Powerlessness…

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.

 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I am free to write whatever I please without it detrimentally affecting my career prosects. Nobody can meaningfully threaten to ruin my career if I say something that they do not like. Nor can I be cancelled because I am not engaged or employed or contracted.

I am however powerless. I have no influence and no power by association. I am largely inconsequential – without obvious consequence.

One can say that my relative freedom comes at a price, power. Provided that I don’t break any laws or slander anyone I can carry on writing in this tiny unknown corner of the internet. I cannot exert power over anyone because I have no positional power to exert.

I have the power to choose what brand of tinned sweetcorn I use. That should not be too upsetting to anyone.

It is also true that because I have no power to lose others cannot threaten loss of that power either. My position cannot be threatened because I don’t have one. I cannot be sacked or fired or shunned or ostracised.

As a “grey”, a sixty year old pensioner, I am almost invisible. I sat in a room of other greys at Eurofins this morning to have a blood sample taken for analysis. I was at the younger end of cohort. We gather at urology departments for prostate exams and at orthopaedics for joint replacements. We know the ins and outs of modern medical imaging. We move around during the 9-5 hours invisible to the employed and those hard at work. We are a hidden host of greys…faceless unnoticed.

It is difficult for people to have a lot of power over us because we are not overly susceptible to the normal socio-political leverage. We don’t have much to lose and very little to prove. We don’t care that much what people think, we are not worried about our precious reputation. We are not “on the make”.

Some people don’t like being powerless, they like to be big cheeses and order others around. They like to be boss, to have their will done. They do not understand that they are slaves to their own positional power. Being a big cheese too has a price.

It is difficult to understand that there is a weird kind of power in powerlessness. It is not to everyone’s taste…

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies.

Basic Working Hypothesis

The basic working hypothesis I have is that there is not a lot left for me to do in this life. It will slowly fizzle out and I will leave. My significance is very low now. What might have been no longer can be. My residual fate is small. I am pretty much done in the wider world.

Despite a few dreams of late with London in, I cannot envisage any reason why I would ever go there again. It is expensive. I might pass through Gatwick, Southend or Heathrow airports and that will be as close as I get.

If we go to the UK it would be West maybe up the M5.

In the past I would on occasion feel a compulsion to do things presented to me in dreams, to attempt to manifest. That urge, that sense of “devoir faire”, has long since passed.

There is the notion that I have much less karmic obligation than I once had. This could be wrong.

The dreams may span wide areas but I don’t have to do anything about them.

All the people I once knew in my peer group are getting on, retired or dead. There is no connection, no network.

Last night we watched Sheldon, Jim Parsons, on “Who do you think you are?”. As a result I had a vague interest in maybe seeing New Orleans. Also maybe Aukland or Christchurch. But that would be well expensive. 150,000 air miles by age 13 In 1977 means that travel is no biggy.

We have just had our letters from USS about pension scale.

In putting the house on the market we are seeing if anyone wants to buy it and how much they are willing to offer. Maybe we will change our “view of the world” which is what house represents in dreaming symbols. A new house or flat could offer a different outlook.

We are financially limited to France and because of Brexit the rest of Europe is taboo. We could move back to the UK unless I get banned. Ireland rains a bit too much.

Within this geo-location France-UK the “where” is not fixed, rather open. But price will limit where we might live.

The hypothesis is that there must be somewhere out there for us to move to and someone willing to buy this house at a sensible price. It is not a big ask of the universe.

We can afford another year here.

Maybe the universe says stay.

The scope of what I envisage is not broad, nor highfalutin…

I have had another reminder about renewal from WordPress again so I do need to make my mind up soon.

When we have been in a tricky situation before something always crops up…

One way or another we will find out…

House Sale and Justification

We have just started the process of putting the house on the market and looking at others to buy.

We are about to enter the world of “avoir raison” a pillar of French thinking. In which one is supposed to have reason. They love justifications for this and for that and imagine that justifications are entirely necessary. They think that having a justification is a good thing and that it is persuasive.

Unfortunately I do not share their love of rationing comparative mind justifications. I don’t find them convincing. The moment someone starts to try to justify something to me and insists that justifications are a good thing. I switch off. They may not notice being so enamoured by their lower mind tick box justification thinking. It is a non sequitur for them.

I have just said that I do not negotiate and as usual the person started to explain and negotiate. I rarely need the explanations proffered. I can answer questions on “University Challenge”.

It is impossible to get this across. I am not being understood. I do not want to discuss until hell freezes over.

Hey-ho here we go….

I tried to explain that with only a few sales data points conclusions about trend are ill-founded. They are not undergraduate science students so I cannot deduct marks for joining four or five scattered data points with a trend line in which faith is placed and upon which discussion is to be had.

