A psychic parrot?

Sometimes snippets of evidence turn up in the oddest places.

There are 30 videos of this foul-beaked parrot (all of them hilarious) on YouTube. Just search 'X-rated parrot'.

In this one, the parrot starts repeating the name 'Jill'. The owner is baffled, and explains that Jill was his sister, who died years ago. When he tells the parrot 'Jill died', the parrot responds 'Bye-bye' which is a heck of a coincidence for a bird with such an extensive vocabulary.

This particular parrot is an excellent mimic and picks up words quickly.

Coincidence? Well, the world is full of them, but this one clearly sends shivers up the parrot-owner's spine.

Watch the video and decide for yourself - but be warned, that parrot's vocabulary extends deep into the gutter!

Debunking debunkers.

Science claims to have proved that out-of-body experiences are an illusion.

I fail to see how this experiment proves anything of the kind.

Using virtual reality goggles, volunteers get a view of their own body, or of a mannequin made to look like them. They are, in effect, looking at themselves from 'outside' their bodies. Just as described by out-of-body experiencers.

Are these scientists claiming that all out-of-body experiences are due to some sneaky housebreaker slipping virtual reality goggles on sleeping householders? Do surgeons place these goggles on anaesthetised patients in case they wake up, then have a good laugh about it afterwards? Somehow I doubt it.

I haven't had an out-of-body experience myself so I can only speak from the reports of others. Yet what I see in this experiment is a replication, using technology, of the experiences reported by 10% of the population without that technology.

This is a rather poor and desperate attempt at debunking a common and still unexplained phenomenon. It no more disproves the out-of-body experience than Caspar disproves the existence of ghosts.

All it proves is that the effect can be replicated using technology. Just like Caspar.

OK Go - Get Over It

I vote this song for the national anthem of every country in the world. It makes more sense than any of them and it's a great deal better to listen to than most of the miserable dirges out there.

Orbs - ha!

While in Wales, I heard about an old railway station that was, coincidentally, very close to a pub. So I visited both. There was no hint of haunting at either location, but I like to visit old places because they’re fascinating.

The track has long since been lifted and turned into a footpath and cycleway. A crime in itself, but worse was the wanton removal of the old station. There were photos of it in the pub, and it looked like an excellent example of Great Western architecture.

All that’s left is the bridge that carried the track over a tiny, winding road. It’s well over a hundred years old yet there’s not a brick missing from the structure and it shows no sign of recent repairs. They just don’t build like this any more. Modern bridges often show cracks and flaking masonry after a few years. Have we run out of the ‘proper’ cement, or is building a lost art? It’s most likely down to cost-cutting by the empty suits, but that’s not what this is about.

Here’s the bridge in question:


Since I had my infrared filter with me, I used it to take a few photos, including the bridge.
Here’s one of them:


It’s full of orbs. No flash this time, so I’m not lighting up dust in front of the lens. It’s a sunny day, just after lunchtime, and the sun is almost overhead.

Here’s another:


Note the pattern of orbs in the photos. Pretty similar, don’t you think? The pattern was the same on a few other photos. It depended which way I was facing.

In fact, it depended on whether the sun struck the filter at just the right angle to light up the dust specks on it. Yes, it’s dust on the filter, nothing more.

There are no records of anyone ever dying at the station, no accidents, no heart attacks, nothing. Yet if you believe in orbs, you’d assume there must have been a pitched battle here in the past. There wasn’t. Nobody has ever lived here, it’s the site of an old railway line and that’s it. No ancient burial grounds, nothing.

These orbs are dust. Most orbs are dust. I’ve heard of people claiming they can tell when orbs are around. Well, yes, Stomp around a disused building and say to your photographer ‘Take a photo now, you’ll get orbs’. This translates to ‘I should have stirred up enough dust to get you excited by now. Sucker.’

Ghosts are real. Other, non-human, spirits exist. I’ve seen them. There are such things as spirit lights, corpse candles, lights that can’t be passed off as will-o’-the-wisps or other natural phenomena. They are visible to the eye, not just to the error-prone digital camera.

