Many a man has gone astray

Music for this cold and miserable January day is from John Holt, reminding us that summer is just around the corner. Apologies if the video doesn’t play where you are but the song is called “The further you look, the less you see”. Hope you enjoy the summer sounds of Reggae from Jamaica.

Men will stray for many reasons, because it’s cold, it’s warm, it’s winter, it’s summer. There is no reason why men will go astray, one man will tell you one thing while another will say it’s something else completely. The reason will depend on the man and the season. Usually it’s because he’s an idiot who doesn’t appreciate what he has, or he isn’t getting what he needs at home. Is there any man who goes astray because he has everything he needs at home? I bet the answer is no. But that is his fault, no one else’s.

Any man who chooses to settle into a relationship, should realise it won’t all be easy from that day on. Any relationship will have it’s ups and downs, there will be times when you could strangle the life out of your significant other and he or she will feel the same way about you. The secret of any long term relationship is communication. When times are tough keep talking and working at staying together. If you don’t then your relationship won’t last since you will both be chasing different things and you will never find any common ground to build on.

I know, with 3 divorces and a fourth failing marriage I am a fine one to give relationship advice to anyone. However, I have found that you can’t always bail when things go wrong. You have to work together to find a solution or else it will all go wrong. If you are the one trying to fix a relationship and your significant other doesn’t care too try with you, then there is nothing on earth which will keep you together. For a relationship to last you both have to work on it. One can’t keep two going, unless you both have the same book open at the same page you won’t find common ground. What is the secret to a good relationship? Easy, give and take, if one party is always taking and the other always gives then there will be resentment and that bodes ill for any couple.

Ask anyone who has been married for a long time and they will tell you that they not only met their soul mate, the one who makes them feel whole but also someone who gives as much, if not more, than they give. Without give and take no relationship will work forever. You need that on both sides as one side will not give forever and the other side will not take forever before resentment starts to kick in.

I decided last Friday to have a tRump free day but as soon as I went on twitter I discovered that was impossible. Why didn’t I just stay away from twitter? There are people I only “see” on twitter and when I’m feeling myself beginning to sink into a deep dark place I need them to lift my spirits up. I was pleased to hear from them and even though there was a whole lot about the baby and his tantrum because he can’t get the money he needs allocated for his stupid wall which will take decades to build, will keep crumbling and falling down, he still won’t reopen the Government to pay the people working for the federal Government so they can keep living from pay check to pay check. ‘Nuff said about that because, apparently, the Senate can vote to reopen the Government, if he refuses to sign this into law they can vote again and do it without his signature. but the GOP won’t do that, makes me wonder why they are working with a child and giving in to his tantrums.

Anyhoo, we all have heard about the Saudi girl who fled in fear of her life to start afresh in Australia, she thought she would be safe there but the Australian Government didn’t say they would take her before she was about to be deported from Thailand back to Saudi Arabia so Justin Trudeau stepped in and flew her to Canada and safety. The Australians are claiming she snubbed them for Canada at the last minute. Forgetting that they were dragging their heels and she didn’t have time to wait, that’s why she went to Canada. I just wish other Governments weren’t playing politics with Russian influences and would have just told her she could come to them and be safe.

If there is one thing I have seen since 2016, which is worrying me more than anything else, it is that hatred for one another seems to be having its last fling. Racism is running rampant throughout the Western World, first the USA selected a misogynistic racist to the WH, then the UK voted to leave without understanding that the promises were unachievable because the cost of Brexit was going to be much higher than the cost of remaining within the EU. Britain used to have an Empire to help out before the 1960’s saw an end to that. We joined the EU in 1973 because we knew we couldn’t keep going it alone and we are too far away from the USA to be accepted as the 51st State, and they would have wanted us to remove our queen.

I am a firm believer that there is no race except the human race, we all belong to that race so there is never any excuse to hate another human being based on skin colour, religion, gender or sexual preference. We are all the same under the skin anyway. If you can’t see that you will never know peace. We have to start looking out for each other in order to survive and I trust the scientists who tell me that there is an event coming if we don’t act today to reduce our carbon footprint because the world is warming up and we can see the effects of this everywhere. There are floods, strong hurricane force winds, less ice at the poles, sea levels are rising and volcanoes erupting more and more frequently. It’s only a matter of time before the planet starts to destroy more in order to try and balance out the bad and restore balance to nature.

Why is that so hard to see for some among us? They would rather grab another dollar than admit their profit and greed have caused the problems faced by many today. Do we need them and their obscene wealth to stop us from working together to build a fairer society which will benefit everyone AND leave a planet to our children’s children’s children. If we keep going the way we are then either we will become a bigger threat to the planet which will treat us the same as the dinosaurs way back in prehistory, and we will become extinct the way they did.

