The Wayward Chronicles- Blinded by the light.

Waking up at 4am is an annoying habit but the early morning silence provides me with time to mainline a lot of books & watch some serious documentaries.The subjects are eclectic but environment, science and history reel me in (conversely the subjects most hated at school) putting the dots in your brain. Connecting them is the secret.

It turns out that so called civilisation is way older than we've been sold. A lot of the things claimed as modern inventions have existed before.Recent leaps in technology are helping archeologists reshape our history and frankly we've been told a whole different fairytale. Our planet is no stranger to the rise and fall of mass populations far greater than this, if not in numbers in mind, but mustn't panic the people, so history is tidied up to keep it's  secrets and we learn the abridged version,thanks to the education system, another thing designed to keep us all chained to the desk.

The climate is pretty much fucked.This has also happened before, didn't end too well for all living things but then again,we made it back to be here today & this time we have power of advanced technology on our side. Is it too late to fix it before a lot more people suffer? Let's hope so.

Natural disasters far greater than anything experienced in recent history have come out of nowhere and wiped out swathes of the planet, back through our entire history and one could very well do the same in the next ten minutes and there is mainly fuck all you can do about it if you happen to live too close to a Volcano say, (Millions do) ditto sea rise, ditto earthquakes,ditto forest fires, ditto rogue asteroids. Why anyone takes a 50 year mortgage...

The 6th extinction is a real thing that's happening now. Species decline is running at a terrifying rate...Two thirds of animals gone by 2020...that's two thirds in two years folks, why isn't this horrifying news on the front page of every news paper so people can realise what we're doing to our ecosystem?

Why is because the media is owned and shaped by powers with knowledge of how to control people, filtered down through progressive civilisations these tricks of the trade are now owned by the few to exploit the many.

First there was the Sun, our initial ruling benefactor, giving us heat, light & ruling seasons.Partnered by the moon, controlling growth & water. These forces were life's rulers, powerful but unruly and unpredictable. By studying the sun,moon and stars human beings worked out how to thrive. When we were wild things,having this knowledge gave you the power to survive. This power was so admirable, it was inevitably taken and shaped by those who sought to utilise it for their gain. By claiming to represent the heavenly entities Sun gods arrived on earth as kings and rulers, controlling their slaves by the might of their wealth. (See Media moguls and presidents.)

By blinding us with light we become but dazzled deer. In ancient rule it was Gold, fire, jewels that twitched and bewitched the populace. Like Moths and many creatures, Human beings are easily captivated by the light (The dark has its own pull.) See how we can't resist the light of our screens, it's just a modern equivalent. Our natural capacity to see the sun as our leader was exploited easily and the knowledge of this passed down to the hierarchy, represented in most power structures in some form,
each generation seemingly more greedy with it than the last.

Like a magician's misdirection, we are only ever being shown the things designed to misle us into believing we have & need so much more than we do.

While those in power mine our lives for luxury yachts they barely use,we let the glare of technology,commerce, wealth and new, distract us from the truth and destroy our connection to the very earth that gave us this life in the first place.

 Many countries are run by those who simply bought their way to the top and whose interests are only profit related not humanitarian,though they put on a good show. We are ruled in every aspect of our lives by those exploiting their power to keep us making them money. Human beings are easily led by suggestion and have a herd mentality (ask Derren Brown) you show us on TV what our lives should be like and we will copy it.

Herd mentality cultivated by feeding us herd animal meat and dairy products? They say you are what you eat.


Keep staring at the screen, let programming take over your mind so you don't notice your puppet strings and even if you can see them dangling all around you and they're twisted up in knots of frustration, can we ever break free?

 I suspect Mother Nature will do it for us and it won't be pretty.Might not be in my lifetime, might be after lunch and as a rumbling starts high in the sky, we'll probably go outside
and stare at the Sun.

Message in a bottle

                                                          What the 80's wants me to know.

