The Bhagavad Gita: The Dark Night Of The Soul…

The first verse of the Bhagavad Gita introduces us to one of the main protagonists, Arjuna.

The image we are presented with is a troubled soul questioning his lot.

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Upon the physical battlefield of war and the metaphysical battlefield within his mind, Arjuna sees chaos all around him, everything is war, a life full of frustration, sadness and despair.

He concedes that whilst there are fleeting moments of happiness they never last, all are transient and ephemeral. Doubt and discontent has replaced hope and contentment, with no apparent end to dramas and dilemmas driving his negative emotions.

He feels that there is simply no end to misery, and when problems are resolved, they are quickly replaced by new ones to overcome (Buddha’s eighty four problems concept).

He ponders on whether he would ever be successful in his attempt to find peace, and becomes resigned that he will not.

He sees his life as pointless with no apparent way out of the darkness, a darkness which steers him into depression, concluding that life is not worth living.

As Arjuna gets older, the worse his condition gets, illnesses take longer to get over, become more chronic and persistent, and the looming shade of death penetrates his thoughts, something he never contemplated in his youth.

He reaches a point where he sees no good in things, no point in carrying on against a sea of struggles, waves that never cease.

He reflects on times of wealth and of material possessions that never truly brought happiness, and how things have lost their flavour, colour and shine.

Despair overwhelms Arjuna and he grows weak both physically and mentally and sees no way to carry on.

Without knowing it, Arjuna has reached the “dark night of the soul”, a point in life when one has lost the appetite to live but has not yet gained the knowledge or awareness of divinity.

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And so it is like Arjuna that one must weather the storm. We often forget that the darkest part of the night is just before dawn, and that night always gives in to day, and that light always overpowers the dark.

Most of us may have at one point experienced the dark night of the soul, a time when all is empty and devoid of meaning or connection. No pleasure or purpose can be derived from existence.

Such moments can be triggered by external events or internal worries, generated by the ego.

I have come to observe that what happens next seems to be determined and influenced by three things; people that surround and support us, how eager one is to change and how spiritually evolved one is or one wants to be during our darkest hour.

Several things can and do happen during the dark night of the soul, invariably a chain of events that culminate in something tragic or something majestic.

My father’s family has been plagued by tragedy, not able to navigate through the dark night. Of the six children born, one died as a new born, two died from suicide, two had nervous breakdowns and became alcoholics and spiritually bankrupt, and the strongest and most spiritual all them all (my beloved Aunt Joan) lived a life that was full, until her passing well into her Eighties.

And it is perhaps folly to think that materialism may help us through the dark times, when in fact it can push us further and further away from the light of liberation.

I know so many people who resort to alcohol for an uplift, when in fact it has the polar opposite effect, leading to more misery, which, like the unfortunate tale of my friend from Finland who tragically passed away recently, leads to premature death.

I too have experienced the dark night of the soul. Twelve years ago my wife told me in no uncertain terms that our marriage was over, she would no longer put up with the alcohol-fuelled transgressions and told me of her own, which led to the most pivotal (“sliding doors”) moment of my life.

Thankfully the thinnest of filaments between our souls was still attached, so it was in that exact moment in time that I had to make a decision, to change who I was and the behaviours I was exhibiting, or to leave the family home for uncharted and lonely waters.

I chose wisely, and soon after changing my ways, I found what one could call God, not in personified form, but in energetic form.

My first experience of reiki literally blew my mind, in a room of twelve strangers I witnessed and experienced some incredible things, things that told me that not only were the dozen practitioners in the room invisibly connected, but that everything everywhere is connected.

In later chapters we will come onto the Hindu concept of “guna”, which I understand to be three levels of spiritual evolution, and I believe that what happened to me twelve years ago opened the door to “Level 2”, and since that day all transgressions have ceased, and in times that I do struggle, I turn instead to contemplation and knowledge over alcohol abuse, and my marriage and friendships are better for it.

What actually happened appears to be an awakening of sort, a transition away from the material world and the ego, towards a more spiritual existence and liberation.

It was also around that time that I began to see things which hitherto went unnoticed, the amount of synchronicities increased exponentially, as did deja vu, Bader Meinhof and lucid dreams. Something was “turned on” and once the light was turned on it was never turned off, although from time to time it may dim.

So I survived my dark night of the soul (not as dark or as extreme as others I’m sure) and I managed that primarily due to the people that surrounded me and the wanting and willingness to change, moving from materialism to spirituality, from ego to a higher state of consciousness.

I’m not there yet, but things become clearer and brighter every day…

The Bhagavad Gita: Introduction…

Walking through a dense, dripping, deciduous woods with a dear friend of mine two weekends ago may well turn out to be a fruitful and fortuitous fork on the path to liberation, a path that leads me further away from the material world.

For it was on our bucketing-down bimble that we swapped ideas and notions from the books we were currently reading, me from Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now, he from Matthew Barnes’s Bhagavad Gita 101.

I had of course heard of “The Gita” as it is affectionately known as, but never before attempted to acquire a copy. As with many things it seems, things of import have a tendency to present themselves more frequently and more obviously when one is meant to notice, synchronicities if you will.

My recent discussions with Hindu friends, research into the works of Alan Watts and now my friend all nudged me towards a the path through another particular forest, Amazon.

So acquire The Gita I did, albeit in audiobook format, knowing that I had a long return drive to London coming up, a seven hour round trip, which, by the time I saw the sun setting over Liverpool Bay, would have the firmly rooted the central themes and tenets of ancient Hindu wisdom in my noggin.

To say the book had a profound impact on me is an understatement. Everything I had learned and understood since my spiritual awakening twelve years ago seemed all of a sudden to fit right into place, like the final missing piece in the jigsaw of life, which was in the box all along.

Thanking my friend for the recommendation, we went on to agree that we would try and take eighteen more walks before the years end, discussing in detail the Introduction and each of the seventeen chapters of Bhagavad Gita as we fumbled our fragile frames through the forest foliage, I’ll also be documenting those thoughts here.

00: Introduction

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not one for reading novels, my attention span drifts quickly with the turning of each page, but this was different. Perhaps it was because it was in audiobook format that made it more accessible, perhaps too this particular edition was written for dummies like me so I didn’t have to read the ancient epic Mahabharata and get totally lost on verse one.

Either way, the twenty five minute introduction passed in seconds, and things hit home hard throughout.

To my understanding, The Bhagavad Gita is to Hindus what the bible is to Christians, with the main exception that The Gita appears to be more of a field guide to life, a guidebook in how we can best navigate the human experience, without the need for dogma, diocese and donations, a Haynes manual for the soul.

As one would expect, the introduction sets out its stall with the same fundamental questions that have plagued humanity since the first chimpanzee leg bone was thrown up in the air to the tune of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.

• Why are we here?

• Is there more to life than what we perceive?

• Is there a higher power?

• Is there a way to get through life without suffering?

• Do we exist after we die?

The Gita explains that it is life and material existence on Earth is actually hell (who could argue with that right now), and that the dilemmas and daily dramas that we face are but stormy seas that can be successfully navigated through as long as we have a map, a compass and do our best.

We are all here to live a life worth living, learning lessons along the way and evolving spiritually, returning back to the source only once there is nothing left to learn when everything we do is selfless, egoless, done without recognition or reward (see Bill Murray in Groundhog Day).

