David L. Atkinson's Blog, page 92

Writing - Chocolate Wars

I was awoken by some news that I find an affront to my position as an apprentice chocoholic. I consider myself as an apprentice, even though I am approaching my middle sixties, in comparison with real chocoholics using quantity as a measure.

On a visit to the USA around 1990 I had the misfortune to sample a Hershey Bar and it was an experience that I have no wish to repeat.
The need for conflict over this much loved product, chocolate that it not Hershey's, is caused by the USA on two fronts.
Special relationship - what special bloody relationship?
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Massive food giant Nestle bought out Cadbury's some while ago but recently committed the cardinal of all sins - they altered the recipe for Cadbury Creme Eggs! The change has been assessed by a family expert who is most upset by the alteration which was obviously unnecessary. (I will personally verify the assessment). Why change something that is clearly perfect in the first place?
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The second blatant insult to British chocolate has been by the Hershey (yuck!) company who have successfully blocked the import of British chocolate in the courts. Please spare a thought for British ex-pats who are being forced to hoard chocolate bars from their native land because of the bullying actions of the failing Hershey bullies. Simply put, British chocolate is better than Hershey's and they are not making enough profits, so they have taken out a court injunction. What they should be doing is admitting defeat to British chocolate makers, and either changing their recipes, or quietly folding and disappearing into the wide blue yonder. They obviously can't cut it!
Hands off our Chocolate USA!!!!
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Isn't it amazing what a minor thing can generate in terms of writing inspiration!
God Bless

Poetry Thursday 146 - Glorious Winter

The inspiration for this was two-fold. Firstly, I wished someone good morning one dull wet day and their reply was that the day was good but the weather wasn't. Secondly, on another day I was awakened with a beautiful dawn that preceded a gloriously sunny but bitterly cold day.

Glorious Winter
Air as clean and sharp as a razor blade’s bright edge.Its coldness catches the back of your throatlike the kick from iced cold water.Virtually painful in its intensity.

The light is almost flawless – head achingwhiteness.It burrows into every unguarded orificewith its cleansing purity,rendering dullness obsolete.
It is quiet sterility from a dearth ofinsect life.A chill silence waiting for regenerativewarmth.
Each creature’s dormancy is an awaitingof rebirth to full activity.All dependents anticipate the burst of vitalitythat will alarm them back to life.
The disappointment of spring.© David L Atkinson February 2015



God Bless

Writing - I've a fine soap box

Today's blog was initially inspired by my catching part of a film - Demolition Man starring Silvester Stallone. It was a comment made by Sandra Bullock (Officer Huxley) on the illegality of salt that was mostly responsible. Stallone (John Spartan) asks for the salt in the restaurant and Huxley replies,
'Salt is bad for you therefore illegal John Spartan'
Similar things were said about, smoking, alcohol, sex and so on. It made me think of the 'nanny state' that we live in and where it will end up. Hence the soap box.
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The first item that hit me about today's news was concerning the creation of babies from DNA from three people. I understand the difficulties people have living with genetically transmitted diseases and the ache that parents have when they see their children struggling with such health issues as cystic fibrosis and more. However, the process of natural procreation has always come up with problems, and it still will irrespective of the governments decision. Again I'm sorry for anyone who is suffering or caring for the sufferer, but natural selection is part of the life process. No one knows what this genetic fiddling could end up producing. The science has not yet been fully tested and the idea that we could be opening the door to designer babies is abhorrent to me. Wouldn't we be better spending the money on cures for cancer, motor neurone disease and the like. In truth no one knows what the long term affects may be or produce.
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Then there is fracking. I witnessed an MP saying this week that we know all about the affects of fracking it has been on going for twenty years. I'm sorry but that is a contradiction in terms. Twenty years isn't long enough to ascertain the full range of illnesses and side affects produced by the contaminated water that is produced as a result of fracking. It could be another full generation before those after effects are fully understood.