If you don’t believe me then take a look around and tell me that there are no more disasters from Nature now than at any other time in history. I will take pleasure in calling you out because there are more now than ever before in recorded history. We have seen glaciers shrink, ice caps shrink, forcing polar animals to move further north and south and chase ever smaller food sources. We can’t keep taking without consequence, there are consequences to our actions and the planet is fighting back. We can either change our ways and survive with the planet we call home or we can keep destroying and be destroyed in our turn.

I ain’t gonna miss you when you go

OK the music today is from a truly international group which started off as a UK Blues group before changing in the mid 1970’s into MOR. Here is one of the best tracks from the Rumours lp for your delight and delectation. Also to take your mind off the tRumpster who seems to be willing to lose the election in 2020 by pissing off his supporters and leaving the USA Government closed. Once again the music is courtesy of YouTube and apologies if it doesn’t play where you are.

I didn’t watch the tRumpster take to the airways yesterday because, frankly, I hate hearing his lies. I read a tweet today that said Fox News (of all places) pulled his statement to shreds just after he had finished making it. I thought they supported his regime and were only too willing to aid his cause by promoting his propaganda?

Anyway, there is a site I visit almost daily (change of topic because, as I said already, USA news bores me) it’s called Change and ordinary people can get together and raise petitions calling for Changes to Government policy. I found a few petitions to support because I am a firm believer in equality, freedom of choice and supporting the planet. If you want to check it out then the web site is https://www.change.org/en-GB and, as I said, there are a lot of petitions on there worth supporting.

On a completely different topic (today seems to be the day to allow my brain free rein to follow where it leads and not get in the way) there are people who want to change the way our children are taught about sex. Women want to include menstruation advice as part of sex ed. I, myself, am in favour of this. We have spoken openly about topics that were taboo in my parents’ day and this has allowed us to embrace our feelings. Talking about menstruation which affects 99% of women (and that figure is probably higher) between the ages of 13 and 60. Since women are, approximately 50% of our species this is a lot of people. As a man I have never suffered the cramps, pains and bleeds undergone by women every month. I understand that not every woman has a bad cycle, but some do.

If we, as men, can be taught about this then maybe fewer men will object to being asked to go and get some menstrual products for their women folk. I used to go for my 2nd wife as her periods were often heavy and sometimes she hadn’t prepared for them enough. I took the looks and backward glances when people wondered what I was going to use the pads for. It never bothered me and still wouldn’t because if my woman can’t get to the shops and I can then I should get whatever she needs.

Changing subjects again, slightly this time, if I can go shopping with a list and get everything on that list and get back home within an hour, why does it take 3 hours to go shopping with the wife? I think it’s because we both hate food shopping but she sends me with a shopping list and when she is with me we don’t have one so she will spend an hour looking at clothes before starting food shopping. I would rather cut my own throat than go clothes shopping with her, she will go around every shop where we happen to be, make up her mind in the last one that the top she spotted in the first store we were in was right for her so we go back there and they don’t have it in her size.

When I go clothes shopping I know what I want, go to the store which sells it for the best price and buy it. Over and out in less than 15 minutes. Why then does she insist on going round every clothes shop for an hour before heading back to the first one to make a purchase? Women are the most infuriating creatures on this planet. Of course if we didn’t bother with clothes then we’d all freeze to death at this time of year so I get that she needs clothes.

While I am here, although women can be infuriating we do still need them to keep the species going. I don’t look on women as sex objects or as a means to propagate the species, I think more highly of them than to ever treat them that way either. Facts are though that we do need them to keep going. I would gladly give up my time to help someone in need than go shopping for clothes with a woman because my mum (who I loved immensely) was just the same.

Changing topic, yet again, I found a quiz on Smooth Radio’s web site about which rock star would you get on best with. I answered the questions as honestly as I could and the answer came back that my ideal companion on a night out would have been: David Bowie. No surprise there at all, well only slightly, since I would have picked for myself to have conversations with John Lennon, George Harrison or David Bowie (preferably all 3 together) but if I had to stick with someone who is alive then I would probably opt for a conversation with Keef (Keith Richards) Richie Starkey (Sir Richard Starkey as he is at long last) or Jess Glynne.

Anyhoo, time to wrap this up dear reader, thank you for your support since I started this blog and I hope to catch up with you all over the course of the coming year.

Cover me through the fire

Music today to accompany this post is from an unusual source, for my posts, but it is one of the many albums I have recently dusted off to listen to which I forgot how good they were. While 2019 is off to a (relatively) good start I wanted to reflect this with an upbeat song (until I checked the lyrics). Anyway copyright is not owned by me, but video is courtesy of YouTube UK so it may not play where you are, if it doesn’t apologies for that.