There is no single path to the eternal either, all paths lead to the same place and all are welcome as long as one acts selflessly, and through love not fear.

The human condition is a constant struggle with the lower self, the ego, the beast we fight against each day of our existence on the material plain, and it is this human condition that has to be studied and fully understood in order to find what is true, what is real and what absolute reality is.

We appear to be in a constant state of suffering and most of us want an escape from that, an immediate end to the pain, which can of course be achieved through the purchase material things, through alcohol, drugs and sugar, all of which give us a quick endorphin fix, a false and temporary happiness that dissipates quicker than a fart in a jacuzzi.

It is this materialism that leads us further and further away from the source, from higher consciousness and closer to the ego.

Most people realise this at some point in their life and seek out alternatives that weaken their bond to materialism, seeking out an alternative and commencing on a journey towards spiritual enlightenment, which I believe I did back in twenty twelve.

Liberation (or mogsha) is there, it has always been there but we just don’t know it’s there, like we have taken a spiritual enema and evacuated all memory of it.

However, when we do start looking for answers to the difficult questions above, a light bulb turns on and all of a sudden the night doesn’t seem so dark after all. As a result, our behaviours change, our actions change, we become more selfless and demand no reward, all of which drains power from the ego and the material being we occupy.

Think about this scenario for a moment.

You are walking to the shops and an old person’s bag splits open and their food spills in the floor, they are visibly upset, do you:

• Record it on your phone and share it on social media?

• Simply snigger and walk on by?

• Stop and help and then tell everyone you know what a hero you are?

• Help out and carry on with your day with a silent smile inside?

Those four outcomes are an evolution in and of itself, all may carry with it an endorphin hit, but the last option is what “The Gita” inspires us to be like, and if we do liberation follows. Doing what is best, doing it for others and doing it in the best way we can without reward is actually the reward.

Every single thought and action can either lead further into the material world or conversely transcend it.

Even if there isn’t an eternal life after we depart our physical bodies, wouldn’t a selfless life doing things for others without reward actually be a better way to live anyway?

The Gita suggests that living a monastic existence or burying one’s head in the sand will not truly evolve our spirit, we are here to participate and to help each other evolve. Avoiding drama and dilemma is to avoid an opportunity to advance to higher levels of consciousness.

Once this concept is understood, it becomes very apparent that money, power and personal status are ephemeral and transitory, and consequently one starts looking for a better way to be, and when that happens a state of presence, of tranquility, of peace transpires.

We tend see the world as “we are” not actually how “it is”, and give meaning and shape to that has none; create boundaries where they do not exist; make assumptions not absolutes; make friends and enemies; define right and wrong; create our own truths and opinions and let all of the above define who we are.

Life is meant to suck, but ultimately as Bill Hicks said “it’s just a ride”, good times are followed by bad times from our first breath to the last, it is either meant to be that way, or it just is that way.

Happiness does not last, but neither does sadness, and this will continue as infinitum until we question our reality, our motives, our materialism.

We escape the suffering by living a selfless life, which will bring about happiness and spiritual evolution.

By observing (not judging) the behaviours and actions of others with all of this in mind, one can see how evolved others are on their own personal journey towards liberation.

Friendly, kind people, without a self declared social status, who give no credence to honours, wealth or material things tend to see the universe pervaded by a single consciousness, and they live in a world of marvel.

Kind people see things others do not, they see meaning where others do not, they see synchronicities where other do not, they have empathy and intuition where others do not.

Be a kind person and happiness follows…

Boundaries…

In cricketing parlance, a boundary is the perimeter of the playing field, marked clearly by a visible rope.

When such boundary lines are breached, the rules of the game clearly state that the impact (runs in this case) is both negative and more severe for the fielding or defending team.

With that analogy in mind and hopefully well articulated and understood, applying that logic to our own personal boundaries may help us to prepare, predict and produce a response when it is clear that our boundary lines (much in the same way a cricket ball will do) is about to be, or in fact, breached.

Two days ago, one of my boundary lines was well and truly breached by one of my neighbours, an event that I was not prepared for, failing in an attempt to produce an effective response, even though I could have predicted this particular event several months, weeks or days before.

The trigger point in this case is race. I have been fortunate enough to work and travel all over our pale blue dot during the last three decades of my life, which has given me a fully inclusive world-view, taking in the cultures, traditions, religions and beliefs of folks from all walks of life. I strongly believe that this has made me the person I am today, my core values cascading well to my children, all of which make me very proud each and every day by the way in which they behave and respond to much of the chaos society serves up to them.

Thanks to technology, I converse with people across our planet, for eight hours per day for five days a week, and as such carry no prejudice against anyone, especially groups.

Likewise I have been conversing with my neighbour for several years even taking short trips away, but more recently I have stepped back from social events due to his escalating and revealing attitude towards race and immigration.

My lack of recent engagement saw him approach my front door (boundary if you will) on Easter Saturday to ask me why I was not opening or responding to his messages (noting a distinct lack of the “two blue ticks” on his phone), at which point he showed me (smirking as he did) the last image he had sent, which was a montage of Sadiq Khan, Rishi Sunak, Humza Yousaf and Vaughan Gething, unpinned by a Union Jack with the words “We Know What The Problem Is…”

Clearly if I had opened his vile messages I could have prepared a solid front door defence, but instead I chose to archive him so that his malignant missives are hidden from view. My response was to shake my head, say nothing and walk inside, my wife mediating in my absence.

I have no time for racists (they whether live next door or many miles away), yet I had an opportunity to produce a response but chose to walk away instead, as my wife rightly said later “like a teenager in a huff would do”.

The ensuing and difficult conversation with my wife revealed to me something I’ve probably known all of my life but have never really tackled head on. I deal with real-time verbal conflict very poorly, in stark contrast to my wife who has an incredible aptitude in diffusing situations in the right way with the right outcome in the right now every time (99% rounded up). I don’t know how she does it (and neither does she) but she does it well and it is one of her best skills.

Needless to say the Easter Sunday was a washout, my inability to shake off the negative energy surrounding the doorstep challenge having the same psychological impact of a malt whisky hangover. What the musing time did allow for was a introspective on what went well, not so well and what to do differently going forward.

What is abundantly clear is that something fundamental needs to be uncovered before implementing any lessons learned from the “race use case”.

Why is it that I have the inability to react calmly, logically and respectfully during real-time conflict?

What part of me clams up when unconsciously I know the difference between right and wrong yet the mechanics that surface those thoughts and turn them into conscious dialogue evade me, almost – one could say – cowardlylike?

I’m sure more learned bloggers reading this post could provide a Freudian/Jungian angle on my psychological and communicative limitations (and I’d welcome that), but what is clear to me is that my id and ego, my lower and higher self, my eidolon and daemon, my conscious and subconscious layers do not talk to each other, quickly. They get there eventually, but it takes time, sometimes minutes, hours or even days, so conflict conversations that require an immediate response are lost.

Why is that?

Is it physiological because I have a broken or retarded link between the two hemispheres in my brain?

Is it psychological because of childhood traumas putting as much distance between the two layers as possible as if to protect me somehow?

Is it spiritual because I have not yet learned to operate the Huxleyan reducing valve and initiate a response from my higher self instead of my lower self?