Orbs, however, are dust. That’s all they are. They are not ‘the first attempt at manifestation of a spirit’. First visual attempts are usually hands, or feet and legs. The head and face are generally the final touch because they’re hardest to visualise. Nobody visualises themselves as a semitransparent disc. Nobody. Orbs are not ghosts. They are the worst thing that could happen to a serious investigation because they are easily proved to be photographic errors. Ammunition for sceptics.

Forget the orbs. If you want to be taken seriously, then don’t ever present an orb photo as ‘proof’.

It’s like loading the guns for your own firing squad.

The clown that turned.

I heard about a rotating clown a few weeks back and wandered along to take a look. I was invited. I don’t just turn up at your door and demand to see your spooky happenings. So far, I have never seen the inside of either a prison cell or a padded room and I’m happy with that. So I arrive by invitation only.

The clown was blown glass, in a glass-fronted cabinet set against, but not fixed to, a wall. I’ve opened the glass door for the photos because of reflections, but it’s normally closed.

The room is one of those little-used ‘best rooms’ to be found in most older British houses. The young don’t keep up this tradition because modern houses are too small to swing a cat in. You can tell this by the cat-shaped dents in the walls. There aren’t enough rooms in new houses to designate one as ‘best’.

Anyway, the ‘best’ room is used for guests, dinner parties, that sort of thing. It’s left alone most of the time, apart from dusting and polishing. Nobody in the house disturbed the clown overnight, yet in the morning it had turned almost ninety degrees to the right. The homeowner turned it back. Overnight, it turned itself around again.

There was no history of strange happenings in the house, and the clown had been in the family for many years. In that time it had always behaved itself, facing the direction it was set in and showing no rotatory impulse whatsoever. It has a twin, in the same cabinet, that seems content to remain in place.

Overnight, the house creaked and groaned a lot. Nothing supernatural in that, but it did give a clue. Behind the wall, behind the clown’s cabinet, was a staircase leading to a lower floor (the house is built into the side of a hill: after entering the front door, the second level is down, not up). So the cabinet is on a wooden floor with a room below.

An inspection of the clown showed that its base was uneven. It pivoted easily on a bulge in the glass of its feet. Combined with movement on the floor and the staircase, I concluded that simple vibration was sufficient to cause it to turn. I found no evidence of any spirit involvement in this case.

The one thing that puzzled me, and still does, is why the clown’s rotation has only occurred in recent months. It has been in that cabinet, in the same place on the same shelf for well over a decade.

It might be worth a second visit.

How to poison a child.

Our children have now to live in terror of the despicable Foreign Toymaker, who is coating all toys with lead and magnets.

I have no idea why magnets are now dangerous. I had several as a child, most from toy sets. Now I have some from defunct hard disks which are powerful enough to not only stop a pacemaker, but to rip it from the victim's chest. There must be some reason why we are suddenly terrified of magnetism. Does anyone know?

Lead has long been known to be toxic, which is why I recall a childhood incident where all the water pipes in my parent's house had to be replaced with copper ones. The latest pipes, in an extension I had built a few years ago, are plastic. This means I can't find them with a pipe detector, but that's progress for you.

We had lead water pipes. Their removal was a good idea. Green paint in very old houses is coloured with arsenic. It's best not to scrape that off - just paint or paper over it. It's safe until you turn it into airborne dust. Asbestos roofs still exist. If you want to remove one, it's a specialist job. It was probably put up as a DIY job, but now it's deadly.

The world is full of dangerous things. There are, however, degrees of danger.

I had lead toy soldiers as a boy. Pity I didn't keep them, they're worth money now. I had (still have) soldering equipment and dabbled (still dabble) with electronics. Lead-free solder is now available but when I was a child, a whiff of solder vapour was considered trivial. Dripping it onto your hand wasn't. I learned, very quickly, to treat hot solder with respect.

