SHOUT AT THE DEVILS INSIDE

I think I may have to type this one out in two sittings?

We are a funny species.

The things that we do and the things that we want to do along with what we think others should do makes us do an say the funniest and at times the most hurtful of things.

Many years ago I had to write out a eulogy, or at least part of it and I ended up writing all of it.

This was for y father's funeral who had been paraded on TV as a master villain by the BBC less than a year earlier but failed to stop over 500 people appearing at his funeral so much so that the chapel had to break its rules and allow a crowd three people deep up on the platform around the coffin.

Stabbing in the dark in desperation while blindfolded is never a good idea.

I wrote the eulogy from the deepest depths I could find. It struck a chord with every single person in the room and was designed to do so. It was also designed to get messages across about our faults and failings and attempt to change people. For the better.

To this day I have not ha much sign that it worked. That on its own does not sound like much.

However, if I told you that the humanist, I think called, stuttered and started while reading it because he wondered where it was going and that after he finished he place the writings in my hand and squeezed it, stating that he had never heard anything quite like it, it may mean a bit more.

If I then explained that dozens of people commented on the eulogy throughout the wake and had asked me for copes of it … well I think now you may be getting the idea of how disappointing it was that I did not see much signs that it sank in.

I did, however, get more of a sign that people take a lot more notice of reading my words rather than hearing my words, well at least hearing them from me at any rate.

Christmas just gone did not go as I had planned, thought or hoped that it would and in many more ways than just one.

I was not where I thought I would be and I am still in the dark as to why this is and what was supposed to transpire was delayed until after Christmas. Well it is now after Christmas but I sense it will be a few days into the new year if at all.

Remaining here in London was going to be tough and challenges would be rife in remaining here and that stems from the fact that I am still here. Hmm, hard to explain right now but I will within a couple of weeks.

Then there are the usual challenges associated with getting over a Christmas and these possibilities were one reason I really did not want to be here at all.

Still, there was the possibility that all would be well. It wasn't.

Christmas Day evening started out with a disagreement I had, had with the same person at least twice before, though I was led to believe it was three times by one person. This was over me buying something and that I was told that I should use reviews by reporters in a magazine despite the fact that not only I but at least two other people had told him over 15 years that at best these people are paid money to write this stuff and at worst, paid money to state specific stuff.

What makes this argument far worse is that he would argue over my method for choosing to buy something. This something was a personal music player, a high resolution music player and headphones. He gets into all the technical stuff without fully understanding it and forgets regularly that everyone has different tastes. For instance my present sset of headphones are RHA T10's and he quoted What Hifi Magazine as stating that their bass is too much and over powers other frequencies. I told him that was complete bullshit as I had used them for almost a year, do not like much bass and that a friend had listened to them and stated that they are not “bassey enough”.

You cannot just go in and listen to headphones, you can some but not all all due to some threat of ear infections widely held to be stupid by every single person I have ever spoken to about it. Including on-line. So what is left to do, especially when headphones can cost in excess of a few thousand pounds?

Now I myself read as many reviews as I can fro people who actually bought the things your looking to buy. What I do also like to do is take the average marks out of five for an item that has had several hundred reviews. If two people give reviews and one gives five and one gives one out of five then the overall mark is 2.5 out of 5. Simple maths. If there are 200 reviews plus and the items gets four out of five overall this is an undeniable score. Unless your the person who is telling me I cannot use this method as its extremely unreliable and instead should use the word of one or two people who are paid to say shit and everyone knows it, except him who has been told repeatedly over 15 years.

His base, pardon the pun, for his argument when I tell him its mathematics based and you cannot argue with it? You can get several hundred idiots all writing those reviews. SIGH.

I decided to stop the disagreement, picked up my tablet PC and looked to see what was being published about the next series of Doctor Who!

Well a slight, old and boring disagreement and not the one I thought I would have.

Boxing Day involved more people being added to the mix. One person tried to get out of coming but was kind of emotionally blackmailed to turn up.

I chatted to one for half an hour about computers and computer games and all seemed well.

He tried to update someone's laptop to Windows 10 and had been thwarted a few times and asked if I could attempt it. The laptop was being stubborn so I used the download tool to do it and it was taken a lifetime to do but was at least installing this time.

I found myself on my own in the room with just one older person and five others had disappeared though I was so engrossed in not letting this laptop and Windows 10 beat me I had barely noticed.

Then I heard a shout .. a single and solitary word and looked up.

I wondered what this was, then told myself I must have imagined it and refocused on the laptop.

Then I heard more shouting, a whole sentence this time along with some heavy footsteps and then “we are ****ing going!”

The person stormed into the living room said something about something having being said to them and I replied “who?” It was not the person I expected to hear I had a disagreement with the night before. Odd as they were intending to have a few words with the previously argumentative one about being … well argumentative and his stagnated life.

The stagnation has gone on for well over 5 years, possibly 8, and does not possess the tools to be argumentative. They do not possess any of the tools that are a compulsory requirement for being argumentative. Something else they fail to realise.