There were plenty of news items regarding waiting times at A & E departments across the land at the turn of the year. In fact they are still going on. I remember one doctor commenting that they'd had to cancel elective surgery operations so that they could cope. Some elective surgery is cosmetic as are some gastric band operations and so on. Perhaps the NHS would run more efficiently if this often unnecessary stuff was all privately funded in designated clinics. Perhaps if people who perceive themselves as needing that type of surgery had to pay for it themselves then the 'need' would dissipate somewhat. We should be happy with what is God given.
Writing
I could go on at length about these and other matters that I consider wasteful and pointless but the real spin off from soap boxing - have I just invented a new term? - is a greater understanding of people and how they relate to the world. Writing books, creating characters and the like needs an understanding of how the human mind works and how we relate with each other. To do that, I believe that you have to be involved in what is going on in the world. Even those of you who write about the future or the past can't ignore relationships and the basis on which they work, or don't.So read about current affairs, world news and controversial subjects and consider them from every side, it can be frustrating but also enriching. 
God Bless

One pot cooking - Pork Loaf en Croute

Back to Clarissa Dickson-Wright's One Pot Cooking. This meal probably would do very well in spring and summer when it can be eaten hot or cold.

This is quite a sizeable loaf and would serve six people immediately straight from the oven. It would go well with mushy peas, new potatoes and any other green vegetable. Served cold with salad it would be very tasty. I could see hikers taking a piece of this in their backpacks to fortify them during a break, that is if they were strong enough to carry it!


I'm sure those experts looking at the amount of pastry would be laughing but I don't claim to be a baker of any note.

The full recipe is on the appropriate TAB at the top of this page.

God Bless

Writing - Surveillance society

This should be read in a voice akin to Michael Caine's in his Harry Palmer films. 
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'Did you know that there are more than 20 types of traffic cameras?'

The question is when is enough surveillance enough? Every time you set out in a car you are spied on. Your speed is recorded, your photograph is taken and your number plate is checked. Some of the cameras are hidden and linked to sensors in the road; some are handheld; many are either on a post at the side of the road or a gantry under which you pass. There are cameras that are operated by DVLA, by the police or by local authorities some of which are no more than money generating cameras. £284 million was raised from speeding fines last year. Most of the money goes into the treasury.

Some cameras are there to help traffic flow which, judging by the number of traffic jams there are round the country, brings into question the efficacy and intelligence of the people operating them. Other cameras are to help catch criminals.
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The Truvelo D camera doesn't need film as it transmits images to a central office wirelessly. This is less dependent on staff and so cheaper to run.
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Then there is Trafficmaster which is found in smartphones, satnav systems either purchased separately or in-built in cars. The system is monitored 24/7 by personal assistants and is principally intended for stolen vehicle recovery and passing traffic information to drivers. It is possible for police to obtain a court order to compel the company to hand over data.
Now the above information is only about surveillance to do with traffic. There is also urban surveillance supposedly to help us feel safer, it can be carried out with cameras similar in size and colour to the traffic variety or there are things like the mosquito.

As it says in the picture it has a camera, microphone and may land on you and take a DNA sample. Then of course last Christmas's gadget of choice were personal drones which I wrote about in a previous blog.
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There are hundreds of varieties of drone and range from tens of pounds to thousands.
What type of surveillance do you need in the next story that you write?
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Next time you take a drive or walk ponder who is watching you!
God Bless

10 things we didn't know last week

Another collection  of off the wall facts from this weeks news. Looking at some of them I can't help but feel that they range from weird science to stupid science! Take the first one!!!!!!!!
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1. An egg can be unboiled.
Sorry but isn't this just pointless? Why would you want to unboil an egg? What can be gained from that piece of wizardry?--------------------------------

2. Dutch babies smile, laugh and enjoy cuddling more than their US counterparts.

Really?

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3. There are four different ways to pronounce diplodocus, and the way children say it is probably more technically correct than the academics' preferred method.

Again a load of the proverbial. I saw a recording of children being taught spelling. Specifically silent letters and how they can create confusion. The teacher said that the silent letter in Wednesday was 'd' - never in a million years. It depends on where and when you were raised. The silent letter was always the 'e' where I come from. We always pronounced the 'd'.

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4. Toilet paper is getting smaller.

Shit!!


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5. TV crime dramas are good for the brain.


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6. The athletic performance of early risers peaks at noon.


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7. Manot Cave in Israel is the most likely contender for the location where humans and Neanderthals first had sex.