School physics lessons included the art of soldering, the construction of a mercury thermometer and other things that make the bubble-wrap brigade tremble with fear. I'm not even going to start on chemistry lessons. Let's just say the school had a small stock of pure sodium and pure potassium for class purposes. Physics and chemistry were fun subjects, as was biology which involved dead rats and scalpels. Nowadays, children aren't interested in those subjects and the Institute of Incompetence, previously known as the Government, wonders why.

It's because they took all the fun out. For children, things that go bang, things that burn, things that smell, are the stuff of dreams. Dusty textbooks and long equations are not. We learned the equations only because they showed us how to make things like nitrogen triiodide and weedkiller bombs. Without the class demonstrations of those things (and some self-imposed homework) those equations would have held no interest at all. Before you ask, the particular weedkiller required is no longer on sale.

Children don't want to spend time in a class of clean white lab coats and clear solutions. They want lab coats with stains, and with holes from 'accidental' alkali spillage. They want to have to leave the room teary-eyed because someone's experiment 'accidentally' produced sulphur dioxide. They want something to go bang, something to stink, something gory and something poisonous. They want the dangerous stuff.

Lead soldiers were never dangerous unless you bit chunks off them. If you're the sort of person who finds lead tasty, then natural selection will deal with you. Lead in paint on children's toys is less dangerous than those soldiers. It's at a much lower concentration and will only affect a child who's daft enough to eat it.

They say lead makes you stupid. I say if you're actively eating these things, you can't get any more stupid.

Lead is bad for you, there's no doubt about that. It's the same lead that's in vehicle exhaust emissions. That's bad for you too. If you have fillings, the amalgam used by dentists contains mercury. In the UK, we are at low risk from this because it's impossible to register with a dentist. Even so, having your teeth filled with mercury without being told makes no news. A little lead-based paint causes utter terror. What a world.

It's not the metals in our household products that's responsible for rising levels of illiteracy among university students. Lead doesn't cause chavs or any of the other congregations of brainlessness that litter our streets at dusk. Children are not unruly and idiotic because of the traces of mildly harmful things the twee little ladies of Political Correctness haven't mopped up yet.

They are unruly because the Politically Correct will not allow anyone, parent, teacher, police, courts, to discipline them.

They are stupid because the Bubble-Wrap Brigade won't let teachers teach them anything.

There is little need to be concerned about the physical poisoning a child might pick up from its toys. It can happen, but it's very unlikely in today's world.

There is every need to be concerned about the more insidious, mental and psychological poisoning of every child's thought processes by the madmen who currently run the country.

That's why I make no plans for the future. The human race will coddle itself to death in a couple of generations.

Think deep.

Where is Heaven, and where is Hell? Those who have faith in such things generally regard Heaven as being somewhere in the sky, and Hell as being in the bowels of the Earth. This is, however, a recent development and, I suspect, has its roots in the observation that upwards means moving towards light—the sun—while underground is dark and gloomy.

The ancient peoples had one thing in common, despite widely differing beliefs. The ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Celts, Picts, the Maori, all believed (many still believe) that the paths souls travelled after death were underground.

Consider: in all the studied cases of reincarnation or past-life regression, nobody has ever reported a previous incarnation on another world. Always this one. There are no reincarnated Martians or Alpha Centaurians among us.

Air travellers, astronauts, cameras and other sensors sent to the moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and other floating rocks report no paranormal activity at all. I’m not one to study UFO’s but if they are real then I don’t think they have any spirit connection.

Mines have long had reports of kobolds (Germany) tommyknockers (America) coblynau (Wales). Knocking spirits infest mines all over the world. Goblins and demons are generally regarded to come from underground. Fairies—originally souls of the dead from Celtic lore—live in hills, in underground caverns. Haunted caves abound, while every tale from folklore describing things like vampires and ghouls describe them rising from the soil, not falling from the sky.

It seems we are tied to this particular ball of soil for the long haul.

Why? Is there some gravitational effect on spirits, just as on the living? Is it because this is where we were born, and where we choose to stay after death, or do spirits have no ability to leave this world? I’ll be disappointed if that turns out to be the case since I was hoping to travel extensively.