Also you need to be in a damned good position to be argumentative and with the necessary experience. Something else seriously lacking though you would doubt this if you heard them.

OOPS!

There I was sitting there quietly, I had avoided a subject I knew would cause and argument between me and someone else and successfully never brought up the subject. It was … once and I cut that off with a one word answer … “NO”.

Suddenly the other combatant was in the room. Followed by the others.

I remained quiet, uninvolved and sat behind the laptop before me as words were now being turned into weapons interspersed with accusations and insinuations at full volume going from left to right and back again. Oooh boy!

As the words went back and forth I eventually started to realise some of the faults we have as human beings when it comes to communication.

We somehow believe that we are heard more and are proved more correct the higher the volume is that we communicate. I realised how ridiculous I must have looked when I used to be like this, something I learned many years ago not to do.

The flapping of arms like birds must help the sound waves to go faster and penetrate the body of their opponents?

I remained quiet.

I did not want to be there. I also wanted to leave. I was still sorting out this laptop and still did not want to be beaten by it.

There had been an accusation or at best an insinuation that did not go down to well. A similar one involving suggested infidelity was thrown in the other direction. The problem? One partner was on their way and the other one was present. Oh crap! I do not believe I heard them just say those things! This is going to get worse.

It did.

Suddenly the only indirect member of the family speaks for the first time and continues to do so. It was the same question. It was always going to be the same question.

In a few moments I realised there was nothing in either one of these insinuations as the same thin was confided between them and each one took it upon themselves to assume there was much more than that confided. Obviously there was not. Otherwise they would never have confided in the first place.

No one is that stupid.

By now I had drunk a few glasses of Jack Daniel's, unsual as I rather prefer a real Whiskey like Glenmorangie or Laphraig.

Eventually the family member with the partner present left and stated they would explain things in the car on the way home.

The one that remained was still furious.

They did calm down a bit before another family member entered the room, spoke up for the first time and demanded to know if they was going to strike the other person?! WHAT?!

My head sank. I could not believe that was just asked and in the way it was asked too! What effing point was there to that question? It didn't happen, that was the main thing. Naturally and obviously it fired up the person it was directed at. Then they did their usual vanishing trick.

Several minutes later and aftyer simmering down a little this person returned and demanded to know if a child from a previous relationship who lives thousands of miles away was still their child in their eyes!

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

I am dreaming now. I must surely have dropped off to sleep and entered the twilight zone in doing so? Or I am a part of another strange mystery TV series from when I was a kid like The Outer Limits? They surely did not just ask that?!

After setting the person off a second time now they performed another Houdini trick. Funny as they are in a terrible situation in their life and several of us were planning to talk to him. I can tell you exactly how it would go. They would argue against established facts, argue against other facts realised by everyone except them and take a guess what they would do then? Yup … another Houdini and like they did the other night suddenly is disappear out of the street door and not return for 24 hours, after setting the place on fire twice.

If you asked them why they had left they would say that they are “fed up with the arguing”. Odd as they opened their gob twice. They are also the biggest problem in the family, to be honest and little do they know that everyone states it.

In fact one of the embattled two that remained actually stated that Houdini had gotten off lightly and that he was going to state a lot of home truths to him but held back.

Well...that was after I decided to break my silence.

I ordered rather calmly that another person in the room to have taken up the baton of the previous child in a previous relationship and told them to politely 'drop it'. I explained that this subject was not in the last relevant to what had just happened. I explained that the two subjects that Houdini had bought up was “stupid” top which I got a few thank you'd for from the embattled family member.

I then set out every now and then giving out my quotes of infinite wisdom and felt like bloody Solomon. In fact I generated praise while there and after I left from one family member who normally is highly critical of me. Wonders never cease.

Once I had spent an hour still listening and every now and then breaking my silence with yet another nugget of wisdom I decided that I had done enough. The chances any of it would be remembered or heeded was snot that likely. After all I did state that it was pointless arguing at all and even more pointless as everyone's emotions were on and off a knife's edge.

By this time I had finished off with Jack Daniel's and had started on a Rose wine. I was not completely legless and was getting there. My fish, animals and orchids had gone without me for 48 hours and I could not leave them any longer. Well the fish had an automatic feeder, though that had not bloody worked!

I was not looking forward to public transport on a Boxing Day but thought the alcohol would help the journey. Turned out I was back on very little time as I got on my first bus immediately and waited all of two minutes for the second bus!

As I feared there were the phone-calls and texts that night about what had happened. Hell, it was only a few days ago and I have even had one visit already about it.

The two have disowned each other all because one does not know how to control reactions while the other does not know how to communicate.

Then you descend into a living hell whereby the volumes are pumped up to 11 in the hope that the devils and demand that reside deep within somehow get forced to listen to the messages and learn something.

Yup. Human being really are a funny species alright.

Ooh. Well that was more difficult than I had planned it.

This is the second part of this post and I have just returned from a cycle ride. The weather has allowed me precious little of that privilege this last year and I have precious little in the way of privileges.

