From Orcas to Big Pharma and Putin, Out With Malevolence.

It is Halloween, we must chase the evil spirits and welcome all the saints.... I am at home in Ireland after three somewhat frustrating weeks in Nazaré. I had hoped to get the 'Anna M' dressed up in a coat of epoxy glass, but the weather turned against me. It was supposed to be brilliant, and indeed it was a couple of kilometres inland for most of the time, but a fog-bank installed itself on the coast, and didn't shift for days, too chilly and damp for epoxy. Then the weather turned rainy. I had just missed the chance of doing the job before the winter. Still I did get a lot of useful work done, painting and varnishing, inside and out, so hopefully it will not take too long to get her ready for the water in the Spring.

Finally the fog withdrew to seaward.

     While I was there a French couple, Maho and Fanny, sailed in with a fine strong aluminium boat, 'Liguane', with a coating of epoxy glass, whose drop-keel had been broken off by orcas, as well as the rudders being damaged. As can be seen in the photo, the keel was made of several layers of ply-wood coated with glass-fibre, and the power of the attack was amazing, showing extraordinary malevolence. There have been numerous such attacks on sailing boats off the Spanish and Portuguese coast in the last couple

Good job Maho is handy!

of years, with one boat actually being sunk.

The standard response these days is likely to be along the lines 'oh it's their sea, why shouldn't they attack sail-boats if they feel like it?' 'Probably some sail-boat gave them a hard time!' etc. They are much more likely to have had a hard time from fishing boats, which however they have not been attacking. I prefer the attitude of the Spanish firework makers who sell a box of grenades which are said to be very effective at scaring the orcas off.

    I have always disliked orcas because of the grief they give my humpback whale friends, attacking their calves if they can and eating the livers out of them. There are also plenty of reports of orcas killing seals and penguins just for the fun of it, when they don't even want to eat them. Some will say that it is foolish to assign attributes such as malevolence to animals. I disagree, believing as I do that evil or malevolent spirits do exist and are present just about everywhere.

    It is not even unrealistic to imply moral standards to plants, though here again some careful distinctions are called for. My homoeopath wife tells me how this or that 'weed' or 'poison' can be very effective remedies; so the moral quality is not intrinsic to the plant, but nonetheless weeds are bad when they choke ones vegetables. It's a matter of their role in a particular context. Even Putin, let alone Russians, are not evil in themselves, but they have misconstrued their context. The battle between good and evil is real, indeed it is the ultimate human context. If we mess up in our interpretation of it, we are in deep trouble. Fortunately Christ has the victory, for having attracted the ultimate malevolence to Himself, he was able to turn it into the means of our salvation.

    Times have changed lately; the values of tolerance and enlightenment, along with the institutions of liberalism and democracy, are looking more shakey than ever they have done before in my lifetime, which is especially shocking in the countries that have liked to see themselves as their principal bastions. It just happens that these orca attacks have coincided with a certain rediscovery of evil, most dramatically illustrated by both the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The fact of the matter is that the 'your truth and my truth' lark just won't do any more!

    I have been frankly shaken by the realisation of just how right my initial scepticism of the vaccines turned out to be, along with the profoundly troubling corruption of our whole medico/political/information establishment. As for the profound and mendacious malevolence of Mr Putin.... Let me say that I would not hesitate to use a grenade to scare off an attacking orca, and I would not be too bothered if I killed it. I do not believe Christ meant us not to stand up to bullies, and believe that the Catholic teaching about just wars is sound.

    Which said, it has to be remarked that the war in Ukraine, extremely regretable in itself, has yet done an immense favour to the environmental movement, ramming home the necessity of emancipating our economies and way of life from dependence on burning fossil fuels. Come to that, we have also been reminded of the dangers of nuclear power stations. People like Alec and I, who have been chuntering on for some years about, for instance, electrolysers, are suddenly getting the feeling that we may be taken more seriously, and something similar is true for those of us who have been saying that the medical establishment, taken over by commercial interests, is going off the rails, and is due for a complete overhaul.

    There must be a reason why the simple technology of hydrolysers has not been employed long since, for a start by radically reducing both fuel consumption and emissions from internal combustion engines,- and not a reason all that different to why alternatives to vaccinations as treatment for covid were systematically suppressed. One might call it 'capitalism', but I don't. There is no reason why capitalists should not be open and rational about what they do, and there is nothing wrong with making a profit on it. The problem is when the profit becomes the guiding principle, and the pursuit of it causes capitalists to distort and indeed hide the truth about what they are doing, especially when it happens to be against the interests of their customers, which they are there to serve. This is not the inevitable truth about capitalism; it is just greedy badness. It is remarkable how powerful, how obstructive of simple things like treating ill-health or getting around affordably, such people can be, as they hide behind the desperate need for real business to find ways of meeting genuine needs. Capitalism is morally neutral, like a plant or a ship, which is as good or bad as its owners and crew; the trouble is that it is made of money, 'that tainted thing', which so easily becomes an end in itself, a false god. Honesty and transparancy promptly disappear when it does so!

