Bolton Abbey – the ruins, stepping stones and river wharfe.

I walked across the stepping stones which was more scary than it looked!!

Adelson’s Shadow Illusion. The world is an illusion.

The world is not real. We make it up!

Adelson’s Shadow Illusion shows just how much our brains are making up.

Squares A and B are in fact exactly the same shades of grey. But because our brain expects them to be a checker board we do not see them as they are. Our brain makes it up.

Even when we are shown the reality the illusion still works.

Today’s Music to keep me SSSssSAaAaaNnnneeeee in Isolation – Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland

I’m going to immerse myself in Hendrix today. I shall think back to the three times I saw him play. A genius!!

To think that he only released 5 albums in his lifetime – three studio albums, 1 live album and 1 album of singles.

Poetry – I can hear them

I can hear them

I can hear them

I can feel them.

They speak to me.

With every cyclone,

Every flood,

I feel their anguish.

Not the people.

For they are the focus of attention.

They receive the aid and sympathy.

They look forlorn and hopeless.

They cry openly on camera.

They elicit the response.

The ones I hear and feel

Are the creatures

Swept aside and ignored.

Unheeded.

Unnoticed.

As if they were of no consequence

And did not matter.

Opher 3.4.2019

Every time I see the devastation in the wake of a cyclone or flood, a bushfire or drought, I think of the poor creatures who are caught up in it.

As the poor people are gathered up, fed, sheltered and looked after there is not a single thought for the creatures who were killed, maimed and had their lives destroyed. Nobody seems to care. But I do.

Poetry – Harbingers of Death

Harbingers of Death

We are the harbingers of death,

The purveyors of hate,

The disbelievers in life.

We mostly walk the earth

In benign denial.

We feign empathy and compassion

While disguising our true nature

Behind a veneer

Of civilised behaviour.

We sing, dance and love

And then we kill.

Opher 3.4.2019

Never has such a destructive species stalked this planet. The first sign of humans moving into a new area was always the extinction of all the megafauna. From giant otters, giant sloths, mammoths and daeodons there are so many fabulous creatures that modern people have never seen.

They no longer exist because we wiped them out. Behind the party going lover lies the mind of a callous killer.  

Inequality, Tax Evasion and the Obscenely Rich!!

We need some social justice!!!

Inequality, hammering the poor, desperate poverty – Tories laughing all the way to the bank!!

The Brexit Dividend!

People are beginning to wake up to the devastating cost of Brexit. Tariffs, red-tape, delays, rising costs, empty supermarket shelves, massive trade deficit, firms going under, rising costs, higher taxes………… all covered up by the Tory Brexiteers!! They hide it behind covid and huge borrowing!! It is bankrupting the country!!

The army is being brought in to drive goods, to work in A&E – they’ll be picking fruit and veg soon!!

The Corona Diaries – Day 536

No end in sight as I went through a cloudy day in Yorkshire. Partway into the morning the weather changed and it dropped five degrees! That didn’t stop me from going on my walk though – a daily five miles. It’s become an important part of my covid routine.

While out I watched a flock of fieldfares fly over. A joy. It is particularly dispiriting to find that the verges have been once again flattened and mowed into a dead brown wasteland. The young tractor driver responsible, who wasn’t getting paid to do it, mindless of the environmental damage, said that it looked a lot neater!!!

For fuck’s sake!! We are destroying nature on the altar of neatness!! Makes me want to scream. I did not hit him though!!

Back home I’ve been editing my Harper book, publishing my latest poetry book – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09G1HXZJW/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=Opher+Goodwin&qid=1631461004&s=books&sr=1-4 Visions From The Pits of Love and Despair, playing some Mothers of Invention and watching a bit of sport!!

I finally finished reading my Marcel Proust book (quite an achievement), nearly finished my John Cooper Clarke (hilarious and insightful), still dipping into my Jeremy Harding and am just starting reading my Brian Beck novel. Not much time for reading these days. Too busy writing and editing.

Meanwhile, out in Coronaland, the Tories finally start to slump in the polls. My hope is that once the bubble has burst they’ll descend at speed. There is a momentum about it. People are sheep. They take their cue from everybody else. Most don’t think for themselves and live in a perpetual state of ignorance. For some reason they really thought that a lying profiteering Tory millionaire from an overprivileged background cared a shit about them – it was jolly Boris. Maybe they are waking up to the fact that this ‘jolly Boris’ is in fact a lying, cheating, lazy, incompetent profiteer who has taken them all for a ride!! Once they’ve seen through him and his sleazy crew there won’t be any going back.

The Tories are in a spin as their popularity dives. Not surprising really as they have a two-pronged attack on the poor. Not only have they raised prices, put in a pay freeze, at a time when Brexit has caused prices to rocket, but they have cut benefits too! At the same time the profiteering billionaires are raking it in, Tory donors are getting multimillion pond contracts for sod all. Sleazy deals and tax loopholes. The rich have never had it so good!!

Brexit is causing absolute mayhem but the government is hiding it up with huge borrowing and covid. The truth will out!!

So the Tories have abandoned the idea of covid passports. Too unpopular. I can sense the panic. The tide is turning!!

They are bringing in booster jabs as quickly as possible. They are desperate to get things back under control.

Today there was another 29,173 new cases with another 156 deaths. It’s far from under control.

Hospitals are in a mess. They are bringing in the Army to help out in A&E!

They’ll need to recruit more soldier!! We’ve got half the army driving lorries to hide up the dire Brexit situation, we’ll have the army working in hospitals, soon we’ll have them harvesting from the fields!

Perhaps that was the big plan of Brexit? Put all the unemployed into conscription!!

Stay safe!! You’ll get your call-up papers soon!!

Visions From The Pits Of Love and Despair – Kindle Edition available now!

Commentaries on life, from a planet ruled by psychopaths and sociopaths, in a world of inequality, war, poverty and misery, created by us.
Commentaries on a planet of awesome beauty in a universe of wonder.
Written post Brexit and Trump, in the midst of a pandemic, in a country governed by extremist nationalists led by a clown – in a world on the brink of environmental catastrophe.