One thing is for sure, I can take a lot from this Easter weekend, especially a walk in the woods with one of nearest and dearest friends who has been with me through thick and thin all of my adult life.

We have not seen each other for a while, but when we do we talk, really talk, we both open up on conversations about life, the Universe and everything, including the stuff men typically don’t talk about; emotions, feelings, stress and anxiety.

We talked today about a wide range of boundary violations, and how we should look to such luminaries like Eckhart Tolle and the writings contained within the Bhagavad Gita for guidance, on the basis that a life of “observation without judgement” and “respectful reactions” does not trigger a negative neuro-chemical response which ends up as anger, as hatred, as frustration, things should be just “thus”.

When verbal conflicts and trigger points arise, presenting well articulated, factual and respectful responses help to diffuse the situation at hand, and as a result do not escalate to negative emotions.

A common corporate concept is that of the “elevator speech”, a pre-canned thirty second synopsis of what one’s role is or what project one is working on, a perspective that gives the listener a well articulated, factual and respectful response to a question posed, so why would a person like me with my neural limitations not use those same mechanics that work well in the workplace in life situations too?

I had a long think about my potential trigger points on the drive back from the woods, and the list of potential scenarios in this complex and polarised world we live in is of course endless, but the ones that bubble up to the top (and are worthy of “elevator speeches”) are race, gender, social inequality, politics, ideologies and religion.

Will this approach help? Maybe.

I will continue to operate my moral compass to help me navigate through turbulent waters, preparing, predicting and producing strategies to reduce the impact and effect of the waves that approach from the horizon. Keeping a calm and steady ship in the midst of a maelstrom increases the chance of successfully reaching one’s final destination without sinking, without drowning.

Oh and for the record, I don’t like cricket…

I love it…

Me 2.0

Giving up alcohol (for the second and hopefully final time) has brought forward a clarity I’ve not felt in a long time.

It is likely that I am in fact an alcoholic, albeit a closeted and functional one.

Brought up in an environment where alcohol was the mainstay liquid, my alcoholic parents drank, and drank. Not every day of course, which by their own definition meant that they never had a problem, nor were they alcoholics. Alcoholism was reserved for their friends who went to the pub every single day, even though the vast majority of them never worked (legitimately).

So was the way in Thatcher’s Liverpool, such an incredibly impoverished place to live in the 1980’s, but somehow the male heads of households always found money for booze, cigarettes and football (season tickets for Liverpool or Everton), whilst the dutiful wives stayed at home and tried to feed their families with what pitiful allowance was given to them.

Alan Bleasdale’s TV drama “Boys from the Blackstuff” to this day remains as one of the most accurate portrayals of reality in the dark days of Thatcher, the plight of socialist working communities of Liverpool replicated across all of the industrial regions of England as neoliberal financialism spread like a like a cancer across these green and not so pleasant lands from its heartland in the City of London.

Being a child of alcoholics is something that doesn’t really hit at the time, the way things were and the behaviour patterns of parents were normalised back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it’s how it was back then and you just got on with it because the vast majority of houses, streets and wards in Liverpool were the same.

The invisible boomerang hits you hard later in life, and inevitably without the benefit of wisdom or hindsight, what was their normal becomes your normal.

And that’s how it was for me. I drank a lot when I was younger, it was fun. I did a lot of very silly things on drink which my friends still remind me of when we meet up “Oh my God, do you remember when you did…”. So many anecdotes, so many entertaining stories.

But what of the darker moments, what of those transgressions that I am thoroughly ashamed of? Those moments were happy Mike turned into chaos Mike and did some truly awful things to people he knew, loved and respected. Those anecdotes don’t come out at the drinking table, it’s only the fun ones.

No one wants to be reminded about the bad things alcohol does, just the good things.

My sister ended up in rehab for six months several years ago, a product of our shared broken family values with an addiction to alcohol. She “was” an alcoholic, which my parents eventually admitted to, as she needed alcohol to function everyday.

A few years back I decided to look into biohacking in an attempt to live out the last third of my life optimised and pain free without dementia, so gave up alcohol for nine months, and I felt good for it. But like most folks who step away, the pull of the fun times came back, so back to the pub I went.

Like the Huxleyan reducing valve, the effects of alcohol and mescaline can have a similar effect, albeit with very different outcomes. For me, there is always a tipping point, and once the reducing valve is opened wide enough, the tsunami that flows through makes it impossible to shut, and it is at that point that chaos ensues.

We lost our family dog of fourteen years on Halloween last year (that day in the calendar where the veil between this reality and the next is drawn back for souls to traverse) and I can honestly say that with the exception of my gran passing, it was the most traumatic day of my existence so far. Naturally we all mourned back home after the ordeal of putting him in forever sleep, but my way in dealing with it was to reach out for the whisky, and I drank a bottle of single malt in ninety minutes. Needless to say more carnage ensued.

My recent results from the elective and proactive blood tests have revealed that for a fifty two year old man, I’m doing well, all except the liver. In the two years since my last test, my liver has deteriorated by 50%, with several markers bypassing amber altogether, going straight from green to red. The two markers in question relate to alcohol and if left unabated could lead to permanent liver damage and the need for a transplant, which should never happen because of my poor lifestyle choices.

Thankfully my only malfunctioning organ is the one that has the power of full regeneration, so hopefully in six to twelve months of abstention, those markers will be green again.

I grew very tired of being “Fun Mikey”, almost having to be on the top of my game to bring an element of craziness or clownsmanship to nights out with my buddies and work colleagues. I came to the conclusion of late that my role as “Group Entertainment Officer” had to go for the benefit of my own health.

I’ve had a good run, and yes there are so many fun anecdotes to recall when reminiscing, but that was then, this is now.

One thing I will say about sobriety is that clarity, real clarity, returns when there is no alcohol coursing through the bloodstream.

I’m currently in Scheveningen, a small seaside town in the Netherlands after spending a week in Den Haag at a workshop with my new leadership team. Every single one of those workshops in the past were rocket-fuelled by booze, this one was no exception, except for the exception that I didn’t drink.

It is interesting how some folks react. Some clearly observe that you don’t drink and acknowledge that choice point without judgement or need for discourse on the matter, others see it as abnormal behaviour and challenge why it is that I choose not to, almost wanting my full backstory and medical history.

One thing is for sure, without hitting the Hilton bar every night, the clarity I had everyday was off the scale, no stress of facilitation, no anxiety from management challenges, nothing, nada. I put this down to having all of the brain cells that landed with me at Schipol Airport the previous Sunday.

After receiving several plaudits from the managers, I came away both happy and justified that a life without alcohol is better than one with it.

I came to the conclusion that hydrocarbons should only be consumed by the transportation sector, and not used to fuel our own bodies. Ethanol is so highly toxic and poisonous to our delicate system, long term use ultimately leads to a life not worth living for some.

The final nail in the coffin for the booze for me was a neighbours party I went to before flying last weekend.

Everyone there was in their late fifties to early sixties, and every single one of them (not one person excluded), took a cocktail of beta blockers, metformin and/or statins to live, all acquired through poor lifestyle choices, the main culprit being alcohol.

It’s interesting, there I was in observation mode, watching and listening to a group of pensioners drink heavily until the early hours, only recalling the fun drunken anecdotes of yesteryear which they repeated again and again and again, until the point of passing out or throwing up.

