Category: Personal

Preparing for the Annual Toad Migration

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Earlier this year, in February, I put up a three strand electric fence to try to deter the Coypu coming onto the property and eating all the lotuses on the pond. It worked.

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This year we had a magnificent display of flowers and no Coypu turds. The availability of fresh shoots in the wild has dropped as we come further into winter. They managed to find a way in by the bridge in October. Here are four of the blighters I blocked this off with wire mesh at end of October.

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The family of Coypu coming up from the river…

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So, we have had no Coypu sign until about a week ago. I found some chewed iris shoots. I set up the trail camera and got one returning to the river hesitantly through the electric fence. I did not see it get shocked but I heard the audible click as 0.25 J earthed at kilo Volts through the Coypu. The animal seemed to be coming from another direction. I set up witness sticks on the river bank and by a hole in the fence. The little bugger was coming through the fence. I blocked it last night with one big and one medium sized pine fire logs. He shifted the smaller log last night. I saw some Coypu sign, damaged iris shoots. There are two fairly hefty fire logs there now.

Yesterday evening when checking the fence I came upon an electrocuted toad. For an animal ~50-100g I guess 0.25 J is too much. I am surprised that it was on the move. We have had an inordinately mild time of it. In general, we get up to 60 toads and frogs at any one time in the pond for mating. I wondered if the annual migration is beginning early.

Today I have put a few more posts up near the old ingress route for the Coypu and lifted the bottom wire so that at no point is it less than 6cm from the ground. That should be enough room for the amphibians but not enough for the Coypu…

We shall soon see if the toad migration proper is beginning early.

Another harbinger of anthropogenic planetary warming?

A Dead Rat, No Nads and a New Tom

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Since Felix the feral tom cat has gotten back from the vets without his bollocks things have started to change in the garden hierarchy. The other night we heard a fight. Felix has taken to sleeping in a different position in the garden. All the animals enter through the big three metre tall hedge.

Yesterday I noticed, just outside my office, a dead rat. It had rigor mortis and was not fully mature. There is a “pissing” tree approximately three metres from my left hand. Gandalf the now neutered feral female has the habit of leaving me vole noses and entrails, on the window sill about a metre from where I sit.

Last night I set up a trail camera on the patio outside my office. At ~3:45 AM a hefty striped cat appeared. It sniffed the tree and started to piss on it. This is something like the eighth cat to visit. It is possible that the tom brought the dead rat.

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Felix who probably got Gandalf up the duff before they were operated on has started rubbing himself against our legs. The vet suspects that he might have feline AIDS. Before he would not let me get within a couple of metres. Gandalf has been angling to get in the house. She is becoming a trip hazard. They have started sitting on the back door mat. Waiting impatiently to be fed. This behaviour was hers and has been copied by Felix.

I am starting them on a course of aromatherapy. I have applied some malt vinegar to the mat. It keeps Gandalf at bay but Felix seem more immune to the smell. He even sniffed some blue roll soaked in ammonia. He is often snivelling and has a near perpetual cold. I know by experiment that neither cat likes the smell of petrol

If I can break Gandalf’s habit Felix will follow suit.

Is the new cat a regular visitor? Will it attempt to acquire more territory like Israel in the Golan Heights and West Bank?

We shall see…

Walking in Different Circles

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Yesterday it was blustery and with Welsh mist in the air. We chose to go up to the coast. With only three official shopping days left to Christmas we reasoned that Christmas lunacy would be inflicting the town centres. We travelled during “witching hour” or French two hour lunch time. The roads were quiet and up at île Renote it was deserted. I joked that there had been a zombie apocalypse which we were not aware of. In all of our nearly six years it was the most deserted we have seen it. They are still clearing up the devastation visited by storm Ciaran in November last year. We did the circuit and maybe saw half a dozen people and a dog. We said “bonjour” a couple of times in passing. Now that it is off season the locals greet each other.