There is only one way to test this, and that’s to die on another planet. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone (well, not on many people) but it’s certain to happen one day. Especially if plans to set up permanent colonies on the moon or Mars ever come to fruition. One day, through accident or old age, someone will die on another world.

Will they travel subterranean passageways on their new home planet, or will they return to this one? Will the mines of Mars one day have kobolds of their own, directing miners away from the highways of the dead? Or will they all come home to the crowded underworld of Earth?

I doubt I’ll see the answer to that. Not with living eyes, anyway.

Questions, questions...

The last post resulted in a deluge of questions. Well, two - but for this blog that's a deluge.

Southern Writer asks:

Heh. On this side of the pond, we call it reality TV.

Good point. We have that too, but those who volunteer for it deserve torment.

But never mind that now ... tell us more about these ghosts who should not have been awakened. What do you know about them? Are they the ghosts of rapists and murderers and such, or are they a different species altogether?

Not so much awakened as let through the door. Some are human ghosts (if you don't think humans are dangerous, read the news). A few are not. There are other forms of life, and I know I'll be called a crank for saying it. I stopped worrying about that a long time ago. Now, I don't mean take-over-the-world or let-Hell-loose Hollywood type creatures. I don't mean demons, though some would call them that.

Imagine another reality overlapping this one. If you don't have sufficient imagination to do that, read no further. In that other reality is a Romulus Crowe who tells the inhabitants about our human world. Most laugh at the very notion. Most don't believe we could exist. A few will take up the idea and try to find a way through. Most demons don't believe in us. A sobering thought.

What happens when humans get a sniff of ghosts? Amateurs play with Ouija boards, table-tipping and other 'games'. The ghosts aren't, to them, real living things. They are toys. Why should any other species regard their 'ghosts' differently? When someone playing with the supernatural connects with another, playing their own supernatural games, they create a bridge.

As with humans, those playing on the other side don't regard their findings as life. Just as entertainment. As with humans, those playing around on the other side aren't usually the brightest sparks in the fire. They are the ones who tease cats, who poke dead rats, who kick dogs. That's what they do to things they regard as real. They don't think we're alive.

Most 'demons' are idiots from another reality. They don't want to take over the world. They're just poking the dead rat. Why would they stop? To them, we're not even real.

Vicious humans are worse. Spiteful, self-centred, hate-filled souls are more common than serial killers and can be far more dangerous. The non-human 'demons' usually get bored and go away, or die in their own realities. Note that few poltergeist manifestations last longer than a human lifetime, for example. Human ghosts hang around longer.

If they can't be returned once they're summoned, what becomes of them?

You can't put toothpaste back in the tube because it's been there and knows not to fall for that trick again. You can put toothpaste in a different tube, one it hasn't seen before. They can be tricked into a different containment. Most 'demons' aren't too bright. If they don't get caught, I think they become administrators and politicians. There are many current heads of state I'd regard as demonic. Have you heard of the game 'Second Life'? I think they might be playing their own version of that.

How can we know if a ghost we're seeing is benign or malevolent?

If it tries to kill you, that's not good. If you recognise the ghost then it's most likely okay, but remember that what you 'see' is projected into your mind. Few 'demons' are smart enough to fake an image but a few are. If you suspect it's not who you think it is, a few questions will soon show them up.

What are some of the ways they're being summoned? Will simple ghost hunting in itself conjure them? Do some things, like Ouija boards or trigger objects, invite them?

Any reputable medium will tell you that the phrase 'Is (so-and-so) there?' is an invitation. The phrase 'Is anybody there?', as uttered by halfwits on TV shows is an open invitation to any spirit, human or otherwise, trying to get through. A better, much safer phrasing is 'Who's there?' because it demands an identity. Never underestimate the power of invitation. And never trust any response. Ghosts are dead people, and people lie.

