We packed the boot of our ‘Bentley’ with lamps and books and stylish old clothes. It was time to head back to our European ‘heaven’.

Things were getting pretty tight out there, the city we now called home was going in to semi-lockdown again.

Being back in Britain had been markedd by soaring happiness and abject despair … we’d spent two hours with my 90-year-old mum in a dingy pub. And we’d seen Andrea’s elderly auntie too. On the doorstep.

But covid had stopped us seeing our grandchildren.

But now it could shut the ‘borders’ we needed to cross to get home … already the Czech Republic was claiming one of the worst outbreaks in the world and Hungary and italy were back on the ‘poorly’ list.

And Boris was ready to close UK cities like he was flicking switchesflicking switches.

It was time for us to try to get home.

#Covid #Europe #UK #family #lockdown #truth

George Clooney and Bob Dylan are to work on a new film adaptation of John Grisham’s baseball-themed book Calico Joe.

The project has Clooney and his Smokehouse Pictures partner Grant Heslov getting together with Dylan’s Grey Water Park Productions.

 Calico Joe is the story of a father and son, played out against the backdrop of league baseball in the United States.

“John has written a beautiful story and the chance to collaborate with Bob to bring it to the screen is just fantastic,” Clooney said.

Dylan said: “George and Grant see in this book what I see in it – a powerful story that will resonate with young and old alike. People in all walks of life will be able to relate to.”

A statement from Bob and George said: “In this climate, with the ever-evolving distribution landscape and different ways to reach audiences, we feel this is the perfect time to focus on development with the best storytellers.

“The calibre of talent involved, and quality of John Grisham’s amazing book is the exact type of content we are looking to develop and produce.

Bob released his new album ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’ back in June, which NME called “arguably his grandest poetic statement yet” in a five-star review.

 The album went on to debut at number two on the US Billboard charts, making Dylan the only artist to have achieved a Top 40 album in the US in every decade since the 1960s.

#georgeclooney #bobdylan #johngrisham #calicojoe #joecocker #catfish #baseball

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we practise to please … like all those people who asked us to do a webinar on how to make a living as a writer.

Sorry!

We zoomed in, we zoomed out, we picked up the computer and shook it all about.

We went live – then we went dead!

We shouted and then we cried

… but it could not be denied

the webinar had turned up and fried.

And, guess what? It was all down to 3G… they’d cut me off for using all my ‘unlimited data’ on loading a couple of writerly videos on to YouTube … I thought my data was unlimited! Their explanation was couched in unintelligible jargon and incomprehensible sales pitches!

And, eventually, they sold me more data – but then admitted we couldn’t get a signal in the Eccleshall area of the Midlands – we are staying there in an ancient Catholic manse and have to smoke under an old oak tree next to a creaking gate.

They were carrying out maintenance, you see.

Thank you very much 3G! That fixed it for me!

Next, Jessica’s life took a turn for the better and she was called away to Wales, new climes and opportunities.

So, we didn’t do the webinar….

Sorry.

But that’s enough of excuses …

Here’s my plan, I have pulled together THREE vids giving my views on how to make a living as a writer – I’ve done it for more than three decades and I’ve done quite well out of it, thank you.

I am a travel writer and live abroad, I am a broadcaster on many stations including the BBC, I am involved in making TV documentaries and I write for international newspapers and magazine.

As a journalist and writer, I fight for what’s right … and that’s what writers should do whether through prose, poetry or narrative.

Look to make to make things better, whether that’s from inside the darkness or from outside the light.

Have a look at the vids and pop your questions in the comments box below. We will answer them, I promise.

Cheers

Leigh and Jessica

#writer #writing #money #earning #journalism

President Donald Trump has ‘put people’s lives at risk’ with his decision to stage a drive-by outside the hospital where he is being treated for Co vid-19.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days. They might get sick. They may die. For political theatre. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theatre. This is insanity,” . Dr. James Phillips tweeted. He is a Walter Reed physician.

Dr. Phillips, who is the Chief of Disaster and Operational Medicine at George Washington University as well as a CNN medical analyst, said Trump’s ride outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was irresponsible.

