We can!! – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’

Posted on by Opher

So where are all those Punk kids that came round my house that day? Are they all boring adults? Are they still out on the edge? Have they still got the passion? Did they burn out and drop in?

Is there any purpose to this youthful rebellion and angst? Is it inevitable that we grow up and become boring adults caught up in the rut of making a living?

Where’s the wonder?

Where’s the awe?

Where’s the drive to grab it by the ears and wrench life’s head off?

Where’s the fury?

Where’s the desire?

Where’s the spirit that says ‘Fuck It’ every time you see something wrong!

Where’s the will to believe that all us human beings are not fuck-ups, we can learn, we can get better, we can put it right!

We don’t have to be vicious, superstitious greedy bastards!

We can share!

We can learn to live with each other!

 

FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

WE CAN LIVE ON THIS PLANET WITHOUT DESTROYING IT, EVERY LIVING THING THAT BREATHES (AND OURSELVES IN THE PROCESS)!

WE CAN!

 

I KNOW WE CAN!

11.11.01

Farther from the Sun – the novel

Posted on by Opher

A mosaic of a novel, a memoir, an homage.

My father was born in 1922. I was born in 1949.

We have different values, different lives and ideas.

How far apart are we?

How much light did he shed?

What are our legacies?

This tells the story.

My new novel – Farther from the Sun – is now available in paperback.

It is a mosaic of a novel – part anecdotes, part commentary, part homage, telling the story of two lives and a relationship. A commentary on life and values.

Farther from the Sun – now available in Kindle

Posted on by Opher

There are no rules.

My latest novel ‘Farther from the Sun’ is now available in Kindle.

It is a mosaic of a novel – a series of anecdotes, commentaries, memories, thoughts and feelings that gel together to form a picture.

The title is the play on words that contains the content of the book.

I wanted to tell my story of a relationship with my father from memories, impressions and thoughts. I wanted to illustrate my own life and how dissimilar and yet similar we were.

This is a novel. It tells a story.

He was born in 1922. I was born in 1949. He fought in the war. I grow up in the sixties. In many ways we could not be farther apart. In so many ways we are so similar. I sometimes feel his eyes looking out through mine.

It is now available In Kindle digital version.

In the UK

In the USA

In India

In Canada

Or from your local Amazon.

Falling down a cliff – extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Happiness is when you are completely crazy and don’t know what the fuck is going on.

3.11.01

 

You have probably seen a film with the guy hanging off the cliff facing death and the whole of his life goes before his eyes. It is a recurring theme.

I’ve hung off a cliff.

Liz and I went on holiday illicitly, camping in Devon. Wow. I have a photo of her in our campsite. We pitched the tent between three dry stone wall of an old derelict barn. A most convenient campsite – sheltered and private. I was taking a photo and she was looking sexy and peeling her bikini top down. Incredibly, just as I was about to take the shot, a middle-aged couple walked past the front and Liz jerked the top up with an indignant look. That’s what I shot. It is a wonderful photo of her looking indignant.

Later we walked along the beach at Lyme Regis and there were fossils to be found. I’ve always loved fossils. I went back for a trowel and hammer and started digging in the blue lias shale, hoping to uncover a plesiosaur or an ichthyosaurus or two. At very least I wanted to find a nice full pyrites ammonite for Liz as a memento. In my usual manner, I became quite obsessive, particularly when I could not find what I wanted. All I was able to uncover were lousy flattened imprints. I wanted a good solid bronzed ammonite. I knew there was one in there. It had to be remarkable enough to impress Liz.

Liz sat on the beach in the sun. I became engrossed in digging in the shale and bashing open rocks. I had this notion that the best ones were higher up the layers in the cliff so I began working my way up the cliff face. The shale was very crumbly but I managed to secure footholds and handholds. I was hammering the trowel into the shale with the hammer so I could use the trowel as a piton for a handhold. Before long, without realising it, I had worked my way up to near the top.