Ouija boards are a recent invention. This is used by sceptics to 'debunk' them. In fact, they were invented as a means of making money from the spiritualist craze. The inventors might not even have believed in the supernatural. They might have seen nothing more than a business opportunity. However, they were based on previous, long-standing spirit communication methods and effectively put the atom bomb within reach of the amateur. They do work. They do allow spirit contact BUT they are not selective in who, or what they contact. You might reach Aunt Flo with one of these or you might reach someone or something that's pretending to be Aunt Flo. With the limited contact allowed by that board, you can't tell. It's an open radio. You have no idea what's coming through. It works by the attraction of the life force of the people using the board and it's specificity is less if none of the sitters believe. They're all pressing for a result even if they claim to be non-believers, otherwise they wouldn't be sitting there. Pressing for a result, and not caring what that result might be, is like pressing a big red button labelled 'Don't press this'.

Trigger objects are neutral. They don't send an invitation. I'll post the 'rotating clown' story someday, when I have it sorted out.

What about simple fear? Could someone's fear of such things send out a signal, like fishbait in water? Do tell all!

Ah, the old 'blood in the water' theory of fear. I don't know for sure, but I think that can only apply to human ghosts. Dead bullies react to fear just like living ones. It's not a signal as such but if they've scared you once, they might try to do it again.


heyjude said...

Rom, sounds like you need to write another book to warn the naive about all the dangers.

There's little point trying to explain things to those too stupid to listen. Many times, the dangers of drink-driving, or using a mobile phone while driving have been explained in gory detail, yet the masses of morons that populate the world have declared themselves exempt from death and injury. In an earlier post I described how most people are too dense to realise there are other living people around, never mind dead ones.

I have a second edition in preparation but I don't fool myself into thinking it'll make a big difference. The world will always be populated with 99% dopes, and we'll always elect the dopiest to lead us.

Did that answer the questions? I have to go now to see if the clown rotated.

Not a good day to die.

Ghosthunting has turned into some kind of package holiday deal. Everywhere I turn I see adverts for ghost tours, haunted excursions, all-inclusive 'training sessions' that will apparently circumvent any need for all that dreary education and teach you everything about the supernatural in half an hour.

I really wouldn't want to be a ghost right now. You think death will be the end of your trials, and you can finally rest - but no, the afterlife papparazzi are on your tail.

How do I feel about this? Well, how would a nuclear physicist feel if there were workshops showing people how to build a cyclotron in their garden, or an atom bomb in their shed? How would a microbiologist feel if details of growing things like anthrax were made public? How would you feel if the torment of living people became a source of entertainment?

Those are scary scenarios. So is this. The number of people dabbling with the paranormal is growing by the day, and ghosts are not all benign, timid, harmless spooks. Some are very dangerous indeed, and those are the ones looking for some amateur to call them out.

Calling them out is easy, it can be done by accident. Putting them back--well, how do you put back the explosion from a bomb? To borrow a phrase Tom Sheepandgoats used, how do you put toothpaste back in the tube? Particularly if the toothpaste doesn't want to go back and is actively trying to kill you while you do it?

The irresponsibility of encouraging complete novices to dive in and chat with the dead is breathtaking. Would you send someone who's never used a gun on a tiger hunt?

Take the time to learn about the supernatural properly, or leave it alone. This isn't a game.

How to profit from ghosthunting.

A couple of rules from the game of Life first:

One, you will meet very few people who genuinely want to help you.

Two, none of them will try to sell you anything.



At the moment, paranormal investigation is rather like gambling, in that the bookies always win. The bookies in this case being those who sell paranormal investigation equipment. You must disabuse yourself of any notion that they do this to help you. They do it to make money. It’s their business.

Now, I don’t want to sound as though I’m slating the sellers of gadgetry. I love gadgets. Two of my favourite places on the Internet are Tom’s Gadgets and Maplin. The former advertises paranormal equipment, the latter sells much the same stuff but as general electronic equipment.

Both are out to make money. They must not be regarded as places to turn to for help in deciding what to buy. That decision is yours, and yours alone. There are, however, very few pieces of equipment that are proven to be useful to the point of being indispensable. There are, in fact, only two. A camera and a voice recorder.

Thermometers are useful, infrared ones are not. I’ve raged about those in the past so I’ll leave them alone for now..