I read a statement on twitter that worried me a lot. As some of you may know already I am a firm believer in treating women equally and not calling them names I wouldn’t call myself for behaving the same way as I have in the past. However, someone was called out for a misogynistic comment they made on twitter and I totally agree with the person calling them out.

The original tweet (sorry I don’t have it in front of me but it was on the lines of): Any woman who sleeps with multiple partners is losing a bit of her femininity with every one. The response said that Any man who sleeps with multiple partners must lose part of his masculinity with every one.

The reason I agreed with the response wasn’t because I thought it was correct. I didn’t, I merely thought that if the original was taken to be correct about women then it must also be true about men. I don’t think either statement is correct and here is the crux of my argument. Anyone who sleeps with multiple partners is increasing their chance of catching an STD. Their feminism or masculinity is never in doubt, they are still feminine or masculine if you use the binary argument for gender. If they started out as gender fluid, trans, gender neutral or any of the other gender adjectives out there today they will remain the same person.

A woman is no more a slut than a man is if he or she sleeps around with multiple partners. I don’t care what people think of me because I was brought up by my mother to respect everyone. If I went home and told either of my parents that I had been hit by an adult they would have hit me again, and a lot harder, telling me I must have done something wrong to warrant being hit in the first place.

A child today who goes home and tells his parent(s) that he has been hit by an adult will be told to remain in for the police to arrive so they can give a statement regarding their attacker. The number of times I hit my children when I turn round is off the scale because, they always used to stand directly behind me and when turning I would catch them in the arm, head or chest. I used to hit my daughter when she was bad, but that did no good so I changed tack with my son. If my daughter hadn’t stopped talking to me I would have apologised to her in person for doing that.

You are not given a manual with a child, it is learn as you go what works and what doesn’t. You can only try your best to do right by them and I’m so pleased that both my children are away from home and seem to be managing well without me. Don’t get me wrong I miss both of them like crazy and would love to meet my grandson’s, the youngest of whom is 18 now. However, that isn’t likely to happen any time soon because my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me for leaving her behind when I moved to the North East in 1997 without telling her I was heading home.

At the age of 22 I thought she had her own life which she wouldn’t want to leave behind to travel the length of England with me. She wanted to be asked and told me she would have come with me at the time. Anyhoo that’s ancient history now but I have not been forgiven and the more time goes by the less likely I will ever be forgiven. I am struggling to keep my eyes dry while writing this, but I have been sidetracked again, seems to happen a lot these days.

To return to my story when I hear someone criticising another human being for doing something natural (sex is natural no matter what the bible bashers would have you believe) it really boils my urine. Regardless of gender, sexual preferences, colour of skin or the country we were born in, we are all human beings. I fail to see what being a woman has to do with enjoying the pleasures we have with being alive, or being a man, gender neutral or gender fluid for that matter. The only time I will call someone out for having sex with another human being is when the other human being is under the age of 16, 18 or 21 depending on what the age of consent is where you live.

I think the age of consent being fixed (as it is in the UK) is wrong, for example if two people want to experiment with what it feels like to touch and be touched by someone else and they are both 14-16 AND it stops short of penetration, then why shouldn’t they do it? Over 16 and under 25 the age difference can be relaxed slightly, however, there should not be any time when a man of my age (64) should be allowed to go to bed with a 16 year old who is only learning the rules around dating and sex. A 16 year old is not mature enough to know what love, real love, feels like.

At 22 I knew what it was, or I thought I did, and I took up with a woman 10 years older than me, she taught me a lot in our 15 years together before I started to picture what she was going to look like in 10 years time and it frightened me so I left. I’m not proud of that fact but hey, things change over time. I was with my first wife for 4 years, all of them married, my second wife and I shared 15 years, 6 of them married. My third wife lasted 6 years with 5 of those as man and wife. My fourth and current wife has, so far, lasted 18 years with 16 of those as a married couple. I’m not the best to give relationship advice, apart from what not to do, but if someone asks me then I will offer them advice but tell them to feel free to ignore me.

It’s well after midnight here so I will finish this off, with another tweet I have seen today which I found offensive when confronted by his accusers a serial rapist said he raped the women because of the way they were dressed. He felt they were asking for it and because he was a “celebrity” he thought it was expected of him.

I have stated before in posts on here and repeated it in my reply to this tweet, even if a woman is naked she is entitled to say no to sex and be left alone. If you are about to get into bed with anyone and, up to now there has been agreement, don’t expect to get into bed together and get sex because a woman can still say no right up until the point she has a mind blowing orgasm. Especially if you are eating her at the time, using your hand or a dildo to bring her to orgasm. It’s happened to me and I have never tried to press her to change her mind back to yes, I would never deem it appropriate to rape anyone male or female under any circumstances and it is only once the man is inside his partners body that the time to say no has passed. However, if a woman said no to me at any time then I would back off and get out of bed and go for a cold shower.