    Vast sums of money are being pushed out by governments and banks to 'mitigate the climate crisis', but how little of it has shown up around us in practical ways actually doing it! Those with access to the money remain more interested in wheeling and dealing on the whole, rather than the uncertain and laborious business of innovating, finding solutions and actually producing things. Meanwhile down-to-earth people have such a struggle to survive that they have little time or energy to even think about such things.

    Well, Alec finally fitted the electroliser in my 08 Citroen Picasso, before I drove it home by way of Bilbao. We had plenty of hydrogen bubbling out of it on Alec's work bench a couple of years ago now, but much time was wasted while I looked around, in vain, for someone to fit it in Ireland. Perhaps we may succeed now that it is in the car and working. I am looking for someone who would like to specialise in this kind of business, but first I suppose I must be able to demonstrate its effectiveness. Alec reckons the one he has in his Transit van improves diesel consumption by over 30%, something like the percentage of European energy that came from Russia before the war, and massively cleans up the exhaust. We believe the hydrogen improves the combustion in the engine so that much more of the energy potential of the fuel is released. I have been carefully recording my petrol consumption/distance travelled since I got the car in March 2020. All I can say so far is that it seems to be doing the job. The car floats along like a boat with the wind behind it, with noticeably less need to put one's foot down on the accelerator. I put exactly 40 litres into the tank very soon after the fuel alarm went off in Bilbao, and am still running on it. When it goes off again, we shall have a pretty good idea how far the 40 litres has taken us; see next blog!

    

    Since the ferry was delayed by weather, I was given a chance to explore Bilbao,- a very

interesting city. Of course I had to see the Guggenheim Museum, a fascinating building, even if one might have reservations about much of the art inside it. It intrigues me, how the loss of the Faith entails the loss of faith in even human attempts at realising rational order; so artists end up talking about dodgy 'Pseud's Corner' stuff like 'Transcending the Spiritual', while they try to reach directly for our subconscious sensibilities and to bypass the conscious mind that they have given up on, not believing the two may be reconciled.

    What a relief to come into St James' Cathedral, with its Madonna who has her eyes wide open, while holding a rose! We all need to take a step backwards, maybe here in Ireland just into the old culture of our Western coastlands, to see if we can knit artistic and technical endeavor together again, work with fun, technology with the love of nature, physical with spiritual life.

    Meanwhile the 'Anna M' is ready for her electric drive, but we are out of capital for now. Alec is trying to find business partners in Portugal, as I am here in Ireland. The vision is simple enough, of a company delivering custom-built electric/hydrogen drives especially for boats, but also vehicles and all kinds of down-to-earth applications. Electrolysers and fuel cells are of particular interest. It would be great to be up and running here in West Clare when they start to bring the mooted off-shore wind power ashore. Whatever the application, it starts with cheap, green electricity,- hence a whole new future for wind power, be it from sails or windmills. It is fun to have such an open field before us!

Just Holding On

 

There is something grimly appropriate about the fact that many gannets are dying, apparently of avian 'flu, and being washed up on our Irish shores,- it being hard not to get depressed about the state of things these days. Yet it was all the more heartening to see a few gannets flying strongly past Loop Head on my Sunday walk yesterday. What's more, though the Gannetsway project of restoring the Anna M has sometimes looked shakey lately, we are still forging ahead.

 

Last time I was in Nazare, a couple of weeks ago, I actually moved aboard; the saloon is quite liveable in now. We also made a start at glassing the hull. The weather was turning rainy, I got a drop of resin in my eye, and most seriously money issues had to be addressed, so it was only a start; I just wanted to get an idea of what exactly is involved. It was successful enough, but it was evident I needed more help as well as materials.

So anyway, I hope to be back on the job in a week or two, and a big push will be under way to get the hull finished before the winter comes. Then we shall be trying to have the Anna M back in the water for next year, and hopefully the big experiment with an electric drive. Plenty of trouble ahead, but if we can overcome adversity in our own little ways, perhaps we can hope that all those people suffering so much more than ourselves will somehow do the same!

Looking forward

Looking aft

1st & 2nd skin

Just Holding On

There's Truth In That There Old Boat.

    Three years ago, on the 28th June 2019, I invited readers of this blog 'to take their seats for the Boris Johnson Show, with a drop in hand.' I professed myself to be 'settling in for this morality play in London with both a grim fascination, a frisson of amusement, and a fair degree of trepidation.... The only value that seems to be generally recognised today is that of personal autonomy. Well Mr Johnson just about sums up where that trip ends up. Undoubtedly he will sooner or later self destruct, but how much damage will he do in the process?'