The stunt was just the latest example of Trump and his inner circle flouting public health recommendations. The President and those closest to him have repeatedly failed to wear masks when mandatory, practice social distancing and abide by the quarantine rules set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yesterday’s episode shows there’s no indication that Trump’s hospitalization is changing his approach to the pandemic.

“That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of Covid-19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures,” he explained. 

Despite the risk posed to others in the hospital, the driver and security staff, White House spokesman Judd Deere said that “the movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do” and that “appropriate precautions” were taken, “including PPE.

At least 10 people in the President’s vicinity have recently tested positive. Some 7.4 million Americans — roughly one in 44 — have been infected with the virus in the world’s worst-affected country.

#covid #trump #hospital #driveby #danger

Today was a day of self care and love or REST.
I get super sad when I come home from travelling – it feels like pulling myself out of where I am meant to be.
So today I made some Truffle Fettuccine (made with truffles I brought back from Croatia) to make this I blended black olives, garlic, truffles and a little cold pressed organic rapeseed oil added this to a mushroom sauce- made from blended oat milk, cooked garlic and mushrooms and nutritional yeast threw in some courgette broccoli and fettuccine and garnished with a health dose of black pepper and Himalayan salt.
I had a small portion in true Italian style and served it with some extra veg with a tahini dressing (literally just 3tbp spn organic tahini, garlic, 1/2 tsp maple syrup, black pepper and water down till you have the right consistency)
This was my take on the post I put up a few days ago as I was craaaaaving that #trufflepasta backing in my life.

#truffles #vegan #veganrecipe #croatiantruffles #pula #futtuccine #veganpasta #tahinidressing #healthy #travellingvegan #himilayan #salt #healthbenefits #recipe #yummy #italianrecipe

Contributing writer Andrew John Teague

Why are men taking their own lives every year in Yorkshire and Humber?

The Office for National Statistics has revealed that the region has the highest suicide rate for men across England and Wales.

It works out at 20 men in every 100,000 who live in the region actually kill themselves… and Hull seems to be the centre of so many tragedies.

The rate in the region is double the rate for men in London (11.8 per 100,000) and more than a fifth higher than the average in 2019 (16.9 per 100,000) – which itself is the highest recorded rate since 2000.

There were 5,691 suicides registered last year for both men and women, but deaths among males accounted for three-quarters of the figure at 4,303 – meaning suicide is the biggest killer for men under the age of 50.

It has led suicide prevention campaigners to identify several underlying reasons why three times more men kill themselves than women.

Andrew John Teague, co-founder of campaigning groups D.A.D.s and NAAP, spotted the trend after taking a peaceful campaign to Hull.

He said; “Since 2017 dad’s had become aware of suicides in Hull. In 2017 there was an article about a father’s death and it’s link the family courts and separation.

“We are in this so we are well aware how the trauma  effects  hundreds of thousands of parents around the world after separation. What we have noticed is the trauma being related contact denial.

“Again in 2019 we travel to Hull to raise awareness on suicide and contact denial. Parental alienation is one of the worst forms of that contact denial.

“This is the point where children reject the parent. By far not all the effect contact denial  have with a children. For decades the family courts have been the birthplace of children being used.”

For instance one dad killed himself just days after being banned from seeing his daughter, an inquest was told.

Daniel Donnelly, 38, was found dead at home in Hull, Humberside, in February, 20 days after a court barred him from seeing his child.

He had “lived for weekends seeing his daughter”, the coroners’ court heard and had gone clean after battling drug addiction.

A pal said the court ban on seeing his daughter took Mr Donnelly “over the edge”.

The distraught father left suicide notes at the flat where he lived alone.

“It needs to change,” says Chelsey Dalee, once partner of suicide victim Jamie Swalla.

She says dwindling government budgets and rising mental health cases are devastating her home-

town of Hull.

The 31-year-old said: “The situation is disgusting, and it’s only getting worse.

“Jamie was human just like the rest of us. He tried to get help but he was abandoned time and time again.

“This needs to stop.”