I may be the odd one out but sex without consent is rape and no one deserves to be raped. Rape isn’t about sex most of the time, it’s usually about control and I am no control freak. Hell most of the time I don’t even like me so I don’t want control over another human being with their issues, hopes and fears being destroyed by my behaviour? Not me, no way.

Happy New Year

Well, it’s now the 5 January 2019 so I figure it’s about time for another post with music. Courtesy of YouTube and Sony Music here is the video to accompany today’s post. If it doesn’t play where you are then I am sorry, however, YouTube have different rules for different countries so you could always do a search for it and listen while reading.

I have a lot of hopes for this year, firstly to see bigots and racists of whatever nationality get their comeuppance when people realise that all their vitriol is designed to stir hatred and close their respective borders off to refugees even though their country signed up to accept refugees trying to escape oppression, war, victimisation and hatred where they were previously living. This was signed in 1951 in the wake of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime in Germany when Jews were being turned away from countries across the world.

I know that Israel was set up (again) to give the Jews a homeland but not to force them to live there. It was not done to allow them to commit some of the atrocities they suffered from Nazi Germany. We have moved on as a planet (at least I thought so) to prevent this happening again. Then Americans were firing gas canisters into Mexico, a separate country, to prevent refugees entering the USA where they thought they could be allowed to settle in safety.

The UK is no better with Javid, the Home Secretary, telling Europe and the world that our borders are closed to anyone fleeing oppression in the Middle East because, and this is important, a few of them are terrorists looking to come here and live among us before committing acts of terror. The thing is, the more we stop coming in now the more we alieniate those already here suffering from the hands of racists who only need the smallest excuse to convert from peace to war.

We should be trying to build bridges instead of walls, protecting citizens from war, poverty and hunger, we have the technology to make this world a much better place for everyone if the one per centers were less greedy and paid their way by sharing their profits as well as paying as little in taxes as they can get away with. We need to wake up to the so called patriots who are advocating nationalism. After all it isn’t even 100 years since the Nationalist Government was created in Germany (1933 so it is close but we’re not there yet). They think we have forgotten that Nazi was an abreviation for National Socialists and they also preached about a Master Race, they called it Aryan (that race of people has not existed for almost 1,000 years and they were never a Master Race anyway, just better at stealing, killing and warfare than their neighbours.

In the 21st Century we should have realised that there is only one race, the Human Race, and we are all in this together. Global Warming is not made up by the scientists but it is real and the planet is fighting back. That’s why we have severe storms where they never reached before. We have floods in places that used to be protected and coastlines are seeing hundreds of years of erosion in one season. The scientists have been warning of the dangers of the shifting ozone layer and global warming for decades. We are, probably, the last generation who can do something about it for the sake of our children, their children and the generations to come after them.

I feel that the planet can sustain life if we all work together, after all we are all members of the Human Race and the solution lies with everyone feeling this fact and acting on it to end war, borders, racists and other haters who seek to divide us and conquer. We have to all work together to make others feel accepted, to make them feel safe and to protect everyone who needs to feel protected. Human beings are a loving species and we should help to spread this love we feel for our planet, for not only our species but for all species left on this planet.

I am not in favour of taking to the streets and beating up those who oppose us, that has been done before and the only benefactors of this are the haters. We need to end the violence and peacefully is the only way to do this. Mahatma Gandhi spoke of this in India and he was the prime example of non-violent action to change the status quo in India. His legacy was to leave behind a strong country, which has fragmented but if we end borders then what is there to fragment?

Land should not belong to anyone apart from the people living on it or making a living from it. Slavery, we realised in the 19th Century, was wrong and should be outlawed. Unfortunately, we didn’t go quite far enough and the civil war in the USA which was fought to end or promote slavery ended with slavery being abolished in name only, segregation was still keeping human beings alienated because of the colour of their skin and this is now illegal in almost every country, however, people like tRump who won high positions through feeding this hatred and living off it, want to continue the division. That is the only way they can hold onto their power.

Hatred and division is never the answer. We should accept others for being different, no matter their differences as we are all unique. Love is all we need and we should remember that no matter the skin colour, gender, sexual orientation or sexual preferences, we are all brothers and sisters on this planet.

Mars, may be suitable for life but why should the rich enjoy destroying that planet when they have made their fortunes destroying this one. We have to work together to save one another from the hatred and division used by the one per centers to hold onto their lives and wealth no matter what it costs in terms of this planet and the people living on it.