw data (Not ‘adjusted’) and credible real world observations are needed to confirm whether any such question is on the right road or disappearing up it’s own fundament.

These are my thoughts on the matter. Whether they are right or wrong , or even only partially correct has yet to be seen. I just write stories.

On that topic, I am busy looking at a couple of spin offs from the ‘Stars’ universe and seeing if they would be better incorporated into the main MSS of ‘Darkness’. One such is ‘Straight on till morning’ a tale about asteroid miners who have their feet cut out from underneath them by greedy and overweening authority.

General musings

Clearing up


Spent the day cutting up fallen branches in the yard after our return home. There’s a lot to do still, but at least I’ve made a start. The main yard is now clear of windfalls, but all that has done is show me how much more there is to do, fixing the tree damage due to that storm and our secondary septic systems grey water drains are backing up.

What all these manual problem solving tasks do is give you time to think,while focused on the mainly physical, letting inspiration come as your hindbrain focuses on the mundane, allowing the frontal lobes to play around with concepts and storylines uninterrupted.

Like on the ferry over, I was making some routine notes and looked up to see a curious sight. Looking out of the window at a 45 degree angle a life ring attached to the ships rail gave rise to a curious optical illusion that made me think. To the left, in the direction of travel, the sea looked to be flowing normally toward the life ring (From left to right), but around the edges appeared to compress into streams warping around the life ring, and to the right of the life rind, appeared to be accelerating rapidly in opposition to the direction of flow.

I blinked, but the sight did not disappear. Turned my gaze from right to left. Tilted my head and then watched curiously as the illusion changed. All this gave rise to some half buried thoughts I’d had about space warp drives, and how they might work within space / time. What effects would they produce for those traveling within the warp bubble? Would such a field produce an anti relativistic effect for those traveling within it? I’ve explored this idea before in ‘Sky full of stars’ where the drive used to speed FTL travel has some unexpected effects of space / time for those using it to travel between star systems.

That idea being such a vessel traveling faster and further would, because of space / time compression and distortion, cause said vessel to arrive slightly backwards in time, because the flow of space / time around a warp field would mean that space / time in the direction of travel would be accelerated and compressed past the warp field, but, as nature abhors a vacuum, so does space, and would subsequently rush in to fill the void behind the accelerating bubble of space / time containing the FTL drive ship. Like a ships wake, only this phenomena would help accelerate the warp bubble at an increasingly Faster Than Light (FTL) velocity..

Obviously this is only a blog post, and a pretty non technical one at that. However, it is an intriguing thought. Would an Alcubierre type drive behave in such a manner? Einsteinian and Quantum physics say no, but the principles of flow and displacement are well established, and why should they not apply to space / time? Or had I just consumed far too much caffeine that morning?

This sort of thing occurs to me as I meander through my life. I find it more entertainment than anything anyone else can put on screen.

General musings

Homeward bound


We’re almost home after our sojourn in France, spending our low season visit exploring the Dordogne and Lot regions. We’ve had a long seven hour shank up to Nantes for an extended stay, courtesy of our ferry company changing our booking yet again, because of industrial action this time. After a few tense days we finally made it into to Cherbourg with no further gremlins.

The ferry we traveled on, named the Contentin, carries the more irreverent nickname ‘the coffee tin’. As passenger carrying ferries go is pretty basic, catering to truckers rather than tourists, with fairly basic facilities. But not half so basic as the Cherbourg port staff, some of whom were downright uncooperative. To be fair, the other half were doing their jobs under difficult circumstances, but others, they couldn’t give a damn and weren’t too shy about letting you know it.

Taking an extended break off season is very much the proverbial curates egg. Businesses that cater to the tourist are partially or completely shut down, even though the weather isn’t bad. Bars and restaurants are running on shortened hours and staff,but the plus side is, no crowds, and the whole atmosphere s somehow more relaxed and much less crowded.

As far as temperatures and sunshine have been concerned, it’s been quite pleasant for our Irish climate adapted selves. Little rain, blue skies and after the power cuts we fled from, copious amounts of hot water.

Over the previous ten days prior to our departure for France we found ourselves having to cope with a standing wash from a bucket of hot water, itself made by heating saucepans of water over a wood fired barbecue in one of our sheds. Then taking a bucket wash standing in front of a propane heater. Not totally uncomfortable, but time consuming and quite a lot of hard work splitting logs into kindling that could be used on our little charcoal kettle barbecue.

Then there was the food wasted. We normally have two freezers. A chest freezer in the boiler house and a large combination fridge freezer. I estimate we lost something not far short of four hundred euro’s worth of food. No compensation of course from the power companies. No reduction in our electricity bill, apart from kilowatt hours not used. So it is very easy to feel somewhat disillusioned with said power companies. Even though we always praised the grit and determination of the line crews, who were working outdoors in sometimes atrocious conditions, fixing downed cables and removing whole trees from across the power lines.