     He is having to be dragged from No.10 kicking and screaming, yet worse trouble is that the main lie on which the house of cards was built will be even harder to get rid of, and there's not much sign of this happening any time soon, despite the obvious fulfillment of our forebodings about Brexit with regard to the British economy, for Ulster and the prospects of young people. Things have turned out even worse than Europeans of British extraction like myself feared, but there is still no prospect of a British Prime Minister or Government who will admit this, let alone do anything serious about it.

     On what basis can anyone hope to unite the Conservative Party anyway, let alone the 'United Kingdom'? Sentimental, nostalgic nationalism certainly won't do it. If they have recourse to another general election and a 'new mandate', they will still be in trouble. Unfortunately, that Sir Starmer looks like something of a wimp, refusing to grasp the nettle of Brexit, so the once Great Britain has even more existential issues to deal with than the lesser island from whence I look on; but the whole world is tumbling on to some cataclysm that only time will reveal!

Ice-cream time at Mary O's.

     Meanwhile some of us are doing what we can for the future; indeed everything we touch has to take into account the effects it will have for our grandchildren. It's still a great world, really worth struggling for. But it's no use thinking, for instance, that since we are fine and cool here while most of Europe is scorching, we don't have to worry about the climate. Anyway one has to get off this island of Ireland now and again, and where would we be without wine and olice oil? The Gannetsway is the geographic zone that I find most congenial!

     The ding-dong between County Clare and Nazaré has become something of a habit which has been working well for myself. There's a very handy Ryanair flight that, along with buses, enables me to do it in a day, both directions. I would much rather sail, but that will have to wait for the time being. Even the Bilbao ferry is problematic in the summer, - besides the time it takes and being only available for a very expensive car journey, it is actually hard to get a booking in the high season. Wouldn't it be great to have a sail-electric schooner reaching back and forth all summer, with both people and a cargo of goodies?

     Like most sailors, I do miss my family, being away so much, and was particularly sad to miss a grandson's confirmation a couple of weeks ago. Still, sometimes such necessary absences can actually deepen relationships; anything is better than falling into a boring, introverted routine! On the principle that lamps should be put on lamp-stands, I shall post a little poem I wrote for him:-

A Smile for Bede, on his Confirmation Day.

Deep in the Sea of Memory,
Beneath the turbulent zone,
In sombre, solemn obscurity
At the limits of our perception,
A glint of treasure lies
At our very foundation.

After the fierce ordeal of birth,
It was a smile of recognition,
Encouragement, peace and mirth.
Thence grew into our waiting world
Faith, Hope and Charity
For us to gather when we’re called.

So that glint let us remember
When on the restless surface waves
Our fragile boats do founder;
Live in the enduring serenity

Of Light above, below, around us;
Blessed, ever-present Trinity.

    If one struggles to stay sane these days, I do recommend the Catholic ways of praying, - the Psalms, Mass, the Rosary; but I believe anyone of any faith and none can have a go at the wonderful gift of prayer. For a start, it is necessary to find a way to still the clamour in our minds, which constantly distracts us, causing us to spin off in a myriad directions, and to concentrate on actual, positive and beautiful realities that might pierce the armour of our egos, collapse our phantasies, require us to commit to a process that may not be simply put aside, and thus put us in touch with the transcendent truths which it involves. 

     It should not be difficult to understand that making any kind of passage in a sailing boat can come in handy here. I was out last evening in the Sally O'Keefe with some dear old ship-mates. The last time our Mary Emma, Tony Whelan and myself were sailing together was

Old Shipmates.

in 2005 when we crossed the Atlantic together. Here we are with Steve Morris, who built that Sally O'Keefe and has been helping me with the Anna M,- indeed without his help I would be nowhere.  The same is true of course for Alec in Nazaré, and quite a few other people come to that, not to mention Fiona. 

     It's a very ambitious and somewhat haphazard plan, and I still do not know how it will be completed, but already it shows how commitment brings its own graces and gifts. When this happens, one is reassured that the project is not just an ego trip. It is prayer that keeps one right! This gives me the freedom to dream on about sail/electric boats fit to fish and to trade up and down between Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula; so dreams and talk have their place, though with time mere ideas are soon blown away if actual results are not forthcoming. Mr Johnson illustrated brilliantly what happens when dreams are marshalled to the service of egos, but it is a problem for all of us.            

     Endurance through all sorts of difficulties is a good sign. One has to take every opportunity for a sight; signs, affirmations from whatever quarter so long as they come from somewhere outside ourselves and are not mere reflections our our own desires, but rather of some kind of project with enduring values and relationships. It is part of the grace and joy of being elderly that this becomes easier when one really does have to face the fact that our ego is a busted flush, and whoever is going to inherit the fruits of our efforts, on the face of it, it can only be ourselves in a very limited way! 