I had just hammered the trowel in, when one foothold crumbled. I scrambled around with my foot to find another without success. Blue lias is like dried mud, layers of dried mud. It is very flaky. As I was feeling around with my foot the other foothold crumbled away. I was now high up the cliff clinging on to an embedded trowel and a handhold. I didn’t panic. It was all right. I had to get a new purchase in the lias, that’s all. It was OK. I looked down and it seemed a long way down to the rocks on the beach. Liz was not looking. I scrambled around with my feet but could not seem to find a crevice to get my toes into. The cliff was sheer and my arms were tiring. Then my handhold gave way and I knew I was in trouble. I was left hanging by two hands from the handle of the trowel and no matter how much I scrambled around I could not find a foothold. It was a matter of time. The trowel started slowly slipping out. I have to report that my life did not go through my mind, only a sense of foreboding accompanied by an exclamation or two.

The trowel finally came out and I went downwards.

Somehow I leaned into the cliff and clawed at the face with my nails and toes like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I crashed down the cliff and hit the bottom along in the midst of an avalanche of debris. Liz screamed.

When the dust had settled I stood up virtually unharmed.

I have a photo of two long gouge marks down the cliff, made by my feet and clawed hands as I clawed at the cliff on the way to the beach. I escaped with ripped nails and multiple lacerations and bruises over arms, hands, belly and legs. Nothing too spectacular.

I laughed it off. It could easily have been a lot worse.

3.11.01

 

Happiness is the feeling you get when you survive something unscathed that could have come out a lot different.

3.11.01

The start of the wild life – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Happiness is freedom to do what you want!

3.11.01

 

Looking back I can see that my wild life started when I was fifteen. That was the year I hitch-hiked in France with my mate Foss. We spent the entire summer camping out the back of a Youth Hostel. It was an eye-opener – different food, culture, experiences and freedom. We had to cook, shop and clean up after ourselves. There were girls, wine, cheese and bread. I was adopted by some older Hungarian girls, had a Scottish girlfriend and was befriended by an enormous German guy who adored the Stones album I had brought with me. I made friends with the French guys, discovered yoghurt, and had a

It was also the year that Foss also took me to the local Walton Hop for my first taste of live Rock Music.

The Walton Hop was a notorious dive. It was the haunt of the Walton and Hersham Teddy Boys. There was a knife-fight in the carpark outside the gig that first night. We edged around a baying mob (mainly girls) who were wanting blood as two teds with flick-knives circled and slashed at each other.

The first band I saw was the British Birds who had Ron Wood on guitar. They had the hair, waist-coats and Chelsea boots. I just had to have some of those Chelsea boots. They were loud and raucous with synchronised beat and guitars. They even had someone turn the lights on and off in time to the music like some primitive light show. It was incredible.

Even more incredible were the audience. It was a bit of a time-warp to the fifties. Bottles and glasses flew through the air. Groups of Teds stood around the dance floor looking hard, with their greased hair, siddies, drape jackets with fur trim and brothel creepers. The girls grouped together with their beehive hairdo’s, full skirts, petty-coats and ankle socks. Some couples danced wildly, mainly jiving, spinning and throwing the girls around so that their skirts billowed out showing their knickers. One of them noisily screwed a very blousy looking girl against the wall on the landing of the stairs up to the gallery while a group of his friends stood around them shouting and clapping and egging them on. She looked completely disinterested throughout, chewing gum and looking bored while he thrust away under her lifted skirts. All quite a incredible to a fifteen-year-old lad. Some might have been put off by the experience but for me, it was incredibly exciting.

The next band I saw was Them with Van Morrison. They didn’t jump about quite so much and I remember being a bit disappointed at that. But they did stay behind at the end and sign postcard pictures. I had two of them. I later gave one to Phil at work, who was a big fan, and lost the other. I think my Mum threw it away when I was away at college.

Maybe it was the fighting that was the final straw that broke that camel’s back? The council closed it down, but I’d already got the taste. Live Rock Music set the heart thumping like nothing else.

I wonder what my parents were thinking, letting me go to a place like that at that age? I think they wanted me to live life and enjoy myself. They probably had no idea what it was really like. I’d always been pretty free and wild and they trusted Foss to look after me.

Perhaps they managed it about right. I’m not so sure I would have been happy letting my kids loose in France at fifteen years of age or to go to a dive with mad violent Teddy Boys!

