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God has taken another two of of the great sixties musical legends Don Everly of the Everly Brothers and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones.

As you pass through life a piece of music become a date stamp that you can look back on and remember what you were doing the first time you heard it.

So hear I go.

When I was sixteen and attending Erdington College, Birmingham one day a week occasionally in the dinner hour I would go to a small caff on the high street with another boy and hurriedly eat a plate of egg and chips.

They had the first juke box that I had ever seen and the one dinnertime someone played Bird Dog one of the brothers early hits, and I thought Wow.

The only time I saw them life was in the UK and it has always brought back mixed emotions because the following morning my Mom died.

How I wish I had spent that night with her and not attending their concert.

I saw the Stones when they were still teens and so was I; but how mesmerizing they were with that blues style of riffs. And Charlie Watts was part of that distinctive sound that pulsed through the building and the audience.

Bet God Has to take a lot of paracetamol; its his own fault he should have left Charlie down here a bit longer.

China is starting a program which teaches children from the age of six to think in terms of a becoming part of a communist regime and reducing there ability to have independent thought. But there are many governments that move peoples ideas in the direction they think would help them achieve long term goals.

A long time ago Germany and Japan had ideologies which used the same principles and look where that took them.

But not that long ago the UK dominated certain parts of the world so my philosophy is ‘he who is without sin throw the first stone’ actually I think someone did on the Monty Python show.

When my mother was in her late seventies she once told me that she never looked in the mirror anymore because she didn’t like what she saw. I must be quite progressive because I stopped looking into a mirror well before I reached my mothers age.

A piece of advice from an older person ‘dying is bad for your health,’ so do your best to avoid it.

If God could build the earth in seven days how come he made such a bad job in designing humans.

No wonder I am nearly an atheist, the part of me that strays towards believing is the same part of me that took out insurance policies; just in case.

How long before several other countries offer to help the Taliban financially in the hope that they can access the mineral wealth of that country; Russia and China being the most prominent.

Russia has soon forgotten the nine-year it fought trying to take control of that country and failed miserably.

And are China’s long-term ambitions to eventually take complete control of Afghanistan the way they have in Hong Kong.

The best of luck with that then.

The Taliban are now firmly in charge of Afghanistan and despite a promise that they would not allow insurgents to take refuge in what is now their country the first suicide bomber has killed himself and several other people.

How long before these new breed of fighters become so strong that they try to take over this country that was once so hopeful of their freedom.

What goes round comes round.

The withdrawal of UK and American troops from Afghanistan and the rapid capitulation of the local army may have been a surprise to both of these countries but not to anyone that even limited common sense. For years the Afghan army was bolstered by numerous nations and every time they got into situations beyond their control help was supplied immediately so they never became battle hardened. So many times when I was small I heard children who were being threatened with violence by bigger or more aggressive classmates use the phrase ‘my dads bigger than your dad, well the Afghans Dad was quite big but he has left the country.

So now the Taliban are now in charge but are they capable of running a country, I hope so, but doubt it. Most of them have spent twenty years fighting, they had a directive in life and I suspect they enjoyed the excitement of combat, and now the set of tram tracks has disappeared with no defining signposts to tell them which direction to travel in. Most walk around aimlessly with a look of puzzlement on their faces, they have achieved their dream and won the war with no thought of what might happen afterwards.

Make sure your dream is impossible to achieve and just try to get a close to it as you can then you will always have a direction to travel in.

So we lost on penalties and there were many negative comments about the three young lads who took them.

To me they were heroes just nineteen, twenty and and twenty three young men who should be applauded for their courage.

They and their manager Gareth Southgate should be remembered for what they achieved and what they may achieve.

Cases of the virus in the UK are rising rapidly despite this on Monday the 19th we are removing nearly all restrictions working on the principle that most of the new infections are among younger people and children. The Government are doing this because the amount of people who are vaccinated is nearly ninety percent with one injection and over sixty percent with two injections.

Does this government know what its doing, does any government.

I come back to ‘the king with the invisible suit’.

When I was quite young and working at Ryfords in Great Barr Birmingham, a toolmaking company as a three dimensional pantagraph operator (look it up) Brian one of lads who worked on the grinding section said rather cynically ‘Its only the name over the door that changes,’ he was right and that applies to most things in life.

Wonder if its the same in heaven?

Later in his life Brian moved from being a factory to running a seven bedroom hotel, split from his wife because she started having an affair with the cook and was left with virtually nothing. He did find another partner so I was really pleased for him.

I am now at an age when my mind brings up pictures of the people I knew when I was young ‘as they were then’ and I wonder where and what they are doing now.

But I don’t want to meet them because it would destroy those so special images and sounds from the past.

England is experience a spell of nice warm weather which is forecast to last for several more days. In the same time-frame Germany, Belgium, and Holland are being hit with flash floods; its scary that climate is happening so fast.

But the reality is that it hasn’t happened fast, it has taken a long time but we have ignored it. And why? the simple answer is of course money because most people want to become rich, as do most countries. Chase the pound, the dollar, the yen. Plenty of time to have a conscience when we have enough wealth.

We never have enough money because our expectations increase when our bank balance does.

Take my advice learn to use stilts and if it floods in your area you will be able to keep your head above water.

This is my fifth attempt to write a successful novel and I thought that while not being full of intellectual phrases and plots that would take readers to another dimension it was in the realms of an easy read and quite interesting.

So I sent it off to five different agents and most said it was interesting but it did not fit with their book profile.

That was apart from the one agent who sent me three links to basic writing courses ( you may have realized from my articles that they may be correct)

I sent an email back pointing out that this could undermine my confidence in my ability to continue in this new career and they should be far more helpful to new authors.

They apologized and agreed to be more diplomatic in the future then added that they would be sending me a gift which if used correctly could propel me into unimaginable opportunities.

It was a box that contained a length of rope with instructions how to fix it around my neck and to a beam.

I am still trying to understand how to use it correctly as the slipknot keeps slipping.

I console myself that I was exceptional in using a Three dimensional panto graph (you may find it on you-tube)