      I am happy to report that the Anna M should be able to take to the water again early next year. I have just completed the serious work of routing out all the seams between the planks. This goes well with a new bit in the router, but the attrition from which they suffer means one is likely to be struggling again all too soon, considering they seem to be impossible to sharpen and cost at least €30 a pop.  Anyway that's done, Anatole is gluing splines of hardwood into the grooves, and Dario is chiselling and sanding them level, so she will be ready for an epoxy and glassfibre skin in the autumn, when things will have cooled down. Meanwhile they are working inside the hull, installing water tanks, battery storage, quarter berths, and a new floor ready for the furniture.

Port side ready for epoxy and glass skin.

     

Quarter berths

Home  for the Summer, though plenty of work such as making a hen run and painting the house, not to mention serious background work for the Nazaré Project and our Sailelectric drive.

Graft in Nazaré.

     The luscious leaves of June are strugging with a westerly gale back here in County Clare, though the sun is shining brightly. I flew home yesterday for a ten day break from graft on the 'Anna M' in Nazaré. I've been at it for over six weeks, and settled on a good steady routine, living in a little flat over Mario's Waves Restaurant. At the front it looks over the Praça da

Life support team.

Fonte Velha, while at the back the view over all those Atlantic waves is

softened by the cooing of pigeons and the crazy acrobatics of the swifts.

My main job recently has been routing out between the planks, where Anatole has been gluing wooden splines, and Dario has been following along to clean off. The routing would be straightforward with sharp bits,- if it weren't so awkward to work on some parts of the hull, and if the wood were not so hard and laced with the odd bit of rivet or screw. They can be hard to spot, especially with a visor on, without which one would end up with bits of debris in the eyes half the time, even with glasses on. Between this and the hardness of the wood, I've been going through a lot of those router bits, and spending time scouring the country for them,- one not inconsiderable expense that I had not allowed for. I need someone to recycle them!

It will remain to glass over the whole hull with epoxy and glassfibre cloth. At last, with another month's work, the old hull should be sea-worthy again and indeed beautiful and very strong. Hopefully I will even be able to live aboard, and if Alec gets the electric drive installed, we shall move into the next phase of 'The Nazaré Project', testing and demonstrating the said drive.

      What a lot has happened since we first mooted the idea; yet everything seemed to have only emphasized how good and timely it is! More than ever, we need to get out of oil-dependence. Perhaps the best thing about it is the fun of it all, and if there is one thing we need these days more than ever, it is fun; but it seems to me there is not much fun in a holiday that has to begin and end with an airport nightmare, nor in driving or even cruising when fuel costs so much.  There is also comfort in feeling one does not have to contribute to the dodgy types who generally supply oil, nor to climate change, and there is the prospect of a more exciting, challenging but pleasant kind of cruising. Imagine, besides no huge fuel costs, no smelly diesel in the boat, nor racket and vibration!  

     Besides all this, there is the huge satisfaction of bringing that lovely old wooden boat back to life, and in the process of 'bringing home' a great deal of the technology involved. Alec has done a great job of the new hydraulic steering gear, inderneath the new cockpit that Anatole is building. The big question now is how successful will he be with the electric drive? The control side seems to be the most challenging bit. Well, once the hull is liveable-in, I hope to be able to sit back and watch the fun rather more!

 

     If only those pesky Putin poodles, and everyone else including covid cowboys, could get out of nihilistic places and find positive things to do, I'm sure there would be a great deal more fun in the world. For all the shocks and disillusion we have suffered lately, the answer to evil remains not primarily with weapons, nor money; and indeed there's not so very much that governments nor anyone else can do about the many crises, when people lose the ability to enjoy life and to show a better way of living. It's just a shame that so often when nihilists see such things, it can make them more madly resentful! But even if we go down fighting evil, as sometimes we must, we shall overcome in the end, and meanwhile, every little victory counts.

May Day!

It's now five years ago, in May 2017, when I set out to sail home to Ireland from the Rio Guadiana, and half way up the Portuguese coast, had to admit that it was not safe to proceed north across Biscay with the 'Anna M' making so much water that the bilge pump started up every ten minutes, taking about five to empty the bilge. When Lent came round again this year, it seemed a good time to take a break from shovelling yet more precious words into the bottomless pit, or maybe I should say the fire, of the internet, like so many dead leaves. Lent is a time for digging deep, to see if the dead looking branches can really burst into life again, or will they be like those dead old branches on the tops of our trees in County Clare, which the winter gales have indeed killed. 

