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Funny in a Sad Way

Life is a funny thing – strange words you might think. And you might question. Funny as in ‘Ha! Ha!’ or funny as in strange. Let me clarify. Funny in a sad sense; I mean it to mean a contradiction in terminology.

Our lives are filled with inconsistency; our emotions towards life are Jack in the Boxes, never static, always on the move, up and down, up and down, our lives are in constant motion, and each of us have numerous facets, many of which we hide even from ourselves, and yet, we are all very similar. We are filled with contrary emotions when it comes to love.

For some, love is like a butterfly, flutter, flutter, flutter and it is gone, and we move on, but that is applicable mainly to the love of a man and woman. With children, it is somewhat different. That love represent more of the chrysalis – cocoon type of love, and parents very rarely leave that spot – love of our children is unconditional, giving of ourselves to our next generation, but could that be classed as hereditary? Are we programmed to do it for the survival of our own genes? The way that nature surreptitiously disguises our continual existence and calls it loves.

I have questioned myself many times what love actually is, what are the ingredients that makes up the mix? You can’t eat, smell, hold it. Physical it is not, but an abstraction, a firing in the brain of wanting the object of that love to be near to you.
A longing for that thing or person that fills the mind with warmth, and to have the feeling reciprocated, makes it even better, the bonus, a payback if you like. Though, it is not essential to make love happen, often love is one way, but it does make the emotion that much more powerful and deeper if there is reciprocity. And yet, often, we just fritter it away by our own actions and feel sad when it flies away from us, and often we don’t know how to get it back, lost in a world of our own making.

Some believe love is a physical sexual feeling with a partner, a sense of belonging: to own and control that person. We can hold emotion towards things – animals – inanimate objects. Your home, car, money, prestige, fame, recognition, adulation, have all been loved in some degree over the ages.

From a surgical viewpoint, love is but a chemical reaction in the brain and little else, but for me that is a journey a little far, a too simplistic and naive view of life and love. A living thing – a person, an animal, is more than a chemical. With a person, love can be as deep as a touching of two souls. For those of you who have ridden that horse, you’ll know to what I’m referring – I’ve been there, the ride can be bumpy but well worth the trip – it is one of the great wonders of life. Feelings and emotions are real, as real as beaches, mountains, trees, and far more beautiful.
You wouldn’t give your life for a beach, a mountain or a tree, no matter how beautiful, but you would, and often give it with a glad heart for love, if it meant saving that person whom you love. We all have experienced these feelings, every one of us in some measure – more or less, most people wouldn’t willingly give their life for an object, but would for a person, but here again, nothing is that  straightforward. Millions throughout history have given their life for an ideal, the love of democracy is but one example.

Some demonstrate only a love for money, – sad, but true – and place it above all else, and yes, they would die in the getting of it. Everything pales into insignificance when it comes to money for these people, and quite a few, who have won and lost it, can’t live without it and commit suicide rather than face a future alone without the crutch of wealth to ease their pain.

Can you start to see why I believe life is funny in a sad sense?
Now I’ll get to the crux of the matter – the wonder -to share with you what love means to me. To answer that age-old question, I will refer to my father. A far wiser person than I’ll ever be, and what it meant to him.

But first, I need to set the scene. When I was young and in the garden with my father, with whom I spent a lot of time, he told me when he was young that once he found a thrush’s nest with five little chicks inside. The parents had been killed, and my father removed the nest and chicks and placed them in a box.

They belonged to him, he had given them life, at the least, he had certainly saved them from death, so he reared them, and then he let them go, and of course, they flew away.

“Did you not love the birds daddy?” I asked.

“Of course,” he forcefully replied.

“Why let them go? They would be dead without you, they belong to you, owe you their life.”

He smiled a little, I can see that smile even now, and he said.
“You have overlooked one main point: they never belonged to me in the first place. They belong to the land and the countryside. I was only helping them on their way. It was their time to move on, just as your time will come to fly the nest and make your way in the world. To deny anyone this right is to deny them their freedom.”

“Did you ever see the birds again?” I asked.

He was quite shocked at this question.

