OCTOBER 4th

Life has always fascinated me. Not how complex we, as humans, are. Not how we are able to think and act in such an amazing way. What fascinates me is how, so often in my life anyway, coincidences happen. I read The Celestine Prophecy in 2001 and, although it was a novel, the ideas within it made me think about aspects I had never studied. The narrator in the novel started to notice instance of synchronicity. This idea, put forward by the psychologist Carl Jung, suggests that just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning.

I suppose a definition of causality would be that everything which happens has a cause and is, therefore, an effect of that cause. Something is as it is because something else interacted with it previously. By the way, I accept this is a simplistic definition but I am a simple person. While in New Zealand some years ago I had an interview with a Buddhist monk. He explained the true definition of Karma which isn't that if you do something good then something good will happen to you, as many seem to think, It is, like causality, that every action has a reaction. Synchronicity stresses that events are meaningful coincidences.

The reason for all this rather deep thinking is that something happened to me in the last two weeks that can only be seen as synchronicity. It happened as a result of other actions but at no time, until it happened, did I have any idea of the possible link. As of now, I am not revealing what it is but, rest assured, you will know soon enough.

OCTOBER 11th

Very simple explanation of what Tashy has been doing this week; recovering. Two weeks ago my television decided to become a radio. The following day it was just a piece of furniture. After a few days with no TV I decided I needed to purchase a new one and so I did. Then I had to set it up. Luckily my eldest son was around and he helped me carrying it back from the shop. It's only a 32inch screen, I cannot understand why anyone would want anything larger. I use the TV to watch programmes not impose upon my life. He also helped me set it up. No longer do you bring it home, plug it in and watch. It requires programming, linking to various other devices and plugging in and, eventually, watching.

During last weekend my laptop started to slow down and, fearing the worst, I copied all my files on to my external hard drive. On Tuesday I took the laptop into the repair shop, On Wednesday they told me it was dying. Later that day, it died. I then ought a new laptop, carrying it home on my own. I spent the next few days re-loading everything back and re-installing all the programmes I had

Now, Saturday, all is back working. The only problem is that a few keys are in different positions. I will survive that.

OCTOBER 18th

A good and productive week. My son has temporarily moved in while he finds himself somewhere to live following the break-up of his marriage. This has caused some disruption but, as always, I've got round it. I do find that when you see people going through a break-up it does rekindle, that may be the wrong word, but it does revive, better, memories of the break-ups I have been through.

In total there have been six of them. Two were marriages, fifteen years and ten years respectively, one a fairly long seven year relationship and the other three were all less than eighteen months. In all but the last, my anxiety and panic attacks meant that I needed someone with me rather than needed someone as part of a loving relationship. I moved too quickly on to someone new.

I'm not sure it is possible to offer advice because you do not have the feelings, the opinion, the hopes of that person who feels they are losing something special. One can, however, try to explain that you cannot live in the past and if you are going to move forward you must do so from where you are not from where you would like to be. If you partner has lied to you, then you move on from there not try to forget that they lied.

I have learnt much about people, their behaviour, their way of seeing things I saw totally differently. To me, what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced has to be all that matters.

OCTOBER 25th

Two more weekends remain until I embark on a highly intensive period of work in relation to my learning site. For those of you that don't know, it can be found here and has a pretty comprehensive, though in no way complete, history of England. The history is there to show how we progressed since the last Ice Age, some 8,000ish years ago, until now. The idea is not to cover every year, every event, every detail in full but merely to cover the most relevant, in my opinion, and to leave enough interest for young people to want to find out more.

That history has been in place for almost six months now and I have had some very good feedback from those who have made use of it. The plan, over the next six months, is to review all the entries, amend some if necessary, add some where it would improve things and generally check that each entry is the best it could be.

However, alongside that, is the research work involved in my plan to enhance the site, beginning in September 2020. This will be done by adding a large number of video clips to the material that is already there. For example, a visit to the scene of the Battle of Hastings, a look around Nelson's flagship Victory or a visit to Lindisfarne where the Viking raid in 793AD was the beginnings of a major change in our history.

That review and the research are easiest to undertake simultaneously and so I have planned to carry it all out between 4 November 2019 and the end of April 2020. It will mean working 7 days a week some weeks but it will be worth.

What it also means, however, is that apart from some Tashy Travels updates to be uploaded during November and December this yea, this site will become dormant again until the work is finished.

Meryy Christmas and a Happy New Year. Oh, and a Happy Easter too.

September 2019
October 2019