I've been listening to Fleetwood Mac recently (Added to my life's discography in 1987 by way of the slightly too synth album 'Tango in the night' which I bought on, a now incredulous, cassette tape and listened to on my brick size Walkman.) So maybe it was the music that unconsciously picked me 3 books to read recently that were all written about that period of time. Gavin Edwards "Last night at the Viper room", Hadley Freeman's "Life moves pretty fast" & Tiffanie Darke's exploration of the aftermath " Now we are 40-whatever happened to Generation X?"  Then I happened upon 'Swayze Sunday' on Channel 5 & gave myself another fat dose of nostalgia.

When I woke up the next morning and picked up my book again I heard a clear," Errr Hi, it's the 1980's & we need to talk..."

Hadley Freeman's book deals with all the 1980's movies deeply entrenched in our '80s kid hearts.She makes some shrewd observations on the politics,gender & culture of the times.These films are now like photo negatives of the decade, revealing retrospectively how attitudes back then shape our lives today.
Having gone back to the 80's literarily, I then watched Dirty Dancing this time with '16-61' eyes giving it an added context only retrospect can provide.

 Saying that however, despite the, now large, age gap between Baby & I, I'd just had a Watermelon moment earlier that day (& I wish I could say they were rare.)My reaction to the "I'm scared of walking out this door" speech remains as heart squeezing as it did when I first saw it, as does the cheese fest that is the 'Time of my life' number.

 I beat myself up regularly for being a hopeless romantic, I push it down by staying resolutely single & staying out of the firing line because it hurts wearing your heart on your foppish sleeve (Think early Spandau Ballet) but it's like actually, not to point the finger at you, 1980's but how could I not be one? The early 80's were underscored & soundtracked by the New Romantics, blame Duran Duran for my awkward heart.
As the decade progressed and the teen hormones kicked in I fed them on a steady diet of John Hughes movies mixed with a musical compendium from punk to pop, hip hop to house with Indie on rotation.It's no wonder I grew up a rebel without a definitive cause, until Band Aid came along that is and shocked us out of our shoulder padded reverie for a while.

30 years has however passed since I slurped up my McMega Milkshake of untenable freedom & movie Love and I'm still not over it, but perhaps, instead of railing against the world for not sending me on a mystical quest (led by David Bowie and backed by The Goonies) or giving me my Geek to Goddess transformation, a la 'Pretty in pink', then pulling me out of a corner to do the last dance of the season (with The Lift obvs) I need to find a better approach.

What I can't figure out yet is wether it means turning a stony eye on the optimism of the 80's, I mean even The Princess Bride cites that "Life is pain, anyone that says differently is selling you something." or can I carry on through the Fire Swamp, doing battle with the rodents of unusual size,still believing that one day Falkor the Luck Dragon will swoop down & carry me off to a world where no-one is cruel to each other or animals, or kills mother nature for profit then throws the rubbish in the sea...

I wonder sometimes if my passion for vintage is really just arrested development for a time less complex but dealing with nostalgia from last century has never seemed more appealing in the light of today's mounting chaos. Remember 1984's 'Never ending story?'  Is it just me that senses 'The Nothing' over the Horizon if people don't wake up fast to the reality of endangering our environment.

 I love the 50's for it's post war new mood, the 60's for the birth of counterculture, the 70's for the explosion of colour & creativity and the 1980's for it's gamut of Youth Culture. The Noughties feel like a real cultural let down comparatively. The worlds gone so Magnolia I feel light headed from the paint fumes.Freedom and individuality have become entangled in a mire of bureaucracy, stopping us from appreciating our differences as a way to stop fighting about them.




People weren't made to be carbon copies but we fear to stand out too much lest someone might see how messy we are underneath the carefully crafted image of perfection we feel we have to front.
" Hi, is that the 1980's? Yeh I'm just calling you from my Trim phone to thank you for making me who I am today and I haven't given up hope, so err, don't you forget about me..."

Surviving Society - The Wayward Chronicles.

 Being Self employed means a lot of things, not all of them sunshine and roses but it does mean my daily commute is down the stairs and the only fidgety colleagues I have can be shown to the cat flap. The majority of my work related, face to face communication takes place at car boot sales, charity shops, auctions and free cycle escapades and I've 100% met some great people, made friends and had some really interesting conversations, finding it strangely easier to be genuine with these strangers.I think that's because I'm in my element, I've heard it called "Junk Drunk" on 'American Pickers' and I think that nails it, in the euphoria of possibility I am my best self.
I maybe cash poor while I establish my vintage/design business but I am grateful every second I spend out of the rat race,pursuing something I love.