“This is their garden; they were born here. This garden belongs to them; they are a part of the garden as much as that tree,” he said, pointing to one of the trees. “If they are still in the garden and you see them every day,” I said innocently, “they are not free, otherwise, they would be gone.”

He lit his pipe, thought for a minute and answered. “Freedom is about the ability to choose where you wish to be, to spend time to suit yourself. To be free, you must be there by your own free will.”

I replied. “By letting the birds go free, you gave them different options, and they chose to stay, so the act of giving them freedom resulted in them staying. They were captives in their own garden, since that is where they wished to be.”
My father smiled at this comment, and looked round the garden in satisfaction. “You’ve got it,” he said. “If you wish to keep something close to you, give it the ability to fly away, but make the staying a lot better.”

So for me love is about giving, unconditional giving, and like the birds in my father’s garden, it will boomerang back to you with a ten-fold happiness.
My father’s words repeated from my first published novel, “Of Boys, Men and Mountains.”

In “The Tour,” my latest novel, I’ve taken love a stage further, contrasted it with hate, greed and jealousy. Lanky, one of the main characters, is unassuming, sees only the good in people, whereas Ron, another main character, is all self, two opposites; their emotions, motivations, the way they see and value life and sex, and how they see and value love. I’ve explored in depth and show the angle by which they see things and the way they play them out to conclusion.

Check out  the story and leave a message on my blogsite http://roytomkinson.blogspot.com, or tweet me on Twitter, @RoyTomkinson, alternatively, contact my publisher and they will pass it on.

www.strategicbookpublishing.com/TheTour.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books

A Thought To Ponder

Time Travel, Parallel Universe Theory, a lot of bunkum, or is it indeed possible?
It is stated that every action much have an opposite reaction. So what is happening in one universe, positive, the same must be happen in another universe, negatively. The entry spot being through a black hole, not only into another universe, but also to travel back in time.

Weird!

You can say that again, you say.

OK, I will.

Weird!

Now let’s get serious: you must have wondered what it would be like to travel back in time. I think every person has at some time in his or her life.

The amount of times I wish I could have told my mother and father how I’d loved them – too late now.

There is a truism, the older you get the less you know. Well, I’m on my way, we all are, the constant is change.

What would you do if you went back in time?

Or, I pose: What Time Era would you wish to visit? And Why?

I’d like to go back to the time of Henry the VIII, one of the most dangerous periods in history, for a woman anyway, well, anyone really, your head was never your own. He would chop it off on the flimsiest of pretexts. He crowned himself the Head of the Church and the repercussions are still felt today, not only in the UK, but also around the world.

This period fascinates me. Indeed, when I wrote my novel The Tour, a part of the story covers that very period. It’s not about the English Court, but about the period of history in 1526-1588 relating to Mull in Scotland, and the warring clans from that period, the MacDougalls and the MacLeans.

Life came cheap, a violent time. Well, if I were cynical, I could say nothing has changed, but that would be unfair. A lot has actually changed, but human nature is still very much the same. My novel is about people, greed, love, their troubles and tribulations. Their beliefs, and way they lived their lives, in the present time and in time past.

Check out my novel, leave a message on my blogsite http://roytomkinson.blogspot.com, or tweet me on Twitter, <@RoyTomkinson> alternatively, contact my publisher and they will pass a message on to me.

www.strategicbookpublishing.com/TheTour.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books

A LITTLE GOLD: Florenica, a Spanish Galleon

I’m looking to go to Mull later this year to scuba dive for 10 days, and wondered if anyone had heard any buzzes about a Galleon called the Florenica, it’s been searched for, for long enough. It went down in the Sound of Mull about a year after the battle between Elizabeth I, and King Philip of Spain in 1588, sunk so history tells us by the MacLean clan, the crew caught and imprisoned in Duart Castle where they eventually starved to death.

The Spanish were the most powerful nation on earth at that time, and by far the best organised and equipped army in the whole of Europe. The Spanish Army of Flanders had crushed the Dutch revolt in the northern provinces of the Spanish Netherlands, and their commander, the Duke of Parma, was ready to embark with his troops to cross the narrow North Sea to teach the heathen English a lesson, and to almost certain execution if captured and classed Elizabeth as a heretic,.