I couldn't have managed another day without knowing that.


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8. Malawi's national football team was briefly coached by a 17-year-old from Colchester.


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9. Baby chickens associate low and high numbers with left and right, respectively.

I didn't write the original version - as I remember a chicken is a baby hen!
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10. In 2004, 24% of households in China owned a fridge. Ten years later this had shot up to 88%.


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God Bless

Writing - Magna Carta and women's rights

In a week where the UK has dropped from 5 to position 26 in a list of countries regarding the effectiveness of their support for women I'm taking a look at similar attitudes in 1215.
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I have never believed that it was right to discriminate against women simply because of their sex. However, it happens as does discrimination for other reasons such as race, religion and age. The fight against discrimination has been going on hundreds of years. The Magna Carta is a particularly aggressive document and deserves some examination.

Magna Carta highlighted the way in which women were sidelined in public life. Not one woman is named in the charter's 63 chapters. It must be said that the term 'man' would refer to 'human beings' in the charter so its stipulations would apply to both.However, Magna Carta reflected the inequalities between the sexes. A woman had far fewer property rights than her male counterparts, she could only inherit in default of a brother , and, in marriage, her property was controlled by her husband.
Although women were entitled to the judgement of their peers, those peers would have been entirely male - women did not sit on juries and they, except on very rare occasions, did not hold public office. The only chapter in Magna Carta where 'femina' did appear put women on a lower level than men. This stated that no one was to be arrested for murder on a woman's accusation, unless the deceased was her husband.
Legal records suggest that women were lodging a high number of appeals at the time of Magna Carta. As they could not be made to back up their accusation in a trial by battle, the suspicion was that women were making accusations irresponsibly - either on their own account or because they were being manipulated by men.
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There were good points to the charter for women. It protected free women from arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, dispossession and 'destruction', it reflected their limited role in public affairs.
In writing it is important to ensure that discrimination in any form is avoided but if writing an historical work then such discriminatory acts need to be dealt with accurately.God Bless

Writing - Magna Carta and society.

This week a new, left wing party has won the Greek elections and formed a government with a far right party. The campaigning towards the General Election in the UK is well under way with the main parties tied with a predicted 36/37% of the vote each. The smaller parties having less representation but in total they will make up a significant minority and probably hold a balance of power in a hung parliament. Much of this uncertainty is as a result of the political classes becoming more divorced from the lives of ordinary people.
This is not a symptom that resides exclusively with the UK
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In 1215 King John signed the Magna Carta on the banks of the River Thames at Runnymede under some pressure from the rebellious barons.It was these 100 or so earls and barons that dominated a very unequal society. The Magna Carta was a very aggressive document that sought to discriminate against unfree peasants and women, and gave less to towns and knights than they might have hoped.
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Even London was discriminated against along with other towns although they felt they deserved better. This was deliberate because the King levied tallage, a form of arbitrary tax levelled against towns, and the barons were worried that if they limited the king's right to tallage then their own similar rights would be affected. Knights were of a lower rank than the barons and often administered the barons lands and people. When it came to discriminating against the unfree peasants on whose labours their wealth depended, the barons and knights were ruthlessly united.
The bottom line is much the same today but instead of earls and barons we have large corporations and an elite sprung from a privileged education system, which is usually unavailable to the ordinary people because of cost. There are variations on this form of rule across the world and although the names may be different the outcome is the same.

I will include more information on this subject in my next blog but at this stage it is worth remarking about the value of such history to today's writer. Given that it would be a historical novel that was created the history concerning the Magna Carta and the description of life 800 years ago is a rich resource. Hilary Mantel took the history surrounding a man at Henry VIII's court and created her two awarding winning stories, Wolf Hall and 'Bring up the Bodies'.In her books she took the historical facts and hung 'life' on the characters producing a version of the relationships and life at court almost five hundred years ago.To do the same with the Magna Carta would be an equally hard task in researching into a past three hundred years earlier, but as a writer used to working on relationships not impossible. It would be a challenge.
God Bless

Poetry Thursday 145 - Human nature

As it was the 70th anniversary of the relief of Auschwitz the other day it had me reflecting on human nature and, of all things, group dynamics. What invisible force takes a set of normally ordinary people and turns them into rabid killers. I am not just talking about IS currently operating in the Middle East but the Nazis, Stalinists, Spaniards, Americans; in other words human beings. Throughout history there have been cases all round the world of groups of what had formally been ordinary folk who became killers.To begin with,
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Holocaust
by Barbara Sonek

We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our
parents and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.
We had a future. We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers. We had dreams, then we had no hope. We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no air to breathe smothering, crying, starving, dying. Separated from the world to be no more. From the ashes, hear our plea. This atrocity to mankind can not happen again. Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.