3.11.01

 

Happiness. What the hell is happiness? A chemical rush? A hormonal surge? A state of euphoria? A sense of fulfilment?

3.11.01

Crazy Zen Beat Hipsters – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Rich said we were ‘crazy, Zen, Beat hipsters’ and we didn’t give a fuck. I wrote him a poem and Tim made it into a song. It sent chills down my back to hear my words put into a song.

It was a silly throwaway poem that I wrote in ten minutes – really nowt but doggerel. But I kind of like it. It’s fun.

Thanks Rich. Thanks Tim.

We’re all crazy Zen Beat hipsters, aren’t we?

But then we’re all pretty ordinary nobodies – Jack Kerouac, Roy Harper, Zoot Horn Rollo, Picasso, Captain Beefheart, William Burroughs, Attila the Hun, Gandhi, Hitler, and my Dad.

Maybe we just want to be noticed? We are ordinary guys. Maybe we want to make sense of what it was about? Maybe we want to make things better?

We invented wars and invasions; complete with genocides and so many atrocities we can’t even record them all. We created fashions and styles and tried to capture life and describe it. We have sometimes tried to right wrongs. But maybe we just wanted to be special and we were all fumbling about in the dark, playing with our demons and trying to make a world we could be happy living in.

So many of us just want to feel important, believe we are important, think we deserve so much more than anybody else. None of us do.

If only we had been loved and praised enough all our lives. We’re all so insecure.

3.11.01

 

Happiness is security and not having to worry.

3.11.01

More tests – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

We are the biggest disaster that has ever hit this planet! By the time we have run our course, we will have killed off a greater percentage of life here than any comet or natural disaster since the beginning of time.

Our priority is to ensure that we change and become less destructive; to ensure that my prophecy of our terrible effect on the rest of life does not come true; to ensure that the destruction we are wreaking is halted and we learn to live in harmony with each other and the world.

There’s nothing daft or soppy about that!

If we don’t learn how to do that we are, along with every other living thing, completely screwed!

11.11.01

 

The major problem is that we are too greedy. We are consuming too much of the world’s resources.

Try telling that to a meathead hell-bent on owning the world and consuming it all. “Hey, look how important I am, yah! I own a castle, twenty Rolls Royces and a fleet of Lear Jets!”

But then we are all guilty.

How many tellies do you have?

Crazy isn’t it?

11.11.01

 

Happiness is when your endorphins flood your brain and tingle all your synapses.

3.11.01

 

Right. Despite all my tests, I was not satisfied. I requested a further consultation with the consultant. It wasn’t lungs and it wasn’t stomach, but the pain was still there and getting worse. I had decided that it had to be the colon. A section of the large intestine came up under the ribcage and that had to be the problem. By my calculations, it could be polyps, irritable bowel syndrome, or bowel cancer. I think I had already decided that it was bowel cancer.

Thank heavens we did not have the internet back then. I might have had a long list of possible ailments and have convinced myself I had them all.

The consultant was very sceptical about my condition. He reassured me that it was psychosomatic and would go away of its own accord. He doubted that there was any physical aspect to my pain. I was not convinced and he could see I was not going to let it rest until I had explored every possibility. There was nothing else for it other than a barium enema.

They dressed me in that same stupid backless thingee that you have to wear in hospitals, probably designed to make you feel embarrassed and stupid, so it keeps you in your place as a patient. Then they put me on a medical couch and inserted a hosepipe up my anus.

The nurse hovered closely watching the procedure. It was embarrassing but at least it did not impinge on your breathing and produce panic. The tube was uncomfortable but I could hardly complain. I had requested it.

They then poured a gallon or two of white barium solution down the pipe. It filled your rectum. It was at least warm and not too unpleasant – though it made me feel as if I were suffering from the worst case of diarrhoea I had ever experienced.

I had to lay still while they pawed over their monitor screens and positioned me in exactly the position they required on the X-ray machine. I lay there trying not to produce the biggest wet fart of all time. The major thing that was on my mind was the desperate need to get to the toilet without making a spectacle of yourself.

Once again I was able to see the results on the screen and the doctor talked me through. There were no tumours, polyps or abnormalities.

“It’s alright,” he reassured me, “it is all normal.”