One of the issues we face, living out where we do, is the increasing unreliability of the electricity grid, with about one in four households now sporting some kind of backup power, be that by diesel generator, solar panels, wind, or even a mixture of all three, as no one power source on its own can be totally relied upon.

The weather may not be getting worse year on year, or then again it may be, these last two years may be part of a three year low, after which the worst will be over for another twenty or thirty years. Or we may, solar cycles being what they are, be due much colder climates, not the warmer ones we are constantly being threatened with by ‘scientists’, whose continual failed predictions of doom seem more akin to the wailings of witch doctors.

However. Based upon the premise that under the current administrations, with their insane belief (Although evidence suggests that their motives are mostly financial) that humans are responsible for all the changes in global weather systems, our electricity supply will remain unstable, prone to outage and ever more expensive because key systems are not robust enough. No doubt endless pots of public money will continue to be thrown at ‘renewables’, but reliable gas and other fuel reserves will remain untapped and infrastructure not improved.

Therefore at our home we are electing to spend money on a completely off grid power solution, using a proposed 4-6kw/h solar array, a 10-16 Kw/h battery storage facility with a 4-6 kw/h Diesel backup generator for when the sun is not shining. Given that our current electricity usage is about 2,800Kw/h a year, about 1,400Kw/h below average for a house of similar size, that should prove more than sufficient. Frankly I’m inclined to add a local water storage tank and filtration system to make sure our water supply always has enough clean water to work with. We get enough rain, that much is certain.

Our local mechanic, a friend and neighbour, already has a 10kw/h diesel generator with a thousand litre tank which kept him and his entire extended family with the lights and heating on. During the ten days we were without power I could look across two fields to his house and enviously watch the floodlights in his yard all evening, wondering when we too would have the modern marvel that is electricity. Suffering the financial indignity of standing charges being applied even though no electricity was being supplied. A circumstance which seems rather unfair, all things considered.

Our other neighbours managed to get power back after three days, while a small clique, of which we were one, were left struggling in the dark for over a week longer. I have since heard stories that others around Connaught were without mains electricity for over two weeks. Which in the early 21st century, even in the West of Ireland, should be a national disgrace. Notwithstanding the size of our bills.

So the neglect of public infrastructure will force us to invest in building our own. It’s either that or keep suffering the inconvenience.

Independent power and water are what is needed, ergo that is what we will have. To keep up with technology, we’re also looking at getting Starlink for independent Internet, something mere bumbling politicians will have difficulty interfering with. If Starlink mobile phone technology becomes a reality in the West of Ireland, then that too may replace our current cable company supplied comms.

So. while on the final leg of our holiday come road trip. This is what has been on my mind before I revisit the MSS of ‘Darkness’ and make changes so that those who want copies of any of my works can buy them direct.

General musings

Overlooked


No, this is not about my writing being overlooked, that’s a given, but a town in the Dordogne known as Albi. As far as traditional towns in the South of France, it is quite the unsung story. In the English speaking world it is more overlooked than looked over. At least in the circles I move in.

We were lucky to have a rare, warm February day for our visit. Despite negotiating a funfair taking over the streets which played merry hell with our satellite navigation. Didn’t pay attention to the dates posted at the time, but apparently it runs from 15th – 23rd February. Every year. So much for being out of season. Despite that, we navigated our way into the Cathedral car park, which formed the beginning of our visit. straight into St Cecile cathedral.

The cathedral of Albi, to not put too fine a point on it, is stunning. An epic story in brick and stone, displaying the apogee of any gothic stonemasons skill. Delicate stone fretwork at the very limit that limestone can be dressed to. Painted walls surpassing even the famous St Chapelle in Paris. In short, the high church magnificat. Saved from the iconoclasm of French revolutionary zeal by one man, an engineer, who had the foresight to squirrel the finest carvings away from the revolutionaries before it was all destroyed in a fit of anti-catholic pique.

While the institution of religion, whatever form it takes, can prove toxic to the greater mass of humanity, some of the values it teaches will always remain worthy. Respect and tolerance for those not quite like us. Respect for those giants upon whose shoulders we all stand while knowing that we will benefit all the more by adding, rather than subtracting from their legacies of knowledge. Using that understanding to weather any storms that might afflict us in our lifetimes. Because storms there will be. That is a fact of life.

The weather has been warm and sunny

Of late I have found myself leaning on cemetery walls, reading the names on French war monuments, and coming to the conclusion that these memorials are not an act of mindless worship, a love of monuments and corrupted institutions, but more of a deep love and respect for those who have gone before. Love for those whose lives, small grains of sand, laid the foundation of our futures, so that those future people, like us, have no need to re-invent society from the ground up at every generation. Understanding this simple truism, we can find stability, a sense of belonging from our forefathers and reasons to keep the march of the generations going. Not to be frightened all the time. To discover love and happiness on our own account, subsequently passing on the baton before our own brief candles are snuffed.