Chelsey set up mental health foundation Mysterious Minds that aims to help other families affected by suicide in Hull.

The group has so far helped 50 families in the city, but Chelsey revealed at least 40 of those had lost a male family member to suicide.

“It’s such a huge problem in this area, men need to get talking,” she adds.

“They’re human like the rest of us. They suffer, they have vulnerabilities.

But what is about across the region? Two men who were complete strangers jumped 100ft to their deaths from the Humber Bridge within minutes of each other recently.

The double tragedy sent shock-waves through nearby Grimsby, rated one of the poorest and most deprived areas of Britain. It’s not thought the two men made a suicide pact, though they were last seen 50 metres apart before leaping into the Humber estuary from the bridge, which is nearly a mile and a half long.

Police think it was a complete coincidence they were both there at the same time and jumped into the swirling water at 4am in the morning within minutes of each other.

The families of male suicide victims have backed a regional daily’s campaign to raise awareness of men’s mental health.

The Hull Daily Mail and its sister website Hull Live launched a Speak Up drive  after two men,died.

Ian Conlin, the father of 24-year-old Sam Conlin, who was one of the victims, has backed the Mail’s campaign along with the families of others who have taken their own lives.

He said: “I can get behind this campaign 100 per cent. Anything that can just help even just one person go and get help will mean that it has done its job.”

Hull Live digital editor Jenna Thompson told HTFP: “The response from readers has been overwhelmingly supportive of the campaign.

“Many have come forward to share their own mental health struggles and have spoken about the importance of talking about these issues openly and honestly.

“Importantly, the campaign has also been backed by families of those who have taken their own lives who have thanked us for highlighting this issue.”

The suicide rate for men in England and Wales in 2019 was the highest for two decades, official figures show.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), published on Tuesday, 1st September found there were 5,691 suicides registered, with an age-standardised rate of 11 deaths per 100,000 population.

The ONS said men accounted for about three-quarters of suicide deaths registered in 2019, 4,303 compared with 1,388 women.

Males aged 45 to 49 years had the highest age-specific suicide rate (25.5 deaths per 100,000 males); for females, the age group with the highest rate was 50 to 54 years at 7.4 deaths per 100,000.

Despite having a low number of deaths overall, rates among the under 25s have generally increased in recent years, particularly 10- to 24-year-old females where the rate has increased significantly since 2012 to its highest level with 3.1 deaths per 100,000 females in 2019.

As seen in previous years, the most common method of suicide in England and Wales was hanging, accounting for 61.7% of all suicides among males and 46.7% of all suicides among females.

These can include feeling pressure to conform to ‘masculine’ behaviour, bottling up emotions over fears it shows weakness, refusing to seek medical help and a tendency to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol.

Andrew Teague said; “When has human beings we think of the darkness the falls over the absent parents. We can clearly see the trauma   the scars   the hurt   the pain   the breathing     shear heartbreak.

“This is of course if people humans  could really see and understand. Very difficult indeed when they’re not going through it. In fact no one will ever know without going through it. Raising the awareness on what happens behind the family doors is a critical part  on saving children and indeed the absent parents.

“It can never be in THE CHILDS BEST INTEREST to lose a parent

“It can never be THE WISHES AND FEELINGS absent parent left destroyed or worse dead.

“Hull is only one city this happens but the only city to identify the real issues 

Awareness is key for saving absent parents.”

#suicide #deadmen #Hull #humberside #yorkshire #groups # helpmenlive #parentalalienation #malelivesmatter

Where has the spirit of the British gone?

An army of snoopers on the streets – the legitimising of the UK’s peevish little village gossips and busybodies – making sure pubs and restaurants have cowed to the curfew.

All now sleeping…

Like Dylan Thomas wrote a few years after we had come out of the war years bruised and battered but unbroken …. 
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, boatman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.
But now the busybodies have their phones, apps and a sense of cynical superiority as they peak through your letterboxes and curtains to make sure you are behaving like good boys and girls – hang the fact you are going bankrupt and the old clocks ticks away like the time-bomb it has become because of this fatty little grease ball of a virus named after a beer.