I had been out on the last day with sunshine and for a couple of months there have only been three or four days of this. I cannot always go cycling either, because I might need shopping and often do or may even be a doctors appointment.

I had failed to notice there was a south-westerly wind, as I was travelling north and east for the first half of the cycle. I had also cycled over 3.5 miles before I decided to turn around. Good job that I did as I had contemplated cycling another couple of miles further away.

My trouble is I am hard wired to go at certain speeds and normally too damned fast. Whether this is walking or cycling and it creates a problem that creeps up on me. It is like I am constantly impatient and I have to consciously slow myself down … all the damn time.

I am not perfect, far from it but I have been through enough things to be aware of the dangers and the pitfalls. That helps. Most of the time.

I have had certain privileges others do not have, though these feel more like curses than privileges in all honesty and I am sure would sound as much to anyone that hears them.

I have been alone with my thoughts, for instance, a very, very long time. Getting hard to remember the exact length of time but in excess of thirteen years that is for certain.

This comes with its own obvious nightmares and drawbacks and a whole host of others that are not that obvious at all. Most of the time I find no one takes the obvious ones into account, let alone the ones that would fail to know of.

So I have been alone with my thoughts an extremely long time and those thoughts I do have work in a kind of overdrive type velocity. I managed to narrow down why that is and this is to do with my Fibromyalgia.

All brain signals are scrambled is the common belief in medicine though it is surprising how many brain processes are not thought about with Doctors that specialise in this ailment.

So as far as left with my own thoughts it is more like 26 years plus as they go at twice the speed as they would normally do otherwise. I hate, or sometimes love, puzzles and always have to find the answers to them.

If you thrown that into the mix with the number of things I have lived through, experienced and dealt with then suddenly a picture starts to emerge. A BIG picture.

Hence why when I started this blog and throughout I always talk about the 'bigger picture'.

A lot like the eulogy I wrote for my father all those years ago.

But I live in a world where no one wants to listen, no one wants to read, everyone wants to speak and yet they all want answers.

But answers come from learning which only happens when you read or listen. The third option is to go through it yourself and that is not … always good. Trust me on that.

Old and late Ken was well into his sixties and once said to me “Martin, despite my being older than you, you are the first person I would come to for advice or a problem. But no one else does!” and I just shrugged my shoulders. I explained that we were living in an age where communication was dying and everything was expected to be told in ever shorter sentences and fewer words. I would quote two evils in this that have compounded this with the first one being text messages and the other being Twitter. I then explained that if you even attempted to try and educate anyone about these pitfalls or try to explain anything the responses are along the lines of “I'm too busy” or “Oh I have far too many serious problems going on” and the cycle continues spiralling ever further downward.

Once you dig yourself in deeper enough you will look up to find that you now cannot dig yourself out of the hole you have created.

I wish to God that people could learn. I really do. My own life would have had far, far less horror stories attached to it than it has. Maybe even none at all? But it has … a very long list I live to regret every single day.

I do not want people at my door every day with their horror stories and asking for advice and I told old Ken this. Yet today the very few that I want to come to me and should ask me do not.

This becomes annoying when you thin that they must be getting advice from elsewhere and I can tell you that they should not be doing this. Especially with one particular faction and once learned what the advice is about no one would disagree with this.

Well all except the person that does not ask, of course.

Same old, same old.

It is groaningly tiresome. Especially when lack of advice has caused me no end of more trouble I would rather be without and no cannot avoid.

In fact it was that which made Christmas for me … rather … uncomfortable as well as this Christmas week and the early days of the new year.

So much so that I have half become a hermit and as the days creep by this is with growing with an ever greater want to become a fully fledged hermit altogether.

I promise I wont groan.

My legs ache. A long drive gone on for months now to get myself fitter than I have ever been before and to which I have succeeded. Again. Only this time I am way early on this drive and am determined to carry on for several weeks yet.

I do not like giving in or losing. At all. Not an option. Only in my own personal endeavours that is, not those of other people's.

It is indeed New Year's Eve today.

Tomorrow, obviously, is New Year's Day.

I am not really sure what the first couple of weeks will bring. Maybe more of nothing at all?

Two key dates would have gone by and another speedily approaching, well another two if I am honest. By these dates it would have become way too late and … really, really bad.

I will have to tell and publish all by then and turn my attention onto other things, though these other things were rather dependent on the nothings being somethings. Lol.

I will also be about a year to fourteen months behind. Annoyingly. Still, these things happen much to my annoyance.

Hmm … I just thought, might be a good idea to check my emails?

Yup, more crap, emails from Tagged, Hi5 and a couple of people wanting to follow me on Twitter, speak of the devil. I never go on Twitter but my blog posts get posted on there. Someone tweeting that the GMC are evil, or something to that effect. Yup, worked out that one, lol.

Speaking of devils … that is all we seem to do as a species, to get somewhere we have this unnerving belief that we simply have to shout at the devils inside.