I may do a Trumpian rant about this over the next few weeks…best stay off social media in the middle of the night…

I can see Pete Tong warming up for his next set at the turntables……

A Plague of Toads Dream 14-04-2026

Here is last night’s dream

The dream opens in a rural setting which is next to a town or city. Frog like animals start to appear out of house waste water drainage pipes onto the gardens. They crawl out of municipal street drainage pipes. They crawl out of wood piles and piles of leaves. They swarm over wooden decking outside of residential dwellings. They are in school playgrounds around city admin buildings. They hop down stairs into tube stations.

Frog like creatures are coming out of nowhere. I know in the dream that they are in fact toads with a Latin double name. {On searching toad Latin names I cannot find it.} They are damp and wet. They are pretty much everywhere. They are swarming like a plague. Thousands of toads.

I am observing and watching the reactions of people to the swathe of toads. People are recoiling and revolted. They are wary of touching the toads. I find it amusing as they are just toads. They are everywhere now. The emergence of toads continues.

The dream ends.

I think back to what might have caused this dream. A few days ago on an old episode of “University Challenge” there was a question on the second biblical plague in Egypt which I got – frogs.

Exodus 8 KJV

8 And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me.

And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs:

And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading troughs:

And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants.

And the Lord spake unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt.

And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.

And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt.

Imperial College – Dirty Laundry – The Royal Institution Dream – 13-04-2026

Here is this morning’s dream.

The dream opens in the subterranean service tunnels under the South Kensington campus of Imperial College London. Most people do no know they are there. I know them from when I helped moved the lab from The Royal Institution to Imperial. I am wandering along the corridors with my white shirt on a hanger. It is clean white and immaculately pressed.

I come upon a side room off the main tunnel it is by way of a laundry. I hang my shirt up by its hanger on a filing cabinet. Several former colleagues of mine come in along with some of their new colleagues I do not know. They are carrying industrial sized cube shaped heavy duty material laundry bags. They are full of dirty laundry.  As they unload the bags onto the floor they knock my shirt onto the floor. Soon it is covered in the dirty laundry. The pile of dirty laundry is big and grubby. It smells. I say that they have knocked my shirt into the pile and that they must help me find it. They are very sheepish. I am amazed at the size of the pile of dirty laundry. I catch eye with a number of the people who were my contemporaries. They know that my clean pristine shirt is hidden under the pile of dirty laundry which now has a kind of light foul mist emanating from it. The dirty laundry is in the tunnel beneath South Ken.

The scene changes and I am wandering around the streets of Mayfair without a care. I am light and carefree and it is a bright sunny morning. I know these streets like the back of my hand because it used to be my patch. I stumble upon The Royal Institution and enter by a side door. I walk into the library  and there is Irene. She recognises me and says, “I know you..” I explain that she is right and that I left 30-40 years ago. I say that it looks like they are winding up the library. There are card index trays and packing boxes everywhere. There are three young women assistant librarians who are helping. They are very curious about the past and Irene. They say that they are having a closing down party and that I am very welcome. They press a flyer invitation into my hand. They insist that I come to the party. I say that I have to check with someone, implicit my wife, first. They want to know what it was like there all those years ago. I make my excuses and leave saying that I might see them later at the party.

I am now walking through a more hall like room in which there are science big cheeses sat around a big ceremonial table setting. At the back of the hall there are heraldic type ceremonial swords on the ground. David is sorting them out and they are discussing which to use. I walk past the table to the end of the room past David and out onto the back stairs. Although he recognises me clearly David avoids catching me eye. He knows that I know he is avoiding acknowledging me. I recognise a few of the big cheeses.

As I get to the hallway I see Rob halfway up the stairs. I call out “Robert”. He comes down and is pleased to see me. We embrace in a friendly manner and I ask how he is doing. Which he does in turn. As we are talking some of the men from the formal gathering come through and effectively usher Rob away from me. They close ranks around him and lead him off to another meeting. I think that the whole experience has been a bit off. I go outside into Albermarle Street and into the sun

The dream ends…

Decision Quanta

I have just been getting ready to do our annual tax return. It is simple as we have very few boxes to fill.

Our two biggest expenses are propane and insurance. Next are Orange {broadband} and EDF.

For us a €200 quantum of decision is significant and €400 for wood well worth thinking about.

We do not reach the tax payable threshold and our income is below that of one person on the minimum wage working full time.

I have just calculated that had I stayed working where I was I would have had earned well in excess of £1,000,000 taxable income assuming no promotion or pay increments in the interim. Based on published pay scales.

My London flat would have been worth more than £1,000,000 by now.

Next year Rodney…

My pension amounts to ~ €1350 per month.

Balancing a delivery of wood against a patent renewal fee and a WordPress account bill is real…

It is looking like maybe we need to plan for another winter here…

Maybe we need to harvest more wood for winter 2027-28 too…I’ll have a scout of trees tomorrow…

I’ll get the tax returns done too…