Words that fail to produce action are just like those dead leaves! It has sometimes seemed like that lately, both for my old boat and indeed my own body. I felt dreadful in the early part of this year; on top of covid, my whole lumbar region was in a state of misery, after the radio-therapy I had last year for prostate cancer. Still, as I hoped, things got better the more I got into work again, and along with the usual homoeopathy, a course of thalassotherapy here in the seawater baths on the beach in Nazaré did me a great deal of good. In fact this is my third session here this year and since my last post. 

Thank God Steve Morris spent a fortnight here and finished the new planks, (thank God also he is on the end of Whatsapp to give advice and direction!) and I had my good friends Ger and Canice out here doing sessions too. But would we ever make that old boat seaworthy again?

Canice stripping the old paint.

Would Alec get the electric drive together? Would I be physically able to rise to the challenge? Are our aspirations nothing but fantasies? Can humanity indeed overcome the challenges the world is facing? Well, Alec and I have declared a race, to see who can get their bit done first; will it be the hull or the drive?  Will we get it together this year at last? Will the aspirations that we have been chuntering on about finally 'make it':- to get the lovely old boat seaworthy again, to develop our own sail/electric drive, to set up a company producing custom-buit units for small craft, indeed to foster an approach to cruising suitable for our times? 

(I can't say I'm sorry to see a few of those super-yachts hitting the rocks, but I hope taxpayers are not going to end up with the cost of maintaining the damn things for God knows how long. Take them out and sink them, I say!)

What a five years it has been! It turned out I was most fortunate to have the old boat in a safe berth that was not breaking the bank.  My scribbles took off in all kinds of directions that had little to do with sailing; yet I hope remained - I can hardly say 'rooted' or 'grounded' in the sea - let's say true to the spirit of the sea. A sailor must live with that special, vital and immediate imperative to discern where safety and where danger lie; what is in fact a deception or lie, and what is true. He shares 'the common sacrament of mankind' with all those who succumb to the lure of the sea, for whatever reason. He will recoil in horror at those who would deliberately leave any human being at peril on the sea, and hence if he is true to his calling he believes in the brotherhood of all mankind. 

(Forgive me, sisters, but I can see no way to rejecting the old-fashioned idea that the male gender can and should be used inclusively; to do so seems to me to make language impossibly cumbersome and unwieldy, such as sailors do not like.)

The lies that I have been busy lambasting, with regard for instance to Brexit and the covid vaccines, I might even mention gender-bending of one kind or another, now seem in danger of being overwhelmed by the effects of an even more massive lie, that seems to have engulphed a huge swath of this same mankind in a poisonous fog; I refer of course to the crazy notion that bombing, shelling, murdering, raping and generally tyranising a whole nation can possibly be imagined as constituting their 'liberation'.

While I am at it, in a degree of despair as to the state of this human race or at least of our modern civilisation, I am reimagining the 'Anna M' as possibly a kind of survival capsule, which after all is what boats are about,- surviving in that frequently hostile element, the sea, so often a kind of 'no man's land'. Yet paradoxically its waves constitute perhaps the most fundamental and vital physical medium of communication on Earth. Navigare necesse est! I count Fiona and I lucky that our nine children are not hopelessly scattered, and are mainly clumped in two groups on the west and east coasts of Ireland, with the exceptions still being accessible by sea, even the ones who look like heading for Florida. It looks like I might get an excuse for stretching my notion of 'sailing the Gannetsway' once again! Anyway I love the idea of a craft that can sail around between them all without even having to buy and burn any fuel!

So anyway, for the last lap, with a hull massively strengthened with many new laminated ribs, new steel floors (attaching the keel to the hull) and some new planks, we are now down to the little matter of making sure that no water can enter by way of the cracks and holes in it! We have to fill all the holes, rout out the seams between the planks and glue splines into them, sand it all off and apply a skin of epoxy and glass cloth.

It is a great deal of work to be done this month. Now it is the first of May and everywhere the leaves are blooming, another summer is opening up. I am hoping to leave the hull fit to float when I go home in five weeks' time! As it happens I have a Russian and an Ukrainian on the job. Anatole, the Russian, I met on the pontoon when I first arrived, - he lives with his wife in a little sailing boat that he built himself. I have chatted with him now  and again since. Needless to say, he thinks Putin is mad and worse. Anyway he turned up at the 'Anna M' asking would I like him to work for me? Sure, he made a great job of his boat and we know he can work with resin. He it was who introduced the Ukrainian, Valerii, who did that routing, but sadly their relationship is strained, understandably enough, by the present war and God knows what. Valerii has a family still

in Ukraine; he got a nasty wound himself fighting the Russians back in 2016, for which he is still getting treatment here in Portugal. Maybe I am being paranoid myself, but I don't feel inclined to put their photos up on the internet at this stage....