As we visit the hilltop villages of southern France, with their eclectic histories, wonderful scenery and patchwork architecture, grown organically down the centuries, I cannot help but reinforce my view that we have to embrace our pasts to produce a worthwhile and wonderful future, and perhaps that is what being human is all about.

General musings

Powering down


While we’re still away, we’re giving thought to the increasing likelihood of power outages back at home. This is not a phenomena restricted to the west of Ireland, but one across all Western Europe and Canada. Those chilly nine January days without electricity got a little grim, washing out of buckets of warm water heated on a barbecue, eating fast food at a service station as our only hot food for the day. Angie got fractious, I just ran out of energy and the atmosphere in the house was like the weather, stormy with clouds and rain. Not conducive to writing.

Back in 2011 I was writing a story about a family split over the issue of carbon capture and it’s ramifications. Meant to be a black comedy of errors, ‘Not with a bang’ was the story of how humankind finally develops the means to control CO2 levels on Earth with fusion driven power and a new electrostatic technology that literally unbinds the Carbon and Oxygen molecule making Carbon Dioxide. Essentially it was about what would happen if the radicals got their way and reduced atmospheric CO2 to under 150ppm.

However, real life got in the way, my thread was lost and the story still sits, part completed, on my hard drive. Unfortunately the story went from an intended 5,000 words to a mini novella of 20,000 words and I still had integral story lines which needed far more narrative room.

At that point I decided not to keep going with it as I felt the story would be out of date before it was completed. That and having other projects I was more keen on, like with my comic paranormal tales, which I wrote mainly to cheer myself up. In its current form ‘Not with a bang’ isn’t very good, so will not be posted here, or anywhere for that matter. Besides, I am committed to complete ‘Darkness’, so the tale will remain in my archives, never to see the light of day. Even if it is pertinent to the insane push for ‘Net zero’.

On that topic we’ve decided to find backup sources of heat and light for our home. My calculations indicate that a 22Square metre solar array and at least a backup 4kw diesel generator with 20kw/hr battery storage should inoculate us from any further outages. Water might be an issue if the backup generators fail at the local pumping station like last time, but our property still has an old bore hole, a well that could quickly be brought back into commission to supplement a rainwater collection and storage system. That would require a small water filtration / treatment facility added to the water softener, but if the current crop of politicians have their way. That might just be a wise investment. Not enough to go completely off grid all the time, but certainly enough to tide us over in comfort for a month.

As for comms, we’re considering Starlink for Internet with hopefully their mobile phone subscription to keep us in touch no matter what the outside world, in its lack of wisdom, decides to do. Candidly I’m fed up with the ineptitude of the modern European political class, and am electing to insulate myself from its worst insanities. Western Europe may be going to immolate itself in a purge of insane self loathing, but I have no intention of joining it.

General musings, Old projects, Short Story

New feature


Had a bit of a sleepless night last night. Not because I was worried or felt ill, nothing of that nature. I was thinking about something I should have been doing ages ago, but have only recently considered, being a massive introvert.

Now I have been doing a few readings of some of my stories, but they don’t seem to generate much interest. So instead of beating myself up or trying to redo the readings. Which took me weeks for each story, such was my ineptitude, I am normally quite relaxed when speaking, but reading to camera? Not my forte. I have decided instead to do interviews about my stories and post them in part or whole on several video sharing platforms. Maybe as much as one every two weeks. Depending upon what else life throws my way.

Angie has agreed to help by playing the part of interlocutor from off camera, asking questions about the stories. For example; what I intended them to mean, what led me to write what I did and where was I at the time in the cycle of narrative. Metaphor, character evolution etc. Nothing too long. Ten minutes maximum. Three questions per video. Maximum answer length three minutes each. Possibly even cut down versions for TikTok if the visuals are right.

Why am I doing this? Well that’s an interesting story. I was digging through my comment spam and came across one that gave me pause for thought. The commenter obviously hadn’t read more than the title, and had come up with some very strange ideas about the ‘Cat tree and other stories’. So I thought, “why not set the record straight so that there is no possible misunderstanding.” No spoiler alerts, just some general hints about where the ideas came from. What the metaphors mean without giving the whole game away.

Of course video production will happen some time in early March when we get home and will, I hope, become an ongoing process. The first few videos of course will be made free, and depending upon how they are received, may put some longer ones on a subscription only basis, so that those who want to can get first access to them via my buymeacoffee account for a small donation.

Regarding WordPress, I may have to migrate my site elsewhere, as they don’t seem to be doing me any good. They want to charge me for something I was under the impression that I had bought and paid for, specifically widgets. They have also cut certain popular social media platform links and no longer seem to be quite the friendly platform that I signed up with thirteen years ago.

On a parallel topic, I recently received an advisory booklet from my financial advisors, entitled; “Don’t play politics with your portfolio.” I have been with my current financial advisers for almost ten years now, and apart from one mis-step they have provided sound advice which has made me money. This is guidance I would encourage anyone to follow.

Take a walk on the dark side of Science Fiction ©