Another conclusion sobriety has given me is the power of observation over judgement. One should always try to only observe and not judge. We may of course need to make decisions on our observations but we should consider keeping opinions and judgments as internal information only not to be shared externally, as self righteousness seems to follow quickly if judgement is served.

And maybe, just maybe, that is what enlightenment really is. As my wife drank a glass of wine at the beach bar yesterday and me my Heineken Zero, I pondered for a while on what enlightenment was as the waves lapped at the shoreline. For me, in that moment, I understood what Steve Hagen had said in his wonderful book Buddhism: Plain and Simple:

“Enlightenment is seeing reality for what it is.”

I don’t think I have to experience God, or go beyond the Pleroma to see past the veil, the view beyond the door of perception, seeing the right things right now is giving me that.

I believe that I have a really good understanding on how this reality actually works now, I look at the world, I look at the chaos and the machine that perpetuates that chaos, I look at (not judge) how people operate within the chaos and see clearly the right path to take.

I could argue that these last four months of sobriety have allowed me to see that at long last, that hydrocarbon abuse has clouded my view for far too long, and that clean living has perhaps given me the ability to upgrade from Me 1.0 to Me 2.0…

Ode To Bill…

There was a time, when a smoking man spoke, to let off steam.

His social critique, that hit home hard, was true it did seem.

Bathed in neon light, he tore to shreds, The American Dream.

Until one dark day, when he was silenced, neither rant nor scream.

Against fascism, neoliberalism and the commercial machine.

Against democracy at gun point, as elites licked the cream.

So here’s where we are now, in a world without Bill.

As we watch the bombs drop, from the top of the hill…

Ode to Bill – Michael M Mitchell

Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the sad passing of William Melvin Hicks, in my opinion the greatest comedian and social critic the world has ever seen (pipping George Carlin to the post).

Thirty years ago, Bill took his last breath and departed this mortal coil to join up with the ether, the singular source of collective cosmic consciousness he spoke about so often, leaving behind both the material world and the establishment that fuelled his anger and frustration but gave him source material and inspiration for his stand up shows.

I spent nine hours fourteen minutes yesterday going through his entire back catalogue on Spotify, an incredibly rich volume of work, all of which rings true to this very day.

Almost nothing has changed during those thirty years, except for the names of the heads of state of the neoliberal cabal that runs the world today.

Materialism, no change.

Consumerism, no change.

Censorship, no change.

Propaganda, no change.

Control, no change.

Wars, no change.

In an interview on public access television just before his death, he shared the following:

“My take on the foreign affairs of the US government is at best cynical and completely doubtful, that their motives are anything other than the elite maintaining the status quo and as far as the Palestinian situation goes, they are there, they need their land, Israel is a satellite of the US and we sell them weapons so you can imagine what kind of deal the Palestinians are going to get. The US is spreading democracy at gun point”.

A true seer…

What makes him the “GOAT” for me is the fact that he was smart, he was funny, he was spiritual and above all of those things, he knew how the world really worked and declared it to those that would listen, suggesting that as a race, humans should continue to think critically and challenge both the state and the status quo.

I would say that he is sorely missed and he would have a field day was he still around in the circuit, but listening to every joke, every story, every anecdote and every perspective yesterday, his content remains precisely relevant today as it did three decades ago.

I do hope he is sitting off over Battlefield Earth, with Messrs Lennon, Harrison, McKenna and Hendrix for company, musing on how right he was back then and how right he is right now.

And if it is true that we are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, and that there is no death, life is an illusion, we are the imagination of ourselves and eventually we all return back to the source in a grand union of peace and love, then I look forward to that moment when it comes.

So today, I spark up “two lighters” and raise a butane toast in honour of Bill Hicks, a comedy genius, superb social critic, dark poet and agent of evolution.

And remember folks, it’s just a ride…

State of the Union (Part 3)…

“I’m just going out, I may be some time”…

As it approaches the second anniversary of not posting a blog on Infinity Beckons, I’m reminded of that famous quote from Laurence Oakes after his failed mission to capture the flag of the South Pole with Sir Robert Scott before the Norwegians did.

Clearly I made it back where Oakes did not, and it is not without a hint of jealousy that I envy the isolation (not the dying bit) he must have enjoyed when exploring the Antarctic, being in a landscape completely devoid of humans.

It is remarkable how much of the world has changed in the last two years and how much of it has stayed exactly the same.

Fundamentally, the world is still run by the neoliberal 1%ers, with the 99%ers still trying to make ends meat, and “The Covid Years” never really changed the percentiles, all it did was make the rich a lot richer and the poor a lot poorer.

American expansionism continued to expand (as expansionism has a tendency to do) in the form of NATO and the planting of yet more American bases around the world (the administration must be world champions at Risk), including the reinstatement of the UK as a nuclear missile store for its death-to-all bombs of destruction.

War is still the primary money maker on Planet Earth and one only has to look at the recent rhetoric from billionaire UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to see that we are still firmly entrenched in “forever wars”, when he declared to the nation that Britain will do “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes” to support the war effort in various locations, using of course money from the 99%ers public purse to pay for such.

The US tax payer is also funding the exact same “forever wars” from the US fanny pack from the other side of the pond, a sum which will soon be into the hundreds of billions of dollars, money that goes straight into the military industrial complex’s coffers of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, whose major holding companies include Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street Corporation, making yet more wealth for the 1%ers.

War brings peace apparently…

I was surprised that with all of the goings on in Ukraine, Israel and potentially Taiwan, that the doomsday clock was still set firmly at ninety seconds to midnight in January this year, I would have thought by now we would only be a minute from eternal doom.

What has changed significantly in my opinion is geopolitics with the complete chaos and confusion between the left and the right and left is now right and right is now left.

Several decades ago in the UK, voters had a real choice between left and right, between socialism and conservatism. The reds stood for equality, public ownership and community, the blues stood for inequality, private ownership and the self. What we have today is a perpetual state of neoliberalism, no red, no blue, just “a color purple”.

I was reminded recently just when that tipping point was and who it was who initiated it. The true birth of neoliberalism was the ugly Spitting Image union of Reagan and Thatcher, and there is one thing that can be said about the latter (through grinding teeth) was that she was one smart cookie.

Whilst we already had the financial sector and all of the greed and ills that brought with it, it wasn’t impactful enough in the eyes of Maggie. It is well documented that Thatcher initiated the death of the manufacturing industry and the transfer of power to the City of London here in the UK, what is perhaps not so well known is the following quote she shared on change:

“Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul”.

Just think about that for a second and follow it through, “the objective is to change the soul”. Thatcher destroyed so many souls, so many villages, towns and cities in the UK in the 1980’s by migrating the focus away from our industrial complex to the financial complex, leaving families and whole communities destitute (mine included), but change the soul and meet her objective she did.

All that we seem to be now is an island of ignorant consumers. Irrespective of financial standings, we all long to have the latest shiny things (which of course expire and break with more frequent regularity) fed by Saatchi and Saatchi advertisements which subliminally coerce the population to hand over their hard earned cash for material possessions and the short term dopamine fix hit, before that too is cast aside and replaced by the next thing they need.

Materialism.