So another dark cloud hangs over us. Putin has clearly revealed himself as a crook of the worst order, whose main preoccupation it would seem is to avoid being held to account for his crimes. Like all such crooks, he defiles every worthwhile thing he touches, trying desperately to use them to cloak his fear and self-loathing. Of course, any liar grabs at any bit of truth he can lay hands on, and thereby demeans it. Personally I dislike the 'liberal agenda' as much as any reasonable person could, and will agree that it goes with a certain cultural colonialism. However there's a lot more to Western culture than that, and anyway surely Russia is big enough to cope with it! 

Putin's notion that we Europeans hate Russia or would want to take it over, while indeed we may regard it as culturally belonging to Europe, is the paranoia of one who can only maintain his position by fear, and has to ruthlessly suppress opposition and dissent. Dostoyevski and Tolstoy, Tchaikovski, Rachmaninov and all the other great Russians who have contributed so much to our European culture must be turning in their graves, that things have come to such a pass. However one good thing Putin has achieved is to mightily push along the agenda for escaping dependence on fossil fuel, and thus contributed to our little effort to develop our own electric drive. 

It takes some effort alright, especially for an ould fella like myself; yet meanwhile it is a great pleasure to be getting to know Portugal better. I have to say I've become very fond of it, and the place suits me very well. They were complaining about the lack of rain last time I was here, but it rained quite a lot while I was enjoying the good weather in Ireland, and then it settled the moment I returned to find Portugal bursting with growth. My favourite path for a Sunday afternoon walk, behind the Praia do Norte, is blooming with wild flowers, and the birds in the pine trees are full of song. How beautifully they go with the everlasting som do mar!

Time to be thinking boats again!

 As the fog begins to lift, there will be plenty of questions to be asked about the pandemic and the way it was handled. When it comes to dissecting everlasting statistics, this is hardly the place to do it; but one aspect of it all that fascinates me is the role of anxiety. Authorities the world over could hardly have found better means to maximise it than the lock-downs, vaccine mandates, social distancing, masks and ubiquitous sanitising, had they deliberately set out to do so. My own scepticism about the vaccines was massively reinforced by the dependence of the whole effort on such anxiety, rather than on measured and rational considerations.

     Does anxiety ever really help, or on the contrary, is it more likely to undermine health and sanity? We must figure out whether it was bogus or simply inevitable, leaving no alternative but to bury our heads in the sand! One thing that does not help is to try to simply ignore the basis of anxiety. Perhaps some people get so mad with BoJo because he does just this in private while trading in anxiety in Government, while others like him for giving thesaid anxiety the two fingers behind his own Government's back. With preoccupation with covid on the wane, other foci of anxiety will be on the make,- war in the Ukraine, the cost of living, climate change, there is rarely a shortage of them. Is there perhaps a genuine connection between such mega issues and the personal problems that dog us all? 

     Whatever our own personal preference in the line of anxiety may be, there is no satisfactory living with it if it comes to dominate our lives! Perhaps a useful thing to equate it with is inebriation or alcoholism, which one may say is founded in anxiety of one kind or another. I like those voices from the Ukraine that urge moderation and calm. Nobody wins from war, and if we try to diffuse anxiety, even in the face of threats, instead of ratcheting up the anxiety with counter-threats, surely we have a better chance of damping it down?

     Nowadays there are calls for Ireland to increase our defence capability. It is very important to keep a sense of proportion when it comes to what we might achieve, and even to remember that a hundred years ago, we did not actually defeat the British Empire by force of arms. However the effort to do so was not in vain. The British responded by shooting the 1916 leaders and sending over the Black and Tans to terrorise the population here, all of which created a very bad look for an Empire that had just allegedly fought the Great War 'for the rights of small nations'!

     Yet supposing war or catastrophe do catch up with us, in our relatively comfortable lives, can there be any living without anxiety? Surely sickness and death catches up with us all, sooner or later, and how can we possibly fail to be anxious about it? But perhaps it is possible to both confront and overthrow it, all the more effectively for keeping our eyes wide open? Jesus went willingly to his cross, 'for the joy that was set before him'. What kind of joy might that be? A very mighty thing, surely! So how do we find it? At this point, I might attempt to deliver a sermon on prayer and the Catholic Faith, but again, this is not the place for it. Instead I will settle for hoping we may go towards our fear, whatever it may be, and let us treat with disdain those who peddle anxiety. 

     The sea is a kind of archetype of chaos and anxiety, and that's partly why I like it, especially trying to cross it with an old wooden boat that at 50 years of age, has come very close to her end. Can an old man, coming close to his end, manage to turn this situation around? This year, finally, we shall see!

