Poetry – Dear Mrs Planet

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Dear Mrs Planet

 

Dear Mrs Planet, you know we’re just chimpanzees

Who think we’re very clever.

So help us if you please,

Because we think we’ll live forever.

 

We think the oceans are an infinite resource

That we can fish and fish;

That we can take what we want by force

And do anything we wish.

 

But you know Mrs Planet,

How deluded we can be

Consuming like a greedy gannet,

And failing to agree.

 

But please Mrs Planet,

Remember it was you who created us.

Please don’t have a hissy fit

And kick us off the bus.

 

We’ll plant lots of trees

And not spray all the land

With toxic chemicals.

We’ll try to get them banned.

 

We’ll try our very hardest

To be so very good

And behave with intelligence

Like we know we should.

 

I’m writing Mrs Planet,

To apologise.

Please Mrs Planet,

Open our eyes and make us wise.

 

Opher 18.7.2020

Is New Eden a possibility?

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Is New Eden a possibility?

Is it possible that a government, for political reasons, or to remove surplus population, might have a virus engineered in order to wipe out the ones it does not want?

I reckon so.

Is it possible to manufacture a deadly virus and put a vaccination programme in place for those you want to survive?

I think it is.

Available in both paperback and kindle .

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Poetry – A feast

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A Feast

 

A feast of flowers,

Cornucopia of creatures,

Selection of seeds,

Intensity of insects,

All thriving in a composed community.

Profoundly profuse,

Vigorously vital,

Symbiotically sustaining,

Humming harmoniously.

Devastated

Through dreadful ignorance.

Now a scarred desert

Of ruin.

 

Opher – 14.7.2020

Today’s Music to keep me SANE in Isolation – Steel Pulse

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I like a good bit of reggae, particularly if it has a strong social/political message, and Steel Pulse fit the bill.

Straight out of Handsworth Birmingham – a reggae band with a great beat and lyrics.

What could be better?

Today I’m playing my Steel Pulse albums!!

Poetry – All Around the World

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All Around the World

 

All around the world

There are mindless men in uniform

With guns, helmets and body armour.

Trained not to think.

They no longer have minds.

They do as they are told.

 

All around the world

There are arrogant men in power

Who command their minions to do their will.

They do not care about anything

They believe they deserve everything.

We do as we are told.

 

Opher – 11.6.2020

The Process of Writing.

Posted on by Opher

The Process of Writing.

Writing

I am certain that this process is different with all writers. We all have our ways of working. It is also clear that it is not always the same with me. Sometimes I have carefully plotted out a novel while at other times, I work with a vague idea and allowed it to unfurl as I progress.

I used the Butch Cassidy principle: there are no rules.

But always, as a novel progresses, as a character develops, a novel takes on a life of its own. It is a coalescence of ideas. I will wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and have to get out of bed to write it down or it is likely to go.

All my novels start with an idea. That might be sparked by a news story, a book I am reading, a programme I am watching or a train of thought. One idea is never enough though. It has to be married to others.

Often the end of the novel is what emerges first. I will often write the end first.

Always there comes that time when you sit at a computer (or a typewriter) and begin. You have a blank page in front of you and a head full of ideas. With me, there is excitement and anticipation.

The ideas have to have a setting and characters. With Sci-Fi, there are infinite possibilities.

I often write a beginning that is later superseded by another beginning. Once I get that first sentence down the rest seems to flow. The characters develop, the scenes change, the ideas flow. I struggle to keep up. It becomes like a line of dominoes. One knocks over another which sets two more falling over. I write quickly, trying to keep up with the ideas, following the characters and inventing settings. I work on the principle that with the first rewrite I can expand and fill everything out. It is as if the first draft is a rough sketch that gives the outline of the book. The rewrite starts to fill in the colour.

It is usual for me to increase the word by a good fifty per cent.

The second rewrite will again add a lot more.

The third rewrite is more of an editing process – changing words, altering sentence structure, correcting grammar.

The most important part for me in writing a novel is to get that first sentence down. After that, it is like an egg-timer. The sand grains are the ideas, characters and settings; I just allow them to trickle through until my head is empty.

Encountering nature.

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When I was a boy I was surrounded with nature. My life was caterpillars, lizards, slowworms, snakes, frogs, toads and newts. There were ponds, streams and grassland, forests, moors and lakes. But so much of that has gone. I used to lie back in a meadow, among a mass of flowers, and the insects would be buzzing all around.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

There are hardly any insects now and consequently, everything else is harder to find.

This lockdown has been fantastic. Every day, for one hundred and six days, I have gone for a ten-kilometre walk in nature.  It has given me a real rush of pleasure. Every day I seem to stumble across something wonderful – a duck with her brood of ducklings, a grass snake swimming the beck, a barn owl swooping overhead, a kestrel hovering in the air, a fox walking up the road towards me, a hare running up the path and nearly bumping into us, a pair of buzzards circling, a family of eight stoats flowing across the road in front of me, weevils, butterflies, rabbits, warblers, red kites, tits, finches and hedgehogs. It feels like nature is alive and was expanding back into the space we’d left vacant.

Today, as I walked up my hill, in the distance I could see some creatures moving on the road, but I could not make out what they were. I thought that it was probably crows with a bit of roadkill.  As I slowly went forward I saw that it was two stoats with a dead rabbit. One ran off but the other was trying to drag the carcass along. When it was about five paces away from me it looked up and saw me. It darted, sinuously into the undergrowth on the verge.

I walked passed the dead rabbit and quietly stood ten paces away to watch. Sure enough, the stoat, not wanting to lose its kill, shot across the road. I waited another minute and could see its tiny face peeping out of the undergrowth. It came back out into the road, stood on its hind legs to look all around for danger. I stood still. It went over to the rabbit and began dragging it along. I was enthralled.

Nature is amazing. To get so close to the action was like being on safari. I love it. It filled me with joy (I’m still feeling it).

We so have to look after this planet of ours and protect the wonderful creatures we have!

Now that lockdown is over it is sadly in retreat again. No doubt we will chop more trees, fill more ponds, spray more fields and continue to kill off the little we have left.

Kuala Lumpur – the caves and weird tableaus – photos

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To the side of the main Batu Caves there are other smaller caves.  Outside were a water cascade and big effigy with a chariot. I should have known better. You had to pay to go in. But the locals assured me that it was very good and well worth a visit – so I paid.

Inside the caves, it was all gaily painted and there were various tableaus of what looked like Hindu fairy stories. It was a cross between religion and Disneyland. Not my cup of tea – but fascinating. I walked around and took some shots. I’m sure it meant something more if you knew the stories behind the scenes.