People have asked us what we are doing for Christmas. They don’t get it when we say, “nothing”. We have received one paper Christmas card and an ecard. We have sent one card. We will probably go for a walk fog permitting in the morning and I will cook a roast dinner later. There are no decorations, no tinsel, no Christmas jumpers and no obligatory work do. We are essentially, that is in essence, out of the Christmas loony loop, in a different circle.

What is important to any circle or peer group varies. Earlier this year on LinkedIn I was able to satisfy my curiosity about what had happened to my year class for Chemistry at UCL. I was slightly surprised at how many had retired at age 60-61. I was the baby of the year with an end of August birthday. Which meant I got my degree aged 20. Because I got one less mark than Sue, I did not qualify for the last SERC quota studentship and had to look further afield for my Ph.D. place. Many of them stayed put and did their Ph.D. at UCL. I lost touch with that peer group and moved for a while in a different circle. I found something I could do – research. I was never keen on exams and strict syllabuses. I did OK but attention to detail was not my forte. I can get bored easily. It turned out that I probably had the shortest career and the lowest life time earnings. {My estimate based on LinkedIn profiles.} I haven’t had a job since end of 2006 but I did work freelance a little and then as a private tutor. I have been retired for five years now. I am pretty sure that I could not fit back into the academic circles I once haunted. I could not hack all those people.

Some of my peers from London are big-ish cheeses in academia and industry. Me not. They have a different orbit to me, what is important to them, is not to me. I am not sure it ever was. We were talking about someone who has landed himself in controversy in that field. The taint of controversy in academia is difficult to shift. I have a joke that the collective noun for academics is a “gossip” of professors. I hope he is OK. It is another world.

Over the years I have met some weird people. One guy was fascinated by Aleister Crowley and belonged to a group of people so minded. I have read some of his correspondences and the I Ching. It is not all that. That group of people might be interested that I get Count Saint Germain in my dreams. He is an occult hero and was also a chemist of sorts. In the science circles he would be seen as fictional / made up.

We have two problems to solve. Because of my osteo arthritis the garden has become too large. This can be solved either by finding a small income stream to pay a gardener or to sell the house and buy another. The second problem is the cesspit which needs to be brought up to current standards. For the moment that is the boundary of problem. My working hypothesis is that part-time work for me is unlikely because a) my age, language skills and lack of employment and b) under French employment law creating posts is not straightforward. Realistically there is little besides editing of scientific English which I can do here. I could go back to doing online “A” level science tutoring for people in the UK. The pay rates in France are poor in comparison. We will have, hopefully, reliable fibre optic broadband next week.

It is strange for me to get dreams with famous politicians in. I have never met any of them nor am I ever likely too. They walk in very different circles to me.

Our daily routine has me empty the coffee grounds, feed the birds, turn off the electric fence to prevent nocturnal coypu eating our lotuses and iris shoots, collecting wood from the store. The coypu came during the afternoon yesterday when we were out so the fence is on 24/7 from now. We will play Hokey Cokey, in out, shake it all about with Bibi the indoor cat. Felix and Gandalf, the stray cats are already waiting for their 3pm feed. Tonight, we have lamb tagine, the lamb is marinading in the fridge. I will stick it in the oven for around 4:30 PM. Then as dusk starts to arrive we will close the shutters and light the log burner. The outside world will be outside. We are due gusts of wind to 90 Kmh this afternoon. We will have no face to face in person social engagement for the foreseeable future. We see the physiotherapist early January.

This is the circle that I walk in.

Dreams and Life Changing Decisions

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To be specific in what follows dreams refers to passive nocturnal dreaming, most often in the 4-7AM time frame. I am lucid in these dreams, knowing that I am dreaming, they are then either written by hand down in a journal on waking or typed into a word document.

The theory is that the reincarnating entity or dreamer selects a dreamed for each life in order to evolve, learn and thorough fulfilling a fate work at its destiny. The dreamed is the physical body or apparatus, its personality, weaknesses and abilities. In this context, I the dreamer, chose my parents, their circumstance and this lump of meat. Both my parents had a scientific leaning, it was fairly natural that I became a scientist of sorts. I was perhaps fated to study at a world top ten university, do my Ph.D. at a place with the world’s highest per capital Nobel prize density and later teach at another world top ten university in London, the capital of the UK. I am a trained chemical physicist.