EMF meters are interesting, but have come to be regarded as ‘ghost detectors’. They are no such thing. They measure electromagnetic fields. That’s all they do. You might find an electromagnetic field where you didn’t expect to find one. It’s interesting but it’s only the start of your investigation. In itself, no EMF reading proves anything at all. Worse, no EMF meter records data in conjunction with time and place so the only one to see the reading is you.

The same is true of thermometers. You will never obtain proof that the dead are still around with either of these things. In an investigator’s kit, that’s not their purpose – if you come back from an investigation elated that you found cold spots and EMF spikes, but do nothing about them, you have failed. If you go back to the places where you found those things and investigate more deeply, then you’re working on the right lines.

Considerable evidence has come from the recorded voices on both tape and digital equipment. Ultrasonic equipment, such as using bat-detectors, is just being silly. Those things pick up sounds at frequencies too high for humans to hear. Why would any spirit attempt to communicate at those frequencies? They pick up artefacts that can sound like voices. Sounds that are always there but not normally heard.

Remember, what you’re looking for is proof. You don’t have to convince yourself of the reality of ghosts. If you’re willing to spend all night in some dark, cold place then you’re already convinced. Your proof has to convince those who scoff at what you do, and using any technique that’s open to artefacts is just wasting your time.

Similarly, using a method that allows easy fakery is not a good idea. Digital photographs can be manipulated and faked with no difficulty. Film fakery is much easier to spot. If you use only digital, then you’ll have trouble convincing sceptics of anything you find. They can reproduce your images in any photo-manipulation program. I use both. Digital allows lots of photos at no cost, and it’s easy to store them all on disk. If I think I have a result, I return with film only. That long-sought-after proof will only come with film. Digital images will always go down in flames.

You need a photo, you need a solid, unmistakable recorded voice. You need a camera and a recorder. The rest of it, the EMF meters, the ludicrously expensive and pointless tri-field meters, even the thermometers, are not the means to your proof. They are the means to find those places where you might get a photo, or a voice.

It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. You don’t need a ready-made ‘ghost hunter kit’ although people are buying these at an apparently fantastic rate (thanks to Jude for the link).

The places selling these things will sell whatever you want to buy. If you want insanely expensive gadgetry because you think it makes you look like you know what you’re doing, then that demand will drive supply. All you’ll do is spend hours setting it all up and then all night changing batteries, adjusting and fiddling with your toys. None of it, no matter what results you record, will prove a thing. The only proof will be a photo or a voice.

Don’t gloat over orbs. Orbs are bunk. Don’t load yourself down with tons of equipment. Ghost manifestations have a nasty habit of draining batteries, so the less battery-powered stuff you have, the fewer batteries you have to carry. Have at least one camera that works without batteries, and a tripod to stand it on.

People have been seeing ghosts since the first human died. If you want to really connect with this, do what they did. They didn’t have miles of cable, they didn’t use cameras or voice recorders. They used something we’re all born with for free. Use that.

Use your senses. Switch off your damned ego-boosting gadgets and just listen!

Selling toxic waste.

It's time for politicians to wake up to the reality that they can't solve all the world's problems by moving money around.

Their latest soon-to-be-regulated industry is carbon offsetting. This is a scheme whereby you do nothing at all to cut your greenhouse gas emissions, but pay someone else to worry about it for you.

It's the same as if you paid me not to mow my lawn more than once a month so you could mow yours twice a week. The greenhouse gas emissions are the same as if we both mowed weekly; you are, in effect, buying my emissions quota. If anyone's interested, I'm open to offers.

Note the key phrase 'the greenhouse gas emissions are the same' in the above. Paying me to not mow my lawn so you can do yours more often does not result in an overall reduction in emissions. If we both mowed once a month, that would work. That's not how the carbon trading system works.

If there's going to be a serious cut in global emissions of noxious fumes (which I regard as a good idea, whether it has anything to do with global warming or not) then everyone has to do it. Letting some buy their way out of responsibility is senseless.