The rest of my encounters are on line, behind which from I can be, mainly, super nice thanks to the relative anonymity.Sadly however I cannot hide behind my jaunty logo out side of work, though it would make a useful shield when encountering the horrors of society. You can run however but you can't hide. The lunacy is everywhere, even our inclination to head to the beach for a breather  has turned into a heart breaking trudge through marine litter.


In a car boot conversation someone told me that Winston Churchill said,       "Shop at supermarkets at your peril." I can't substantiate this but it's a valid sentiment. Since changing my eating habits and paying more attention to the environment Supermarkets are unbearable. The amount of processed food, dead animals, plastic, mass production and waste packaging coupled with people clearly making unconscious choices is driving me to 'Falling down' point. Directed by greed and our need for convenience (which is a direct byproduct of our stolen time) Humans have become horribly selfish,wasteful & cruel creatures. The 'I'm alright Jack' mentality acts like a brain washing tool to keep us participating in the slavery of modern society.


Politics are a delusional method of keeping the wealth & power flowing upwards. Rules for our alleged greater good are in place to keep us from our freedom and the net is still tightening as the cost of living spirals,personally and environmentally.Spontaneous combustion beckons.



Moving far, far away to escape from society is tempting,though in some ways it's another version of 'I'm alright Jack'. If we all moved back to the wilderness we'd trash that too. What people need to do is to manage their own lives, not let advertising tell them what they should be doing. Wake up and see that the Earth is dying in front of our eyes and only we have the power to stop it.Say no to being spoon fed bullshit on a factory farm conveyor belt. I don't believe Humans are built that way but society is forcing us to live like that.






 I harbour a Utopian fantasy that involves moving all my family and friends to Fogo Island, Newfoundland, a dying fishing community with breath taking scenery and the most amazing hotel
-The Fogo Island Inn.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08nx7hd
I stumbled across this incredible place via VicelandTV's 'Abandoned ' series, then it popped up on the BBC's Amazing Hotels series, cementing every fantasy I have about running away to work there.To live and work wholly immersed in a culture that respectfully utilises it's environment in such a mindful manner is Nirvana to me as I pick through our rubbish strewn streets.



'

https://youtu.be/6zrn4-FfbXw
https://www.plasticoceans.org/take-action                                     
The 'Plastic Ocean' documentary is a harsh look at the effects of plastic pollution and if I thought UK beaches were increasingly toxic, that is nothing compared with the rest of the world.
The man made invention of this cheap thus highly profitable material is literally choking the life out of our eco system and desperate calls are being made to ban Plastic as material.Please support them.

 So how do we go on without bursting into flames in rush hour traffic/ being banned from Asda? The Japanese pastime of 'Shinrin -yoku' promises peace from bathing in the woods, though thanks to popular culture we are all mainly convinced the woods are populated by serial killers (funny that.)




But as Albert so wisely put it, if we could all spend more time looking at nature we would be able to see it waving it's help flag with an increasingly frantic motion. If we don't act now every day, in every way Nature will kick us back so hard that human life may never recover.
 ( A good thing? To be discussed)

The Wayward Chronicles-Women's world.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-to-watch-viceland-in-the-uk                                                         
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7DbPE4salw








I strive not to live in fear, to trust in a greater good that shows me that living a kind life will be echoed by the world I live in. However if I were to examine the parameters of my beliefs I can clearly see where being a woman & mother, often alone, is a solid barrier to a wider existence. It's second nature to me always consider my personal safety as a woman when travelling about and now my daughter is starting high school, hers too. My son however goes out alone, I caution him, but instinct just does not create the same ball in my stomach as the thought of her out on the streets alone, and that's in the UK, where compared to many places in the world,women are statistically fairly safe.
http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures

Viceland's series 'Women' provides a powerful snap shot of the lives of women around the world and will open your eyes to some the most extreme conditions in which women are forced to live.It's brutally honest, heart breaking & at times, crushingly frustrating but always with an empowering example of how things can and are changing, the charge usually led by women.As I watch I can feel my empathy with woman kind pulsating through my veins. In simplistic terms, no women deserve to live like that and what can we do to stop it?