In order to work with the theory above one has to literally follow, to the best of ability, what happens in dreams, even if that goes against “common sense”, plans and ambitions. The dreams may suggest things which you would prefer not to do and things which you do not like. This means that my orientation to life differs from the bulk of humanity. It may not sound too much but in practise it can be radical.  It would be very scary for someone prone to control freakery.

The dreamer tries to guide the dreamed towards the purpose of any given birth. The dreamer senses a destiny and needs to complete the fate for a chosen life. Fate being an integral over all karma.

People can play lip service to fate. They like to imagine that they are in control of their lives and that they direct life, that they can have life on their own terms.

At the moment I am fated to live outside society, physically adjunct. I got a new passport today. It has space for two emergency contacts. I was only able to fill one of them. I am not socially connected and that extent of disconnection is hard for most to comprehend or imagine. Few would believe how very little I use a mobile phone, despite the fact that I am reasonably computer literate.

I have made around six significant life changing decisions based on my interpretation of dream contents. Each one of these set off a sequence of events which were unexpected. I have had dreams which vastly altered my understanding of this current life. In making offerings after some of these dreams I have largely been ignored. A common theme in my dreams is that I will not be believed. I have rationalised this that I am fated not to be believed. It does not particularly bother me. That seems to be how it is.

There is “evidence” in my dreams of 7 or 8 previous incarnations, one of whom is a named historical figure. In most of these lives I have been associated with the “priesthood”. There is no way of proving this, I myself and inclined to believe this explanation. We have a pukka erstwhile ex-scientist believing something which would be for most of my ex-colleagues something of a stretch. It is a strange fate to find myself in this position and I do no know what if anything to do with it.

My interest in dreaming was rekindled by “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho.

For eight years I did a dreaming practice specifically to allow the dreamer, the Soul, to advise thence to take over the steering will of my mundane vehicle, the dreamed. I am a dreamer by predilection and in some arrangements, I am “in” the place of dreams the South. I lived as a child under the light of the Southern Cross. It is not too surprising that my dreaming is vivid and extensive.

Letting go of the steering wheel and handing it to my dreamer, the real me, was not easy.  However, retrospect suggests that the dreamer knew what it was doing because things unfolded. You need to have faith and courage to try this.

At the moment it looks as though there is not much complexity to my remaining fate. But one dream could alter all that dramatically…

It has happened before a sudden turn…

We shall see…

A New Phase?

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My previous passport was set to expire in March 2015 so I applied for a new one in September 2014. The following year I joined the big C club and was operated on 2nd July at full moon. The cancer was diagnosed pT3N0M0 with around 40 clear lymph nodes. They caught it just in time as at T3 it had broken through the colon wall. That passport kicked off a new phase of my life. I had colon cancer and bought myself T-shirts with a large semicolon on. I no longer had a full colon. I did not get any chemotherapy. I was now very expensive to insure in terms of life cover. Key man insurance was in the 50 grand sterling range. I did not want to continue tutoring high school science.

I have just applied for a new passport. The passport office have told me that it is printed and on its way. A passport is an identity document. My identity has been renewed. I hope this one is not a harbinger of doom. We have seen too many hospitals these last few years.

I have had a feeling these last few weeks that I am waiting for something and that something new is on its way.

Suddenly two things went our way. I caught the stray Tom and he is back now neutered looking at me through the window to see if there are any more bits of food. The vet thinks he may have feline FIV. And the volet company can fix our volets before Christmas!!

