OUT OF EUROPE, OUT OF RICHMOND, INTO FRANCE

I vote out of Europe. Not because of Boris Johnson. In fact, the more business people who comment that it would be bad for UK business to leave the EU, the more I realise it is in their interest and that they have been taking advantage of the benefits and not passing them onto the customer.    I don't think they are on 'our side'.  They are on their side.  That may, very occasionally, be the same as 'our side', but it is only by accident.  But not on staying in the EU.

Not that I have anything against Europe. I love it.   Its wonderful. And I love living in France. I love the food, the French, the weather, even when it rains, and the parking.  There are no parking attendants where I live in France, there are parking spaces and there are no road works.    I don't even care about the adders in the back garden and the slow tractors because there are supposed to be tractors in the countryside.  We are the ones who are foreign.  And as for the adders - better the venomous snakes that slither than those you meet on the streets of SW London.   And there are no traffic jams in France where I live.  I mention traffic jams because this morning it was horrible in Richmond.

 I took a journey today that takes less than 10 minutes normally.  It took me ten minutes to get out of my street.   It took just under an hour to drive half a mile.    Gridlocked by gasworks and mummy mafia driving four wheel drives painfully slow, extension building builders double parking vans, with builders  working overtime (bonking blisteringly bored kept wives), and smug cyclists dodging doors opening at any opportunity of huffing and puffing businessmen trying to look powerful, I've got fed up of Richmond.   If there is road rage over the next few days, the local council should be considered culpable.   They are guilty of poor planning, for not banning four wheel drives in a town that doesn't need four wheel drives, and for allowing bankers to take over homes where creative types once lived, and adding extensions to their homes to make them into the homogenous colourless characterless places that mirror their own homogenous colourless characterless personalities.    Richmond Upon Thames is becoming incredibly beige and boring and it had magic twelve years ago.   Even the planes are starting to bug me now.

ITS SPRING - yoga, writing and getting screwed.

Its almost the end of the February and this is the second blog of the year I think.  At this rate I'll be doing one a month, which is really what people should be doing.   They should be living and occasionally writing about it, at a push getting it published, and then into a film, TV series, stage play or APP or all of the above.   And despite the frost it smells of spring.   And I'm on the last module of my psychology degree and writing and yoga-ing.   I haven't been traveling as much as I'd like but then I have a lot to focus on at the moment.   And I'm aiming to go to specific destinations this year, I haven't gone to before.

I'm so enjoying teaching the yoga. Especially the children and the retreats and workshops.   I taught at GSK today and I'm pleased I'm out of the corporate world.  They are lovely people and not starchy in any way, but here I am working with aromatherapy oils looking all hippy walking into a glass bastion of corporate discipline.

I want to see Spotlight although that will make me cross because its about injustice caused by establishment protecting itself  In this case the Catholic Church. I'd like to watch The Big Short, but that will make me cross because its about injustice caused by establishment protecting itself. In this case the Financial Industry.  In both cases they knowingly and willingly screwed the general public - one literally    And they both knowingly and willingly got a way with it.     And are still getting away with it. Is there nobody of any importance who is able to break these systems?  There must be someone at a high level who is prepared to out those who are really to blame, not just the patsies who have been put out as guilty parties.  Or is everyone at a high level, been so corrupt in getting to the top they realise they are just as guilty as those they will out?    The real guilty ones should go down for good.  Don't let them have time to find God or any other get out of jail clause. These types never find God.   No wonder we have a spate of superhero movies.  Batman would know what to do.

Oh, and i'm going to vote out of the EU, simply because every time I hear some one from the 'establishment' say they want to stay in, I just feel they are knowingly and willingly screwing us again.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.

BEAUTIFUL EIGHT

Just watched The Hateful Eight, Tarantino's latest masterpiece (and all three hours of it is).     Kurt Russell is beautiful. He's actually beautiful to look at.  Goldie Hawn is very lucky. Or perhaps he was just very well lit.    Tarantino should get an Oscar.  He won't but he should.   He gives the best lines to Sam L Jackson, Tim Roth (superb superb and strangely very attractive), and the  beautiful Kurt again. Its a cross between Agatha Christie, Carrie and a spaghetti western with snow.   Like an eskimo western.  He chooses actors who have so much character in the face, each line etched like a story in itself.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is horrible but she's meant to be horrible.    Channing Tatum doesn't have lines (on the face) and it shows, but he had a strangely sinister quality which Tarantino sees.   He just needs more lines (on the face that is).   Then he'll be one of Tarantinos beautiful eight for good.  Iconic film which will get better each time you see it.