Viceland junkie that I am, I savour watching episodes of 'Abandoned' like a spiritual practice. Obsessed with architectural salvage and repurposing myself, I sit in worship of those people who are utilising these spaces and my mind is allowed to create numerous scenarios for the still empty ones.
Episode 8 on the Native lands of Canada showed derelict fisheries and canneries lying to rot, in desperate need of dismantling before they cause environmental catastrophe on sacred Native land.
Episode 3 of 'Women' tackles the problems of the first Nations women,who are suffering today for a long, shocking history of abuse to the native population.

I am idealistic but right now,things as they are,what have we got to lose? Joining the dots between the two programmes I thought why not use one problem to solve the other. Start women's refuges across the world in these abandoned spaces? Simultaneously clearing up the environment and creating self sustaining communities for women who are marginalised in their current societies. Women are strong, resourceful and when put together could easily create a new world where they could live and raise their children free from fear.

Running away of course, does not solve the root problem, but these women are running anyway but into worse situations, so for for now, while Men figure the fuck out that it is not OK to treat women in these terrible ways, they deserve some place safe to go and we need to make it so. No woman or child should have to live that way.

Women have the gift of building a home and the resourcefulness to be able to take the challenge and make it work.Granted it would take time to establish a food supply to make it self sustaining but with enough land it could be done, after all we lived that way for thousands of years before "civilisation" came along. Yes living rurally can be environmentally challenging but I bet women would rather take on Mother Nature than the constant threat of Femicide.

So who can make this happen? Viceland I'm asking you, is there any way one project could serve the other? In Canada could these sacred sites be restored whilst simultaneously giving refuge to the marginalised first women?
 Most of the stories featured in both series involved people moving mountains to make things happen.It gives huge hope to see the hard work and ingenuity that people can muster when they're not being spoon fed by society.Contrary to what we know it doesn't have to cost much, if you're prepared to be resourceful. There are empty buildings everywhere and enough scrap that anyone can build a home with very little money.With some basic tools you can cultivate the land and eventually make it as civilised as you desire.Deep down even the most urban of us still have the primal skills to make it happen, especially if you were motivated by building a better,safer life.

Does anyone have Angelina Jolie's phone number ? Surely she could buy some abandoned buildings- there's whole empty communities across the U.S -or land tucked away in South America and Africa and start some women only worlds, on safer land. She's pretty tight with the U.N, she could get the peacekeeping force involved to help them to do it and keep it safe.There should be a better escape route so these women can leave those violent male cultures, let them work it out amongst themselves. Male children would then be raised in a dominantly female community where they could learn a different way from the traditional attitudes of their current culture. Isn't it worth a try for the next generation?

We are clamouring at the perimeters of a gender revolution and we have a long history of fleeing oppression, any woman or child who is suffering deserves somewhere to go and in a world littered with abandoned societies,surely we could make it happen.




As Steinem says, "By confronting the problems once marginalised as Women's issues,we can tackle the greatest dangers of the 21st century."

Joining the Dots- The Wayward chronicles.

                                       
                             The Wayward Chronicles - Joining the Dots.

We roam through the world and the lives we've created like work horses wearing thick blinkers designed,ostensibly,to stop us from being spooked.Scared horses might
 rear and bolt,upsetting the applecart and causing chaos, they might even actually escape and become the wild animals they were born as ,then where would we all be ?

What we can't see is that our current masters are whipping us into a minefield littered with the carcasses of civilisations, far wiser than ours, that too broke down in the face of greed and politics or fell foul of Mother Earth,destroyed by her ultimate power.

Once you begin to question the accepted truths about the world we inhabit, you start to see everything in a different light and suddenly you find that actually,all the evidence is right beneath your nose,you've just been conditioned to only see it through the narrow slit.