I am a bit sad in that my new passport will not be an EU one…

It is a full moon today…

Hmnn

Likelihood and Significance

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What is significant and important is very subjective. Things important to some are not to others. Many might imagine themselves important to society or the institution in which they work. The whole notion of importance is important in the minds of some. People might make an “important” discovery in science and get a Nobel prize.  People might make an important contribution to literature and get a Booker prize. “Important” things end up as questions on University Challenge. I can normally answer more than half a dozen questions per show. There is loads of stuff in the show which I have never heard of. Being an old git, much of what seems important to the younger generations has next to zero importance to me. My phone has never been used for a call. It is only used to keep in contact with the wife when we are apart. This is almost unbelievable for many though actually factually correct.

I speculate that I am only “important” to one human and three cats, two of which are stray. My current level of significance in the grand planetary scheme of things is very low, the prevailing likelihood is that this will not change.

Were I to leave the physical form it would not impinge on many people, there would be no obituary, no funeral. It would matter not a lot. I am not in the lives of others and they are not in mine.

We will have been here six years in January. It is the longest time in my life since 1969 in which I have not travelled by airplane. My first outing was a 32 hour flight from Heathrow via Acapulco to Syndney Australia. We have left Brittany only once in the six years to go to the Loire with a view to house hunting. One of the questions we occasionally get asked is “have you been back to England?” People are surprised when the answer in no, not at all. I can’t think why I would want to go back. There is nothing there for me. I may never see the UK again.

I was pondering on the nature of fate and mine in particular. The likelihood is that this life will simply fizzle out. I am pretty confident I won’t make it to the life expectancy of ~82.  A part of the fate was to shine early then stop suddenly. I left full time employment at the age of 42 and I haven’t had a job since. I did private tutoring for a number of years. I did pioneer a few things but since end of 2006 I have not contributed in practical terms, I certainly did not add to UK plc. I have not been of much use. Whatever potential I once had has perhaps been spent and there is not much left.

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This from Wikipedia

Social isolation is a state of complete or near-complete lack of contact between an individual and society. It differs from loneliness, which reflects temporary and involuntary lack of contact with other humans in the world. Social isolation can be an issue for individuals of any age, though symptoms may differ by age group.

Social isolation has similar characteristics in both temporary instances and for those with a historical lifelong isolation cycle. All types of social isolation can include staying home for lengthy periods of time, having no communication with family, acquaintances or friends, and/or wilfully avoiding any contact with other humans when those opportunities do arise.

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Research indicates that perceived social isolation (PSI) is a risk factor for and may contribute to “poorer overall cognitive performance and poorer executive functioning, faster cognitive decline, more negative and depressive cognition, heightened sensitivity to social threats, and a self-protective confirmatory bias in social cognition.” PSI also contributes to accelerating the ageing process: Wilson et al. (2007) reported that, after controlling for social network size and frequency of social activity, perceived social isolation is predictive of cognitive decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

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Although I meet the connectivity criteria for social isolation, I do not feel particularly isolated and certainly not lonely. Social conditioning suggests that one ought to be social and one would miss contact when it ceases.

It is perhaps my fate to live this way. I have always been taken by the poems of Ryōkan Taigu a Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. As a couple our lives are quite hermit-like. {The wife talks to friends using Skype.}

Whatever knowledge I have will go with me to the incinerator.  From time to time I wonder if people missed out learning from me, but that could simply be vanity messing with me.

I bought a new A4 folder today to put my dreams in because the other ones are full. I have made good progress towards carving some dice for the Mo practice. The parameters of life will be clarified by medical professionals next week. It is difficult to engage with the news as it is so repetitive and dire.  War, mass killing, sex scandal, flooding, people getting cancelled for not being PC, orange manbaby says blah blah, blah. The human world has lost its way.

According to numerology I am now well into my final pinnacle which is a one. This is supposed to have the positive aspects of pioneering, go-getting, the instigator, the strategist, the natural leader, the inventor, the cosmologist, mapping out the unknown, fluidity, tenacity, originality, individualism, self-respect, volatility.

Of these only two apply these days.

The negative aspects don’t really fit either apart from perhaps anti-establishment.