Many contemporary recorders at the time gave little chance of the English surviving the coming Spanish. British troops were quickly recruited to counter the threat, but England’s land defences were poor. The fortification undertaken at the time of Henry the VIII was fifty years old and in poor condition. His coastal castles were already vulnerable to modern guns, and posed little threat to the pernicious Spanish Army.

It was a foregone conclusion that the battle hardened Spanish troops, with their state of the art artillery, would have little difficulty in sweeping through Kent and quickly overwhelm all opposition and capture London within a week of the Armada landing.

We know the history, but now to the crux: one prestigious Galleon, the Florenica, fled the carnage and executed its escape by going around Scotland, and ended up in the Sound of Mull.

The crew were captured and taken to Duart Castle, where it is believed they were either executed, or left in the dungeon to starve to death, by the MacLeans who then occupied the fortified castle.

This galleon, many believed, was filled with treasure. Some are of the opinion all valuables were taken off it by the MacLeans before they blew it up, and the only thing that went to the bottom in Mull was a blown up ship. Others think the contrary, and believe the ship’s crew fought off the MacLeans, and in the battle the ship was lost, treasure included, and only the survivors taken to Duart Castle and incarcerated.

My own opinion when I researched the history of that period for my novel, “The Tour,” which is based in Mull, about a group of divers going up from Wales to dive Mull, and finding the Galleon Florenica, is that, somewhere around the Sound of Mull that Galleon is still there, gold included, just waiting to be found.

If the gold was taken off the galleon, where has it gone? Surely, some snippet of information about the gold would have become known. The reports at the time stated it was a Man of Warship, and full of gold, which went down with the Galleon. Even without the treasure, finding the Galleon would still be a coup d’état for anyone.

Henry VIII’s battleship was discovered not that many years ago, and brought to the surface, and that went down years before the Florenica met its fate in the Sound of Mull.

Check out my novel, leave a message on my blogsite http://roytomkinson.blogspot.com, or tweet me on Twitter, <@RoyTomkinson> alternatively, contact my publisher and they will pass on the message.

www.strategicbookpublishing.com/TheTour.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books

Words 608

Reflections on A Hanging.

I wish to share with you an essay by George Orwell, “A Hanging.” It’s less than 2000 words long, and yet, when I first read it, the effect on me was quite startling, and the feeling has stayed despite having read this essay many times over the years.

Orwell was a man tortured by his upbringing, a rebel in many ways against authority; he fought against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War, became disillusioned with humanity in the relentless pursuit of war and inhumanity against each other.

His one constant in all this mayhem is that he was always against the Totalitarian State, for the worker in its various guises, and inheritably believed with a passion that the basic human psyche was good, but could never quite, despite his inherent genius,  believe he was quite good enough as a writer.

When a Police Officer in Burma in the “sodden morning of the rains. We were waiting outside the condemned cells…” You are taken straight into the prison; the scene is set for a hanging. Already, in this first paragraph you can feel death’s icy grip.
“Six tall Indian wardens were guarding him…” the condemned.
Two held guns with bayonets fixed. You feel his plight is hopeless, as they “close about him.”

The impatient Superintendent, wished to get it over with so he can have his breakfast. To him, it is just another day at the office, hang a few and then breakfast, an ordinary day. Quicker the better, no compassion, remorse, nothing, only impatience, hurry up, we can’t delay breakfast is his dominating thought.

A dog appears in the yard, happy, wagging its tail, jumps and tried to lick the prisoner’s face. And the Superintendent, well, he’s annoyed. This dog – how dare it delay his breakfast!

Suddenly, the realisation with Orwell sets in: “It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide.” A picture of the gallows floods into your mind, erected in a small yard overgrown with weeds.

The prisoner was “half pushed… clumsily up the ladder.” A rope was placed around his neck. The prisoner cried out. “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!” Not urgent and fearful, but prosaic, almost like the tolling of a sad bell.”

The dog replied. Barked.

Minutes passed.

Blank faces. A clanging noise.

“Chalo!” shouted the Superintendent.