NEW YEAR

I wrote half the blogs last year I did the year before. This is good.   It doesn't mean I have less to write about but that I'm doing more and have less time to write about it.   I met some very supportive, wonderful and genuine people in 2015. Yes a few odd balls, but less than usual.    Filtering helped.  This is also the last year of the psychology degree, a decision I took three years ago, that and the teacher training for yoga. Both are like a divorce; painful but necessary.  Yoga I love teaching.  Practicing is secondary to teaching it.  My father always said I should be a teacher but only to those who are interested and want to listen.   He was right.  

Studying for the degree has made me realise how linear education is, even on this level and how academia manages to make even the most interesting of subjects into something very dull. Bit like politicians but they do it on purpose so you don't realise how little they know and how little they are able to do.    It is painfully opaque, structured, limiting and dogmatic, a bit like those who pass and construct these blooming exams.    But hold your breathe to pass the test and then you can fly.  As in life.  

Got more books out this year, with the A to Zens and more radio, which I'm enjoying immensely.   I'm always a little nervous these days to admit or write 'I'm happy' so I won't.  

I loved Charlie Brooker's Wipe on 2015, especially the woman reporter's take on feminism or femininism as she put it (which is how I put it as well).  The funniest line was 'do you think a man would be better at being a feminist if he was a woman being a femininist than a woman would be being a woman being a femininist."  Strangely I actually think thats a good question.  

I watch the news less because I'm more aware its a depressing comic of non news. Bankers have once again been left of the hook by Osborne who is no longer going to hold an enquiry into how and why the crash happened and how and why they were able to break the World bank, because we allegedly need the greedy corrupt sociopaths to work for us because we need them to pay tax, which by the way, they are also not paying.     No news about that.  And its raining a lot.    Watch out for anyone building an Ark. I know a few men who have grown a long silver beard and hair long to the shoulders, admittedly looking more like silver haired my little ponies than Noah, perhaps in anticipation they'll convince God they're the chosen ones.   I for one, hope not.

LEARN FROM THE PAST, LIVE IN THE NOW, VOTE FOR THE FUTURE

Focused on strengthening the 'self' today in yoga.   Rising above the ego - which feeds on fear and need (greed).    I do not read the papers but listening to the radio and the fear being nurtured and heard int the voices of those speaking and being spoken to on LBC, is interesting. The media stokes fear rather than trying to clarify the story and at the moment, they should drop the need to sell and advertise and focus on the bare facts because you don't need to dress it up in any way.   No background music, no actor doing the voice over.  No tight edit.   And those in charge are the most fearful of the lot.    History repeats itself - I think every 80 years its been proven to - and we're set for a 1930s repeat which of course then ended up in WW1.   Controversial to say, but those who are best prepared for what is about to happen (on a material level) are least worthy of survival.  

LOST VOICE NOT MOMENTUM

I lost my voice two weeks ago.  There's a bug going round and I heard even David Cameron croak through a talk to a group of City suits I think earlier this week, may be last.   Any way, he was croaking. As I teach yoga and present radio, its not a good idea to lose the voice. Sounding like the vamp in Carry on Screaming is one thing. Sounding like a squeaky mini mouse is not so cool.  I managed to do both week before last and ended up talking in whispers.  Thank goodness for the technology of microphones.

Where was I when I heard about Paris?  Working late.   I was recently asked to talk about where to go for Christmas. It has been an extraordinary year for travel, as in safety has over taken sunshine as the number one priority for travellers.  Or British travellers.   Shootings on the beach in Tunisia, bombings in Paris restaurants and flight blown up from Sharm.   I have never known a year like it.  Even when 9/11 happened it quietened the Americans coming to the UK, but the Brits travelled everywhere.  This is closer to home.  Next year the choice is Italy and Australia and China.  They seem to be the places people feel are safe….

BUSINESS AS USUAL, WELL SORT OF...

World Travel Market, Family Travel Market and Luxury Travel Market.  I have lost my voice. This wouldn't normally be a problem any other year as I'm not sure if people listen to me anyway sometimes. But I teach yoga and I co present a radio show so its a bit of a nuisance when the voice varies from Mariella Frostrop gravel to Minnie Mouse squeak within a few seconds.  I ended up whispering down the microphone this evening.   Never know, I may get some dates.

No one would talk about the elephant in the room at WTM.  Security. True they had 'talks; about it, but on the stands they went on business as usual as though this had been just like any other year.  Well, barring 9/11, I've never seen a year like this in travel.  

I'm heading to Luxury ™ and may pop into Spirit of Christmas although I have no spirit of Christmas at the moment. I'm still enjoying the fireworks.   I've looked at my blogs for this year.   It will be under forty written, unless I have a spurt in December.  This is a good sign.