I knew that I had to come to terms with this. Most probably my symptoms were psychosomatic after all? But I still wasn’t totally convinced.

28.10.01

 

Happiness is when your mind is in balance and is not craving for anything.

3.11.01

 

The art of living is doing and being.

11.11,01

 

I went back for a further consultation. The doctor argued his case that he could see no physical reason for my condition but I remained adamant. He recapped through the procedures; they had now checked the lungs and been in from both ends to check my gut, I had had a physical examination of abdomen and liver but he could see that I was still unconvinced, the only thing that was left was to check my abdomen with an ultrasound.

Once again I found myself in a hospital ward wearing one of those strange backless thingees.

The ultrasound technician was a young doctor. She placed me on a surgical couch and immediately lifted up the front of my smock to expose my abdomen. I found myself once again wondering what was the point of having a smock that had no back? but I did not put it in words. She unceremoniously plonked a big dollop of cold gel on my abdomen, which made me jump, and proceeded to smear it around.

I had this strange feeling that I had become pregnant. It was just association, Liz had had it done exactly this when she was pregnant. She began searching around with the sensor. She showed me the images on the screen and I found myself looking for a foetus. Pulling myself back to reality I pointed out where the pain was and she began checked, pushing the sensor over the area, in and out, focussing on the organs and providing me with a commentary of the organs we were looking at. As a biologist I found it easy to identify them and asked all manner of questions. She was very diligent and persisted until I was satisfied. There was nothing to see. Normality, bloody normality!

By this time I was hoping for a nice round tumour. Something they could identify and say- “See!  There!  That was what was causing the problem!” I wanted something they could easily cut out and deal with.

I did not want a negative result.

She checked the kidneys and liver, even had a look at the spleen. I was sure that it had to be lurking there somewhere. Everywhere she looking it came back with normality. The gut checked out, gall bladder had no sign of stones.

We ran out of places to look.

I had to face the truth – I was healthy.

28.10.01

 

Happiness is when you are completely crazy and don’t know what the fuck is going on.

3.11.01

Tarting up the past – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

They are presently digging up parts of Britain, indeed the whole world. They are uncovering the past and restoring it. They are tarting it up so that it looks attractive. They put in roads to the sites and trim the grass. They construct paths and riddle the place with signposts. They produce brochures and put in historical information on plaques. The result is a tourist attraction.

People have got so much money and time that they can indulge themselves. They can go and see things that look interesting. This may be natural phenomena, such as hot springs, waterfalls and gorges or they may be old ruins. The idea is to make it accessible and attractive. It is no good leaving them as they were. They have to be manicured and resurrected into the artists’ impression of past glory. We worship the past.

We are becoming heritage Britain. We sell a sanitised version of the past to tourists. Battle scenes without the blood – we are fascinated. Stone circles without the sacrifices – we are intrigued. Castles without the rape and pillage – we are in awe. We are then invited to visualise these events.

Soon the whole planet will be a big plastic historical amusement park for the benefit of affluent tourism. It brings in the dollars. It is big business. You sell your merchandise on the back of the curiosity seekers.

I enjoy doing it myself – but, at the back of my mind, I know that what I am viewing is not necessarily real. It’s been tarted up to make it look more attractive and not more authentic.

8.11.01

 

Some seek out sexual partners and spend hours making themselves look attractive so that they can have lots of sex with different people.

11.10.01

 

We pretend we are ruled by our minds when in reality our noses and emotions tug us around. We do not even register that we are responding to each other’s chemistry. We do not know what makes us do the things we do.

We watch our dogs sniffing lampposts and other dogs and think we are superior. At least they most probably know what messages they receive. We respond without it even becoming conscious.

8.11.01

Death in the bakery – an extract from ‘Farther from the Sun’.

Posted on by Opher

Our vision is only clear in two small pools, like headlights, in front of our sight. Our brain makes up the rest and pretends that it is sharp and clear. Most of us go through all our lives without even knowing this.

Most of the world we live in is made up by our brains.

We males vie with each other in some primordial ritual to establish a pecking order of status. Our position is set by the chemicals we exude from our armpits and groin. Unknowingly we respond to the chemicals exuded from others. Most of what we respond to, we are not even aware of.