I took a good long look at leadership because someone once banged on at me about this {a lot}. I have concluded that I lack the socio-political skills and inclination to lead for anything other than a very short time. I just cannot be arsed with all the horse trading and back scratching. I am not cut out to lead people in normal activities.

I am confident that I have pioneered differing forms of meditation.

I have pretty much stopped reaching out to other people. I have no desire to inflict myself upon them. Everybody has their own agenda and evidence suggests that I am not thereupon.

I wonder if having a quiescent mind ends with a quiescent life fading in which one realises that one is not a big deal and in reality, one never was. I am no big cheese, no grand fromage. I was perhaps only mildly significant to others for a very short period.

I wonder how many people think themselves important, if only in their own lunch hour…

Hmnn….

Travelling With a 511 keV Gamma Emitter Tomorrow

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We are a four cancer household of two. I have had stage 3 colon cancer and a couple of basal cell carcinomas. The wife has recently had a lumpectomy for breast cancer, stage 1, followed by 15 sessions of radiotherapy. Tomorrow, she has a Positron Emission Tomography {PET} scan to check on the state of play with her multiple myeloma, it will be an 18F – FDG PET scan. The [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose shows sites of hypermetabolism associated with regular cancer or myeloma. It decays by positron emission, an up quark changes to a down quark.

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The annihilation of the emitted positron causes two ~511 keV gamma “rays” emitted at exactly 180 degrees to each other to conserve momentum. The half-life of 18F is around 110 minutes. The drive back from the centre of nuclear medicine is half an hour, we have a smallish Peugeot 207 and it takes place at less than one half life after injection.

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According to what I have read in the scarce literature, this car journey gives me an exposure of ~0.4% of the annual average exposure to radiation.

Perhaps there is a need for more research on what happens when a patient leaves the nuclear medicine centre? There are health and safety assessments for the healthcare practitioners, what about the carers? This is the third journey like this for me. There will be more.

We have an appointment with the radio-oncology specialist and the haematologist week beginning 2nd December.  We will know a little more about what our immediate future holds by the end of that week….

Being Watched and Residual Fate

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We have two feral cats who live on the compound, Felix who is black and white as you might expect and Gandalf who is grey and now white after the battle with the Balrog. Gandalf is a young, neutered female who is full of beans and Felix is an old warhorse who got her up the duff not long after she arrived here. I captured her and took her to the vets and the local charity paid for her operation for her to be released back here.  

When the wife was recovering from surgery for her breast cancer recently, I fed them both. Gandalf in particular equates me with food. So, I am under constant surveillance wherever I go in the garden. Having a patch of white fur is poor camouflage. Cats think they are clever. I can often feel it when Gandalf is observing me from some random place of hiding / vantage point in our 2 acres. I know. When I turn and look directly at her from say 50 metres, she has on occasion looked surprised and even startled. I have seen her flinch.

I have a kind of sixth sense, which may or may not be reliable.

Of late I have felt some kind of human observation, especially when I am down near the river. It is the wrong time for day for the Korrigans {fairy like beings often associated with water}. The feeling is always of a male, masculine. It has happened a few times in the last few days. But when I have turned to look there has been nobody there that I can see. The line of sight through the gap in the hedge points at a treeline on the hill. It is possible, though unlikely, that someone is watching. What are the crazy Brits up to now? The other day a helicopter flew over our property, stopped directly above, then turned around and headed south. This happened twice in a few minutes. If anybody is watching it must be bloody boring for them. I might set up some trail-cams.

Weird…

Today I have been mulling over if there is any residual fate left for me. The current hypothesis is that I will quietly eke out my days and experience my possibly karmic bad health slowly worsening. I don’t see much left for me to do. I am largely apart from the world. There are cancer and myeloma follow ups for the wife in the next few weeks which include another PET scan. That will advise.

The world is perhaps braced for whatever lunacy might ride forth from Tango man in DC. Maybe he will decree that all Americans must wear tin foil hats on their heads. You might be able to get a special MAGA cap lined with tin foil.