And our politicians are right behind the snitches – a country policed by special constables, waddling parking wardens, the corona police and our curtain-twitching neighbours…. yep, politicians are encouraging us to snitch on neighbours and tell the police if anybody invites more than six people round for a cucumber sandwich and a cup of tea, let alone those who invite their mates round for some super-lager and illegal substances…

Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional
salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row.

Our Prime Minister – a man who sometimes seems of Churchillian proportions and at others appears to be the original dumb-blond – has become the flapping windy over-weight grinning gargoyle of our experts strapped to mast of this ship of fools listing in an uncharted sea.

Cowed by Covid, that’s us.

These experts are drowning us in bubbles of fear – and do you know what – and I have been a conspiracy denier since the beginning of this spitting snotty virus – we are making it easier for the powers across the world to control us.

Now, this might be a by-product of Covid terror everywhere, in high places and the dereliction of cities but it does seem that we are all becoming more and more in favour of more restrictions.

Where has it gone, our spirit?

Have we signed with a strange doomsday cult run by the people who studied for decades to keep us well? Scientists who have said for centuries that science is more honest than nature? Politicians who need a kind of unnatural truth to support their views of the future?

Are we really so brain-washed that we are destroying the future of the next generation? We’ve already landed them with massive debts, robbed them of the where-with-all of buying a home, getting married, getting a car and the obligatory two weeks in Benidorm.

And we’ve unleashed these little peevish snitch-police on the streets while our real policemen are being shot in their custody units.

We all have to ask a simple question:

Are we all going to die if we don’t stay at home?

The second question has to be – is loneliness, depression, fatness, alcoholism – and dishonest and robot-ridden Facebook – really the only alternatives to going out for a bit?

Who are the real bogeyman in our now-spirit-less dreams?

Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth
Thou Shalt Not on the wall...

Do you know, when people live in constant fear they can become incapacitated, because fear interrupts the processing of information.

Being ordered about can become a blessed relief for us.

I have never understood why suddenly all governments in the world rose up against us – and WE ARE THE WORLD – and began to dismantle their own financial bases?

Why would the besuited representatives of all that is conservative want to turn capitalism into a corpse? Deliberately turn our cities in to dystopian film sets​?

Let us not become slaves to fear and uncertainty and a miniscule pustulating blob of fat and disease … let’s stand up for ourselves, fight for our lives, battle for the freedoms we hold so dear.

But let’s not do it by wearing our baseball caps backwards and wildly dancing what could be the last of our nights away … no, let’s do it by asking question after question after question… let’s tell the dark doyens, the fat controllers, what we want.

Remember, we got Brexit even though we didn’t want it because so many of us couldn’t be ‘arsed’ doing anything about it.

I think it may be true to say that the governments of the world have finally become the real anarchists.

And now we – the Citizen Canes and the Citizen Smiths – need to decide what we want.

So as …

the thin night darkens the Reverend Eli Jenkins delivers a greenleaved 
sermon on the innocence of men, the suddenly wind-shaken
wood springs awake for the second dark time... 
 

#dylanthomas #covid #borisjohnson #killer #anarchists #deadlycon

FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SIX MILLION newspapers are sold across the world every day.

So, based on industry standards – and all industries are allowed to have them – there are about 1.5bn daily readers of what are considered to be the most heinous, lying, despoiling, misleading, exaggerating, click-baiting, sensationalising, scandalising, distorting, disingenuous, despicable, debasing, disgusting, sexist, hateful and hating form of any media known to man or beast since the world began turning in its own starry starry grave…

Well, we newspaper people must be doing something right then!

Yep, 536 million units sold every day to a world that hates us.

We are an industry worth billions despite the fact that for the past fifty years newspapers have been dismissed as flopping around in their own sickly dying beds.

But dying?

Really?

Think about it! What would the fish n chip shop industry have done without us for half a century if we’d died?

And what about Ink Inc (orporated)? That’d be blotted out wouldn’t it!

Where would all you celebs and sinners dip your quills then, then? (If I may be so bold).