I know that group dynamics can generate behaviours that are out of character, and that issues such as collective bravado overcoming individual's sense of responsibility, have much to do with individual outbursts. However, when we are looking at organisations such as Islamic State, the time factor is not short. Similarly, with the Nazis the movement began many years before the outbreak of WWII and yet the individual members of the party were ordinary hard-working Germans.So a poem from me demonstrating my puzzlement.

Dark side of Human Nature
Man is even handed and fairwho treats others with great care.
But … !
Humans are capable of copious generositysharing wealth and knowledge with luminosity.
But … !
People have boundless, oceans of lovegranted to them from God above.
But … !


Humanity has a depth of kindnessshared between us with great fondness.
But … !
Humans are capable of great selflessnessto the benefit of those who have less.
But … !
Beneath the surface is there hatredlaced with varying layers of violence?A pool of festering bad bloodfrom long dead, evil descendants.Undercurrents of death granting evilcareless of those that are targeted.Enjoying the fate of the gulliblelooking for more from life to be parted.
© David L Atkinson January 2015

God Bless

Writing - Relief of Auschwitz

If I ruled the world (no I'm not a megalomaniac) I would encourage parents to take their children to one of the myriad of sites in this sad world where man's inhumanity to man has been witnessed. The point being to ingrain into the next generations psyche that there is never an excuse for violence.
Auschwitz 1

It is 70 years since the Russians entered the prison camp, built a soup kitchen and fed the starving inmates. I took the above photograph and the rest in today's blog in 2008 on a bright warm spring day that belied the terrors that were inflicted on fellow men in the name of science in these blocks. Contained in one of these enormous blocks is a display cabinet running the length of the room and up to the ceiling and behind the glass was a mountain of human hair.
[image error]HairAs I walked past this horrific monument I found that I couldn't utter a word, in fact, observing people as they passed by no one was speaking. There were handkerchiefs dabbing at cheeks and the sights kept coming, in another room a mountain of suitcases, in another a mountain of shoes.
ShoesNot to put too fine a point on it, but there is never an excuse for this level of brutality. 
In news bulletins the view we are shown tends to be of Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz 2. 
Birkenau (Auscwitz 2)
This is the view we are often shown when anyone mentions the name of the death camp on TV but in fact this is almost 2 miles away from the camp where at first Jews then Poles and Russians were held. Birkenau was built to accommodate many more inmates than the original camp. Once you pass through the arch your senses are assaulted by the sheer size of the camp. It was truly enormous.

The enormity of Birkenau
There are a few preserved huts in this enormous acreage, but for the most part all that remains is the heating pipe and the odd corner post.
Hut interior
The Germans didn't waste space inside the huts either. At each side of what was a brick built heating duct, there were two rows of bunks 3 tiers high. Each bunk held three adults and by my calculations that is around  four to five hundred people in each hut. There were hundreds of huts.Of course that was for the lucky ones. These were intended for the people who were set to work! When the people were disembarked from the trains they were split into workers and then those to be sent to take a 'shower'.
Going to somewhere like Auschwitz or Hiroshima is not going to be a laugh a minute trip, but sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the level of depravity that the human animal can sink.
To finish I feel that it would be a fitting memorial to include some of the more creative side of human nature in spite of such adversity.

Holocaust
by Barbara Sonek

We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our
parents and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.
We had a future. We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers. We had dreams, then we had no hope. We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no air to breathe smothering, crying, starving, dying. Separated from the world to be no more. From the ashes, hear our plea. This atrocity to mankind can not happen again. Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.
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God Bless