'I have a problem. You, take this money and worry about it for me'. That's pretty much it.

How long before the nuclear industry pay us to bury radioactive waste in our gardens?

And what do we do if it makes the grass grow faster?

Watching the defectives.

I haven’t been around the internet too much for a while. The weather here remains dull with rain every day. Floods are subsiding but more floody weather is forecast for the weekend. Contrary to rumour, I am not building a one-man Ark in my garden and stocking it with tinned goods. As I explained to the local council, it’s nothing more than a tastefully curved storage shed. I’m building it upside-down because it’s easier: I’ll turn it over when the rain stops. The only reason it’s so watertight is because of the constant rain.

Since the weather ruins any chance of my preferred investigation sites – abandoned and derelict ancient buildings – I have spent a little time reacquainting myself with the living, and reminding myself why I don’t like them.

Wandering around city centres, it’s easy to see why so many people don’t believe in ghosts, and why so many have never, and will never meet any of the wandering dead. Most of them are not even aware of the living people around them. The dead stand no chance.

People walk in one direction while expending considerable effort to ensure that their eyes never point in that same direction. They would risk seeing someone in their way and have to go to all the trouble of taking an extra step or two to go around them. I have, several times in the past month, stood perfectly still in the middle of a busy shopping area and stared with fixed glare at someone walking directly towards me.

More than half of them didn’t see me. Of those, at least half blamed me for walking into them, and maintained this belief even after I explained I had not been moving. I wished, more than once, that I had been covered in long needles coated with the most potent itch-inducing chemicals available. If I can get some, I’ll try that.

I saw women pushing prams, carrying shopping, while wearing Bluetooth headsets as though they were executives, or perhaps cybermen. How the Hell did these people survive a few years ago, before the constant-babble machines were invented? How many words can one person speak in their lifetime? There are people half my age who have already made more noise with their mouths than I am likely to achieve if I live to be a hundred. So much noise, so many conversations, so many words spoken and not one of them worth hearing.

More than half the people on the street are talking or texting on mobile phones. Some, with these earpieces that resemble Borg implants, wander along gesticulating and talking to their invisible friends in ways that would have earned them long sleeves and straps at the back just a few years ago. It still should. If you’re a nut who wanders along muttering to yourself, just clip on a dummy earpiece and nobody will ever know. I’m wondering if psychiatrists have already worked this out. What’s the point of curing them when you can so easily make them fit in with the modern world?

So many people on the phone, so much of the time. Who are they all talking to? Is there a call centre somewhere where the friendless work, where they murmur ‘Yes, I know’ constantly to these chattering imbeciles? Perhaps a recording would work just as well. How many of the mindless phone users would know the difference?

I have to admit, they do provide considerable entertainment. I found a convenient seat overlooking a busy road and waited for these Phone People to come along. I didn’t have to wait long. The loudest laughs were elicited where the driver of the car that screeches or swerves to avoid one of these oafs is also on the phone. It’s illegal to drive and phone in the UK but it’s very common because most people are too stupid to understand just how dangerous it is, and how idiotic they look.

The odd thing is, even though I laughed aloud at potentially deadly near-accidents, nobody minded. I drew no stares, no disapproving looks, no chiding glances. Partly because there were few among the hundreds of people around who were sufficiently sentient to realise I was there, but mainly because I had adopted a cunning disguise.

A pair of earphones can be had for as little as £1 (about $2). Stick them in your ears, thread the wire to an inside pocket and everyone assumes you’re just listening to something funny. This is all the disguise anyone needs nowadays, in order to blend in with the halfwits who populate the world. You can grin like a maniac, hum to yourself, bounce in your seat, you can do a thousand things for which you should really be sectioned. As long as you have these earphones, you’re immune.

One thing I have always enjoyed is silence. The dead of night, away from street lights and traffic and (best of all) idiots, in the ruins of a remote cottage or castle, is a blessed time of peace and quiet. The odd owl adds to the charm, as does the whisper of a breeze in long, dry grass (of which there is currently none available in the UK). I take no MP3 player, no thought-blanking music devices, no television. I have a phone with me but it’s switched off. It’s there in case I break something and have to call professionals to get me out – that’s never happened but I have the phone because it might.