In an octopus’s garden?

No… newspapers are not part of a dying industry. They’re not even sleepy.

And they could actually be the next big thing, if you think about it…

Look at it this way, apart from 536 million print copies, almost one in ten people in the UK in 2019 paid online services to get their news.

Then add to that, glossy magazines which supplement newspapers with such a rich and perfumy, fashionable blanket of security.

Do you know, that in 2018, 373.8 million glossies were sold in the UK alone?

And that figure helped the global entertainment and media market to reach a value of 2.6 trillion US dollars .. that is 1,995,461,000,000.00 pounds sterling.
The entertainment and media market encompasses newspapers, magazines, TV and radio and film, music and books.

Now let’s take a look at an industry that really IS ALL ABOUT DYING

Yep, the God industry, an industry that’s been getting us, by hook or by crook, to sell our souls to it almost before time began! (Depends what you think came first, God or the Universe).

Anyway, analysis from Georgetown University shows that religion in the US alone is worth $1.2 trillion – that’s more than the combined revenues of the top 10 technology companies in the country, including Apple, Amazon and Google.

So here, on Earth as it is in Heaven, God has got to be, well. the godhead of all industry – beating the news industry with far more than a proverbial wing and a prayer.

But which is more honest?

Now there’s a question of Biblical proportions surely.

Well, a claim that people of faith can somehow avoid disaster while at the same time enjoying material success and good health has to be a promise of miraculous proportions, surely.

And so is the claim that you can live happily ever after (life) on a big white fluffy cloud when you’ve fallen off the unfenced edge of this Flat Earth!

Oh, and talking of clouds – what about the internet?

How much is the internet worth in the great scheme of things?

Well, globally its market worth is about $1319.08 billion at any one time.

Right, now we’ve actually got our digits into the internet – the cyber land of the porn again – let’s ask a very big question indeed… which is the biggest liar?

The news industry, the church or the internet?

First, let’s have a look at some research about online honesty: Online deception is said to be the rule, not the exception.

Studies suggest that less than 60 percent of web traffic is actually human! The majority of it is actually a secret army of bots – yep, bots, ROBOTS in real terms.

Do any of you remember that massive scandal about ROBOTS in 2013? It was reported that half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people”.

The figure was so high that Youtube feared that their systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake.

In truth the “fakeness” of the internet is incalculable.

So, what about newspapers and their honesty then?

Do you know there were 49 reported defamation cases in the UK in the year ending June 2017.

And newspapers were the defendant in only 22 per cent of them – less than 10.

defamation cases, a fair barometer of who is telling the truth and who isn’t, in the UK were down 50 per cent compared to a decade ago.

Just 6 per cent of UK defamation cases last year were brought by celebrities.

And there have been less than 100 celebrity versus newspapers court cases in the last two decades.

And most of the celebrities lost!

Well, I ask you… let the facts speak for themselves, eh.

Let’s pick the bones out of this then … up until the year 2000 there was a telephone booth at a crossroads in the wastelands of the Mojave Desert.

A very famous writer indeed said that it had one free phone call on it for every gambler who had become a loser … they could call the next station on their losing streak. Or they could call their God.

When the internet discovered the phone booth’s existence by proxy, it went insane in its own gigantic dark box of a world. It blew one of the world’s best-kept secrets to millions and millions of people. And those millions and millions created a situation where the booth was removed forever.

Some years ago, as a travel journalist, I drove in to the Mojave Desert to see if I could find anything left of the telephone booth, supposedly used occasionally by cinder miners to order supplies.

When I arrived in the blistering sun at its location, even the concrete plinth it once stood on had been obliterated.

And yet its number still exists and sometimes somebody answers it … call 7607339969.

#covid #mojavephone #phonebooth #desert #newspapers #media #internet #church #god #cinderminers #heinous #lying #despoiling #misleading #exaggerating #click-baiting #sensationalising #scandalising #distorting #disingenuous #despicable #debasing #disgusting #sexist #hateful 

I have to admit that I have never managed to forgive the two ex-partners who cheated on me.