People are obsessed with things and more things, and what they may fail to understand is that materialism feeds the financial complex, and whilst they are occupied with their new clothes, gizmos and gadgets, that have lost a sense of who they are, and, one could argue, that they have lost their soul.

Thatcher 1 – 0 Humanity…

Her objective was complete when Blair took over in 1997, not a socialist, just another neoliberal taking office, and it’s been the same way ever since. With Starmer now getting a new set of keys prepared for Number 10, it is looking more and more like another four years of exactly the same.

The US will also elect another neoliberal in November and there will be more of the same there for another four years too.

The outlook is bleak, but…

People are waking up and I think that in part is down to the internet. I have long been (in equal measures) an admirer and a hater of the internet, but of late I have seen the true value of it, and that is down to a single fundamental principle, control – and lack of when it comes to the web.

I no longer have a traditional TV and as I such I no longer have a traditional TV licence, which means the coffers at the BBC (Biased Broadcasting Corporation) are lighter by £180 a year.

My children have never watched traditional TV, everything they and I consume is via the web, and whilst I concede that the internet is at times a cesspool of vile vitriol, it gives the ultimate control of what is being consumed to the hands of the user.

No longer do we only have a few channels peddling neoliberal values and narratives, channelled through the likes of the BBC and Sky, we have the option to seek out information from outlets from all perspectives giving us the freedom to make up our own minds on how things are and how they should be. The internet promotes critical thinking, contrary to the mainstream media.

Whilst certain platforms may have ways to downplay, downsize and demonetise such voices, those “other voices” are still reachable, you just need to know where to look.

I think the 24×7 fear from the mainstream media during Covid was too much for some to take, so they naturally looked to find alternative sources of information, and find them they did. The BBC has lost a staggering amount in license fees over the last few years and by all accounts they are struggling to stay in the game now. People also want to consume information when they want it, not when it is broadcast, so for me traditional TV is dead and as a result the mainstream media is on the ropes.

Another social barometer was the Covid vaccine uptake. Statistically, as each vaccine and booster was rolled out, the uptake got less and less, and the recent spike in cases of whooping cough, measles, mumps and the like may be down to vaccine hesitancy, brought about by the Covid experience and the lack of trust this country now has in the government and the health service.

Whilst the average member of the public may not be able to influence the outcome of the next general election, there does seem to be more and more people waking up. We see a lot more protests on the streets, some of which is leading to policy change (recent case of the farmers from Belgium).

Is it enough, I’m not sure, but if enough people do wake up and rise up, then, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, “the times they maybe a changin”…

Into The Wild…

Sitting in a Merseyside camping ground watching the world go by may be a million miles away from The Stampede Trail (well four thousand and fifty six air miles to be exact), but the word-smithing of Jon Krakauer can transport anyone from anywhere indirectly into the mind of Christopher McCandless itself (sort of).

I have waxed lyrical over the years of how great the film “Into The Wild” is. I have lyrically waxed over the years on how great the soundtrack is by Eddie Vedder too.

After recently finishing “A Walk in the Woods” by Bill Bryson, I thought it was about time that I picked up a second-hand copy of Jon Krakauer’s book, which, as one would expect, paints a very different picture than that of Hollywood (and Seattle).

Whether it be painting or prose, poetry or prog-rock, beauty is in the eye (and ear) of the beholder and everyone perceives things in a different way, until in the grand scheme of things polarised views are formed (and everything else that lies in between).

None more so than the story of Christopher McCandless and the investigative telling of his journey, motives and idiosyncrasies by Jon Krakauer.

Whilst Hollywood painted a picture of a headstrong and ultimately tragic adventurer, the truth behind both the young man and the film becomes much more complex after reading the book.

In short, boy is born, boy goes to school, boy goes on outdoor adventures, boy reads, boy finishes college, boy reads, boy goes on solo road trip, boy reads, boy goes to university, boy reads, boy graduates, boy gets angry with world and parents, boy goes on two year road trip, boy walks into the wilderness, boy reads, boy dies.

OK it’s a ridiculously simplistic view of a complex story but for me the real emphasis on the rather silly synopsis above is the word “boy”.

From my perspective, the book really is a cautionary tale, and perhaps goes so way to explain the fundamental difference of worldly experience between a boy and a man (or equally girl and woman).

It was clear that Christopher McCandless was well read. It was clear that at the start of his journey he was of sound mind. It was clear that he had the strong will, stubbornness and arrogance of his father, but in essence he was still a boy, immature and not risk-averse in any way, a boy who may have been an academic genius but a boy nonetheless who lacked a common-sense approach to life and longevity.

What was also abundantly clear as I progressed through the pages was that his inexperience of life thus far posed significant risks and mortal dangers, dangers and risks that ultimately proved to be his downfall.

The reason why I loved the movie was the drive and apparent bravery that McCandless had to put a middle finger up to a world of conformity, to declare to the world that this boy was not for churning, that a life of freedom in the great outdoors outweighed the expectations of a modern man living in a material world.

His on screen declaration of a life less ordinary personally helped me to take more opportunities to read more, to write more, to experience more, to get out into the wilderness more – albeit for short periods of time, ever-returning back to materialism and “churnism” and the daily duties of husband, father, brother, friend, neighbour and colleague.

The silver screen does that for me. I adore watching certain films over and over again, looking for meaning which was perhaps overlooked in previous runs, analysing what is presented before me, internalising scenes, themes and dialogue until I have reflected and concluded on my own life and set of ideals, changing my views and actions in accordance to any new-found principles. This is not in a Clockwork Orange brain-washing type way of course, just proactive pondering whilst observing works of art through the cinematic experience.

Whilst Hollywood invariably does a reasonable job (most of the time) of storytelling via screen adaptations of works of non-fiction, their business model is to ultimately get as many bums on cinema seats as they can. As such, one expects there to be over-egged dramatisations of specific events and individuals to enhance the user experience. We all get that. We all know that.

Books, however, always reveal much more complexity and depth, especially when it comes to character and detail.

After reading Krakauer’s book, I reflected on my own life and the events that have led up to this point in much more depth than countless replays of the film ever did.

Emile Hirsch was brilliant in the movie, his performance and portrayal of McCandless really hit a chord with me. There is a very small part of me that wants the bravery to resign from the corporate world immediately (a world that he refused to join in the first place), a part of me that wants to leave the urban sprawl behind, exchanging scenes of concrete and steel to mountains and leaves, to seek adventure and meaning in nature away from the chaotic cancer of society, never to return.

Even if that remote possibility ever came to pass, I would never do it in the same juvenile and reckless way that McCandless did. Maybe it is the wisdom of my fifty years on Planet Earth that has taught me that longevity requires planning and preparation, that simply leaving everything you have ever known for a life in the wild with only a modest and woefully stocked backpack would only lead to disaster.

Or maybe it is because I have watched the film, read the book and concluded that “Into The Wild” was a lesson in what not to do.

It was in the depths of the books pages that I found more similarities with McCandless than I had done whilst watching the film. Whilst he came from a well-to-do family and I did not, whilst he was an intelligent academic and an athlete and I was not, whilst he was well-read and I was not, what we shared as youths were self-righteousness, stubbornness and a father figure whose transgressions would spur us both into action (more reaction – leaving the family home and excommunication).