If you've travelled you'll have no doubt stared,on one continent or another, at the ruins of a once great civilisation.Amazing as they all are to marvel over, it transpires that, through the relatively new medium of Space archeology - https://www.wired.com/2016/02/sarah-parcak/ - that the ones we can see are just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the pioneer of the medium Sarah Parcak, history as we've been told it, has hugely underestimated the size and scale of past human settlements.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/996220-ancient-egypt-illuminated-by-electricity/

We've been living under the misconception that this modern society is the most highly evolved but contrary to our general understanding Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison are not the fathers of electricity, the ancient Egyptians & other cultures had all ready been making it,indeed overwhelming evidence of batteries and light bulbs aside,there are theories that the Pyramids are not just monuments at all, but power stations,creating energy that we have yet to fully understand.

Did you know that there are pyramids in Bosnia and that China is also littered with them?

 We've all questioned how they could build the pyramids and the other wonders of the world with primitive technology when evidence, in fact, indicates these societies were no more primitive than we are today and some would argue we are the ones lagging behind.




It doesn't take long for the earth to reclaim things no longer being used-
http://askwhy.co.uk/dinosauroids/?p=480 -

I may have mentioned Viceland TV's  series  "Abandoned" a few times- ( Love McCrank- whole channel is a must watch) but if you want to see how quickly the natural world will reclaim a disused spot then this series has completely opened my eyes. As seen in the episode on New Orleans,after hurricane Katrina, it only took the trees ten years to  take back over and for wildlife to reclaim the turf. I find this information oddly reassuring that in the face of human extinction the forests will regrow and Mother Earth might get her balance back.



Once you start looking clearly, there is overwhelming evidence everywhere that the Earth has seen many a civilisation, some much greater than this, totally disappear under the rubble and weeds, is it so unbelievable in our modern arrogance that we could be next?



The conspiracy theory that we are all being played by a New World Order is an old one and like every fairytale it hides a truth within the many stories. The recent political turn of events is just another red flag as to who really has all the power and it isn't us.Why and how can one family be so wealthy and have so much control? Precisely because us work horses keep plodding on,we've got bills to pay remember.We have to pay a mortgage or rent to live on land that no more belongs to anyone but the earth itself.We pay heavily for food that we could grow ourselves,pointless insurance against events that don't happen and for a plethora of utilities at a cost far outweighing their production.Nikola Tesla wanted electricity to be free and was squashed by those seeking to make money from it.


History, as we are taught it, may have been skewed to an agenda, but thankfully evidence remains of our rebellious natures. Humans have staged uprisings at many critical points in history and have toppled the dictators of the past. Inside all of us is a seed that recognises freedom as an intrinsic human right, even if our fear ( False Expectations Appearing Real) prevents us from doing anything about it.

 No doubt we are currently at a critical turning point, NWO and the evidence of our slavery aside, Greenland is melting ,rapidly, along with both ice caps,at an unprecedented rate, all ready way out of control.  http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5056
This is not good news for over a billion people who will be directly affected by rapid sea level rise as their homes go under water. Displaced refugees are all ready desperate, add a billion more to the problem and see how the system copes.

Ironically if all predictions come to pass and the 6th extinction wipes us all out, except the Rothschilds I'm wagering, who must have a hell of a vault to hide in, it will not be the concrete structures of our recent time that survive, modern building methods degenerate
way faster than ancient brick built monuments do, oh wait...

All the single ladies...

I'm coming up 9 years as a single parent and five since I was in close proximity with a male of the species and if you had told me that 10 years ago would I have maybe,made different choices?

But ten years ago I was still waist deep in the lure of love and I had no idea that being single would be the most empowering thing I could be.I was an insecure girl,validating herself by the men I chased around constantly in my head,looking for a soul connection outside myself,with a tinge of fairytale and happily ever after.I couldn't know then that it would take those single years for me to actually achieve dreams that had been half arsedly pursued in the heady 20's and that went missing,presumed dead after having two children in two years.That's not in a bitter way by any means,I was just too busy changing nappies to give them head space.