Our subliminal responses reveal our disposition. Our status is based upon the respect we command via these chemicals and other subtle messages from our body language. The game never ceases as our position is always precarious. We are only as good as the messages we are sending out. In order to reinforce our status some people in power bully and arrogantly show off.

Females respond to the signals we transmit in different ways to us. They respond to status. Females also respond to the subliminal messages they are putting out. They have their own pecking order.

8.11.01

 

 

According to the rumour in the bakery, two people were horribly killed while I worked in there.

One was a mechanic who was fixing the ovens.

The ovens were long tunnels through which a conveyor belt took the baking trays. There were many of these ovens all lined up next to each other. The bread moved through the ovens in a constant flow. It was all automatic. A machine plopped a lump of dough into a bread-pan and a conveyor belt took the dough through the long tunnel of the oven. The journey took twenty minutes, which was the length of time necessary to cook the bread. It emerged at the other end as a standardised, fully-cooked loaf.

On this occasion, something had gone wrong inside one of the ovens and the only way of dealing with it was to get an engineer to crawl up inside the oven and fix it. Of course, they turned it off and let it cool down first. The trouble was that someone inadvertently turned it on. It wasn’t on long enough to cook the guy it seemed he got mangled up by mechanical arms inside the guts of the oven that were there to keep the bread-pans in line! At least that was the tale that was circulating.

The other tragedy was when a man was killed in the flour storage bins. These were huge storage bins, circular and tapering. They were about thirty foot high and twenty-foot across. When they were emptied someone had to go down into them with a broom on a long handle and dislodge any flour that was sticking to the sides of the hopper. It was a very dusty, unpleasant job.

While this guy was down in the hopper sweeping out, someone, not knowing he was in there, pressed a button and a load of flour was deposited into the hopper, tons and tons of the stuff. The guy was buried and completely suffocated in the fine powder.

5.11.01

 

One push of one button could be enough to finish everything. Easily done.

7.11.01

Ron Forsythe Science Fiction – Future Projects

Posted on by Opher

Future Projects

Please check out my Ron Forsythe Science Fiction site:- https://ronforsytheauthor.wordpress.com/

 General 

Recently I have been reading a Stephen Hawking book – Brief answers to Big Questions – and I found it extremely thought-provoking.

A lot of science, particularly in the field of astrophysics, is now stranger than Sci-Fi. Who would have imagined the 11 dimensions of M-theory? I find that aspect of science fascinating. The quantum world and time are plain weird and do not seem to make sense in terms of our own reality. But it was the other topics that intrigued me (neither of which are particularly new but both of which are on the verge of becoming real).

There were two main themes that set my mind racing. One was A/I. Stephen found this a threat to humans. He was looking at the huge advances that have been made in computers over recent years, doubling their capacity every two years, and predicted firstly that these machines would soon exceed human intelligence and secondly that they would be conscious. His fear was that their intelligence might far outstrip us and they could consider us superfluous. Now I am aware that this has been a standard theme in Sci-fi for a long time – right back to 2001-A Space Odyssey – but this is real science and it appealed to me.

The second theme of Stephen’s that stimulated my creative juices was the idea that we now had the means to genetically alter organisms easily. Not only can we switch genes from one species to another but we can alter those genes and create entirely new characteristics. So we could take a gene out of a daisy or a jellyfish and put it into a human. We could take a specific gene, involved in our intelligence for instance, and play about with it to see if we can improve on it.

Stephen suggested that there was no way of controlling this. Even if experiments on humans was considered unethical and banned, there would be nations with secret labs who would not be bound by such ethics.

Stephen suggested that we were on the cusp of a revolution. Not only would our crops, farm animals and food be radically altered in the forthcoming years, but we would be too. We are on the verge of identifying the genes involved with intelligence. Once we have achieved that we could optimize them, perfect them and ultimately create humans who were immensely intelligent.

Once again, these ideas are not Science Fiction, they are real science – but my mind is already looking at storylines. Soon real science may become Science Fiction. We’ll see.

What Stephen’s book achieved was to inspire a few storylines. We’ll see if they mature into stories or novels.

Keep watching this space.