From what I’ve seen, I think most of the population would be utterly terrified in such a situation. Not because of the dark, not because of the owls or the bats, not even because of any ghosts that might call by.

Because of the silence.

It came from the sky.

The rain has not stopped in over a month. I've been considering asking Tom Sheepandgoats if he happens to have Noah's phone number.

Hats and coats are futile. This rain comes down with power-washer force. You'd get wet even if you were laminated. There are floods all over the UK, fortunately only minor in my area but severe in many places. It's more than enough to put me off any idea of investigating derelict buildings. All that expensive equipment, and none of it waterproof...

Apparently, a group of bishops have declared that the terrible weather is God's punishment for allowing homosexuals to marry. I'll try to find that link, I don't have it to hand. These bishops should really be taken away somewhere and placed under sedation.

(Edit: here's the link.)

Most of the problem is in engineering. Houses built on those nice, flat areas with a view over the river. You know, the places we normally refer to as 'flood plains'. To stop them flooding, the riverbank usually gets a nice new concrete wall. It all seems futile: build a house in the countryside with a river view, then concrete it. But then, I have long since ceased to expect common sense from people.

Further downriver, all that water that should have dissipated into the flood plains now arrives in a massive torrent. It has nowhere else to go. So rivers burst, drains back up, and whole towns disappear underwater.

Yet our water companies still charge us exorbitant amounts for the supply of this stuff. Why? It drops out of the sky for free.

I think I'll install a big tank and a purifier.

Proof?

This looks interesting.

Good luck to him. Before anyone asks, no, it's not me. I don't have 'teams working around the clock'. There's just me.

If he succeeds, he'll make my job (and life) much easier. I doubt he'll stop war and other terrible things with this proof though. Goverments like to kill people, and if they can say 'Oh, it's okay, they don't really die' then things are likely to get worse, not better.

It's a grave responsibility (pun intended) and I hope it doesn't turn into a media circus.

There'll always be sceptics, you can be sure of that. I can hear their knives being sharpened now.

More fixing for the unbroken.

The UK's children are fast approaching the status of feral, and our government believes it's because they're all mentally ill.

Not because this same government have made children immune to any form of discipline (and no, discipline and abuse are definitely not the same thing).

Not because no adult dare even shout at one of these mini-miscreants without risking arrest and ending up on the sex offender's register. It's happened. It's not even uncommon. Interfering in one child's rightful pummelling of another can get you into serious trouble in the UK.

No, it's because our children are all bonkers. Rather like the mental stress and confusion experienced by undisciplined dogs, in fact. Any member of any group-focused species needs to know where it stands in the heirarchy. From top dog down, each member of the group knows who must be obeyed and who can be given orders. Lose that, and the group loses coherence. Our government's solution, as always, is to throw money at the problem. I wish I was enough of a problem that they'd throw some at me.

Deprive a dog of that information - who's boss in the household - and the dog will be confused and probably turn vicious.

Humans aren't all that different in that respect. The last few decades have proved that.

There's one line in the article that gives away much of what's wrong with the world:

"The emphasis must change from social class to social skills, self esteem and resilience if we are to give the next generation the chance they deserve."

This 'deserve' part is what irks me. It reinforces the culture of 'I am important, I must be respected even though I'm a spoilt, repellent little oik, I deserve... I deserve... I deserve...'

Nobody 'deserves' anything. If you work for something, it's yours, and well earned. You don't get it simply by existing. You work for it. You don't get food, water, clothing in real life unless you get off your bloody arses and earn it.

That's what we should be teaching children. The world isn't yours on a plate just because you've done it the honour of being born. You want things, you earn them. That's how you get on in life.

That's how you move up the heirarchy from base cur to top dog.

I'm glad I'm not a schoolteacher. I'd last five minutes before some whining PC cretin found a reason to have me fired, arrested or both.

Probably before I reached the classroom.