Clearly one of the catalysts for Chris’s decision to decouple himself from his family was the duplicitous behaviour of his father, living a double life by having two families on the go at the same time. For Chris, it appears the lies and deceit of the family mirrored the lies and deceit of society as a whole, and as such, close relationships with either were a commodity he could well do without. I for one get that.

For him, nature was pure, free from sin, righteous and holy. I for one get that.

I have not spoken to my father for over ten years now. By the time I had reached my fourties’, I had used up most (not all) of my life’s supply of sex, drugs and rock n roll, and at forty-two took a more spiritual approach to life.

Conversely, rather than forgiving a father for the many transgressions of the past (some which continue to this day), I stood even more resolute to the principals I had gained over the years, ceding once again perhaps to my inner stubbornness and self-righteousness.

Wisdom and time do not always lend themselves to absolution, sometimes an unwavering moral code must be adhered too, and that includes bondage by blood.

Whilst we know that Walt McCandless did much to find his lost son and bring him home to reconnect with the family, my own father knows exactly where I am but has never tried.

There is a sense of bittersweet irony however, in that my father has been one of the best teachers I have ever had, and just like Jon Krakauer’s book and I guess McCandless himself, he has taught me exactly what not to do…

A Walk in the Woods…

Sitting in a Dubrovnik watering hole watching the world go by may be a million miles away from the Appalachian Trail (well seven and a half thousand miles to be exact), but the expert word-smithing of Bill Bryson can transport anyone from anywhere directly to the trail itself.

I’ve always been a slow reader, but at every opportunity last weekend (between the sightseeing tours, Game of Thrones scene recalls and wonderful food), I picked up A Walk in the Woods and found it difficult to put down.

I’ve not read Bryson before, but the neo-Anglo-American sure has a way to keep the reader hooked, arguably it’s the time he spent in the UK that turned him into the cynical, dry, sarcastic and humour-filled grumpy old man that he is today, all core traits that us Brits are famed for the world over.

It catalogues a two-thousand mile journey traversing the Appalachian Trail (AT) on the east coast of America, a hike that he himself attempts to take (and fails) with a rather out of shape and reformed alcoholic friend, equally as dry, and well, British.

The book not only navigates the reader through the physical highs and lows of the trail, but the metaphysical highs and lows of the human spirit and condition, and I think that is why it is so relatable and so unputdownable.

So after just three days spent in the jewel of Croatia, the book was done and I was looking forward to this weekend with even more rigour.

It’s not often one gets to spend time alone, truly alone, and this weekend reminded me that self-isolation and solitude is good for the soul.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, friends, colleagues and dog, but for the first time I can remember (and I don’t think I have ever done it before), I went on a “holiday for one”.

As my wife was throwing a boozy doo for all of her friends at our house, I devised up a plan to abscond for a couple of days to North Wales, on the basis that I would stand a significant chance of getting a weekend pass out, and it worked.

So Friday came, I gathered my things and headed off to pick up the van and take the short drive to Llandegla, a small camping ground situated in the heart of the Clywdian mountain range (although in truth they are more hills).

Through the wind and the rain, I got to my destination safely, happy that I experienced more difficult transit conditions whist pulling a small home behind.

The site was beautiful, Llandegla Forest on one side, Clywdian hills on the other, and all around me, trout fishing lakes.

I settled down quickly and went for a tour of the site which was in super condition, with optional shepherds huts and bell tents for hire, it really was a gem.

My intent for the weekend was to click back and whittle some, and begin work on my second Lovecraftian horror novella, merging local folklore with cosmic horror.

To get myself somewhat in the mood, I put on a horror movie, turned out all of the lights and abruptly fell asleep.

The working week was certainly one to forget, and my frustrations with the ineptitudes of senior management nearly ended up in a career limiting/ending conversation, so my parasympathetic nervous system decided to take over and put me in a coma for twelve hours rather than carry on the chaos (albeit in a creative way).

So I woke up to the sound of bird song from the tree I had parked under, as well as the spooling of fly fishing reels as the anglers outside attempted (and succeeded) in catching their supper.

I was not expecting the weather to be good at this time of year, but the big man upstairs must have looked down upon me with pity and sympathy after the week I had had and parted the gloom to reveal a cloudless day ahead.

It was my original intent to just go for a short walk in the woods and focus on my writing upon my return, but after reading Bryson’s book of the same name and not having to be anywhere or do anything, I scanned my Ordinance Survey map to see what was a little further afield, and saw an unequalateral triangle present itself.

From the camping grounds, there was a line which went from the far end of the forest to a place called Worlds End, and from there a wobbly line that went to the Ponderosa Cafe, a place we had been to a few weeks earlier by car, a place that sold the best steak pie and gravy on Planet Earth, and possibly the entire cosmos.

I had no idea how many miles it was, what the elevation was like or the type of terrain I would be traversing, but with all the time in the world and no commitments to anybody other than myself, I hydrated, took an Aeropress coffee, packed my bag and headed for the woods.

Llandegla Forest is beautiful, deep within its core are hiking trails, running trails and mountain bike trails (all at various skill levels), so with the sun shining early morning beams through the tall pines, I took to the Moorland Trail, as I believed it would take me out of the woods and over to Worlds End, my first destination.

Much in the same way as the AT, the forest was awash with blazes (markers as they are called here), signposting bikers, runners and bimblers to well designated paths through the woodland.

I was the only one to be bimbling, and found the isolation wonderful. Here I was, completely disconnected from the chaos, no news, no war, no corporations, no commitments, no accountabilities, just me, nature and nothing else.

Negative feelings purge so quickly when surrounded by such a rich tableau of flora and fauna, the stresses and strains of everyday life had evaporated within the first mile and I was peace, real peace for the first time in a long while.

Although I had skipped breakfast, nature provided some in the form of blackberries, and at this time of the year they just fell from the bush into my hand and equally as easy into my mouth, bursting with flavour and moisture.

It struck me half way round the forest that the sign at the visitor centre which declared “nukeproof” trails and my first destination of Worlds End could be an ominous portent given the current geopolitical climate and goading from the West, so I was half expecting to see a mushroom cloud appear on the horizon towards the direction of Liverpool or Manchester.

Thankfully that didn’t happen, but my door of perception to making such a connection was clearly open. So it was no surprise that I walked a little further to see a collection of magic mushrooms in the undergrowth; Psilocybe Cubensis (Golden Caps), Psilocybe Semilanceata (Liberty Caps) and the unmistakable and Disney-esque Amanita Muscaria (Fly Agaric).

I’ll neither confirm nor deny that said hallucinogens were harvested for future use, only through the power of observation could one be certain, and you were not there, Schroedinger’s Mushrooms if you will.

A little further on down this magical path, I saw the carving of a wide eyed owl, clearly dining from natures larder and talking a trip of its own!

A short while (after observing a rather curios cloud formation and not Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), I came across a marker and the turn off for Offa’s Dyke which would take me over the moorland to Worlds End.

I have it in mind to hike the one hundred and seventy seven mile stretch of Offa’s Dyke one day, estimating that it should take around two weeks.

At one tenth of the length and height of the AT and with the possibility of not being mauled to death by big-bollocked bears, I think my chance of success is quite high.

Offa’s Dyke is a large linear earthwork that roughly follows the border between England and Wales. The structure is named after Offa, the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia from AD 757 until 796, who is believed to have ordered its construction.