Steve hits headlines with Dublin Bay 21s

     I am gearing up for the trip to Portugal in a fortnight's time. This last few months have been productive, especially because, doing a course with Steve Morris in Kilrush*, I have been learning a lot about working with epoxy. We have been building a St Ayle's skiff from plywood and epoxy. I will be far from doing a wonderful restoration of my schooner 'Anna M', as Steve has been doing on the Dublin Bay 21s. Functionality and economy will be paramount, but I am hoping that epoxy is one of those things that empowers the d.i.y. types like me. Sailing must not be left to the millionaires of this world! It is going to be an interesting story, and I shall hope to get some videos up as well as covering it on this blog.

Working on St Ayle's skiff in Steve Morris' workshop.

Kilrush Harbour on a January evening.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l6Glm77jZg

A Basis for Debate.

 Having been virtually forced off the sea for these last three years, I realise more strongly than ever why I must get back on it again this year, or otherwise be in danger of losing the desire to live. It is nearly sixty years now since I realised just how lonely the quest for truth is inclined to be in this world. One cannot altogether trust anyone, even oneself, and one certainly cannot trust the ‘leaders’; least of all the politicians and pundits, but, unfortunately, priests, doctors and the rest of the establishment as well. In situations of war, of course, the usual difficulties of establishing truth are multiplied many times over. It has frequently been said that the pandemic is like a war. For the first time lately, I am inclined to agree, but I do not see the virus as the enemy; rather those who are using it for very murky purposes indeed.

     My thinking life really got going at that particular moment, when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot. Here we are, still waiting for an authoritative and transparent account of that event. There have been a few great guys who have held out some kind of public promise that truth was still an option. I might mention Bob Dylan for example. Nowadays one might mention Joe Rogan. All along however there is the multitude of working people, those who actually keep the show on the road, supplying our food, fixing our houses and our cars, building boats, who give one hope by keeping their humour and sanity alive even in the midst of the kind of insanity we have been living through for the last couple of years. Now I hear them saying that it has to stop. They are done with being psychologically terrorised. But this kind of bogey is difficult to bundle off into the darkness it came from.

      Governments the world over, the legacy media that we once depended on to give us some passably reasonable account of what is going on in the world, all stand exposed, naked. For the most part, they have no interest in truth. Truth, what is that? Pilate, the Emperor with no clothes. The likes of me have been saying it for over fifty years, but never perhaps have I felt the truth of it with the same force. The writing has been ‘peeling off the walls’ all that time. Finally, something has to go up in its place! But what will it be?

      Many people, probably the majority, are so frightened by this situation that they will just double down, no matter how absurd the narrative gets. The vaccines don’t work; they neither prevent infection nor transmission, well then let us have boosters. Far from ‘flattening the curve’, all these do is boost the infection rate to stratospheric heights. Well then, let us have another booster! 

      It’s all a lot worse than even I anticipated, and it makes Brexit look relatively trivial, though it does provide an interesting parallel. Far from admitting their failure, the British Government systematically attempts to repress the realisation of it, and also of the damage which it is causing. They go on mindlessly repeating their little mantras, ‘We got Brexit done’, ‘I believe in Science and in Vaccination’ . They are liable to turn viciously and irrationally on those who question their narratives. But the story is complicated and involved. Nowhere is the battle likely to be sharper than within the EU. Can it possibly maintain its proud claim to be a zone of freedom and the rule of law? The mistake those Brexiteers make is to believe, contrary to all the lessons of history, that they can insulate themselves from this battle behind the white cliffs of Dover. In fact it will be a global battle, whether we like it or not; but we would all do well to sort out our priorities with our neighbours first of all.

      Where do we go from here? Well, 'the weight of this sad time we must obey;/speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.' So says Albany at the end of 'King Lear'. The poor old king never had the chance, but we might as well enjoy ours to amuse ourselves with watching the drama play out around us. Unvaccinated, Fiona and I have just had covid, 'confirmed' by PCR. We caught it from our vaccinated children. We are recovering well. Meanwhile, we get called selfish because we decline to participate in an illegal medical experiment, carrying serious risks, and all because apparently we threaten people who, if the vaccines did work as one has been led to believe, were supposed to be protected.

The damage that is being done to our societies, by the deliberate fostering of fear and psychosis, is beyond measure. Trying to force people to get the vaccinations, and especially children, will go down as a very great crime, when the truth comes out. Meanwhile, how much harm will be done to them? At this stage there is precious little point in arguing about it. People either see it or they don’t; yet if we do try to debate the matter, it would seem the vaccines clearly qualify as medical experiments, and a pretty good place to start a debate is the Nuremburg Code.*

Next month I will be back to Portugal, striving to get the old boat out again. The sea and all to do with it can be cruel and difficult, but the great beauty of it is that it does not lie. It is not impressed by our silly human pretensions. For a while it may pretend to allow us the upper hand, but that will not endure. The bigger and more stubborn the lies we face and must contend with, for that is the human condition, the greater and more stunning the beauty and truth that will eventually be revealed! This is the great mystery of Resurrection. The seed must die, our boats will have their day, but a great Beauty is being born of it all! 