My dreams have pointed at using Tibetan dice for divination. I have made two prototypes from Walnut root. The root is too wet. The ones I made were not fair. It was easy to see that some numbers came up more frequently than others. They were “bent” dice. I have a method of production and nice piece of apple wood for the next iteration.

On the warrior’s path anything is possible. The universe has a bag full of spanners and a playbook full of curve balls. So, you never know for sure. Likelihood is a quiet fade-out to clog popping time.

Fizzling out like a dying sparkler seems quite natural and non-dramatic.

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Sent la pluie comme un été Anglais

Entends les notes d’une chanson lointaine

Sortant de derrière d’un poster

Espérant que la vie ne fut aussi longue

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Inquiry – Inquest – Pow-wow Dream 10-11-2024

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Last night after watching some rugby highlights on YouTube, MasterChef, a bit of the France V Japan game and Strictly Come Dancing we went to bed.

I awoke around 3 AM and then had a relatively short dream in which I was the subject of an inquiry some kind of inquest into what happened and then a knowing and observation that there was/is some kind of ongoing meeting or pow-wow about the findings. Metaphorically the jungle drums are rolling. I had images of several of the people in this inquiry some of whom were known to me ~ two decades ago. There were others who are “famous” or in the public eye.

The contrast between this “dream” and our nighttime entertainment is marked. In no way was I ruminating about this nor have I much. But the dream has brought it to my attention {again}. It is not the first time that I have had dreams about people making inquiries about me.

Nobody {with one exception} has any current knowledge about what I am like, how I behave or how I think. There is nobody I could ask, realistically, to be a referee. Literally nobody has any current knowledge about my abilities and orientation.

If a gang of people gather together to talk about someone when that person is not present is that

  1. Sensible planning and considered responsible behaviour?
  2. A form of conspiracy bordering on bullying?
  3. Rude?
  4. A comforting but relatively pointless exercise? {Look we are doing something about it we are holding an inquiry. We can publish the findings and the matter will be sealed.}

I have pointed out {previously and elsewhere} that I have never appointed nor will I ever appoint a spokesperson or Porte-parole. Anybody claiming to speak on my behalf is therefore a charlatan.

If anyone wants to know what I am thinking, what I want, how I am feeling etc., the answer is obvious. Don’t speculate, guess, suppose or otherwise chew things over.

Ask.

Having One of My Clumsy Days

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I have started with the manufacture of my dice. I have cut a cross section of walnut root with the chainsaw so that it is about 15mm thick. Today I made it into rough cuboids using my hatchet. I quickly realised when chopping kindling that I am having one of my clumsy days. It is probably not wise to play with a sharp knife. It will wait for another day.

Last autumn I was getting nerve tingling in my left hand, two fingers and the thumb. In 2007 I lost nearly all the strength in my left arm due to a herniated cervical spine disc in the c7-c6-c5 region. I got this as a result of an ippon seio nage judo throw at a sports dojo. On and off some symptoms return nearly twenty years later.

I had an MRI scan September 2023.

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There is clear narrowing around my spinal cord. There is osteo-arthritis. The MRI showed I also have a right sided cervical herniated disc c6-c5. When I drive for more than half an hour I get tingling in my right fingers. It is present now.

Most of the time it is non symptomatic.

Last autumn I visited a brain surgeon / neurosurgeon. It was bizarre. He prescribed be a tapered dose of prednisolone starting at 100mg per day for a week!! That tapered off over a month and I would have had no sleep and been a right royal pain in the arse for a month. He also prescribed an injection of steroid into my cervical spine. From what I have read this is no longer best practice. I did not have any of these interventions.

On my clumsy days the gravitational pull of the earth is somehow enhanced. Everything which can drop to the floor does. There was a bit of left sided tremor too, today. These are probably symptoms on the cervical pathology.

If these symptoms don’t go in the next few days, I may go and see the GP. The one thing I have been doing more of, of late, is screen time on this computer. I can easily stop that….