Although its precise original purpose is debated, it delineated the border between Anglian Mercia and the Welsh kingdom of Powys.

The path was very well kept, so with ease I made it over to Worlds End, which itself is a small vale, but overlooked by some impressive cliffs.

One could imagine the cliffs being a worlds end for those who take their own life, a precarious precipice, and perhaps that is how it obtained its monicker.

After taking a wrong turn, I came across two things that made me serendipitously smile. The first was my favourite cow (yes I do have one). A field of Scottish Highland cows were clearly more lost than I was, and a tree with the largest Chicken of the Woods mushroom I had ever seen. Sadly there was too much fungus on the fungus for me to harvest it, so there it stayed in all of its diminishing glory.

After realising the error of my ways, I turned back down the trail and found the correct path to take to make it over to the Ponderosa Cafe, situated above the wonderful Horseshoe Pass, a bikers dream road and one my eldest son rides through often on his motorcycle.

After a short while on the right path, I could see the cafe in the far distance. No matter how many times I put one foot in front of the other, the cafe seemed to stay exactly the same distance away, very reminiscent of the scene from Month Python’s Holy Grail were Sir Lancelot runs across the field ten times in the same position. Classic.

I was getting tired and low on energy, and I had no idea how many miles I had gone, but this last slog running on empty was tough. As with all things, a dogged determination and British “Keep Calm And Cary On” mantra always wins in the end, so the final and rather pathetic baby steps took me inside the cafe.

Not to worry I thought, steak pie dinner was on the way. Imagine the Lovecraftian look of horror on my face when the hot food line had closed just three minutes before I got to the cafe!

I pleaded with the nice lady to pull together whatever scraps she had left from the kitchen by taking pity on the broken bimbler that stood before her. The cuisine goddess kindly placed three sausage rolls on the last clean plate and doused it with the worlds best gravy. Lady of the Plate, whoever you are, I am forever In your debt!

Piling other consumables onto the tray, I ate the plate (porcelain included) at biker speed, and washed them down with several cans of pop.

I know now how Bryson and Katz felt upon reaching diners and eateries after a hard slog on the trail.

Curious to see how many miles I had done and calories I had burned, I was surprised to see thirteen miles and seventeen hundred calories. No wonder I was fucked on an empty stomach.

With only water and a handful of berries inside me, I had forgotten the fundamentals of preserving energy and life.

After thirty minutes of rest and a belly full of meat products and sugary drinks, I took up my heavy pack (and heavy it was, with drone, gimbal, gas canister, Aeropress and stove inside, none of which were used!) and headed back to base camp which stood five miles away, thankfully this time down and not up.

By the time I got back to base, I had managed eighteen miles, eighteen hundred feet of elevation and one hundred and eighty eight flights of stairs climbed.

Finishing off my tuck from the cafe, I watched the full moon rise majestically over the forest, and woke exactly twelve hours later as the white-faced ball in the sky was replaced by the burning ball of life giving sun in the exact same location.

So thanks to Messes Bryson and Katz for inspiring me to get out on my feet this weekend, I just need to suggest to my wife that she has a lot more boozy doo’s with her friends in the near and continued future…

Van Life…

Leo Tolstoy scribed a novella in 1859 entitled Family Happiness, which is, in short, a story of a polarised married couple, polarised in that the older man likes to be still and quiet, longing for a peaceful existence in the country, and his younger wife who seeks the hustle and bustle of city living and a want to explore and discover more and more about life.

I have not yet read the book as it is still on its way here from a second hand bookshop, but it’s existence was revealed to me a few weeks back whilst rewatching my favourite film “Into The Wild”, an amazing dramatisation of the adventure segment of the life of Christopher McCandless.

I have been thinking far too much of late on the potentiality of an early retirement from the corporate treadmill, even going to the lengths of installing a countdown clock on my iPhone, which reads out how many seconds I have left in one of the worlds biggest companies.

So after dusting off several dusty tomes from the philosophy shelf on my even dustier bookcase, it was the sage advice of Alan Watts who convinced to live more in the moment, the present, the now.

After fully contemplating this for a few days, I decided to stop thinking about my end of days scenario in work and focus on the here and now. I stopped projecting my financial position in the long term future. I stopped counting down the years, weeks, months, days and hours until my release date (sounds like a prison sentence, and some days it feels like one). Almost instantly I felt better, I felt like I wasn’t wishing the next few years away so I could get to the end quicker and enjoy the last and final chapter of my life.

I have always enjoyed travelling and after reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig several decades ago, I had it in mind that I’d do Route 66 upon retirement, albeit in an open-caged Jeep rather than a motorbike. Although I may still do that one day, future plans have been put in mothballs, as what happens in the present has immediate importance, significance and attention.

So it was the older man in me from the Tolstoy novella wanting a “peaceful rural existence” and the “live in the now” wiser man in me from the many Watts postulates that encouraged me to buy a van, a caravan to be more precise, and to buy one in the present moment and not in the future.

Last year I sold the boat that I lived on in London for a while, and with the proceeds I paid off a sizeable chunk of the mortgage on the family home, leaving behind a rainy day fund I would purposely drain every August going forward to pay off an extra ten percent of the mortgage each year, until at the ripe old age of fifty five, I was debt free, free from the bondage of the banking system.

So with my new found wanting to live more in the moment, I decided that paying off a multi-national financial institution early was perhaps neither the best fiscal nor most satisfying decision to make.

Instead, I would start looking around for a touring caravan, one small enough for me and the wife to travel and explore the length and breadth of the UK and Northern Europe / Scandinavia, all without the company of our three children, who are all pretty much grown up now and have their own ideas about life, the universe and vacations.

The looking lasted all of thirty six minutes. We went to a local caravan dealership near to our home and saw a fifteen year old, two berth caravan with full bathroom in mint condition. The fund I had in my account was the exact amount the dealer was asking for, so after a brief moment to think (during which time I received a posthumous and rather esoteric nudge from Messrs Tolstoy and Watts), I told the dealer that he had a deal. So thirty seven minutes into our hunt for a home on wheels, we were the proud owners of a Swift Challenger 480.

I have never towed anything in my life so the first weekend away was a little scary. Thankfully the site we went to was just a few miles up the road and I only had to navigate my way around four roundabouts which I did with relative ease (beads of sweat a plenty though), and settle down for the weekend we did.

We tested everything, everything worked a treat at the first time of asking. We invited the kids over for a barbecue which was also nice, and perhaps even nicer were the words “this ain’t for us, Dad”, confirming the right choice we made in getting a two berth and not something bigger.

It didn’t feel like a holiday though and we never expected it to be, just a planned user acceptance test for the weekends cutover and go-live, using work parlance.

This weekend saw our second trip out, this time with our bricks-and-mortar neighbours back home, a beautiful site in Wales just outside of Wrexham, and a mere stones throw from the picturesque town of Llangollen, where we spent most of Saturday.

Sadly, it turned out that our neighbours saw this opportunity to carry on their alcohol-fuelled urban living on a quiet campsite, ignoring rules and etiquette by partying until the early hours, completely missing the point of a weekend on a rural retreat.

Needless to say it made me re-evaluate the reason why I bought the van in the first place, the type of trips I wanted to do and who I wanted to share them with.