*https://media.tghn.org/medialibrary/2011/04/BMJ_No_7070_Volume_313_The_Nuremberg_Code.pdf

A 'Great Reset'?

 

The Crib in Doonaha church.

So, on a mild and pleasant day, we leave 2021 behind us. It has been, and remains till the last, a difficult year, but now it is possible to say with considerable confidence that the 'pandemic' is drawing to its conclusion. Over Christmas we have had three people in the house who have tested positive, but there's no harm on any of them, and so far my wife and I, unvaccinated, remain fine. The biggest problem is that it is going to be hard to persuade the dogs busy 'following the science' to drop their bones!

     It is very understandable that the types who have made big money, or political capital, or just personal prestige out of the vaccines, at such a huge cost to everyone else, find it hard to admit that they have taken us on a hiding to nowhere. The vaccines have completely failed in the avowed aim of eradicating these curious viri, which nonetheless have now gone the way their predecessors have always gone, gradually losing virulence. But the big question remains, can they be persuaded to relinquish the magnificent new powers that they have acquired, the excuse for bossing us all around? Having so widely stoked fear and used it to instil compliance, and caused so much distress and hardship, what hope they will be big enough to say 'ok, enough of that', let alone 'sorry'?

     It is all too true that, between the pandemic and global warming, we have been powerfully reminded that the whole human race, and all life on Earth for that matter, form in a sense part of a single organism. Yet again we are reminded that 'we must love one another or die'. But who trusts 'love'? It is so easy and natural for the super-rich elite, those who have access to real levers of power, to assume that it is their job to guide and preside over this sorry, wayward human race.  How is this to be done, unless by way of some form of command and control, in other words some kind of dictatorship and manipulation? Unless they have managed to get through that narrow gate, the Eye of a Needle, they are all too likely to assume that a good place to start is to acquire yet more power and wealth for themselves, and, boy, what magnificent opportunities have opened up for doing so! Meanwhile we have barely managed to maintain an effective and functional democracy in little old Ireland, for all our revolutionary adventures, and as for our neighbours across the Irish Sea....

     The whole dystopian narrative of a future ruled by one or two Communist Parties on  steroids, with electronic tabs on all aspects of our lives, personal, medical, financial, political etc, is all too familiar at this stage. Presumably if there are more than one, they will be vying with each other to become the Universal one. Such competition, not to say warfare, would indeed assist in keeping the population scared and in order. Instead of it being subject matter for a horror film, we can now see it happening before our eyes. What's more, we find well-intentioned people all round us buying into the line that 'there are just too many people in the world'. Well, which ones are to be deemed de trop, and how are they going to get rid of them?

     Yet this did not come upon us suddenly or without warning; in fact we might say it is as old as the human race. We have always tended to be afraid of some darn strangers taking over our resources and indeed our lives, and not without good reason. More than this, perhaps existential threats to our race, even to the whole of humanity, cut even deeper, and a carefree insouciance in this respect has become a good deal harder to maintain recently. Anyway the End is Nigh remains true, one way or another, even if as far as you and I are concerned we struggle through to old age.

     Repent, and believe the Good News, remains in one form or another the only way out, but we need to be continually reminded that the promised kingdom is not of this world! This does not prevent us from praying thy will be done on Earth, but should prevent us from allowing any worldly power to 'short circuit' the advent of this transcendent and eternal kingdom. The Universal Church squares this circle, in theory at least, in a way no other institution can; yet she is hobbled by her possibly inevitable compromises with worldly power, down the centuries. It should be a source of hope that she finds herself increasingly constrained to the poverty of her Master. Meanwhile, what do we make of the Great Reset, the latest version of this old story, as advocated by the Powers who have lately been dubbed by some 'Mr Global'?

     Let us allow that they have a point, but let us opt for the original Jesus version. The implications, as I understand them, involve not so much revolution against Ceasar, or in rejecting Amazon or smart-phones etc, but in renouncing those very methods of command and control which Ceasar tends to be unfortunately rather addicted to. There is no magic short-cut; we have to patiently build responsibility for our own lives and those around us, practising transparency, listening to others, sharing resources. In this way, on the basis of subsidiarity, even the EU can be sustained as a real zone of freedom, and genuine democracy extended to the ends of the Earth.

     There is no other way to go but, putting aside fear, to trust God to show us how to proceed. It's not the first time, after all, that humanity has faced impossible situations, and been surprised when God has come to our rescue, and although we find all kinds of excuses not to recognise this fact, in the end if we are fortunate we put aside our pride and accept that 'we are His People, the sheep of His flock'. I hope this New Year will be one such occasion!

West Clare at Christmas.