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Photos of ghosts

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  Photos of ghosts are everywhere… and yet they are not really ghosts, in most cases, they are the living who have ghosted the living. A hundred methods of high-speed communication and all of them lie dormant. The baby boomers boom like wailing babies across social media to all who exist and yet those from whom we want to hear disappear into a static like grey ether. Is it fear? Is it hate? Is it jealousy? Is it a lack of interest? Perhaps it is fear. After all, I look at photos from 2008 and still feel warm from the memory of them. 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016. Then again, 2018 into 2021. All periods of great romance and love… and in 2021, it all stopped. I am not sure if I just gave up, they gave up, I got too old, I moved to a place filled with people to whom I could not relate. I went from a famous university town, Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place filled with secular humanists, to a city filled with Christians and climate change deniers. I love it here, too, but even people who drin...
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What is creativity?

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 For New Year’s Eve, 2025, I travelled to Boston to be with some friends and to enjoy the snow. I stayed in Cambridge, next to my old apartment, so I could re-live the walks, sights and sounds of my old neighbourhood, which was mostly a tiny nature reserve. I had to work a little while I was there and the snow was so intense that I spent quite a bit of time inside the hotel working in the communal area. One member of staff was so friendly and helpful that we ended up staying in contact through Instagram and have chatted from time to time throughout the year. This morning I woke up and thought of messaging her to see how she was doing. I couldn’t find her… then discovered she unfollowed me and removed me as a follower. It was a sad start to the day. I only hope she is okay.       As the day progresses, I contemplate, what is the balance between insanity and creativity? To create, I feel that it is almost essential to loosen the grips on sanity. Although, consider...
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Rage writing

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 Writing in a rage. Not now. Yesterday. I wonder if I can publish the things that I say. I should, but political posts tend to cause a nasty backlash. I am simply perplexed, astonished, amazed that we are in the situation we are in. I am grieving.  Slipping on flip flops, I step away and take a short walk in a loop to the lake and back up to the swimming pool. I attempt to swim the rage away. Another beautiful day, but another day that will get too hot and cause my worry for the cat to continue. The week will gradually get hotter with Friday being 39 degrees Celsius (102F). There appears to be no reprieve.  Work begins after the swim, 07:30am, and it’s a relatively calm morning. People are on vacation, maternity leave, paternity leave, sick leave… it seems that mankind as a whole, even if enjoying a job somewhat, is always trying to escape. I invest like a man possessed in the hope of retiring as early as humanly possible. Morning activities mostly done, a mimosa seem...
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O Convento

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  The day began too soon. Now the second mimosa sits before me. To be factual, this one is a Poinsette. The bench is in the German style and provides the perfect place to write and drink and see the outside world and all of its inhabitants. It is a truly beautiful day. The lovely and lively Abi serves me drinks and dreams as we drown in an ever-increasing fog of inebriation and heat. Finally, I retreat… back to the pool in a hope to cool down. ‘Hello British’ a voice calls at the pool, a lady I had not seen was sitting behind a bed of plants and a palm tree. After reading in the water for a while, I venture back to my apartment and pour a beer, contemplate going back out, but decide to just stay home and watch The Mandalorian and Grogu. It was silly but entertaining.                     Second day of the weekend and another early start, simply because sleep eludes me. After dreams of AI, I awa...
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Surfing beneath the surface

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  The curtains are black… like my heart. Block out the sun. Combat the heat. Venture out and think of the people we can’t meet. The noise is relentless. Four people at a table and all four talking at the same time. A witch-like voice cackles and rises above the others in a sinister laugh. The bar tender is intelligent, he is well-travelled, he loves music and literature, he is good company. He turns up the jukebox and an assault begins… original music versus the witches coven.                   Flip flops are vital in this Texas heat, but I see people in jeans and boots. I feel suffocated by their jeans, as if they are a ghostly unit that leaves the legs and attacks innocent bystanders. Social norms passed on and passed on. They stay in the bar to prolong the time before having to go home to the chaos of family. I leave the bar to go home to peace and quiet and calm and escape the noise of the bar....
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The very first memory

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  The very first memory… my parents were involved in building an additional room on the house, I must have been 4 or 5 or 6 (or less), and it had rained so much that the foundations had flooded. We had an emergency operation, and I was helping to scoop water out of the ditch. If I could see a video of that moment I would, of course, be shocked, because it would not resemble in the slightest my memory… but that is the first one that I have and it is pleasant… there is happiness and peacefulness overpowering the concern for the flooding. That little Greater Manchester home… Cambourne Drive… was a little capsule of happiness. I recall the build-up to Christmas, school holidays, putting up the Christmas Tree, snow falling and already deep outside, Smokey and the Bandits on TV. I was delightfully happy. Later in life I asked my mother what her happiest memories were and she said ‘Cambourne Drive days.’               ...
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Twins

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  The gym twins linger daily at the pool. The first encounter with them was during a fierce storm. I had retreated to the gym to walk because it was impossible to go outside. It was a classic Texas storm; winds of fury and horizontal rain threatening to destroy all within its wake, punctuated by deafening thunder and lightning. In these storms, instant flash floods bring life to a standstill as all moving objects shelter in place, embrace and wait. I was astonished by the similarity of the twins, as I still am today. It is impossible to tell one from the other. Identical hair, faces, legs, etc. It’s difficult to determine their age… I’d say mid-twenties. Each day at lunch time they light up the pool and occasionally draw a crowd.                     For a period of time, I sit on my balcony and work, but the heat is stifling (how are the gym twins surviving in the sun? I am dying in the shade)...
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