I had always wanted to be a writer as a kid but insecurity convinced me I wasn't good enough,not realising I could learn, and I chose the safer path,teaching,which I was hopeless at at 18 years old and I dropped out with my hands firmly up. I was always coming up with ideas for books but never finishing any of them, distracted by boys,work & just living.

I was never single for long and I didn't spend much time alone.

In the last 9 years since it's only been me and the kids at home, I finally wrote that novel,then started a second one, decided it would make a better film script,went to a script writing group to learn,won a film competition with the group, wrote a treatment & submitted it (with zero expectations) to a short film making scheme,got accepted,went on to get a contract to develop it as a feature script, got paid to be a writer,went to BAFTA, got a shortlisted for some other schemes,started a novel and a blog, then got a place on a BBC /BFI scheme with a different film,then churned out a 3rd script, got knocked down, several times,got up again,started my own vintage fabric/sewing/design business oh yeh and all be it too briefly, owned a vintage VW camper van. Bucket list tick,tick,tick.

 I know in my heart that had I stayed as I was, for the sake of being in a relationship I thought I so desperately needed, none of those things would have happened,because what I really needed to come into my own was to be alone.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/when-you-start-enjoy-being-alone-these-10-things-will-happen.html 

It's not all been smug quality time with myself, I've buckled many times under the weight of juggling a job and raising two kids coupled with elderly parents, the so called 'sandwich' generation and between all the achievements, I had plenty of insane crushes and broken hearts,some that took years to heal.For years I wouldn't have classed myself single by choice, more unlucky in love.

I've been working alone from home for a year now and apart from my son,Dad and brother in law I've spent no time with any men and frankly, I feel like it's been the making of me. I've never been so focused,so well informed,so content,so thoughtful or self assured,so able to look in a mirror and not criticise,so clear about life and mentally strong.

Am I missing out? Someone said to me yesterday about them being happily single," but I don't want to look back at 70 and regret it." I shrugged,that could happen. (My gut reaction was as if you think the planet will still be here by then...)

I haven't given up on Love by any means but one thing I've come to see is almost how secular our beliefs on male female relationships are.

Kate Nash says it succinctly

https://youtu.be/ryH5cga0yUI

Every man I've lived with (and at one point I lived with 6 of them at once) has been pretty much messy,lazy,smelly and has complained constantly about having the heating on, which, on the flip that makes me a nagging neat freak who can't sit still,is obsessed by cleaning and has the house too stuffy.All true in balance,so maybe this outdated notion that you have to live together needs to go bygones, I've always believed women with young children should not live in isolated pockets,ditto elderly women who mostly out live their men folk. Society would work much better if we went way back to our primitive ways of small female led communities. It does take a village to raise a child to ensure that child is nurtured,in turn to keep society strong in the future. Putting us in pairs, in little boxes (that we have to borrow huge sums of money to live in & never really own) makes us weak and thus easy to control.

Divide and Conquer has so many truths across the world right now but I digress.

Spending a huge amount of time alone has meant I've been able to dig back through the layers of who I became whilst chasing my elusive soul mate through the years,not realising that if I sat quietly and listened carefully,I would find my own soul and become mates with her and maybe that's all I'd been missing.

I guess what I'm trying to write is almost an addendum to my teenage self who would have seen five years without being kissed as a terrible tragedy, and not the best thing that could have ever happened for me to really know me. 

The Wayward Chronicles- And now for some good news...

https://youtu.be/qSwF-StQHSk

https://youtu.be/5HL1BEC024g

I don't know about you but I've had a long fascination with natural disasters, I know I'm not alone by the huge online community out there capturing,monitoring and speculating on them, all that science though and we still can't stop them from happening, despite our white knuckled grip on the controls.

The effects of climate change are all ready kicking us back with flooding, extreme heat, species extinction and unpredictable weather patterns. Have you noticed how wrong or vague the media weather reports are these days? It's because the weather is behaving outside of all predicted computer models making it impossible to predict ahead of time anymore.

Grave predictions of the rise of violent natural disasters such as super volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis that will drown coastal cities, are everywhere when you research the oncoming effects of climate change.

