The Unorthodox Website Blog

There are various categories of physical phenomena which provide evidence of survival, or life after death. There is physical mediumship, ITC/EVP (Instrumental Trans Communication/Electronic Voice Phenomena), and then there are poltergeists, ghosts and hauntings.

The problem with all these is testing under laboratory conditions. With physical mediumship this is particularly difficult, as not only are the phenomena sensitive to light, but they are also sensitive to negative energy, so the very presence of skeptics can stop the phenomena occurring.

ITC/EVP does provide documentary, recorded and photographic evidence but the problem there is that all this is very easy to fake. So you have to be absolutely certain the evidence obtained was done so under strictly controlled laboratory conditions, monitored by independent witnesses.

With poltergeists, ghosts, hauntings, etc. again the presence of cameras and scientific equipment often seems to adversely affect the phenomena, but even when they do occur it is not necessarily evidence of survival.

This was a phrase my Greek-Cypriot cousin used yesterday to describe homosexuality, saying she’d still support any son/daughter who was gay but it was ‘not normal’. This choice of phrasing carries the unfortunate implication that all homosexuals are ‘abnormal’. I would prefer the term ‘not usual’, with the implication that being gay was unusual. Not strictly true, as it is very common in both the human and animal kingdom, but at least it doesn’t imply that being gay is a negative thing.

One could, of course, remark that someone who has lived in this country for about 50 years and has a poor command of English is ‘abnormal’, as are her parents who lived here for 15/20 years and speak hardly any English at all. But I digress, save for the fact that her choice of words might have been wiser had she bothered to learn English better in the last 5 decades.

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Ostalgie is the German term coined for nostalgia for the old Socialist regime in East Germany (Ost being the German word for East, thus: Eastalgia would be an English equivalent).

The film ‘Goodbye Lenin’ gave an idea how many former citizens of the GDR (German Democratic Republic or DDR to give its German initials) have a great deal of nostalgia for the now defunct State which was disestablished and its territory absorbed into the Federal Republic (former West Germany).

Brand names familiar to GDR citizens have disappeared, along with the full employment, security in old age, comradeship, and many other things which the old Socialist state gave them. Gone is the State which subsidized basic food prices, the cost of housing and put the emphasis on public services.

A group of 1950s-style rock’n'roll and Roots Music fans meet up in central London once a month for a drink and a meal out, and for the occasional outing and gig. Some of us have been on trips to the USA together, visiting venues and places of interest associated with the music we love, most of which comes from the Southern States aka ‘Dixie’.

We had a meet-up and meal last Friday. Most of us are around the same age, mid-60s, some a bit older, some younger. A remark was made that we probably had another 10 years of active life ahead of us if we were lucky.

As we get older, and see others get older (my mother is 95), we naturally get to thinking about what happens when we slow down, perhaps get more forgetful and/or decrepit, and if we are on our own, who will take care of us.

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‘CINDERELLA’

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Ugly Sisters (Eddie and Tony)

Dandini and Wicked Stepmother (Anne and Dot – Tony’s mum)

Footman, Prince Charming, Dandini, Wicked Stepmother (Sharma, Maureen, Anne, Dot)

Cinderella and Fairy Godmother (Elvina and Modupe)

Baron Hardup and Buttons (Hilda and Carmen)

Prince Charming (Maureen)

‘COYOTE STEALS THE FIRE’

Tree Spirit and Fire Spirit (Carmen and Tony)

David Cameron and others in the Conservative Party have recently been promoting the idea of cooperatives. Does this mean, while New Labour have been converted lock, stock and barrel to unbridled privatization and capitalism, the New Tories are being converted to Marxism?

Unlikely in the extreme, but perfectly possible they are desperately trying to gather some votes from the more leftwing section of the electorate.

However we should not dismiss these ideas just because it may be a vote-catching exercise, or because they come from the Tory Party. We should, however, be wary as some ‘cooperatives’ seem to be just a way of the State, local or other public authorities abdicating their responsibilities.

Examples of this are when pressure is put on council tenants or parents of State schools to form housing or education ‘cooperatives’.

Towards the end of next month I will hit 65, which in Britain at present for men is when we are eligible to collect our State pension. They are, of course, trying to raise it so that we all slog our guts out and drop dead at work before having a chance to retire or collect our pension. This in itself is a very short-sighted policy, and a completely false economy when millions of younger people with families are unemployed and living on State benefits. Why employ people over 65 or over 70 who will probably by then be on higher salaries than much younger people, and who must surely get less efficient as the infirmities of old age creep in? I retired at 62, but already I was very deaf and couldn’t hear visitors on Reception very well.

This was the subject of a pretentious and rather silly Horizon program on BBC 2 the other night. When not showing children, and adult mathematicians, counting upwards, it was discussing whether there was a biggest number.

This utter nonsense was presented as science or mathematics. What a load of drivel! The term ‘biggest number’ is absolutely meaningless unless it is qualified: biggest number of what: Tomatoes? Gold ingots? Atoms in the Universe? Stupid mathematicians and kids being persuaded to count on TV?

As a few pointed out, obviously there can be no absolute ‘biggest number’ as you can always add one, two or any other number to it to make a bigger number. So of course numbers can stretch into infinity either above or below zero.

The program then went on to postulate on the nature of infinity, and that if it existed there must be many exact carbon copies of Earth and us on it with the same thoughts, etc.

Good old fashioned packaging

Yes, there is undoubtedly a fiendish plot to deprive us ‘oldies’ of many of the basic necessities of life. The plot takes the form of completely unopenable wrappers, jars, etc.. Many of these are described as ‘childproof’ but of course we know that really they are ‘oldieproof’. Undoubtedly the Illuminati, a race of Alien Reptilians, the Freemasons or possibly the Compulsory Euthanasia at 40 Society are behind it all. 

Such things as those plastic bottles of cooking oil which my mother, at 95, finds absolutely impossible to open and which even I, at nearly 65, have difficulty with. I struggle with the little plastic seal, which often breaks as I try to pull it off. My mother simply punches a hole in the plastic bottle and squeezes the oil out thru that, a quite messy procedure I might add, so I wouldn’t advise it.

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Above and below: The Middlesex Hospital

This past week I’ve sadly had to say ‘goodbye’ to two very old friends. Not people, but buildings, or parts of buildings.

One was the Middlesex Hospital where I was born back in 1945, and where I was under constant treatment and underwent many operations (I was born with a cleft palate, hare lip and club foot, and also ended up with one leg shorter than the other. I also broke one leg in 1951.)

I was a regular visitor and in-patient of the hospital between the years 1945 and 1958, and was last admitted as an in-patient in 1969 for a final operation on my lip. I got surgical shoes and insoles to facilitate my short right leg and fixed right ankle right up to the present day, though in latter years have just used the cork insoles or parts of them in shoes I buy in regular shops.