Silence.

Prisoner gone.

Rope twisting.

Orwell shows it to you, the image is there, he indelibly prints the picture into your mind’s eyes as if you are standing there watching the man hang, a participant; a part of the action.

The dog was let loose: “it galloped… to the back of the gallows… stopped… barked, and then retreated into a corner… looking timorously out at us.”

The Superintendent poked the body with a stick. “He’s all right… Eight minutes past eight. Well, that’s all for this morning…”

An enormous relief sweeps over everyone, the cloud lifts, the day is yet to come. A hanging is all in a day’s work – nothing special, it happens all the time.

“One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.”

Now it was time to eat.

The comment: “Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man) when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir?”
Fright, cigarettes, a silver case: What is happening here? How the extraordinary is made to feel ordinary. “Several people laughed… I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing.”

How forced death can be so trivialised, see it enough in its raw state, and yes, I suppose, it does become ordinary. I think the German concentration camps proved that. You become anaesthetised, and it ceases even to seem wrong. Indeed, it even grows into a kind of rightness. Somehow, you seem to wriggle out of its reality.

And then what did they do? “We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.

Read the Essay:

http://www.george-orwell.org/A_Hanging/0.html

Let me know what you think, leave a message on my blogsite http://roytomkinson.blogspot.com, or tweet me on Twitter, <@RoyTomkinson> alternatively, contact my publisher and they will pass it the message on to me.

Have a Peek at my novel “The Tour”

www.strategicbookpublishing.com/TheTour.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books

Novels published to date

Of Boys, Men and Mountains: ISBN: 0862438683

Anger Child ISBN: 978095597360-4

The Tour: ISBN: 978-1-60693-682-5

The Motivation

I live In Wales, UK, I’d like to tell you about a scuba diving trip in Scotland, on the Island of Mull, and how from that trip, it motivated me to write a novel even though I’d only spent two weeks – diving around its coastline in 1992.
I have also scuba-dived Scapa Flow, in Orkney, a group of islands, which lie off the northernmost tip of Scotland, doing around 30 separate dives, on two different diving holidays, and I wasn’t that impressed with Scapa. Perhaps, because it was snowing slightly on – both my visits and cold, so I’m not that keen to go back there a third time.

Now Mull, (Wow!) altogether, another story. We took two dinghies attached to our cars travelling up from Wales to Scotland, crossed on the ferry, and stayed in Tobermory in two chalets on the top overlooking the picturesque secluded harbour.

I can’t remember what the chalet is called, or the name of the campsite, but I remember we used to walk down the stone steps; tree lined with thick undergrowth each side to the front of the harbour, and into the Mishnish, a pub I’ll never forget. It made a lasting impression on me, as did the Island and harbour and the surrounding countryside.

We hardly cooked in the chalet, ate nearly every meal in the pub, typical divers. But there you go, we weren’t there to cook, but to dive, two, sometime three dives a day. Dry suits mind you, I’m not that brave, the water is cold despite the Gulf Stream passing nearby.

Anyway, Tobermory had a lasting impression on me. I researched the history of the Island, and wrote a thriller about a diving trip from Wales to Mull, and, of course, the Mishnish, Duart Castle, the harbour, the countryside, the people, and much more besides. The MacDougalls and the McLean Clans are also there, real people from the past brought back to life.

The whole action happens on Mull: Murder, rape, kidnap, greed, love, heroism, and self-sacrifice: and jumps out of the pages into the reader’s mind. A diving – time travel adventure – of a diving club going to Mull from Wales on holiday to dive, where they find a Spanish Galleon, Florenica, it’s still there somewhere in the Sound of Mull at the bottom, and… and… and… it was filled with gold. They find it, and it starts a chain of events that threaten the very existence of the planet.

Click and peek.

www.strategicbookpublishing.com/TheTour.html

http://books.google.co.uk/books

You’ll be able to get if from the Library; should I venture the words, buy it, and let me know what you think, leave a message on my blogsite http://roytomkinson.blogspot.com, or tweet me on Twitter, @RoyTomkinson, alternatively contact my publisher and they will pass it on.