And they may well be right and quite frankly, I think we deserve a good punch in the face from the planet that most of us have thoughtlessly ruined in a very short space of time. I don't wish for innocent people to suffer the consequences but actually millions all ready are in the thick of it,
 when you look at what's really going on in the world, so more of the same before we claw it back seems horribly inevitable.

Mega Hurricanes & Donald Trump's administration aside, however, amongst all these dire outcomes, there are some huge,positive changes happening in the world right now. 

Watch the great episode of Viceland above and the TED talk by Taylor Wilson and you'll be blown away by his genius solutions to clean energy, all be it feeling like you totally wasted your teenage years...

+Elon Musk  crops up everywhere, thankfully, these days which means what he's doing is working.He has invented many solutions using clean energy that are slowly filtering out into the mainstream, may he nail them all & get us out of this mess.

The Women's march on Washington, inspired by opposing Trump, was echoed around the world when over a million women took to the streets to protest for human rights. Trump is proving to be perhaps the exact catalyst required to get people to change, almost a necessary evil, his repugnant face is like a sharp spike prodding us to get up & stand up for what we believe in. The world should not be in the hands of misogynists. Only good things come when women gather peacefully to change things. Women rights have never seen such widespread support, there is a long way to go in some cultures, but as more women get a voice it empowers others, that's how we roll.

The global powers that be are actually making clean energy changes, but being in such unprecedented times no one knows if it's too little too late.What did strike me though,whilst watching the Viceland   Clean Energy documentary, was that this situation has almost developed at the right time, if there could ever be a right time for destroying our natural resources... When Nuclear power was first touted in the 1940's we obviously didn't have the knowledge we have now, in order to fully utilise it's potential in a safe way. Nor could we pay such attention to the value of the earths resources.

 Now thanks to the information & development age we live in today we can quickly build on these discoveries ( hello,err, the windmill...) with advances in technology we never dreamed of in the 1940's and, like the Trump catalyst, perhaps it takes us a brush with some natural disasters to really consider what's best for the environment and make those changes.

What also struck me was that the argument for green energy is driven by a somewhat skewed demand for a life style that has a huge need for energy but saying that, my kettle is boiling,the heating's on and my mac is plugged in and in the scheme of things I'm low impact, so they have a valid point. 

But I can't shake the sense that actually,wouldn't it be better if we moved toward a society that just used, less? 

In another programme on +VICELAND  - 'Abandoned' Skater Rick McCrank travels round America visiting ghost towns & defunct buildings (dream job) charting the history behind their demise in an interesting way. The episode on Newfoundland resonated on so many levels but what struck me is that the residents who had voted to stay, had been forced to leave anyway, as the government had cut off their power. 

That seems more like a Hunger Games tactic than a civil right to me Canada, I always thought you were better than that...but can we really not exist off grid anymore? Millions of people do but they probably would choose power if they could afford it & had access.

The economies in these ancient fishing ports had been completely ruined in the space of twenty years by commercial trawler fishing and then the outright ban on any fishing,devastating for communities founded and thriving on sustainable fishing long before greed leapt into the water.

But today I have good news.The ban of fishing on the island has led to signs of a rebirth in stocks and now the residents are allowed to fish recreationally again at certain times of the year with sustainable fishing a reality again in years to come.

As my geography is rubbish, I did some research on Newfoundland and it turns out to be located at the most easterly point in North America, on a pretty similar latitude, from a glance to the UK.

To get to my off topic point, there are tons of empty houses sitting on the rocks on an island not dissimilar (sadly no warmer though) to the UK. It's roughly half our size and yet boasts a population of HALF a million to our 60,000 million and it's beautiful & unspoilt and I promise I'd keep it that way if the Canadian government would see fit to let me move there.

Friends, I know the Mongolian commune idea was a bust (cheap but cold) but I'd be well up for a move to Newfoundland.Google it and let's charter a boat...

Veganism has risen 350% in the UK in the last ten years, led by the 15-34% age group who cite their reasons as being a reaction to modern farming methods that are cruel to animals and the effects of mass agriculture on the Earth. I gave up eating all meat, cows milk & fish after watching +Cowspiracy  and am trying to have more vegan days than not and it's remarkably easy,even to a kitchen hater like me,in fact it's definitely improved my attitude to food & how I consume groceries.