The first ‘cheating’ happened almost 30 years ago. And, like an emotionally injured elephant, I have never forgotten…

The last time I was cheated on by a partner was 20 years ago and it led to me becoming the victim of a vicious campaign of lies about sex and infidelity… I even have the video tapes to prove it!

Some people can carry on with their partner after they’ve been cheated on. But I couldn’t. It’s a mixture of anger, hurt and loss which can make you hate the rest of the world too for a very long time.

If anything good is to come out of becoming a cuckold you have to avert the burning fury of your eyes from your ex and take a good look at yourself… did you put weight on? Did you let yourself go? Grow a pot belly? Lose interest in making love? Did you become sullen and non-communicative? Bad tempered? Or worse?

Or did you just simply become disinterested and, yep, the hardest thing to admit, uninteresting?

In my case I had to scrutinise my nightly drinking. I am sure it didn’t help the stability of one of my exes who was actually a practising alcoholic…

In the other case, I don’t think I earned enough money to keep her in the ‘Florida’ lifestyle she desired … I was a working and drinking writer and all I could offer was the equivalent of a romantic artist’s slightly stoned garret in the sky.

It wasn’t enough though, not after half a decade, she went looking for more. Sadly, she didn’t find it.

In a way infidelity can be understood … as a new couple you throw yourselves together, legs a akimbo, shirts and tops rolled up under your chins like monks with dirty habits, pants twanging at your ankles like Cupid’s bow, squirming on cheap motel beds or in the back of your car…

And you believe you have found love, lasting ecstatic love 0 with the sweaty hard-breathing dishevelled person of your dreams.

Sadly, soon that crazy, almost carnivorous, copulating ends up diminishing before your eyes – Coronation Street in front of the telly-on-tick in the lounge of your nice semi-detached in a nameless cul-de-sac in Middle England.

But what if the person who let you down is your best friend? A bloke – or woman – you’ve known for decades who has been by your side through all your trials and tribulations, all your break-ups, all your losses…

And all your successes?

What if they have stolen your money, your work and tried to steal your reputation?

How do you feel then?

Does that kind of betrayal hurt more than the love of your life adopting the prone position with a stranger behind your back?

Tell us your thoughts and even your stories of broken hearts and betrayal.

We’ll publish them here.

Meantime, some words of hope, one from a short missive doing the rounds on the internet and another from that wonder of urbanity Garrison Keillor who had his own reputation prodded over some alleged sexual matters. He said it was all a bit of a misunderstanding. And at nearly 80 it could well be the truth.

The internet:

In life, you will fall out with people that you never thought you would. Get betrayed by people that you trusted with all your HEART.

And get used by people you would do anything for.

But life also has a beautiful side to it.  

You will get loved by someone you never thought you would have. Form friendships with people that will establish more meaningful and stronger relationships. And overcome things you never thought you would get over.

We all have chapters that end with people at some point in life. But take pride in knowing that the very best part of your book is being written.

• GARRISON KEILLOR

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.

#heartbreak #cuckolds #cupid #monkwithadirtyhabit #garrisonkeillor #hope

Contact denial happens so fast – yet while earth continues to turn for us all.

Time never stops, it continues, as the months, the years burn

There are millions of broken hearts – and there are tears – all around the world, forming the rivers of pain as the children’s lives are left in the turmoil..

The scars inflicted are not visible though, so no one seems to care.

Pray you never go through it, it will be the end of you, I swear.

Non-accidental psychological injury should never be put on a child.

The scars run deep, while you fill in the C100 forms.

As parents and families fight in the courts, it’s the children who suffer the most.

The aligned parents smile, at the school yard gates: “Their father – their mother – is a monster.”

I just want to protect my kid.

Some targetted parents don’t make it, they fall along the way.

R.I.P.

The tears roll down our face, we do what we can each day The family courts are farcical, the exe’s drama its their domain.

The hardest thing for the targetted parent, is the contact they hope to gain.

#WeWillFightForYou #parentalalienation #parents #alienation #children #familycourts #C100firms

Written by AJ Teague