Corporate life is chaotic, energetic, loud, urban and surrounding by technology.

Van life should, and has to be for me at least, the polar opposite of that, for if it is more of the same, then one may as well just stay at home.

And it is for that exact reason that I booked a solo trip in a few weeks to a secluded rural idyll in the Welsh Clwydian hills, with only books, an Aeropress and a fly fishing rod for company.

There is a passage from Tolstoy’s Family Happiness which goes:

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness.

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbour, such is my idea of happiness.

What more can the heart of man desire?”

I have felt that these words were (and perhaps are) the prologue for the final chapter of my life, but I’m also mindful of the last written words of McCandless too:

“Happiness is only real when shared”.

If I have another twenty to thirty years left after I retire, I can’t do it in total isolation, as not sharing wisdom, experiences and laughter with my family and friends during those twilight years would be a missed opportunity…

The Wainwrights (Part 1)…

Either I’m going slightly senile or I’m not well read (probably both), but in good faith I believed that it was Wainwright who wrote “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, a poem penned centuries ago amongst the rolling fells of the Lake District in Cumbria, arguably the most majestic of all landscapes in England.

It was during a review of Aldous Huxley’s “Doors of Perception” last time out that revealed that it was in fact Wordsworth and not (Alfred) Wainwright that surfed the stratosphere between Coniston and Keswick.

Then the recall kicked in, one of my friends had turned sixty in July and informed me (in our semi-inebriated state), that a friend of his had bought him a set of seven Wainwright books, and gentleman who I had never heard of before, so clearly my ageing brain had mixed up the two.

To the uninitiated, myself included, Alfred Wainwright was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven volume “Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells” was published between 1955 and 1966 and consisted entirely of reproductions from his manuscript and associated etchings, an output that went on to become the bible on how to navigate and bimble over the not-so insignificant amount of two hundred and fourteen fells of Cumbria’s Lake District.

At sixty and having no walking experience, my friend’s mid-life crisis (sixty is the new forty!) was to attempt to cross off all Wainwrights by the time he meets our maker.

He started that journey in June with just a few chalked off, and as part of his birthday celebrations (he had six different events!), he suggested that I accompany him and his friends on a mission to bag several more this weekend.

Never willing to let a friend down or refuse a physical challenge, I willingly accepted his invitation to join his bimbling ensemble (after securing the mandatory pass out from the significant other) and subsequently did the needful by booking a small cottage in Witherslack, not too far from our challenging walk known as The Greater Kentmere Horseshoe, a hike that would attempt to reduce his remaining tally by nine.

We safely arrived at the old and rustic cottage, decanted the car and packed in the twenty bottles of real ale at the epicentre and coldest part of the fridge. I was delighted to see a secluded garden with a natural seating area where I would take my morning yoga and Wim Hof practices whilst we were there.

As is customary, once everything was in it’s right place (to quote Thom Yorke), we took to the tracks and found the local pub, The Derby Arms, and loaded up on carbs, fats and a little beer to ready us for our journey into Wainwright County.

Leaving early so that we could guarantee a car parking space due to the limited availability in the hamlet of Kentmere, we took a light breakfast and arrived at seven, loading up our backpacks with sandwiches, coffee, jelly snakes and blister patches and headed for the hills.

The last serious walk I had taken was the Wirral Way, a thirteen mile hike up an old disused railway line several years ago, and I went into the weekend with no training as such, just a dogged British spirit of stubbornness and arrogance.

It was clear from the outset that the arrogance was going to dissipate quicker than a fart in a jacuzzi as we started our first incline, with most if not all of the group struggling for a steady pace, with weak legs and a puffing chest, but we made it to the top of the first ridge successfully and then started for the first of the nine peaks.

As we did, a few things happened. Firstly, I realised that the Wim Hof breathing techniques I have semi-mastered over the last twelve months have more benefits, out on the hills inclines are easier if the mind is set to calm and the belly, chest and head are synchronised with leg movement.

Secondly, I realised that the significant effort I had put in over the last three weeks in mind, body and soul control had paid off, as I found the walk relatively easy.

Lastly, it was clear why Alfred Wainwright was compelled to travel from Leeds to the Lake District every weekend to document and catalog each crag, nook and vale, and why Wordsworth felt compelled to scribe poetry and palatable prose.

With the exception of Scafell Pike which I climbed in the twilight, fog and drizzle back in 2010, I had only ever seen the Lake District from terra firma, mostly around the tourist honey pots of Bowness and Windermere. Whilst I knew it was an area of outstanding natural beauty, the view of Cumbria from the ridge and the horseshoe of fells around Kentmere gave me an insight to inside the heads of Messrs Wainwright and Wordsworth. Here we had vivid vistas and luscious landscapes, inspiring writers and artists alike to put pen and pencil to paper to share with those less fortunate to not experience the sights first hand, and what sights they were.

We took the route in our stride and no one fell behind or took ill, quite remarkable really with no real preparation and two hundred and sixteen years of age spread across just four ageing/aged bodies.

We took our lunch and I was glad to fire up my trust Coleman stove which had not been used for several years, it’s beauty personified in the roar of its flame in abject silence atop peak number four.

What was more disappointing was the fact that I had left the freshly ground coffee beans in the cottage, so the inaugural cup of “Aeropress at Altitude” would have to wait another twenty four hours.

With lunch safely tucked away inside of us rather than outside of us, we headed over the connecting ridge to bag peaks five to nine, a tremendous achievement for our new rambling posse, clocking up thirty seven thousand steps over twenty five kilometres and spinning the Apple health circles faster than a Catherine Wheel on bonfire night.

It is, apparently, customary to document evidence of the successful bagging of a Wainwright, so we decided to do that via the medium of selfies and fingers:

W1: Yoke

W2: Ill Bell

W3: Froswick

W4: Thornethwaite Crag

W5: High Street

W6: Mardale Ill Bell

W7: Harter Fell

W8: Kentmere Pike

W9: Shipman Knotts

Technology does have a tendency to kick you in the nuts from time to time and it did that at the end of day one. The OS map decided to give up the ghost and there were no markers to get us through what is now known as “Bracken Jungle”, chest high foliage at the end of a nine-hour hike. We found the exit point (eventually) and the sight of a Mazda CX-5 never was so good as we collapsed and drifted back to the cottage and the Derby Arms for beers and a well earned pizza.

Needless to say the gang started to flag around eight thirty so we took ourselves back to the cottage, finished off the remaining ale and took in a late showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Day two started off with a bang(ers), with me knocking out the mother of all Full English breakfasts for the gang, and after packing up and waving a fond farewell to the cottage, we took to the road and Troutbeck for a quick three hour trek, to bag our final Wainwright of the weekend, Wansfell.

W10: Wansfell

With the disappointment on the lack of Aeropress Altitude weighing heavily on my mind still from the previous day, I quickly set up my tropospheric barista to try and regain some respect from party members and I did not disappoint, the Smoking Hot Java coffee oozing through the press with an air of aristocracy about it, with the end product fit for kings and queens.

And with that, our journey was over, a whirlwind tour of the Far Eastern Fells was done and we had bagged ten Wainwrights in the first weekend.

So there we have it, first weekend, which roughly translates as “I’m going to bag all two hundred and fourteen Wainwrights, only two hundred and three to go”…