If the whole world went Vegan we could solve world hunger five times over. ( A problem that will only get much worse as the impact of climate change ramps up.)

The terrible plight of our wildlife has never been so obvious and yet again, come on humans, it's taken us to get to a crisis to act to save the flora and fauna. Most of us could plant some kind of a bee garden, grow our own,stop eating unethical food and support those who work at the coal face in conservation. 

Another thing I realised when watching Taylor Wilson explain about energy

 is that chain reaction is an inevitable part of the make up of life on Earth. Keep being the change we need to see in the world and we are seeing results, masked away behind the convenience of fear mongering, good things are happening.

Start today at grass roots and watch how it grows.

Love & Peace.

The Wayward Chronicles- The wake up call.

I'll hold my hands up to a life mostly ignoring politics & politicians, stemmed from a deep rooted belief that the political system is primarily motivated by power and money,therefore we would never be singing from the same song sheet, ditto world politics. The events of 2016 however have forced me to pay attention, all be it for the wrong reasons, to how the world has & is being governed. Turns out I was right...Maybe, we needed those bombshells in order to all pay better attention...



We've all heard mentions about climate change from the mainstream media over the last few years, but when the Barack Obama states clearly in his closing speech that without bolder action our children will be busy dealing with environmental disasters & economic crisis, you kind of need to listen up.







If NASA data is anything to go by ( and maybe only until Trump gets his hands on them) the world is in a critical state. We have sprinted past the "safe" level of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere- 350, go to/http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/, it's all there and it's not pretty but people need to know, because without awareness, how can we change our behaviour & positively influence the behaviour of others?



http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

We are right in the middle of a rapid extinction of Earths wild life, losing species and vital habitat every minute. Google it and you'll be shocked at what's really happening and how quickly. Conservation groups are talking about 2 / 3rds of all vertebrates by 2020 ...just 3 years away.
Things are being done,don't get me wrong but I'm sure all those charities could do with our help. Lest we forget we too are vertebrates,the UK death toll rose considerably and without explanation in 2015, as did the U.S's, & when figures for 2016 are released I'll bet it's risen again and is probably behind the current NHS breakdown. All those celebrity deaths are just an indicator of ratio...

Alarming right? But alarms are a wake up call and every time I see Donald Trumps revolting face, I vow that I can not sit back and watch that future unfurl for my children & all the children who were born into this mess without choice. I know I'm not one the American citizens that Barack was addressing but all human beings have the, "Essential spirit of innovation and practical problem solving" required to make the changes required to stop things from getting worse.

It would be easy to settle into a negative mindset, or worse just ignore the evidence entirely and carry on as before being thoughtless,wasteful & greedy, but once you know what's really happening, you are duty bound to take responsibility and try your best to make amends.

There are many problems out there, overwhelmingly so, but a friend of a friend gave wise advice about picking the ones you feel most passionate about and really get grass roots involved in supporting and promoting your work to reach others who want to help the same cause.
The world is 7.5 billion people just like us, that's a lot of hearts and minds. If we could actually come together imagine what we could achieve.There are far more ordinary people than there are power mad politicians,we just need to go round them and maybe surprise them from the flank.



There are so many tiny and massive ways in our everyday life that we can make a difference. Commit  to changing your diet, commit to not buying plastic, shop second hand, recycle,upcycle, use public transport,walk, shop local,eat local, grow your own, use less energy, plant for wildlife or just open your mouth & speak up for what you believe in. As Gandhi knew, we have to be the change.

There are many positive and ground breaking projects across the planet and people are willing to take a stand more than ever before. On the 21st of January Women are uniting all over the world in a protest march for human rights and democracy. Innovations and movements are increasing every day but we have to start fighting right now,in whatever way we can, to stop Capitalism ruining the future of our children.

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/14/womens-march-on-washington-protest-size-donald-trump

https://www.womensmarchlondon.com

http://unfccc.int/2860.php

http://www.eco-business.com/opinion/6-environment-and-development-stories-to-watch-in-2017/